In response to the question in the title, I can report that most of my readers are. Almost everyone got the point of the last column. They see the absurdity of the government’s claim that the identity of the tough, macho Navy SEALs, who allegedly murdered Osama bin Laden, has to be kept secret in order to protect our fierce warriors from reprisals from Muslim terrorists, while those government officials responsible for the torture and deaths of large numbers of Muslims can walk around, identity known, unprotected and safe.
A few members of Congress are also awake, but not very many. Indeed, we are losing two of the most aware–Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. Kucinich was redistricted in order to get rid of his independent voice. He carried 75% of the votes from that part of his old district that was included in his new one, but the new voters lacked the intelligence to vote for him. Ron Paul, in our time of tribulation, tried for the Republican presidential nomination on a platform of saving the US Constitution, but those who voted in Republican primaries weren’t interested in saving the US Constitution.
Now we are down to US Rep. Walter Jones. Initially, Jones was a member of the warmonger crowd. He was angered when the French government cast doubt on the George W. Bush regime’s reasons for the need for war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Jones said at that time that he was renaming French Fries “Freedom Fries.”
Jones unplugged from the Matrix and has been sentient for some time. Recently the tyrant Obama and the government operative Panetta, a political whore who has been in a variety of government positions and is currently Secretary of Warmongering, announced publicly that, the US Constitution notwithstanding, the executive branch no longer needed the authority of Congress to go to war. In our globalist existence, the authority for the US to initiate hostilities against another country comes from the UN, declared Obama and Panetta. If the executive branch can persuade or bribe the UN to give a war OK, Congress is no longer relevant.
This was too much for the awakened US Rep. Walter Jones. He has introduced House Congressional Resolution 107, which clearly states that the president’s use of US military in an act of aggression without the consent of Congress is an impeachable offense.
There is absolutely no question whatsoever that Rep. Jones is correct. However, you can bet that the Obama regime already has a John Yoo-type hireling busy at work in the Department of Justice [sic] writing a legal memo that the US Constitution gives no authority to Congress to declare war.
A person would think that members of Congress would flock to Rep. Jones’ resolution.
After all, it is Congress’ own power that is on the line. Normally, organizations defend their own power. Strangely, the US Congress has not defended its power since Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in the 1930s. Because of the crisis of the Great Depression, Congress gave up its law-making powers to the executive agencies created by Roosevelt to run the country. Congress pretends to still be in control by having “oversight” over the ruling executive cabinet departments and agencies. Cabinet secretaries, assistant sectaries, and CIA directors have to go testify and be questioned before congressional committees and all that, like the Federal Reserve chairman who has unaccountable power over interest rates and inflation, but the laws are made by the executive branch. Ever since the 1930s, when Congress passes a law it is merely an authorization for some executive branch agency to define the law by writing the regulations. As the executive agency also enforces the regulations, we have the beginnings of tyranny as the same agency both makes the law and enforces it. (See, for example, Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Ch. 11, “Abdicating Legislative Power.”)
The roots of tyranny in America go back to the 1930s and even further back to President Lincoln. The decline of Congress, which was created by the Founding Fathers to be a powerful political institution, has been a long term process. However, in recent years, the decline of Congress’ power and relevance has accelerated. The Democrats are as responsible for this as Republicans. If US law had been enforced, and Democrats could have enforced the law, George W. Bush and essentially the entirety of his appointees would be in federal prison.
But the Democrats sacrificed the people’s power over government in order that the executive branch could protect us from a terrorism for which no evidence exists. No terrorist events have occurred since September 11, 2001, except for FBI orchestrated plots that “never endangered the public.” As for the government’s 9/11 story, thousands of experts have their doubts.
So, the US Constitution has simply been discarded on the basis of fear. First, the fear of the Great Depression, and secondly, the fear of Muslim Terrorism.
The United States of America is the Constitution. If the Constitution no longer exists as an enforceable document taken seriously by political elites, the United States no longer exists. Some other entity has taken its place.
Think about that. Describe to yourself the characteristics of this new entity. This will be easier for older people than for the young, who have been born into the new tyranny.
For the young, tyranny is all they know. For the young, tyranny is normal.
How old does a person have to be to remember when you boarded an airliner without any security? In previous columns, I have pointed out the tiny, essentially insignificant infractions, that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in order to avoid impeachment. Compared to Bush or Obama, Nixon was flawless in his observation of US law and the US Constitution. No one of my generation can possibly imagine Nixon saying that the UN could replace Congress’ authority to initiate war, or that he could strip US citizens of their liberty and lives on suspicion alone without evidence or due process of law, simply on the basis of executive decree. All Nixon did was to lie about when he learned of a burglary of which he had no prior knowledge and no involvement.
The loss of our liberty is where we are today. Rep. Jones wants to retrieve Congress’ war-making power. He says that those Americans who wish to support this goal should inform their senators and representative and local newspaper of this fact. He provides the telephone number of the congressional switchboard which can connect you to the three offices that, allegedly, represent you. The number is 202–224–3121.
As you know, I keep trying, and so must we all. If we don’t keep trying, it means we accept our loss of our liberty and accountable government. If we give in now, what was the point of resisting the Soviet threat, other than profits and power for the military/security complex?
The US government and its media whores, presstitutes as Gerald Celente calls them, show increasing contempt for the intelligence, or lack thereof, of the American public. Even Americans spaced out on alcohol, drugs, junk food, television and sports events remember the name Osama bin Laden. This person, formerly an operative of the US government against the Soviet Union, was, we were told, the embodiment of total evil. He was responsible for 9/11.
President George W. Bush declared that Afghanistan’s refusal (apparently another Bush regime lie) to deliver Osama, the alleged (no proof) perpetrator of 9/11, to US authorities was the justification for attacking Afghanistan, a country at that time, as now, with two separate governments at war with one another. Shortly thereafter, Osama became, magically, the reason to invade Iraq, an old US ally who had attacked the government of the Iranian Revolution at Washington’s behest.
Suddenly America’s Iraqi ally had nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction” that threatened American cities, in the words of Bush’s moronic national security advisor, with “mushroom clouds.”
How did all this absurdity occur? Yes, what Gerald Celente aptly designates as “the presstitute media” played a role. However, the whores were serving their customers, which are the government and private interests that benefit from war. The American public could have rejected the spin, but they put yellow ribbon decals on their SUVs and supported the troops.
If Americans were puzzled when the US government abandoned its position that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 and announced a new “mastermind,” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the presstitutes didn’t mention it. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was designated the “mastermind of 9/11” because the US government had in custody this hapless individual, perhaps sold to them by warlords for the bounty paid for “terrorists.” There’s no good in having a mastermind of 9/11 whom you cannot catch. So Khalid Sheikh Mohammed became the Mastermind of 9/11.
Once designated the Mastermind, the CIA torturers went to work on him, illegally, of course, but who cares, here was the Mastermind of 9/11.
After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was water-boarded 183 times with the only evidence against him being coerced self-incrimination, both the former chief US prosecutor at Guantanamo, Colonel Morris Davis, and Admiral Donald Guter, Judge Advocate General of the US Navy, dismissed the Guantanamo military tribunal trials as show trials or “circuses.”
Indeed, the American trials of alleged “terrorists” are even less lawful than Stalin’s show trials of the Bolsheviks, who created the Russian Revolution in 1917, and Hitler’s trials of the German military who attempted to assassinate him in order to save Germany from destruction.
When America’s own chief military prosecutors denounce trials of alleged “terrorists,” the media and the public should take notice. But not in America where the government believes its own lies as fervently as the brainwashed public believes the presstitute media.
Astonishingly, before a show trial could dispatch Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the Mastermind of 9/11, the US government has produced a new culprit. It was not Osama bin Laden nor Sheikh Mohammed, but Iran that is responsible for 9/11. In a US federal court judgment issued in December 2011, Iran was found guilty of the 9/11 attacks (ref).
So who is responsible for 9/11? If not bin Laden, why did the Navy SEALs allegedly murder him? If not Sheikh Mohammed, why is he being put on trial after being tortured for years?
The answer is that the criminals in Washington, who control our lives, no longer care about any of their previous propaganda. They now want to attack another country on totally false pretenses, as does the extreme right-wing Israeli government, the cancer of the Middle East.
Some of the Israeli military brass and much of the Israeli security/intelligence brass oppose an attack on Iran as an act of insanity. Yet, little, if any of the Israeli opposition to war has been reported in the US presstitute media. In order to negate internal opposition, the Israeli prime minister has formed a unity government with the main opposition party, as AIPAC stampedes the US Congress into voting for war with Iran (ref).
If the unaware American population can be programmed to believe that Iran is the 9/11 culprit, then Washington can initiate yet another war that enriches the military/security complex with money and power.
Will bin Laden’s family now sue Washington for blaming Osama for an offense which Washington now acknowledges he was not guilty? Will Sheikh Mohammed be found guiltless, because a US federal court now says it was Iran that was responsible for 9/11?
These would be the results if America had a justice system that was independent of the needs of the political elites and the private interests that they serve. But today in America the ruling interests produce by hook or crook justifications for war that serve the power and profit of the military/security complex. Whatever the mainstream media tells you serves this interest.
So, how do we rescue America from its government and from the corrupt media that serves as a Ministry of Truth for a corrupt government?
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. His home page is paulcraigroberts.org.
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Are Americans catching on, waking up, unplugging?
Posted on May 21, 2012 by Paul Craig Roberts
In response to the question in the title, I can report that most of my readers are. Almost everyone got the point of the last column. They see the absurdity of the government’s claim that the identity of the tough, macho Navy SEALs, who allegedly murdered Osama bin Laden, has to be kept secret in order to protect our fierce warriors from reprisals from Muslim terrorists, while those government officials responsible for the torture and deaths of large numbers of Muslims can walk around, identity known, unprotected and safe.
A few members of Congress are also awake, but not very many. Indeed, we are losing two of the most aware–Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. Kucinich was redistricted in order to get rid of his independent voice. He carried 75% of the votes from that part of his old district that was included in his new one, but the new voters lacked the intelligence to vote for him. Ron Paul, in our time of tribulation, tried for the Republican presidential nomination on a platform of saving the US Constitution, but those who voted in Republican primaries weren’t interested in saving the US Constitution.
Now we are down to US Rep. Walter Jones. Initially, Jones was a member of the warmonger crowd. He was angered when the French government cast doubt on the George W. Bush regime’s reasons for the need for war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Jones said at that time that he was renaming French Fries “Freedom Fries.”
Jones unplugged from the Matrix and has been sentient for some time. Recently the tyrant Obama and the government operative Panetta, a political whore who has been in a variety of government positions and is currently Secretary of Warmongering, announced publicly that, the US Constitution notwithstanding, the executive branch no longer needed the authority of Congress to go to war. In our globalist existence, the authority for the US to initiate hostilities against another country comes from the UN, declared Obama and Panetta. If the executive branch can persuade or bribe the UN to give a war OK, Congress is no longer relevant.
This was too much for the awakened US Rep. Walter Jones. He has introduced House Congressional Resolution 107, which clearly states that the president’s use of US military in an act of aggression without the consent of Congress is an impeachable offense.
There is absolutely no question whatsoever that Rep. Jones is correct. However, you can bet that the Obama regime already has a John Yoo-type hireling busy at work in the Department of Justice [sic] writing a legal memo that the US Constitution gives no authority to Congress to declare war.
A person would think that members of Congress would flock to Rep. Jones’ resolution.
After all, it is Congress’ own power that is on the line. Normally, organizations defend their own power. Strangely, the US Congress has not defended its power since Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in the 1930s. Because of the crisis of the Great Depression, Congress gave up its law-making powers to the executive agencies created by Roosevelt to run the country. Congress pretends to still be in control by having “oversight” over the ruling executive cabinet departments and agencies. Cabinet secretaries, assistant sectaries, and CIA directors have to go testify and be questioned before congressional committees and all that, like the Federal Reserve chairman who has unaccountable power over interest rates and inflation, but the laws are made by the executive branch. Ever since the 1930s, when Congress passes a law it is merely an authorization for some executive branch agency to define the law by writing the regulations. As the executive agency also enforces the regulations, we have the beginnings of tyranny as the same agency both makes the law and enforces it. (See, for example, Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Ch. 11, “Abdicating Legislative Power.”)
The roots of tyranny in America go back to the 1930s and even further back to President Lincoln. The decline of Congress, which was created by the Founding Fathers to be a powerful political institution, has been a long term process. However, in recent years, the decline of Congress’ power and relevance has accelerated. The Democrats are as responsible for this as Republicans. If US law had been enforced, and Democrats could have enforced the law, George W. Bush and essentially the entirety of his appointees would be in federal prison.
But the Democrats sacrificed the people’s power over government in order that the executive branch could protect us from a terrorism for which no evidence exists. No terrorist events have occurred since September 11, 2001, except for FBI orchestrated plots that “never endangered the public.” As for the government’s 9/11 story, thousands of experts have their doubts.
So, the US Constitution has simply been discarded on the basis of fear. First, the fear of the Great Depression, and secondly, the fear of Muslim Terrorism.
The United States of America is the Constitution. If the Constitution no longer exists as an enforceable document taken seriously by political elites, the United States no longer exists. Some other entity has taken its place.
Think about that. Describe to yourself the characteristics of this new entity. This will be easier for older people than for the young, who have been born into the new tyranny.
For the young, tyranny is all they know. For the young, tyranny is normal.
How old does a person have to be to remember when you boarded an airliner without any security? In previous columns, I have pointed out the tiny, essentially insignificant infractions, that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in order to avoid impeachment. Compared to Bush or Obama, Nixon was flawless in his observation of US law and the US Constitution. No one of my generation can possibly imagine Nixon saying that the UN could replace Congress’ authority to initiate war, or that he could strip US citizens of their liberty and lives on suspicion alone without evidence or due process of law, simply on the basis of executive decree. All Nixon did was to lie about when he learned of a burglary of which he had no prior knowledge and no involvement.
The loss of our liberty is where we are today. Rep. Jones wants to retrieve Congress’ war-making power. He says that those Americans who wish to support this goal should inform their senators and representative and local newspaper of this fact. He provides the telephone number of the congressional switchboard which can connect you to the three offices that, allegedly, represent you. The number is 202–224–3121.
As you know, I keep trying, and so must we all. If we don’t keep trying, it means we accept our loss of our liberty and accountable government. If we give in now, what was the point of resisting the Soviet threat, other than profits and power for the military/security complex?
The US government and its media whores, presstitutes as Gerald Celente calls them, show increasing contempt for the intelligence, or lack thereof, of the American public. Even Americans spaced out on alcohol, drugs, junk food, television and sports events remember the name Osama bin Laden. This person, formerly an operative of the US government against the Soviet Union, was, we were told, the embodiment of total evil. He was responsible for 9/11.
President George W. Bush declared that Afghanistan’s refusal (apparently another Bush regime lie) to deliver Osama, the alleged (no proof) perpetrator of 9/11, to US authorities was the justification for attacking Afghanistan, a country at that time, as now, with two separate governments at war with one another. Shortly thereafter, Osama became, magically, the reason to invade Iraq, an old US ally who had attacked the government of the Iranian Revolution at Washington’s behest.
Suddenly America’s Iraqi ally had nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction” that threatened American cities, in the words of Bush’s moronic national security advisor, with “mushroom clouds.”
How did all this absurdity occur? Yes, what Gerald Celente aptly designates as “the presstitute media” played a role. However, the whores were serving their customers, which are the government and private interests that benefit from war. The American public could have rejected the spin, but they put yellow ribbon decals on their SUVs and supported the troops.
If Americans were puzzled when the US government abandoned its position that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 and announced a new “mastermind,” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the presstitutes didn’t mention it. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was designated the “mastermind of 9/11” because the US government had in custody this hapless individual, perhaps sold to them by warlords for the bounty paid for “terrorists.” There’s no good in having a mastermind of 9/11 whom you cannot catch. So Khalid Sheikh Mohammed became the Mastermind of 9/11.
Once designated the Mastermind, the CIA torturers went to work on him, illegally, of course, but who cares, here was the Mastermind of 9/11.
After Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was water-boarded 183 times with the only evidence against him being coerced self-incrimination, both the former chief US prosecutor at Guantanamo, Colonel Morris Davis, and Admiral Donald Guter, Judge Advocate General of the US Navy, dismissed the Guantanamo military tribunal trials as show trials or “circuses.”
Indeed, the American trials of alleged “terrorists” are even less lawful than Stalin’s show trials of the Bolsheviks, who created the Russian Revolution in 1917, and Hitler’s trials of the German military who attempted to assassinate him in order to save Germany from destruction.
When America’s own chief military prosecutors denounce trials of alleged “terrorists,” the media and the public should take notice. But not in America where the government believes its own lies as fervently as the brainwashed public believes the presstitute media.
Astonishingly, before a show trial could dispatch Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the Mastermind of 9/11, the US government has produced a new culprit. It was not Osama bin Laden nor Sheikh Mohammed, but Iran that is responsible for 9/11. In a US federal court judgment issued in December 2011, Iran was found guilty of the 9/11 attacks (ref).
So who is responsible for 9/11? If not bin Laden, why did the Navy SEALs allegedly murder him? If not Sheikh Mohammed, why is he being put on trial after being tortured for years?
The answer is that the criminals in Washington, who control our lives, no longer care about any of their previous propaganda. They now want to attack another country on totally false pretenses, as does the extreme right-wing Israeli government, the cancer of the Middle East.
Some of the Israeli military brass and much of the Israeli security/intelligence brass oppose an attack on Iran as an act of insanity. Yet, little, if any of the Israeli opposition to war has been reported in the US presstitute media. In order to negate internal opposition, the Israeli prime minister has formed a unity government with the main opposition party, as AIPAC stampedes the US Congress into voting for war with Iran (ref).
If the unaware American population can be programmed to believe that Iran is the 9/11 culprit, then Washington can initiate yet another war that enriches the military/security complex with money and power.
Will bin Laden’s family now sue Washington for blaming Osama for an offense which Washington now acknowledges he was not guilty? Will Sheikh Mohammed be found guiltless, because a US federal court now says it was Iran that was responsible for 9/11?
These would be the results if America had a justice system that was independent of the needs of the political elites and the private interests that they serve. But today in America the ruling interests produce by hook or crook justifications for war that serve the power and profit of the military/security complex. Whatever the mainstream media tells you serves this interest.
So, how do we rescue America from its government and from the corrupt media that serves as a Ministry of Truth for a corrupt government?
Copyright © 2012 Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. His home page is paulcraigroberts.org.