Why World War III is on the Horizon

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The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 gave birth to a dangerous American ideology… neoconservatism. The USSR had served as a constraint on American unilateral action. With the removal of this constraint on Washington, neocons declared their agenda of US world hegemony. Now, America was the “sole superpower,” the “unipower,” that could act without restraint anywhere in the world. Washington Post neocon journalist Charles Krauthammer summed up the “new reality” as follows:

We have overwhelming global power. We’re history’s designated custodians of the international system. When the USSR fell, something new was born, something utterly new… a unipolar world dominated by a single superpower unchecked by any rival and with decisive reach in every corner of the globe. This is a staggering new development in history, not seen since the fall of Rome. Even Rome was no model for what America is today.

The staggering unipolar power that history gave to Washington has to be protected at all costs. In 1992, a top Pentagon official, Undersecretary Paul Wolfowitz, penned the Wolfowitz Doctrine, which became the basis for Washington’s foreign policy. The Wolfowitz Doctrine stated:

The first objective of American foreign and military policy is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former USSR or elsewhere, that poses a threat [to American unilateral action] on the order of that posed formerly by the USSR. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defence strategy and requires that we endeavour to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, suffice to generate global power (a “hostile power” is a country sufficiently strong to have a foreign policy independent from Washington’s).

The unilateral assertion of American power began in earnest during the Clinton régime with the interventions in Yugoslavia, Serbia, and Kosovo, and the no-fly zone imposed on Iraq. In 1997, the neocons penned their “Project for a New American Century”. In 1998, three years prior to 9/11, neocons sent a letter to President Clinton calling for régime change in Iraq and “the removal of Saddam Hussein from power”. Neocons set out their programme for removing seven governments in five years. Informed people regard the events of 11 September 2001 as “the new Pearl Harbor” that the neocons said was necessary to begin their wars of conquest in the Middle East. Paul O’Neil, President George W Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, stated publicly that the agenda of President Bush’s first meeting with his cabinet included invading Iraq. They planned this invasion prior to 9/11. Since 9/11, Washington destroyed eight countries in whole or part and it now confronts Russia both in Syria and the Ukraine.

Russia can’t allow a jihadist Caliphate in Syria and Iraq as it’d be a base for exporting destabilisation into Muslim parts of the Russian Federation. Henry Kissinger himself stated this fact; it’s clear enough to any person with a brain. However, the power-crazed fanatical neocons in control of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama régimes are so absorbed in their own hubris and arrogance that they’re prepared to push Russia to the point of having their Turkish puppet shoot down a Russian airplane and to overthrow a democratically elected Ukrainian government that was on good terms with Russia, substituting in its place an American puppet régime. With this background, we can understand that the dangerous situation facing the world is the product of the arrogant neocon policy of US world hegemony. The failures of judgement and the dangers in the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts are themselves the consequences of the neocon ideology.

To perpetuate American hegemony, the neocons threw away the guarantees that Washington gave Gorbachyov that NATO wouldn’t move one inch to the East. The neocons pulled the USA out of the ABM Treaty, which specified that neither the USA nor Russia would develop and deploy anti-ballistic missiles. The neocons rewrote American war doctrine and elevated nuclear weapons from their role as a retaliatory force to a pre-emptive first strike force. The neocons began putting ABM bases on Russia’s borders, claiming that the bases were for the purpose of protecting Europe from non-existent Iranian nuclear ICBMs. Neocons and their puppets in the US government and media demonised Russia and Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. For example, Hillary Clinton, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, declared Putin to be “the new Hitler”. A former CIA official called for Putin’s assassination. Presidential candidates in both parties are competing in terms of who can be the most aggressive toward Russia and the most insulting toward Russia’s president.

The effect was to destroy the trust between nuclear powers. The Russian government learned that Washington does not respect Washington’s own laws, much less international law, and that it can’t trust Washington to keep any agreement. This lack of trust, together with the aggression toward Russia spewing from Washington and the presstitute media and echoing in idiotic European capitals, established the ground for nuclear war. As NATO (essentially, the USA) has no prospect of defeating Russia in conventional war, much less defeating a Russo-Chinese alliance, any war would go nuclear. To avoid war, Putin is non-provocative and low-key in his responses to Western provocations. However, neocons misinterpret Putin’s responsible behaviour as a sign of weakness and fear. The neocons tell President Obama to keep the pressure on Russia, and Russia will give in. However, Putin made it clear that Russia won’t give in. Putin sent this message on many occasions. For example, on 28 September 2015, at the UN’s 70th anniversary, Putin said that Russia could no longer tolerate the state of affairs in the world. Two days later, Putin took command of the war against ISIS in Syria.

European governments, especially Germany and the UK, are complicit in the move toward nuclear war. These two American vassal states enable Washington’s reckless aggression toward Russia by repeating Washington’s propaganda and supporting Washington’s sanctions and interventions against other countries. As long as Europe remains nothing but Washington’s stooge, the prospect of Armageddon will continue to rise. At this time, we can only avoid nuclear war in two ways. One way is for Russia and China to surrender and accept Washington’s hegemony. The other way is for an independent leader in Germany, the UK, or France to rise to office and withdraw from NATO. That’d begin a stampede to leave NATO, which is Washington’s prime tool for causing conflict with Russia and, thereby, is the most dangerous force on earth to every European country and to the entire world. If NATO continues to exist, NATO, together with the neocon ideology of American hegemony, would make nuclear war inevitable.

28 December 2015

Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts: Institute for Political Economy

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/12/28/why-wwiii-is-on-the-horizon-paul-craig-roberts/

Editor:

Now, one can see why the Western media vilifies Jeremy Corbyn… he bids fair to pull the UK out of NATO. If he did so, the American policy would fall of its own weight. Without the UK, the USA would lose its best base near Europe (as the UK is on a series of islands, it’s immune to Russian land-power and uniquely suited to defence by American seapower… the only place in Europe so situated). You can also see why that self-same media excoriates and pooh-poohs Bernie Sanders… he’s Corbyn’s American analogue. If Corbyn were to become PM and Sanders POTUS… the neocon fancy would fall into the dust, dead. You can see why the media is frantic about both… it does its best to tell us how fringy and unelectable they are. I do detect an agenda in both cases… no doubt, you agree.

If you wish to avoid Thermonuclear Ragnarök, vote for Corbyn and Sanders. If we don’t survive, nothing else matters. If the house is on fire, termites in the storage shed don’t matter… do think on that.

BMD

Neocon Aggression Towards Sovereign States is Destroying the Earth

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Editor:

Read this through… and twice… there isn’t an idle word in it. It exposes the sheer evil of Anglo crapitalist “conservatism”… it shows why decent people must unite to destroy it utterly and without trace.

BMD

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Noam Chomsky, former US Secretary of Defense William Perry, and other sentient observers of neocon aggressive policy towards Russia and China agree with my warning that the neoconservatives resurrected the threat of nuclear Armageddon removed by Reagan and Gorbachyov. Daily, we observe additional aggressive actions taken by Washington and its vassals against Russia and China. For example, Washington pressured Kiev not to implement the Minsk agreements designed to end the conflict between the puppet government in Kiev and the Russian republics in the east. Washington refuses to coöperate with Russia in the war against ISIS. Washington continues to blame Russia for destroying MH17, whilst preventing an honest investigation of the attack on the Malaysian airliner. Washington continues to force its European vassals to impose sanctions on Russia based on the false claim that a Russian invasion of the Ukraine caused the conflict there, not by Washington’s coup in overthrowing a democratically elected government and installing a puppet answering to Washington.

The list is long. The USA suborned even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), allegedly a neutral non-political world organisation, into its fight against Russia. Under Washington’s pressure, the IMF abandoned its policy of refusing to lend to debtors who are in arrears in their loan payments to creditors.  In the case of the Ukraine’s debt to Russia, this decision removes the enforcement mechanism that prevents countries (such as Greece) from defaulting on their debts. The IMF announced that it will lend to the Ukraine to pay the Ukraine’s Western creditors despite the fact that the Ukraine renounced repayment of loans from Russia. Michael Hudson believes, correctly in my view, that the IMF will apply this new policy to those countries to whom China has made loans. The IMF’s plan is to leave Russia and China as countries who lack the usual enforcement mechanism to collect from debtors, thus permitting debtors to default on the loans without penalty. In other words, the IMF is presenting itself, although the financial media won’t notice it, as a tool of American foreign policy. What this shows, and what should concern us, is that the institutions of Western civilisation are, in fact, tools of American dominance. The institutions aren’t there for the noble reasons stated in their founding documents. The bottom line is that Western Capitalism is simply a looting mechanism that successfully suborned Western governments and all Western “do-good” institutions. As in George Orwell’s 1984, the IMF divided the world into warring factions… the West vs the BRICS.

To avoid the coming conflict that the neocon pursuit of American hegemony is bringing, the Russians have relied on fact-based, truth-based diplomacy.  However, neocon Washington relies on lies and propaganda and has many more and louder voices. Consequently, most of the Western sheeple believe Washington’s lies, not Russia’s truth. In other words, Russia was misled by believing that the West respects and abides by the values that it professes. In fact, these “Western values” are merely a cover for the unbridled evil of which the West consists. The Western peoples are so dim-witted that they haven’t yet understood that the “war on terror” is, in fact, a war to create terror that the West will export to Muslim areas of Russia and China to destabilise the two countries that serve as a check on Washington’s unilateral hegemonic power.

The problem for the neocon unilateralists is that Russia and China… although misinformed by their “experts” educated abroad in the neoliberal tradition, people who are de facto agents of Washington without even knowing it… are powerful military powers, both nuclear and conventional.  Unless Russia and China are content to be Washington’s vassal states, for the neocons who control Washington and, therefore, the West, to press these two powerful countries so hard can only lead to war.  As Washington isn’t a match for Russia and China in conventional warfare, the war would be nuclear, and it’d result in the end of life on earth. Whether ironic or paradoxical, the USA is pushing a policy that means the end of life. Yet, the majority of Western governments support it, and the insouciant Western peoples have no clue.

However, Putin caught on to this, and Russia isn’t going to submit. Soon, China will understand that American dependency on China’s workforce and imports isn’t a protection from Washington’s aggression. When China looks beyond its MIT and Harvard miseducated neoliberal economists to the writing on the wall, Washington is going to be in deep trouble. What’ll Washington do? Confronted with two powerful nuclear militaries, will the crazed neocons back off? Or will their confidence in their ideology bring us the final war? This is a real question. The US government pays many Internet trolls to ridicule such questions and their authors. To see the people who sell out humanity for money, all you have to do is to read the comments on the numerous websites that reproduce this column. Nevertheless, the question remains, unanswered by the Western presstitute media and unanswered by the bought-and-paid-for stooges in the US Congress and all Western “democracies”.

Indications are that Russia has had enough of American arrogance. The Russian people have elevated a leader, as they always do, and which Western countries seldom, if ever, do.  The West triumphed by technology, not by leadership.  However, V V Putin is Russia’s choice of a leader, and he is one. Russia also has the technology and a sense of itself that no longer exists in the diversified West. There’s nothing like Putin anywhere in the West… over which presides a collection of bought-and-paid-for-puppets who report to private interest groups, such as Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and the extractive industries (energy, mining, timber).

At the 70th Anniversary of the United Nations (28 September), Putin, backed by the President of China, announced that half of the world no longer accepts American unilateralism. Additionally, Putin said that Russia can no longer tolerate the state of affairs in the world that results from Washington’s pursuit of hegemony. Two days later Putin took over the fight against ISIS in Syria. Putin, still relying on agreements with Washington, relied on the agreement that Russia would announce beforehand its attacks on ISIS installations to prevent any NATO-Russian air encounters. Washington took advantage of this trust placed in Washington by Russia, and arranged for a Turkish jet fighter to ambush an unsuspecting Russian fighter-bomber. This was an act of war, committed by Washington and Turkey, and thereby Washington’s European NATO vassal states, against a nuclear power capable of exterminating all life in every one of the countries, including the “superpower USA”.

This simple fact should make even the American super-patriots, who wear the flag on their sleeve, wonder about the trust they place in “their” government and in Fox “news”, CNN, NPR, and the rest of the presstitutes who continually lie every minute of every broadcast… but it won’t.  Americans and Europeans are too insouciant. They’re locked tightly in The Matrix, where the impotent creatures are content to live without understanding reality. Realising that it’s pointless to attempt to communicate to the Western sheeple, who have no input into their government’s policy, Putin now sends his message directly to Washington. Putin’s message is loud and clear in his order directed against any US/NATO operations against Russia in its Syrian operations against ISIS, “we will immediately destroy any targets threatening the Russian groups of forces or land infrastructure”.

Putin followed up this order with another order to the Russian Defence Ministry, “We must pay special attention to strengthening the combat potential of the strategic nuclear forces and implementing defence space programmes. It is necessary, as outlined in our plans, to equip all components of the nuclear triad with new arms”. Minister of Defence S K Shoigu reported at a Defence Ministry meeting that 56 percent of Russian nuclear forces are new and that 95 percent are at a permanent state of readiness. The few Western news sources that report these developments pretend that Russia is “sabre-rattling” without cause.

To make it clear even for the insouciant Western populations, everything that Reagan and Gorbachyov worked for has been overthrown by crazed, demented and evil American neocons, whose desire for hegemony over the world is driving the world to extinction. These are the same bloodthirsty war criminals who destroyed seven countries, murdered, maimed, and displaced millions of Muslim peoples, and sent millions of refugees from the neocon wars into Europe. None of these war criminals are protected from terrorist attack. If the alleged “Muslim threat” was real, every one of the war criminals would be dead by now, not the innocent people sitting in Paris cafés or attending parties in California. Neocons inhumans created the “war against terror” on purpose to gain a weapon against Russia and China. You can witness these inhumans every day on talk TV and read them in the Weekly Standard, National Review, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the British, German, Australian, Canadian, and endless Western newspapers.

In the West lies prevail, and these lies could drive the world to extinction. An expert reminds us that it only takes one mistake and 30 minutes to destroy life on earth.

12 December 2015

Paul Craig Roberts

Sputnik International

http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20151212/1031662320/neoconservatives-sovereign-counries-nuclear-destroy-earth.html

Editor:

There are many traitors in the Orthodox diaspora. Serge Schmemann worked for the NY Times, and got a position in its apparat for Sophia Kishkovsky. Freddie M-G works for NPR. Victor Potapov was a CIA propagandist at Radio Liberty. Vassa Larina soul her soul to the Uniate Jesuit Robert Taft in return for an academic position at a Catholic university. Alexander Webster and Terrence Mattingly are “conservative” stink-tankers in Washington. Rod Dreher is an apparatchik of the unrepentant Patrick Buchannan… a ceaseless cheerleader for “Free Enterprise” and the Affluent Effluent. However, the worst and most soulless of the lot is Jonas Paffhausen… he attempted to ally the Church with the neocon enemies of Holy Rus. He attempted to ally the Church with the “Evangelical” opponents of Christ’s Holy Church. This was on top of his misuse of church funds and his emulation of “a dog returning to his vomit” via his schmoozing with Nashotah House (a rather schizoid Episcopal seminary… with a foot in the camp of the ECUSA and another in that of “Continuing Anglicanism”). He was, perhaps, the vilest man ever to have been an Orthodox hierarch here in the diaspora.

Paffhausen wanted to put the Church into the service of those who wished to suck out our inner life and replace it with heterodox and papist goo. He’s a far worse man than all the other people named put together. “Conservatism” is the ideology of the Antichrist and Paffhausen wanted to enthrone it on the altar. The most disgusting flowers of evil flourish in the holy precincts… Paffso is a glaring example of that. May God preserve us.

BMD

Insouciance Rules the West

Iranian caricature of the Statue of Liberty

US Embassy in Iran

Tehran IRAN

late 20th century

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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

16 June 2014. What Some People Will Believe… or… Conspiracy Theories Run Amuck at Rutherford Institute

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A new twist on the “black helicopter/big central all-knowing computer” nuttiness is the idea that the government will implant chips in everything and they’ll control the world (and us) that way. Here’s a good example of such thinking. Read it? Good! It’s BS from stem to stern, from top to bottom! All totalitarian systems run into two main limits… time… and money. Firstly, people have to enforce such draconian fiats. That is, at some point, a real person has to be involved in the affair. Sure, the NSA collects a gazillion bits of info each day… but it can only analyse a fraction of it due to constraints imposed by a lack of analysts. Fifty years ago, people predicted that money would disappear, replaced by credit cards. Well, guess what? Good ol’ fashioned cash is still around… all the better to pay bribes to the friendly neighbourhood pols and bureaucrats!

If one looks at the old USSR, one sees that totalitarianism wasn’t as pervasive as Western propaganda had it. Firstly, many people agreed with socialism, so, the organs really didn’t need to watch them. What happened is that a ton of security bureaucrats wrote memos that no one read and they received orders that they couldn’t carry out, but they pretended to. You see much the same in the contemporary US Department of Homeland (In)Security. After Stalin’s death, the number of political prisoners went down, and stayed down. It was simply not an efficient way of handling dissent. The organs’ most effective weapon was their reputation… people remembered the Stalinist methods and that alone deterred many. Actually, what the organs did was to create an atmosphere of public mistrust… that was more harmful than any imprisonment (one can say that Russia is still getting over that).

In like manner, technological totalitarianism would run up against many of the same constraints. The system would only be as good as the people who ran it. It’d be only as pervasive as funding would allow. In short, the “sky is falling” conspiracy theorists are chock fulla shit. By the way, Paul Craig Roberts is solid on many other topics, and this POS article is by a guest writer, from a crank Washington stink-tank called the Rutherford Institute. After all, there are hackers, and geeks would figure out ways to crack the system. Before you knew it, there’d be workarounds! I have faith in mankind. The conspiracy theorists will always be with us… but we don’t have to attend to them. There be goofy shit out there, peddled by even goofier people. Have a care… and do bite the coin before accepting it.

BMD