Iranian caricature of the Statue of Liberty
US Embassy in Iran
Tehran IRAN
late 20th century
______________________________
Refugees are overrunning Europe, fleeing both Washington and Israel’s hegemonic policies in the Middle East and North Africa, which bring a massive slaughter of civilians. The inflows are so heavy that European governments are squabbling amongst themselves about who is responsible for the refugees. Hungary is considering constructing a fence, like the USA and Israel, to keep out undesirables. Everywhere, the Western media carries reports deploring the influx of migrants; yet nowhere is there any reference to the cause of the problem. The European governments and their insouciant populations are themselves responsible for their immigrant problems. For 14 years, Europe supported Washington’s aggressive militarism that has murdered and dislocated millions of people that never lifted a finger against Washington. The destruction of entire countries, such as Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and now Syria and Yemen, as well as the continuing American slaughter of Pakistani civilians with the full complicity of the corrupt and traitorous Pakistani government, produced a refugee problem that the moronic Europeans brought upon themselves.
Europe deserves the problem, but it isn’t enough punishment for their crimes against humanity in supporting Washington’s world hegemony. In the Western world, insouciance rules governments as well as people, and most likely everywhere else in the world, as well. One doesn’t know yet if Russia and China have any clearer grasp of the reality that confronts them. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency until his retirement in August 2014, confirmed that the Obama administration disregarded his advice and made a wilful decision to support the jihadists who now make up ISIS. Here we have an American government so insouciant, with nothing but tunnel vision, empowering the various elements that make up Washington’s excuse for the “war on terror” and the destruction of several countries. Just as the idiot Europeans produced their own refugee problems, the idiot Americans produced their own terrorist problems. It’s mindless… and there’s no end to it.
Consider the insanity of the Obama administration policy toward Russia. The total unawareness of Washington and the EU to the consequences of their aggression and false accusations toward Russia astonished Kissinger and Brzeziński, two of the left-wing’s most hated bogymen. Kissinger said that American foreign policy is in the hands of “ahistorical people” who don’t comprehend that “we shouldn’t engage in international conflicts if, at the beginning, we can’t describe an end”. Kissinger criticised Washington and the EU for their misconception that the West could act in the Ukraine in ways inconsistent with Russian interests and receive a pass from the Russian government. As for the idiotic claim that Putin is responsible for the Ukrainian tragedy, Kissinger said, “It isn’t conceivable that Putin spent sixty billion Euros (4.72 trillion Roubles. 436 billion Renminbi. 4.52 trillion INR. 68.3 billion USD. 90 billion CAD. 93.5 billion AUD. 43.5 billion UK Pounds) on turning a summer resort into a Winter Olympic village to start a military crisis the week after a concluding Olympic ceremony that depicted Russia as a part of Western civilisation”. Don’t expect the low-grade morons who make up the Western media to notice anything as obvious as the meaning of Kissinger’s observation.
Brzeziński joined Kissinger in stating unequivocally, “We must reassure Russia that the Ukraine won’t ever become a NATO member”. Kissinger is correct that Americans and their leaders are ahistorical. The USA operates using a priori theories that justify American preconceptions and desires. This is a prescription for war, disaster, and the demise of humanity. Even American commentators whom one would consider intelligent are ahistorical. Writing in OpEdNews (18 August 2015), William Bike says that Ronald Reagan advocated the destruction of the USSR. Reagan did no such thing. Reagan was respectful of the Soviet leadership and worked with Gorbachyov to end the Cold War. Reagan never spoke about winning the Cold War, only about ending it. The USSR collapsed because hardline communists opposed to Gorbachyov’s policies arrested him and launched a coup. The coup failed, but it took down the Soviet government. Reagan had nothing to do with it and was no longer in office.
Some ahistorical Americans can’t tell the difference between war criminals such as Clinton, Bush, Cheney, and Obama, and people such as Jimmy Carter, who spent his life doing, and trying to do, good deeds. No sooner do we hear that the 90-year-old former president has cancer than Matt Peppe regales us on CounterPunch about Jimmy Carter’s Blood-Drenched Legacy (18 August 2015). Peppe describes Carter as just another hypocrite who professed human rights but had a “penchant for bloodshed”. What Peppe means is that Carter didn’t stop bloodshed initiated by foreigners abroad. In other words, Carter failed as a global policeman. Of course, Peppe’s criticism of Carter is a stale reiteration of the false neoconservative criticism of Carter. Peppe, like so many others, shows an astonishing ignorance of the constraints of existing policies institutionalised in government exercise over presidents. In American politics, interest groups are more powerful than the elected politicians are. Look around you. The federal agencies created to oversee the wellbeing of the national forests, public lands, air, and water are all staffed with executives from the very polluting and clear-cutting industries which the agencies are supposed to regulate. Read CounterPunch editor Jeffrey St Clair’s book, Born Under A Bad Sky, to understand that those who are supposed to be regulated are in fact doing the regulating, and in their interests. The public interest is nowhere in the picture.
Look away from the environment to economic policy. The same financial executives who caused the current financial crisis, which resulted in enormous continuing public subsidies to the private banking system, now into the eighth year, are the ones who run the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Without a strong movement behind him, from whose ranks a president can staff an administration committed to major changes, the president is, in effect, a captive of the private interests who finance political campaigns. Reagan is the only president of our time who had even a semblance of a movement behind him, and Bush Establishment Republicans counterbalanced the “Reaganites” in his administration. During the 1930s, President Franklin D Roosevelt had a movement behind him consisting of New Dealers. Consequently, Roosevelt was able to achieve a number of overdue reforms, such as Social Security. Nevertheless, Roosevelt didn’t see himself as being in charge. In The Age of Acquiescence (2015), Steve Fraser quotes President Roosevelt as telling Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau at the end of 1934, “The people I’ve called the ‘money-changers in the Temple’ are still in absolute control. It’ll take many years and possibly several revolutions to eliminate them”. Eight decades later, as Nomi Prins has made clear in All the Presidents’ Bankers (2014), the money-changers are still in control. Nothing less than fire and sword can dislodge them. Yet, and it’ll forever be the case, America has commentators who really believe that a president can change things, but refuses to do so because he prefers the way that they are. Unless there’s a major disaster, such as the Great Depression, or a lesser challenge, such as stagflation for which solutions were scarce, a president without a movement is outgunned by powerful private interest groups, and sometimes even if he has a movement.
Private interests were empowered by the Republican Supreme Court’s decision that the purchase of the US government by corporate money is the constitutionally protected exercise of free speech. To be completely clear, the US Supreme Court ruled that organised interest groups have the right to control the US government. Under this Supreme Court ruling, how can the USA pretend to be a democracy? How can Washington justify its genocidal murders as “bringing democracy” to the decimated? Unless the world wakes up and realises that total evil has the reins in the West, humanity has no future.
20 August 2015
Paul Craig Roberts
Sputnik International
http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20150820/1025946828.html
Voices from Russia 
Insouciance Rules the West
Tags: Barack Obama, Cold War, diplomacy, diplomatic relations, history, Mikhail Gorbachev, Paul Craig Roberts, political commentary, politics, Ronald Reagan, Russia, Russian, Ukraine, United States, USA
Iranian caricature of the Statue of Liberty
US Embassy in Iran
Tehran IRAN
late 20th century
______________________________
Refugees are overrunning Europe, fleeing both Washington and Israel’s hegemonic policies in the Middle East and North Africa, which bring a massive slaughter of civilians. The inflows are so heavy that European governments are squabbling amongst themselves about who is responsible for the refugees. Hungary is considering constructing a fence, like the USA and Israel, to keep out undesirables. Everywhere, the Western media carries reports deploring the influx of migrants; yet nowhere is there any reference to the cause of the problem. The European governments and their insouciant populations are themselves responsible for their immigrant problems. For 14 years, Europe supported Washington’s aggressive militarism that has murdered and dislocated millions of people that never lifted a finger against Washington. The destruction of entire countries, such as Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and now Syria and Yemen, as well as the continuing American slaughter of Pakistani civilians with the full complicity of the corrupt and traitorous Pakistani government, produced a refugee problem that the moronic Europeans brought upon themselves.
Europe deserves the problem, but it isn’t enough punishment for their crimes against humanity in supporting Washington’s world hegemony. In the Western world, insouciance rules governments as well as people, and most likely everywhere else in the world, as well. One doesn’t know yet if Russia and China have any clearer grasp of the reality that confronts them. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency until his retirement in August 2014, confirmed that the Obama administration disregarded his advice and made a wilful decision to support the jihadists who now make up ISIS. Here we have an American government so insouciant, with nothing but tunnel vision, empowering the various elements that make up Washington’s excuse for the “war on terror” and the destruction of several countries. Just as the idiot Europeans produced their own refugee problems, the idiot Americans produced their own terrorist problems. It’s mindless… and there’s no end to it.
Consider the insanity of the Obama administration policy toward Russia. The total unawareness of Washington and the EU to the consequences of their aggression and false accusations toward Russia astonished Kissinger and Brzeziński, two of the left-wing’s most hated bogymen. Kissinger said that American foreign policy is in the hands of “ahistorical people” who don’t comprehend that “we shouldn’t engage in international conflicts if, at the beginning, we can’t describe an end”. Kissinger criticised Washington and the EU for their misconception that the West could act in the Ukraine in ways inconsistent with Russian interests and receive a pass from the Russian government. As for the idiotic claim that Putin is responsible for the Ukrainian tragedy, Kissinger said, “It isn’t conceivable that Putin spent sixty billion Euros (4.72 trillion Roubles. 436 billion Renminbi. 4.52 trillion INR. 68.3 billion USD. 90 billion CAD. 93.5 billion AUD. 43.5 billion UK Pounds) on turning a summer resort into a Winter Olympic village to start a military crisis the week after a concluding Olympic ceremony that depicted Russia as a part of Western civilisation”. Don’t expect the low-grade morons who make up the Western media to notice anything as obvious as the meaning of Kissinger’s observation.
Brzeziński joined Kissinger in stating unequivocally, “We must reassure Russia that the Ukraine won’t ever become a NATO member”. Kissinger is correct that Americans and their leaders are ahistorical. The USA operates using a priori theories that justify American preconceptions and desires. This is a prescription for war, disaster, and the demise of humanity. Even American commentators whom one would consider intelligent are ahistorical. Writing in OpEdNews (18 August 2015), William Bike says that Ronald Reagan advocated the destruction of the USSR. Reagan did no such thing. Reagan was respectful of the Soviet leadership and worked with Gorbachyov to end the Cold War. Reagan never spoke about winning the Cold War, only about ending it. The USSR collapsed because hardline communists opposed to Gorbachyov’s policies arrested him and launched a coup. The coup failed, but it took down the Soviet government. Reagan had nothing to do with it and was no longer in office.
Some ahistorical Americans can’t tell the difference between war criminals such as Clinton, Bush, Cheney, and Obama, and people such as Jimmy Carter, who spent his life doing, and trying to do, good deeds. No sooner do we hear that the 90-year-old former president has cancer than Matt Peppe regales us on CounterPunch about Jimmy Carter’s Blood-Drenched Legacy (18 August 2015). Peppe describes Carter as just another hypocrite who professed human rights but had a “penchant for bloodshed”. What Peppe means is that Carter didn’t stop bloodshed initiated by foreigners abroad. In other words, Carter failed as a global policeman. Of course, Peppe’s criticism of Carter is a stale reiteration of the false neoconservative criticism of Carter. Peppe, like so many others, shows an astonishing ignorance of the constraints of existing policies institutionalised in government exercise over presidents. In American politics, interest groups are more powerful than the elected politicians are. Look around you. The federal agencies created to oversee the wellbeing of the national forests, public lands, air, and water are all staffed with executives from the very polluting and clear-cutting industries which the agencies are supposed to regulate. Read CounterPunch editor Jeffrey St Clair’s book, Born Under A Bad Sky, to understand that those who are supposed to be regulated are in fact doing the regulating, and in their interests. The public interest is nowhere in the picture.
Look away from the environment to economic policy. The same financial executives who caused the current financial crisis, which resulted in enormous continuing public subsidies to the private banking system, now into the eighth year, are the ones who run the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Without a strong movement behind him, from whose ranks a president can staff an administration committed to major changes, the president is, in effect, a captive of the private interests who finance political campaigns. Reagan is the only president of our time who had even a semblance of a movement behind him, and Bush Establishment Republicans counterbalanced the “Reaganites” in his administration. During the 1930s, President Franklin D Roosevelt had a movement behind him consisting of New Dealers. Consequently, Roosevelt was able to achieve a number of overdue reforms, such as Social Security. Nevertheless, Roosevelt didn’t see himself as being in charge. In The Age of Acquiescence (2015), Steve Fraser quotes President Roosevelt as telling Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau at the end of 1934, “The people I’ve called the ‘money-changers in the Temple’ are still in absolute control. It’ll take many years and possibly several revolutions to eliminate them”. Eight decades later, as Nomi Prins has made clear in All the Presidents’ Bankers (2014), the money-changers are still in control. Nothing less than fire and sword can dislodge them. Yet, and it’ll forever be the case, America has commentators who really believe that a president can change things, but refuses to do so because he prefers the way that they are. Unless there’s a major disaster, such as the Great Depression, or a lesser challenge, such as stagflation for which solutions were scarce, a president without a movement is outgunned by powerful private interest groups, and sometimes even if he has a movement.
Private interests were empowered by the Republican Supreme Court’s decision that the purchase of the US government by corporate money is the constitutionally protected exercise of free speech. To be completely clear, the US Supreme Court ruled that organised interest groups have the right to control the US government. Under this Supreme Court ruling, how can the USA pretend to be a democracy? How can Washington justify its genocidal murders as “bringing democracy” to the decimated? Unless the world wakes up and realises that total evil has the reins in the West, humanity has no future.
20 August 2015
Paul Craig Roberts
Sputnik International
http://sputniknews.com/analysis/20150820/1025946828.html