Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Thursday, June 27, 2013
A New Beginning Without Washington’s Sanctimonious Mask — Paul Craig Roberts
A New Beginning Without Washington’s Sanctimonious Mask
Paul Craig Roberts
It is hard to understand the fuss that Washington and its media whores are making over Edward Snowden. We have known for a long time that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying for years without warrants on the communications of Americans and people throughout the world. Photographs of the massive NSA building in Utah built for the purpose of storing the intercepted communications of the world have been published many times.
It is not clear to an ordinary person what Snowden has revealed that William Binney and other whistleblowers have not already revealed. Perhaps the difference is that Snowden has provided documents that prove it, thereby negating Washington’s ability to deny the facts with its usual lies.
Whatever the reason for Washington’s blather, it certainly is not doing the US government any good. Far more interesting than Snowden’s revelations is the decision by governments of other countries to protect a truth-teller from the Stasi in Washington.
Hong Kong kept Snowden’s whereabouts secret so that an amerikan black-op strike or a drone could not be sent to murder him. Hong Kong told Washington that its extradition papers for Snowden were not in order and permitted Snowden to leave for Moscow.
The Chinese government did not interfere with Snowden’s departure.
The Russian government says it has no objection to Snowden having a connecting flight in Moscow.
Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino responded to Washington’s threats with a statement that the Ecuadorian government puts human rights above Washington’s interests. Foreign Minister Patino said that Snowden served humanity by revealing that the Washington Stasi was violating the rights of “every citizen in the world.” Snowden merely betrayed “some elites that are in power in a certain country,” whereas Washington betrayed the entire world.
With Hong Kong, China, Russia, Ecuador, and Cuba refusing to obey the Stasi’s orders, Washington is flailing around making a total fool of itself and its media prostitutes.
Secretary of State John Kerry has been issuing warnings hand over fist. He has threatened Russia, China, Ecuador, and every country that aids and abets Snowden’s escape from the Washington Stasi. Those who don’t do Washington’s bidding, Kerry declared, will suffer adverse impacts on their relationship with the US.
What a stupid thing for Kerry to say. Here is a guy who once was for peace but who has been turned by NSA spying on his personal affairs into an asset for the NSA. Try to realize the extraordinary arrogance and hubris in Kerry’s threat that China, Russia, and other countries will suffer bad relations with the US. Kerry is saying that amerika doesn’t have to care whether “the indispensable people” have bad relations with other countries, but those countries have to be concerned if they have bad relations with the “indispensable country.” What an arrogant posture for the US government to present to the world.
Here we have a US Secretary of State lost in delusion along with the rest of Washington. A country that is bankrupt, a country that has allowed its corporations to destroy its economy by moving the best jobs offshore, a country whose future is in the hands of the printing press, a country that after eleven years of combat has been unable to defeat a few thousand lightly armed Taliban is now threatening Russia and China. God save us from the utter fools who comprise our government.
more @ http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/06/25/a-new-beginning-without-washingtons-sanctimonious-mask-paul-craig-roberts/
Paul Craig Roberts
It is hard to understand the fuss that Washington and its media whores are making over Edward Snowden. We have known for a long time that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying for years without warrants on the communications of Americans and people throughout the world. Photographs of the massive NSA building in Utah built for the purpose of storing the intercepted communications of the world have been published many times.
It is not clear to an ordinary person what Snowden has revealed that William Binney and other whistleblowers have not already revealed. Perhaps the difference is that Snowden has provided documents that prove it, thereby negating Washington’s ability to deny the facts with its usual lies.
Whatever the reason for Washington’s blather, it certainly is not doing the US government any good. Far more interesting than Snowden’s revelations is the decision by governments of other countries to protect a truth-teller from the Stasi in Washington.
Hong Kong kept Snowden’s whereabouts secret so that an amerikan black-op strike or a drone could not be sent to murder him. Hong Kong told Washington that its extradition papers for Snowden were not in order and permitted Snowden to leave for Moscow.
The Chinese government did not interfere with Snowden’s departure.
The Russian government says it has no objection to Snowden having a connecting flight in Moscow.
Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino responded to Washington’s threats with a statement that the Ecuadorian government puts human rights above Washington’s interests. Foreign Minister Patino said that Snowden served humanity by revealing that the Washington Stasi was violating the rights of “every citizen in the world.” Snowden merely betrayed “some elites that are in power in a certain country,” whereas Washington betrayed the entire world.
With Hong Kong, China, Russia, Ecuador, and Cuba refusing to obey the Stasi’s orders, Washington is flailing around making a total fool of itself and its media prostitutes.
Secretary of State John Kerry has been issuing warnings hand over fist. He has threatened Russia, China, Ecuador, and every country that aids and abets Snowden’s escape from the Washington Stasi. Those who don’t do Washington’s bidding, Kerry declared, will suffer adverse impacts on their relationship with the US.
What a stupid thing for Kerry to say. Here is a guy who once was for peace but who has been turned by NSA spying on his personal affairs into an asset for the NSA. Try to realize the extraordinary arrogance and hubris in Kerry’s threat that China, Russia, and other countries will suffer bad relations with the US. Kerry is saying that amerika doesn’t have to care whether “the indispensable people” have bad relations with other countries, but those countries have to be concerned if they have bad relations with the “indispensable country.” What an arrogant posture for the US government to present to the world.
Here we have a US Secretary of State lost in delusion along with the rest of Washington. A country that is bankrupt, a country that has allowed its corporations to destroy its economy by moving the best jobs offshore, a country whose future is in the hands of the printing press, a country that after eleven years of combat has been unable to defeat a few thousand lightly armed Taliban is now threatening Russia and China. God save us from the utter fools who comprise our government.
more @ http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/06/25/a-new-beginning-without-washingtons-sanctimonious-mask-paul-craig-roberts/
Available Gold Supply Disappearing As Gold Price Plunges
27 June 2013, by Eric King (King World News)
http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/6/27_Available_Gold_Supply_Disappearing_As_Gold_Price_Plunges.html
Excerpt:
Barron: ETFs continue to be stripped of gold and the bullion banks continue selling the gold overseas when they can arbitrage the price.
So investors just need to sit tight and ride this out because available physical supplies of gold are dwindling rapidly….
We are at or very near the bottom because gold has now tumbled below the cash cost of production for the mining industry.
So almost nobody is making money mining gold at these prices.
As gold falls below the average “cash cost” it begins to get very dire and we start to see mines close.
I have just seen two operations close without any notice in the last couple of days.
If U.S. Mass Media Were State-Controlled, Would They Look Any Different?
Snowden Coverage
The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed a U.S. corporate media
system at war with independent journalism. Many of the same outlets –
especially TV news – that missed the Wall Street meltdown and cheer-led
the Iraq invasion have come to resemble state-controlled media outlets
in their near-total identification with the government as it pursues the
now 30-year-old whistleblower.
While an independent journalism system would be dissecting the impacts of NSA surveillance on privacy rights, and separating fact from fiction, U.S. news networks have obsessed on questions like: How much damage has Snowden caused? How can he be brought to justice?
Unfazed by polls showing that half of the American rabble — I mean, public – believe Snowden did a good thing by leaking documentation of NSA spying, TV news panels have usually excluded anyone who speaks for these millions of Americans. Although TV hosts and most panelists are not government officials, some have a penchant for speaking of the government with the pronoun “We.”
After Snowden made it out of Hong Kong to Russia, New York Times journalist and CNBC talking head Andrew Ross Sorkin expressed his frustration: “We’ve screwed this up, to even let him get to Russia.” By “we,” he meant the U.S. government.
Last time I checked, Sorkin was working for the Times and CNBC, not the CIA or FBI.
When a huge swath of the country is on the side of the guy-on-the-run and not the government, it’s much easier to see that there’s nothing “objective” or “neutral” about journalists who so closely identify with the spy agencies or Justice Department or White House.
The standard exclusion of dissenting views – panels often span from hawk (“he’s a traitor who needs to be jailed”) to dove (“he may have been well-intentioned but he needs to be jailed”) – offers yet another reason why young people, more libertarian in their views, have turned away from these outlets. Virtually no one speaks for them. While a TIME poll found 53 percent of respondents saying Snowden did “a good thing,” that was the sentiment of 70 percent of those age 18 to 34.
I teach college journalism classes about independent media. New developments like WikiLeaks and independent bloggers like Glenn Greenwald may scare the wits out of establishment media, but they sure don’t scare young people or journalism students.
As media employees at elite outlets have grown cozier with their government and corporate sources (Sorkin is famously close with Wall Street CEOs), they exhibit an almost instinctual antipathy toward those adversarial journalists who challenge powerful elites day after day.
Look at the reactions of some top mainstream journalists to Greenwald, who built up a big readership as a solo blogger before moving his blog to Salon and then the Guardian, where he broke the Snowden/NSA stories. I know several journalism professors who view Greenwald as one of the world’s best journalists. He’s known as accurate, thorough, well-documented and ethical.
more @ http://www.counterpunch.org
While an independent journalism system would be dissecting the impacts of NSA surveillance on privacy rights, and separating fact from fiction, U.S. news networks have obsessed on questions like: How much damage has Snowden caused? How can he be brought to justice?
Unfazed by polls showing that half of the American rabble — I mean, public – believe Snowden did a good thing by leaking documentation of NSA spying, TV news panels have usually excluded anyone who speaks for these millions of Americans. Although TV hosts and most panelists are not government officials, some have a penchant for speaking of the government with the pronoun “We.”
After Snowden made it out of Hong Kong to Russia, New York Times journalist and CNBC talking head Andrew Ross Sorkin expressed his frustration: “We’ve screwed this up, to even let him get to Russia.” By “we,” he meant the U.S. government.
Last time I checked, Sorkin was working for the Times and CNBC, not the CIA or FBI.
When a huge swath of the country is on the side of the guy-on-the-run and not the government, it’s much easier to see that there’s nothing “objective” or “neutral” about journalists who so closely identify with the spy agencies or Justice Department or White House.
The standard exclusion of dissenting views – panels often span from hawk (“he’s a traitor who needs to be jailed”) to dove (“he may have been well-intentioned but he needs to be jailed”) – offers yet another reason why young people, more libertarian in their views, have turned away from these outlets. Virtually no one speaks for them. While a TIME poll found 53 percent of respondents saying Snowden did “a good thing,” that was the sentiment of 70 percent of those age 18 to 34.
I teach college journalism classes about independent media. New developments like WikiLeaks and independent bloggers like Glenn Greenwald may scare the wits out of establishment media, but they sure don’t scare young people or journalism students.
As media employees at elite outlets have grown cozier with their government and corporate sources (Sorkin is famously close with Wall Street CEOs), they exhibit an almost instinctual antipathy toward those adversarial journalists who challenge powerful elites day after day.
Look at the reactions of some top mainstream journalists to Greenwald, who built up a big readership as a solo blogger before moving his blog to Salon and then the Guardian, where he broke the Snowden/NSA stories. I know several journalism professors who view Greenwald as one of the world’s best journalists. He’s known as accurate, thorough, well-documented and ethical.
more @ http://www.counterpunch.org
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Thursday, June 13, 2013
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