Paul Craig Roberts from Creators Syndicate

The Expiring Economy for 08/05/2009

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tent cities springing up all over America are filling with the homeless unemployed from the worst economy since the 1930s. While Americans live in tents, the Obama government has embarked on a $1 billion crash program to build a mega-embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, to rival the one the Bush government built in Baghdad.

Hard times have now afflicted Americans for so long that even the ext ...

Updated: Wed Aug 05, 2009

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Spinning the Economic News for 08/12/2009

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Last Friday, a Bloomberg.com headline read: "U.S. Stocks Gain, Treasuries Drop as Unemployment Rate Declines."

Let's have a look at the reported decline in the rate of unemployment. Do you believe that the U.S. auto industry added 28,000 jobs in July amidst the GM bankruptcy, sell-off and close-down of GM auto divisions, and demise of GM suppliers? No? Well, that's what the Bur ...

Updated: Wed Aug 12, 2009

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Americans: Serfs Ruled by Oligarchs for 08/19/2009

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"In a little time [there will be] no middling sort. We shall have a few, and but a very few Lords, and all the rest beggars." — R.L. Bushman

"Rapidly you are dividing into two classes — extreme rich and extreme poor." — "Brutus"

Americans think that they have "freedom and democracy" and that politicians are held accountable ...

Updated: Wed Aug 19, 2009

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From Citizen to Serf in 200 Years for 08/26/2009

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

America is a strange place. Liberals get emotionally distraught that the Founding Fathers stuck Second Amendment rights in the Constitution. For American citizens to possess firearms is considered to be dangerous. Yet, it is quite all right for Americans to possess deadly green mambas.

Mambas are large, fast and very poisonous African snakes whose bite is usually fatal. Their venom is ne ...

Updated: Wed Aug 26, 2009

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Why Not Crippling Sanctions for Israel and the U.S.? for 09/02/2009

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

In Israel, a country stolen from the Palestinians, fanatics control the government. One of the fanatics is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week, Netanyahu called for "crippling sanctions" against Iran.

The kind of blockade that Netanyahu wants qualifies as an act of war. Israel has long threatened to attack Iran on its own but prefers to draw in the U.S. and NATO.< ...

Updated: Wed Sep 02, 2009

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U.S. Hypocrisy Astonishes the World for 09/09/2009

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Americans have lost their ability for introspection, thereby revealing their astounding hypocrisy to the world.

U.S. War Secretary Robert Gates has condemned The Associated Press and a reporter, Julie Jacobson, embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, for taking and releasing a photo of a U.S. Marine who was wounded in action and died from his injury.

The photographer was on patr ...

Updated: Wed Sep 09, 2009

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Health Care Deceit for 09/16/2009

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The current health care "debate" shows how far gone representative government is in the United States. Members of Congress represent the powerful interest groups that fill their campaign coffers, not the people who vote for them.

The health care bill is not about health care. It is about protecting and increasing the profits of the insurance companies. The main feature of the h ...

Updated: Wed Sep 16, 2009

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The Economy Is a Lie, Too for 09/23/2009

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Americans cannot get any truth out of their government about anything, the economy included. Americans are being driven into the ground economically, with 1 million schoolchildren now homeless, while Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke announces that the recession is over.

The spin that masquerades as news is becoming more delusional. Consumer spending is 70 percent of the U.S. economy ...

Updated: Wed Sep 23, 2009

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More Lies, More Deception for 09/30/2009

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"What does imperialism mean? It means the assertion of absolute force over others." — Robert Lowe, 1878

The G-20 ministers declared their meeting in Pittsburgh a success, but as Rob Kall reports in OpEdNews.com, the meeting's main success was to turn Pittsburgh into "a ghost town, emptied of workers and the usual pedestrians, but filled to overflowin ...

Updated: Wed Sep 30, 2009

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Another War in the Works for 10/02/2009

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Does anyone remember all the lies that they were told by President Bush and the "mainstream media" about the grave threat to America from weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? These lies were repeated endlessly in the print and TV media despite the reports from the weapons inspectors, who had been sent to Iraq, that no such weapons existed.

The weapons inspectors did an honest j ...

Updated: Fri Oct 02, 2009

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How the Feds Imprison the Innocent for 10/07/2009

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Authors of serious books seldom have cause to celebrate, but Larry Stratton and I have two reasons to open the champagne. Crown Publishing, a division of Random House, has announced a second printing of the second edition of "The Tyranny of Good Intentions," and the noted civil libertarian and defense attorney Harvey Silverglate has just published a book covering many of the same lega ...

Updated: Wed Oct 07, 2009

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Marx and Lenin Revisited for 10/09/2009

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks." — Karl Marx

If Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics.

Marx predicted the growing misery of working people, and Lenin foresaw the subordination of the production of goods ...

Updated: Fri Oct 09, 2009

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War Criminals Are Becoming the Arbiters of Law for 10/14/2009

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The double standard under which the Israeli government operates is too much for everyone except the brainwashed Americans. Even the very Israeli Jerusalem Post can see the double standard displayed by "all of Israel now speaking in one voice against the Goldstone report":

"This is the Israeli notion of a fair deal: We're entitled to do whatever the hell we want to the Pale ...

Updated: Wed Oct 14, 2009

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The Rich Have Stolen the Economy for 10/16/2009

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Bloomberg reports that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's closest aides earned millions of dollars a year working for Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and other Wall Street firms. Bloomberg reports that none of these aides faced Senate confirmation. Yet, they are overseeing the handout of hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to their former employers.

The gifts of billions of dol ...

Updated: Fri Oct 16, 2009

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U.S. Joins Ranks of Failed States for 10/21/2009

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The U.S. has every characteristic of a failed state.

The U.S. government's current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation.

Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the U.S. relies on terrorism and military aggression.

Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized intere ...

Updated: Wed Oct 21, 2009

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The Financo-State -- Are You Ready for the Next Crisis? for 10/28/2009

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Evidence that the U.S. is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it.

One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and advance their private interests.

Another conclusive hallmark is rising income inequality, as the insiders manipulate economic policy for their enrichment at the expense of ...

Updated: Wed Oct 28, 2009

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U.S.-Israeli Missile Defense War Game Signals Israeli Attack on Iran for 10/30/2009

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

There's no word in the Western press, but Al-jazeera reports that the U.S. and Israel are conducting tests of the high altitude missile defense system that the U.S. has provided to Israel.

The anti-missile system is useless against the short-range rockets of Hamas and Hezbollah. Its purpose is to protect Israel from longer-range Iranian missiles.

Everyone understands that Iran wou ...

Updated: Fri Oct 30, 2009

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The Evil Empire for 11/07/2009

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The U.S. government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that "our" government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate. Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents will be as in ...

Updated: Sat Nov 07, 2009

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America's Dismal Future for 11/13/2009

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

It did not take the Israel lobby long to make mincemeat out of the Obama administration's "no new settlements" position. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is bragging about Israel's latest victory over the U.S. government as Israel continues to build illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

In May, President Obama read the Israelis the riot act, telling the Israeli gove ...

Updated: Fri Nov 13, 2009

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Morality vs. Material Interests -- Myths of Our Time for 11/14/2009

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

It is conventional wisdom that it was the draft that ended the Vietnam War. According to this explanation, cowardly college students subject to the draft and their unpatriotic families forced an end to the war. This is Karl Marx's explanation. Material interests, not empty morality, are said to have brought the war to an end.

That fact that in those days the U.S. still had an independent ...

Updated: Sat Nov 14, 2009

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