Paul Craig Roberts from Creators Syndicate

Washington Murdered Privacy at Home and Abroad for 03/26/2010

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

In the Swiss newspaper Zeit-Fragen, Professor Dr. Eberhard Hamer from Germany asks, "How Sovereign is Europe?"

He examines the issue and concludes that Europe has little, if any, sovereignty.

Professor Hamer writes that the sovereign rights of Europeans as citizens of nation states were dissolved with the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty on Dec. 1, 2009. The rights ...

Updated: Fri Mar 26, 2010

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American Naifs Bringing Ruin to Other Lands for 03/19/2010

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping "bunker-buster" bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London: ...

Updated: Fri Mar 19, 2010

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The Offshored Economy for 03/17/2010

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

In the 20th century, Detroit, Mich., symbolized American industrial might. Today it symbolizes the offshored economy.

Detroit's population has declined by half. A quarter of the city — 35 square miles — is desolate with only a few houses still standing on largely abandoned streets. If the local government can get the money from Washington, urban planners are going to shrink t ...

Updated: Wed Mar 17, 2010

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Muslims Are Their Own Worst Enemy for 03/02/2010

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Muslims are numerous but powerless. Divisions among Muslims, especially between Sunni and Shi'ites, have consigned the Muslim Middle East to almost a century of Western control. Muslims cannot even play together. The Islamic Solidarity Games, a regional version of the Olympics, which were to be held in April in Iran, have been cancelled, because the Iranians and the Arabs cannot agree on whethe ...

Updated: Tue Mar 02, 2010

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Is The Recovery Real? for 03/02/2010

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Happy news! The government has come up with a 5.9 percent GDP growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2009. The recession is over.

Or is it? Statistician John Williams has informed us that 69 percent of this growth, or 4.1 percentage points, is the result of inventory accumulation. That leaves a 1.8 percent growth rate, and the 1.8 percent is likely due to the underestimate of inflation and ...

Updated: Tue Mar 02, 2010

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America's First Suicide Bomber for 02/23/2010

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Joseph Stack, frustrated American, flew his airplane into an Austin, Texas, office building. He was one of the 79 percent of Americans who have given up on "their" government.

The latest Rasmussen Poll indicates that the vast majority of Americans are convinced that "their" government is totally unresponsive to them, their concerns, and their needs. Rasmussen found th ...

Updated: Tue Feb 23, 2010

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Social Security Will Fall To Obama Before The Taliban Do for 02/22/2010

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Hank Paulson, the Gold Sachs bankster/U.S. Treasury Secretary, who deregulated the financial system, caused a world crisis that wrecked the prospects of foreign banks and governments, caused millions of Americans to lose retirement savings, homes, and jobs, and left taxpayers burdened with multi-trillions of dollars of new U.S.debt, is still not in jail. He is writing in the New York Times urgi ...

Updated: Mon Feb 22, 2010

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Grounds for Hope and Despair for 02/18/2010

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

My Feb. 16 column, "A Country of Serfs Ruled By Oligarchs," received confirmation from high places on the very day it appeared. Popular Indiana Democratic U.S. Senator Evan Bayh announced that he was quitting the Senate. Yahoo News gave this account:

"In an interview on MSNBC this morning, newly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh declared the American political system 'dysfunctional, ...

Updated: Thu Feb 18, 2010

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A Country of Serfs Ruled By Oligarchs for 02/16/2010

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The media has headlined good economic news: fourth quarter GDP growth of 5.7 percent ("the recession is over"), Jan. retail sales up, productivity up in 4th quarter, the dollar is gaining strength. Is any of it true? What does it mean?

The 5.7 percent growth figure is a guesstimate made in advance of the release of the U.S. trade deficit statistic. It assumed that the U.S. trad ...

Updated: Tue Feb 16, 2010

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Can the Real Estate Predators Fight Off the Oil Company Predators? for 02/09/2010

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Which organization is the greatest threat to the Second Amendment, the anti-gun Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence or Idaho's pro-gun Sportsmen for Wildlife?

This might seem like a stupid question until you learn that the Idaho organization recently held three "predator derbies" in which competitors vied to see who could slaughter the most wolves over a two-day period. Simila ...

Updated: Tue Feb 09, 2010

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It Is Now Official: The U.S. Is a Police State for 02/09/2010

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration's "war on terror," which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely ...

Updated: Tue Feb 09, 2010

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Markets Fail When Humans Are Unregulated for 02/04/2010

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan answered that he had placed his trust in a flawed theory when he was called before Congress to explain why he, Goldman Sachs Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, prevented Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation, a government regulatory agency, from doing her job of regulating over-t ...

Updated: Thu Feb 04, 2010

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The Crisis Is Not Over for 02/03/2010

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Readers ask if the financial crisis is over, if the recovery is for real and, if not, what are Americans' prospects. The short answer is that the financial crisis is not over, the recovery is not real, and the U.S. faces a far worse crisis than the financial one. Here is the situation as I understand it:

The global crisis is understood as a banking crisis brought on by the mindless dereg ...

Updated: Wed Feb 03, 2010

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Rule by the Rich for 01/26/2010

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate by Democratic voters in Massachusetts sends President Obama a message. Voters perceive that Obama's administration has morphed into a Bush-Cheney government. Obama has reneged on every promise he made, from ending wars, to closing Gitmo, to providing health care for Americans, to curtailing the domestic police state, to putting the inter ...

Updated: Tue Jan 26, 2010

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How Wall St Destroyed Private Medicine for 01/22/2010

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

At my annual check-up, my doctor handed me a sheet explaining the reasons for office fee increases for Medicare Patients. It is worth reporting at length.

Medicare fixes the prices for Medicare patients' health care. All office charges for Medicare, including office visit charges, have been set by the Federal government since 1984. In real terms (adjusted for inflation), these fixed pric ...

Updated: Fri Jan 22, 2010

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The Rule of Law Has Been Lost for 01/19/2010

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Paul Craig Roberts

What is the greatest human achievement? Many would answer in terms of some architectural or engineering feat: The Great Pyramids, skyscrapers, a bridge span, or sending men to the moon. Others might say the subduing of some deadly disease or Einstein's theory of relativity.

The greatest human achievement is the subordination of government to law. This wa ...

Updated: Tue Jan 19, 2010

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Insouciant Americans for 01/12/2010

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Underwear Bomber case indicates that whoever is behind these bomb scares is laughing at our gullibility.

How realistic is it that al-Qaida, an organization that allegedly pulled off the most fantastic terror attack in world history, would in these days of heightened security choose for an attack on an airliner a person who is the most conspicuous of all? Umar Farouk Mutallab had a on ...

Updated: Tue Jan 12, 2010

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Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth? for 01/07/2010

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

What are we to make of the failed Underwear Bomber plot, the Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber plot, and the Shoe Bomber plot? These blundering and implausible plots to bring down an airliner seem far removed from al-Qaida's expertise in pulling off 9/11.

If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida "mastermind" behind 9/11, ...

Updated: Thu Jan 07, 2010

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First Circle: Liberty Has Been Lost for 01/06/2010

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

I had just finished reading the uncensored edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book, "In The First Circle" (Harper Perennial, 2009), when I came across Chris Hedges article, "One Day We'll All Be Terrorists" (Truthdig, Dec. 28, 2009). In Hedges' description of the U.S. government's treatment of American citizen Syed Fahad Hashmi, I recognized the Stalinist legal system as po ...

Updated: Wed Jan 06, 2010

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Israel Rules for 12/30/2009

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

On Christmas Eve, when Christians were celebrating the Prince of Peace, THE New York Times delivered forth a call for war. "There's only one way to stop Iran," declared Alan J. Kuperman, and that is "military air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities."

Kuperman is described as the "director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of ...

Updated: Wed Dec 30, 2009

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