Truth Has Fallen And Taken Liberty With It

[Underdog]

Truth Has Fallen And Taken Liberty With It
By Paul Craig Roberts

link


There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today, Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded "anti-American," "anti-semite" or "conspiracy theorist."

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

Today, many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. "Free market economists" are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by "the New Economy," a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this "new economy" are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.

Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of "the New Economy."

And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted "studies" that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the "studies."

The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies' role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.

The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.

And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.

Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.

I remember when, following CIA director William Colby's testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a "threat," he wasn't impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don't carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO "performance bonuses," have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.

Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these "performance awards" by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about "the Muslim threat," Wall Street, U.S. corporations and "free market" shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.

Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.

Americans have bought into the government's claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect "terrorists," and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.

Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.

I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week's first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American "mainstream media."

For the last six years I have been banned from the "mainstream media." My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.

For years, I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush's wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

The American corporate media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.

America's fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government's 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government's account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.

These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington's deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar's role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar's value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called "entitlements" as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.

With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington's greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the "war on terror," the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.

The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.


Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.http://www.easycartsecure.com/Counte...nch_Books.html

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[GermanDunk]

That´s fun Under. I saw this text on youtube, yesterday, but didn´t read it, since it was rolling to slow and i don´t know this man.

[Usually Lurkin]

this reads a little like, "I went kookoo over 9/11 cover ups and now I can't find a job. You suck."

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

this reads a little like, "I went kookoo over 9/11 cover ups and now I can't find a job. You suck."

Coming from a former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury who got fired from his job at the Wall Street Journal for writing an opinion piece about US corporations shipping American jobs overseas???

Did you even read the article, or did you just scan for words like "9/11" then decide to lash out because you don't have the capacity to formulate any kind of opinion that isn't being spouted by the talking heads on television? (besides, he never said there was a cover-up, just that there were enough inconsistencies in the evidence to warrant an investigation...)


Your post reads like: "point proven."

[ribosoma]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

this reads a little like, "I went kookoo over 9/11 cover ups and now I can't find a job. You suck."

Yes, indeed. It reads very little like that.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by ribosoma

Yes, indeed. It reads very little like that.

and up is down and down is up. kookoocachoo.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

and up is down and down is up. kookoocachoo.

Great contribution, as always...

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Underdog

Coming from a former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury who got fired from his job at the Wall Street Journal for writing an opinion piece about US corporations shipping American jobs overseas???

Did you even read the article, or did you just scan for words like "9/11" then decide to lash out because you don't have the capacity to formulate any kind of opinion that isn't being spouted by the talking heads on television? (besides, he never said there was a cover-up, just that there were enough inconsistencies in the evidence to warrant an investigation...)


Your post reads like: "point proven."

great. and your weird over the top accusations are saying a lot about you, too.

The guy is blaming everyone but himself for being blind to the truth, and attributing causality to everything but himself for how he used to have jobs but doesn't anymore. And he's a few too many shadowy vagueries like this

And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.

which, regardless of the truth, make him sound like a wacko bitter about his inability to sell his own wackiness to the same sources that used to eat up his non-wackiness.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Underdog

Great contribution, as always...

is it better than, "Yes, indeed. It reads very little like that."?
Or are you just scanning for something to lash out at?

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

is it better than, "Yes, indeed. It reads very little like that."?
Or are you just scanning for something to lash out at?

That would have been a snappy comeback if I was the one who posted that...

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

great. and your weird over the top accusations are saying a lot about you, too.

What's my weird over-the-top accusation, again?

I don't recall setting forth any opinions of my own in this thread...

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Underdog

That would have been a snappy comeback if I was the one who posted that...

I replied in kind to ribosoma and you chose to butt in with a "lack of substance" accusation. For only one of us. That says to me that you aren't caring to think anything through, and want to pick a fight anyway.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Underdog

What's my weird over-the-top accusation, again?

I don't recall setting forth any opinions of my own in this thread...

here:

Did you even read the article, or did you just scan for words like "9/11" then decide to lash out because you don't have the capacity to formulate any kind of opinion that isn't being spouted by the talking heads on television? ...


Your post reads like: "point proven."

[ribosoma]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

great. and your weird over the top accusations are saying a lot about you, too.

The guy is blaming everyone but himself for being blind to the truth, and attributing causality to everything but himself for how he used to have jobs but doesn't anymore. And he's a few too many shadowy vagueries like this

which, regardless of the truth, make him sound like a wacko bitter about his inability to sell his own wackiness to the same sources that used to eat up his non-wackiness.

I can see why you took the article so personally. It's about honesty and self-deception.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

I replied in kind to ribosoma and you chose to butt in with a "lack of substance" accusation. For only one of us. That says to me that you aren't caring to think anything through, and want to pick a fight anyway.

I'm the one trying trying to pick a fight?

I'm sorry, who was it who started this thread, and who was it who came in trying to discredit it without even attempting to understand it in the first place???

Yeah, I'M the aggressor here...

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by ribosoma

I can see why you took the article so personally. It's about honesty and self-deception.

Kookiness and truthiness are completely different. Ask Ron Paul. If he had a lot less kook to go along with his truth (or maybe less truth in his kook), we might be in a different world right now.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

here:

What's so over-the-top about me pointing out the fact that you didn't bother to read this article? Am I a radical because you can't read?

You haven't even attempted to address the topic at hand (ironic, considering that one of the points Roberts was trying to make is that Americans don't even care to seek out truth in the first place - someone who pretends to know everything is incapable of learning anything...)

As I stated before: "point proven."

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Underdog

I'm the one trying trying to pick a fight?

I'm sorry, who was it who started this thread, and who was it who came in trying to discredit it without even attempting to understand it in the first place???

Yeah, I'M the aggressor here...

I read it and understood it, and then did again after your challenge. He still sounds like a bitter truther. And while I said something critical about the article, you attacked me.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Underdog

What's so over-the-top about me pointing out the fact that you didn't bother to read this article? Am I a radical because you can't read?

You haven't even attempted to address the topic at hand (ironic, considering that one of the points Roberts was trying to make is that Americans don't even care to seek out truth in the first place - someone who pretends to know everything is incapable of learning anything...)

As I stated before: "point proven."

Can't read? You are the one so locked into an "us v. them" mentality that you can't understand a simple criticism of your precious source without an immediate reaction of personal attack.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

Kookiness and truthiness are completely different. Ask Ron Paul. If he had a lot less kook to go along with his truth (or maybe less truth in his kook), we might be in a different world right now.

How about "niftyness" and "pazzazz" while you're digging for cutesy words to build your point?

The zanier (that's a good one!) the word, the easier it is to discredit those you're debating, right?


(because name-calling is the oldest trick in the book when debating a topic that you don't understand/don't bother to understand...)

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

Can't read? You are the one so locked into an "us v. them" mentality that you can't understand a simple criticism of your precious source without an immediate reaction of personal attack.

What simple criticism did you offer?

this reads a little like, "I went kookoo over 9/11 cover ups and now I can't find a job. You suck."

Oh yeah, nothing but a personal attack on the author - great point, hypocrite!

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

He still sounds like a bitter truther

This is where you prove that you either didn't read the article or completely misunderstood it altogether.

He mentions 9/11 in ONE paragraph -- only in relation to how the 9/11 conspiracy theory affected the way journalism works in this country -- and you're somehow convinced that he's a truther... He didn't get fired from the Wall Street Journal for writing an article about 9/11 - he got fired for stating that American companies who send American jobs overseas are bad for the American job market.

See what I mean? You're not interested in the article he wrote - you're interested in having a 9/11 truther debate that isn't happening...

When ribosoma said, "Yes, indeed. It reads very little like that," he was stating a fact.

The irony is that Roberts' article is about how Americans aren't interested in seeking out the truth - your participation in this thread kinda proves his point.

[chumdawg]

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Yeah? When was that?

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Underdog

He mentions 9/11 in ONE paragraph --

it's a very key paragraph, and it makes him sound like a kook.

The irony is that Roberts' article is about how Americans aren't interested in seeking out the truth - your participation in this thread kinda proves his point.

Let me put it in words you'll understand, then: Roberts cares about the truth about as much as the people (excuse me, nebulous forces) that he's demagoguing. His economy is just different. He trades in rhetoric. Truth for him is simply convincing people he's right. Your inability to accept a negative thought about him without retaliating in personal attack, your unwillingness to ask questions rather than mimic some accusations that you once heard and thought biting, and your absolute unwillingness to think critically about even the expression with which your pet propagandist forms your thoughts are affronts to truth itself. And the more you uncritically attack anyone who dares speak askance of your precious Paul Craig Roberts, the more you end up feeding the ugly beast that Roberts preaches, and the more damage you do to lady liberty herself. You don't care for truth and we all suffer for it.

He didn't get fired from the Wall Street Journal for writing an article about 9/11 - he got fired for stating that American companies who send American jobs overseas are bad for the American job market.

That's not what he said:

But when I began criticizing Bush's wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

Truth for him is simply convincing people he's right. Your inability to accept a negative thought about him without retaliating in personal attack, your unwillingness to ask questions rather than mimic some accusations that you once heard and thought biting, and your absolute unwillingness to think critically about even the expression with which your pet propagandist forms your thoughts are affronts to truth itself. And the more you uncritically attack anyone who dares speak askance of your precious Paul Craig Roberts, the more you end up feeding the ugly beast that Roberts preaches, and the more damage you do to lady liberty herself. You don't care for truth and we all suffer for it.

I like how you turned Roberts' point around on me - replace his name with "the powers that be" and your little rant is saying the exact same thing as his article.

You're a good enough debater to get the point, but not enough of a man to see your own your hypocrisy in it.

We're a lot uglier in the mirror than we are in our own minds...


Also, how does the phrase "Bush's wars of aggression" equate to "9/11 cover-up"? Can't Bush fight an illegal war in two countries without being the architect of of the worst attack on American soil, or are those two things mutually inclusive to you?

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Underdog

I like how you turned Roberts' point around on me - replace his name with "the powers that be" and your little rant is saying the exact same thing as his article.

I made a criticism of one particular aspect of the article that stood out to me, and you jumped on me as if I was making an unfounded attack on the whole thing, and somehow of your whole reason for posting it. Someone might call that a "classification error." Others might call it demagoguery or propagandism. Anyway, it's all well described in the first few lines of Roberts' column.

Also, how does the phrase "Bush's wars of aggression" equate to "9/11 cover-up"? Can't Bush fight an illegal war in two countries without being the architect of of the worst attack on American soil, or are those two things mutually inclusive to you?

whatever. You didn't read (or misread) some little part of the article describing why he lost all his jobs. Suck it up. And your daddy makes the equation himself two paragraphs below the "wars of aggression" stuff. It's why the 9/11 paragraph is a key paragraph.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

I made a criticism of one particular aspect of the article that stood out to me, and you jumped on me as if I was making an unfounded attack on the whole thing

No you didn't, you made a blanket statement about the entire article.

this reads a little like, "I went kookoo over 9/11 cover ups and now I can't find a job. You suck."

Don't pretend like my reaction to the words you posted were somehow part of an agenda...

Personally, I don't give a damn about 9/11 - nothing that anyone thinks about what happened that day is going to change anything at this point, so who cares?

The article is about Corporate Media serving money over truth - you don't need government conspiracies to see that (well, unless you're an opponent of Obama...)

[Usually Lurkin]

if you really think my first post was a blanket over the whole thing, then this

Originally Posted by Underdog

Don't pretend like my reaction to the words you posted were somehow part of an agenda...

is exactly what you are doing to me. If you'd bothered to ask, rather than jumping right into personal attack mode, then maybe we could have talked about anything else in the article. As it is, I still think his injection of 9/11 trutherness puts the rest of it in a bad light. It makes him sound like a kook.

Personally, I don't give a damn about 9/11 - nothing that anyone thinks about what happened that day is going to change anything at this point, so who cares?

I think the point of the article is that when people don't give a damn about 9/11 (ie, they aren't willing to investigate the truth of a matter so great that it spawned wars of aggression and deficits so great that Armageddon is inevitable), then we (at least) have an indicator that truth has fallen and taken liberty with it.

[Underdog]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

If you'd bothered to ask, rather than jumping right into personal attack mode, then maybe we could have talked about anything else in the article.

The very first thing you posted in this thread was a personal attack, but I'm the one who jumped into personal attack mode?

Gotcha.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Underdog

The very first thing you posted in this thread was a personal attack, but I'm the one who jumped into personal attack mode?

Gotcha.

That's how it reads. I have no idea if he's a kook or not, but this article makes him sound like one. I stand by that.

you don't have the capacity to formulate any kind of opinion . . you can't read. . .

really? You'll stand by that?

Did you really want to post an article just to get a bunch of agreement and to jump in attack at anyone who might disagree, without trying to discuss the disagreement? If that's all you wanted, I'm sorry, I'll just back out and chalk it all up as another thread not aimed at intelligent discussion.

[alexamenos]

Along the same lines and explaining my extreme absence of late....

I had a very nice job where I could handle my responsibilities with three, maybe four hours of serious attention a week until I screwed up royally and got promoted...

...twice...

...In the span of a year.

Major screwup on my part. I don't make much more money and I barely have time to sit and watch the 2nd half of mavs games these days, but I digress....

The company I work for, or maybe run is more accurate term these days, was going down the shitter fast. We'd lost 20% off of our top line, we lost clients we'd had for 80'years as an institution,our reputation was new York knick-esque, and we were bleeding cash at an alarming rate....

...all that and this--> the top level of management didn't see a problem.

Picture me (or some cross between Jethro Bodine and Barney Fife) yelling at grown men that if they don't take massive paycuts and other drastic measures that we're going to have to shut the doors on a 90 year old business...and these guys are wondering where we're going for dinner.

Anyhoo...i *won* that argument and then ran those out which explains my absenteeism of late, but germaine to the subject at hand....

The ability of persons at the top of the dung heap to deny reality is something not to be under-estimated. Mr. Roberts is absolutely correct that the political elite in our country are willfully blind to the obvious. We have untenable national debt, an unsustainable world-wide empire and a morally and intellectually decadent political class. Our nation is headed down the and all the folks at the top are doing is wondering what's for dinner.

[alexamenos]

and since we're on the subject....

9-11....

Two planes hit
Two buildings and
Three buildings fell down.

I haven't studied the subject at all and I don't have anything resembling a fixed opinion, but it ain't exactly the height of enlightenment to scoff at people who don't quite get that math.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by alexamenos

I haven't studied the subject at all and I don't have anything resembling a fixed opinion, .

don't sell yourself short, your kook credentials are solid.

[Dirkadirkastan]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

don't sell yourself short, your kook credentials are solid.

And your cherry-picking credentials are solid as well.

Anyway, nice to hear from you, Alex, I was wondering where you had disappeared off to lately.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Dirkadirkastan

And your cherry-picking credentials are solid as well..

hmm, yeah, "cherry-picking credentials." good one. I think. I don't know what that means.

[Dirkadirkastan]

Originally Posted by Usually Lurkin

hmm, yeah, "cherry-picking credentials." good one. I think. I don't know what that means.

It has to make at least as much sense as "kook credentials".

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Dirkadirkastan

It has to make at least as much sense as "kook credentials".

I think I've called alexamenos a kook around here before (at least I've talked about the kookiness of his hero, Ron Paul, and how that kookiness kept him from electability). So when he prefaces his 9/11 opinion with, "I haven't studied the subject at all and I don't have anything resembling a fixed opinion," I think it's worth noting.

[Dirkadirkastan]

If he hasn't studied it, then it makes sense that he doesn't have a fixed opinion. It would only be worth noting if he did.

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by Dirkadirkastan

If he hasn't studied it, then it makes sense that he doesn't have a fixed opinion. It would only be worth noting if he did.

your wrong. He's more willing to express the kooky ideas than your average joe. And unless I'm confusing him with someone else (or confusing past topics that involved him), he knows more about 9/11 than that post lets on.