De schijnbare achteloosheid waarmee Amerika van deze mislukte president afscheid heeft genomen nadat hij eerst in 2000 op een twijfelachtige manier winnaar was verklaard, waarna hij vier jaar later werd herkozen, maakt de meerderheid van de Amerikaanse kiezers medeplichtig. Een rechtszaak zou bijdragen tot herstel van het Amerikaanse prestige, desnoods bij afwezigheid van de verdachte.
Henk Hofland. Bush als verdachte. 23 april 2014.
A sense of place must include, at the very least, knowledge of what is inviolate (ongeschonden. svh) about the relationship between a people and the place they occupy, and certainly, too, how the destruction of this relationship, or the failure to attend to it, wounds people. Living in North America and trying to develop a philosophy of place — a recognition of the spiritual and psychological dimensions of geography — inevitably brings us back to our beginnings here, to the Spanish inversion. The Spanish experience was to amass wealth and go home. Those of us who have stayed, who delight in the litanies of this landscape and who can imagine no deeper pleasure than the fullness of our residency here, look with horror on the survival of that imperial framework in North America — the physical destruction of a local landscape to increase the wealth of people who don't live there, or to supply materials to buyers in distant places who will never know the destruction that proces leaves behind.
Barry Lopez. The Rediscovery of North America. 1990
Het begint bij de taal, wat Hofland 'Amerika' noemt, heet officieel de 'Verenigde Staten van Amerika.' En terecht: 'Amerika' is de naam van het hele continent. Het zou dus hetzelfde zijn als Hofland 'Europa' zou zeggen terwijl hij 'Duitsland' bedoelt. Dan het adjectief 'schijnbare.' De 'achteloosheid' is helemaal niet 'schijnbaar,' maar juist kenmerkend voor het Amerikaanse exceptionalisme. Het schenden van de soevereiniteit van een andere naties vanwege geopolitieke belangen, oftewel 'to amass wealth and go home,' is sinds 1899, toen het overzees imperium van Washington en Wall Street begon, de normale gang van zaken. Vervolgens: wat betekent Hoflands verwijzing naar 'de meerderheid van de Amerikaanse kiezers,' die medeplichtig zou zijn? In feite betekent het niets, hij suggereert slechts dat de VS een democratie is, waarbij de hele bevolking de politieke koers bepaalt. Dat is een aperte leugen die de mainstream opiniemakers als waarheid blijven verkopen. Tijdens de presidentsverkiezingen van 2000, waarbij Bush junior aan de macht kwam, stemde 48,7 procent van de kiesgerechtigden niet, omdat deze burgers wisten dat de democratie in hun land een wassen neus is. Kortom, nog geen kwart van de kiesgerechtigden stemde voor Bush en zou dus 'medeplichtig' zijn. Tenslotte het argument dat 'Een rechtszaak zou bijdragen tot herstel van het Amerikaanse prestige.' Het gaat deze opiniemaker dus niet om het bestraffing van het schenden van het internationaal recht, of om rechtvaardigheid, maar om het 'Amerikaanse prestige,' kortom, om het 'positief oordeel over de kwaliteiten' van de grootmacht die 58 procent van haar beschikbare federale budget aan het militair industrieel complex besteedt. Hofland verdedigt met zijn argument de neoliberale belangen van de elite. Zo mogelijk nog absurder is zijn impliciete veronderstelling dat de gewelddadige inval in Irak een uitwas zou zijn in de -- voor de rest -- voorbeeldige geschiedenis van wat Hofland 'het vredestichtende Westen' betitelt. Hoeveel intelligenter en eerlijker is de Amerikaanse intelligentsia, want precies zoals ondermeer Lopez stelt dateert het expansionisme van de blanke veroveraars, en de daaraan onlosmakelijk verbonden mentaliteit, al uit de tijd van 'the Spanish inversion.' Het gaat niet, zoals Hofland meent, om een betrekkelijk eenvoudig op te lossen politiek-juridisch probleem, maar om een diep en uiterst moeilijk te veranderen cultureel probleem, het vraagstuk van de westerse onverzadigbare roofbouw-cultuur, al tenminste vijf eeuwen verslaafd aan veroveren, verwoesten en vermoorden.
Columbus was niet op zoek naar een nieuw continent, maar naar een zeeroute die leidde tot de rijkdommen van het Verre Oosten. De Europese kolonisten waren niet op zoek naar 'Indianen,' die werden juist uitgeroeid om zo snel mogelijk de schatten van de 'Nieuwe Wereld' te veroveren. De vanzelfsprekendheid waarmee de elite in de VS nog steeds meent aanspraak te kunnen maken op het land en de grondstoffen van anderen verklaart de talloze gewelddadige interventies van de VS in de binnenlandse aangelegenheden van andere staten. Van deze 'hufterigheid' van de elite zijn niet alleen andere volkeren het slachtoffer geworden, maar ook de inwoners van de VS zelf. Ze zijn ontheemd geraakt, vervreemd van hun eigen omgeving en uiteindelijk van zichzelf. Ze zijn er niet in geslaagd werkelijk te wortelen in hun land; 'Amerika' is voor hen een vlag, het symbool van patriottisme, maar niet van de liefde voor de grond, het landschap, de natuur, de lucht en het water. De Hopi-Indianen wezen de blanke veroveraars er vergeefs op dat zijzelf 'deeply rooted in the history and geography of this land,' waren, en dat 'Our roots are rooted in our villages and it goes up to the whole universe. If we break these roots the world will get out of balance.' Hoe wijs deze woorden waren begint een intelligente en kunstzinnige avant garde onder de blanken te beseffen, burgers die inzien dat
There is a simple truth: that every system does what it is designed to do. If a different outcome is desired, then the system must be changed. This is true with the current economic system, which is rooted in capitalism and which has been expanded globally through neoliberal economic policies.
Barry Lopez:
If, in a philosophy of place, we examine our love of the land — I do not mean a romantic love, but the love Edward Wilson ('s werelds grootste autoriteit op het gebied van mierenonderzoek. svh) calls biophilia, love of what is alive, and the physical context in which it lives… if, in measuring our love, we feel anger, I think we have a further obligation. It is to develop a hard and focused anger at what continues to be done to the land not so the people can survive, but so that a relatively few people can amass wealth.
I'm aware that these words, or words like them, have historically invoked revolution. But I ask myself, where is the man or woman, standing before lifeless porpoises strangled and bloated (opgezwollen. svh) in a beach-cast driftnet, or standing on farmland ankle deep in soil gone to flour dust, or flying over the Cascade Mountains and seeing the clear cuts stretching for forty miles, the sunbaked earth, the streams running with mud, who does not want to say, 'Forgive me, thou bleeding earth, that I am meek and gentle with these butchers?'
If we ask ourselves what has heightened our sense of loss in North America, what has made us feel around in the dark for a place where we might take a stand, we could have to answer that it is the particulars of what is now called the environmental crisis. Acid rain. Soil erosion. Times Beach. Falling populations of wild animals. Clear-cutting. Three Mile Island. But what we really face, I think, is something much larger, something that goes back to Guanahaní (eiland waar Columbus voor het eerst de Nieuwe Wereld betrad. svh) and what Columbus decided to do, that series of acts — theft, rape, and murder — of which the environmental crisis is symptomatic. What we face is a crisis of culture, a crisis of character. Five hundred years after the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria sailed into the Bahamas, we are asking ourselves what has been the price of the assumptions those ships carried, particularly about the primacy of material wealth.
In Ken Burns' documentaire The Dust Bowl (2012) zegt Wayne Lewis uit Beaver County, Oklahoma, een bejaarde boer die als kind één van de grootste door mensen veroorzaakte ecologische rampen meemaakte:
We made so much money raising wheat in the late twenties that we broke everything out to raise more wheat. And then the climate changed, and the depression came along and the wheat wasn't worth much, but we still had the land broken out. We were just too selfish and we were trying to make money and get rich quick of the wheat and it didn't work out.
Hebzucht, onbeheerste begeerte gecombineerd met de dwaze veronderstelling van Vooruitgangs-ideologen dat de mens in staat zou zijn het klimaat naar zijn hand te zetten en dat men geen rekening hoefde te houden met de wetten der natuur, waren de werkelijke oorzaken van de 'Dust Bowl,' volgens de Amerikaanse historica Pamela Riney-Kehrberg 'the worst ten year-period in recorded history on the planet.'
The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion (the Aeolian processes) caused the phenomenon. Extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains during the previous decade had displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. Rapid mechanization of farm implements, especially small gasoline tractors and widespread use of the combine harvester, significantly impacted decisions to convert arid grassland (much of which received no more than 10 inches (250 mm) of precipitation per year) to cultivated cropland.
During the drought of the 1930s, the unanchored soil turned to dust that the prevailing winds blew away in clouds that sometimes blackened the sky. These choking billows of dust – named 'black blizzards' or 'black rollers' – reached such East Coast cities as New York City and Washington, D.C. and often reduced visibility to a meter (about a yard) or less. Associated Press reporter Robert E. Geiger happened to be in Boise City, Oklahoma to witness the 'Black Sunday' black blizzards of April 14, 1935; Edward Stanley, Kansas City news editor of the Associated Press coined the term 'Dust Bowl' while rewriting Geiger's news story.
The drought and erosion of the Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2) that centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and touched adjacent sections of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.
The Dust Bowl forced tens of thousands of families to abandon their farms. Many of these families, who were often known as 'Okies' because so many of them came from Oklahoma, migrated to California and other states to find that the Great Depression had rendered economic conditions there little better than those they had left. Author John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men about such people.
Causes
During early European and American exploration of the Great Plains, the region in which the Dust Bowl occurred was thought unsuitable for European-style agriculture; the region was known as the Great American Desert. The lack of surface water and timber made the region less attractive than other areas for pioneer settlement and agriculture.
Settlement was encouraged by the Homestead Act of 1862. With the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, waves of new immigrants arrived in the Great Plains, and cultivation increased significantly. An unusually wet period in the Great Plains mistakenly led settlers and the federal government to believe that 'rain follows the plow' (a popular phrase among real estate promoters) and that the climate of the region had changed permanently. While initial agricultural endeavors were primarily cattle ranching, the impact on cattle herds from harsh winters beginning in 1886, a short drought in 1890, and general overgrazing, led to an expansion of land under cultivation.
Recognizing the challenge of cultivating marginal arid land, the United States government expanded on the 160 acres offered under the Homestead Act—granting 640 acres to homesteaders in western Nebraska under the Kinkaid Act (1904) and 320 elsewhere in the Great Plains under the Enlarged Homestead Act (1909). Waves of European settlers arrived in the plains at the beginning of the 20th century. A return of unusually wet weather seemingly confirmed a previously held opinion that the 'formerly' semiarid area could support large-scale agriculture, which was readily enabled by technological improvements such as mechanized plowing and mechanized harvesting.
The combined impact of the Russian Revolution and World War I increased agricultural prices, which further encouraged farmers to dramatically increase cultivation. For example, in the Llano Estacado of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas, the area of farmland doubled between 1900 and 1920, then tripled again between 1925 and 1930.
The favored agricultural methods of farmers during this period created the conditions for large scale erosion under certain environmental conditions. The widespread conversion of the land by deep plowing and other soil preparation methods to enable agriculture eliminated the native grasses which held the soil in place and helped retain moisture during dry periods. Furthermore, cotton farmers left fields bare over winter months, when winds in the High Plains are highest, and burned the stubble as a means to control weeds prior to planting, thus depriving the soil of organic nutrients and surface vegetation.
When severe drought struck the Great Plains region in the 1930s, it exposed the increased risk for erosion that was created by the farming practices in use at the time. The drought dried the topsoil and over time it became friable, reduced to a powdery consistency in some places. Without the indigenous grasses in place, the high winds that occur on the plains were able to create the massive dust storms that marked the Dust Bowl period.
De 'Dust Bowl' was een voorafschaduwing van wat nu wereldwijd begonnen is: de uitputting van de landbouwgronden, de milieuvernietiging op grote schaal, de verstedelijking van het land:
More than 370,000 acres of California’s irrigated farmland disappeared from 2006-10. Officials are concerned that hundreds of thousands of additional acres could be lost in the coming years, threatening California’s leading role in feeding the nation and indeed much of the world.
Een proces dat nu wordt versneld door de jarenlange droogte in Californië:
California Drought
After three consecutive years of below-normal rainfall, California faces its most severe drought emergency in decades. Governor Jerry Brown has called for Californians to reduce water use by 20 percent voluntarily, and mandatory rationing could be ordered soon so that homes, businesses and farms don’t run dry over the summer. Wildfire danger is unusually high. Here is complete coverage from The Chronicle and SFGate.
Ook in Europa wordt de situatie steeds nijpender:
Verstedelijking vraagt landbouwgrond
woensdag 02 april 2014, 13.19 uur
Elke tien jaar verdwijnt een gebied zo groot als Cyprus aan landbouwgrond in Europa. De belangrijkste oorzaken zijn verstedelijking en erosie, zegt Janez Potočnik, EU-commissaris voor milieu.
Erosie van landbouwgrond en het behoud van bodemvruchtbaarheid zijn een grote uitdaging voor de toekomst, zei Potočnik gisteren op de bijeenkomst Forum for Agriculture in Brussel.
'Het verlies van organisch materiaal en biodiversiteit in de bodem moeten worden gestopt.'
Bodemvruchtbaarheid
De EU-commissaris verwacht dat in het Europees Landbouwbeleid voor de periode 2014-2020 voldoende maatregelen worden genomen om de bodemvruchtbaarheid te verbeteren. 'Maar dan moeten de regels niet te veel verwateren.'
Goed bodembeheer is ook goed tegen klimaatverandering, zegt Potočnik. 'Grond houdt meer koolstof vast dan bijvoorbeeld bossen.'
Steden
Naar verwachting leeft 70 procent van de wereldbevolking in 2050 in steden. Het wereldwijde areaal landbouwgrond zal tot die tijd met ongeveer 7 procent afnemen, zegt Potočnik. 'Dat is ongeveer 135 miljoen hectare.'
Onderzoek in opdracht van de Europese Commissie stelde eerder dat 56 procent van de Europese bodem laag scoorde op biodiversiteit.
Enkele feiten die de urgentie aangeven:
20 % van de wereldbevolking gebruikt 80% van de hulpbronnen
de wereld geeft 12 keer meer uit aan wapens dan aan ontwikkelingssamenwerking
1 miljard mensen hebben geen toegang tot gezond drinkwater
1 miljard mensen lijdt honger
meer dan 50% van alle graan wordt gebruikt als veevoeder of bio-brandstof
40 % van alle landbouwgrond heeft langetermijnschade opgelopen
elk jaar verdwijnt 13 miljoen hectare bos
1 zoogdier op 4, en 1 vogel op 8 worden met uitsterven bedreigd
soorten sterven 1000 keer sneller uit dan normaal
75% van de visgronden zijn uitgeput, leeggevist of lopen gevaarlijk terug
de voorbije 15 jaar was de gemiddelde temperatuur de hoogste ooit gemeten
de ijskap is 40% dunner dan 40 jaar geleden
Door Brussel en Washington gesteunde Oekraïnse soldaten vallen Oekraïnse burgers aan die tegen de staatsgreep zijn waarbij de democratische gekozen regering werd verdreven.
They could see no way out. They looked stunned, as if they asked themselves: can this really be happening… You really couldn't help these people. What they needed was an inner thing that nobody could give them. They needed a trust again in something, which they had lost.
Het is dit gevoel van ontheemding en vervreemding dat dominant zal zijn zodra het neoliberale systeem definitief spaak loopt, en niet langer meer kunstmatig in leven kan worden gehouden. Talloze signalen wijzen op de onhoudbaarheid van de westerse roofbouw-cultuur, en toch negeren zowel de politici als een aanzienlijk deel van de bevolking de realiteit. Net als de slachtoffers van de 'Dust Bowl' de werkelijkheid negeerde. Al in 1823 kwam de Amerikaanse geograaf Edwin James, die als eerste de Great American Desert inclusief de regenarme prairies, in kaart had gebracht tot de conclusie
that it is almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course, uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence. Although tracts of fertile land considerably extensive are occasionally to be met with, yet the scarcity of wood and water, almost uniformly prevalent, will prove an insuperable obstacle in the way of settling the country.
In Ken Burns' documentaire wordt het volgende illustrerende feit verteld:
The migration out of the Great Plains in the 1930s was one of the biggest folk-migrations in the American history. It dwarfs the movement along the Oregon Trail in the nineteenth century, the covered wagon-era, which we so idealized and romanticized. But we've forgotten the migration in the 1930s. Nobody celebrates it; there are no California Trail-associations. We are ashamed of it, basically, because it was a migration of the defeated.
En de 'verslagene' is een 'loser,' iemand die zijn doel niet heeft bereikt in een meedogenloze cultuur waar 'winner takes all,' zodat nu 1 procent van de bevolking in de VS bijna 40 procent van alle rijkdommen in handen heeft. De Vooruitgangs-doctrine dient allereerst en vooral de rijke, die vooralsnog zich niets aan hoeft te trekken van de wetten der natuur. Maar de overgrote meerderheid wordt door de schaarste van alles beperkt in zijn mateloosheid. De documentaire The Plow That Broke The Plains (1937), liet zien hoe weerbarstig de natuur is op de 160 miljoen hectare grasland, dat geteisterd wordt door krachtige wind en zowel boom- als rivierloos is. Een gebied zich uitstrekkend vanaf Noord Texas tot in Canada. De film toonde aan hoe de gemechaniseerde cultuur er de natuur verkrachte, hoe 'the arrival of the tractor to the southern plains' de fysieke oorzaak was van de 'Dust Bowl,' aangezien de flinterdunne vruchtbare bovenlaag niet bestand was tegen de diepploegende tractoren; het was 'a raid against nature itself.' In zijn hovaardij meent de mens intelligenter en sterker te zijn dan de miljarden jaren oude evolutie op aarde. Zonder die absurde veronderstelling zou de kapitalistische consumptiemaatschappij volstrekt onmogelijk zijn. Vandaar dat Hoflands aanname als zou 'Een rechtszaak bijdragen tot herstel van het Amerikaanse prestige,' zo onvoorstelbaar onnozel is. We hebben hier niet te maken met een misdadige uitwas van een individuele president, maar met een logisch verschijnsel van een roofbouw-cultuur die al eeuwenlang met geweld wereldwijd de mens en de natuur verwoest, zoals elke geïnformeerde burger kan weten.
Waarom zou opiniemaker Henk Hofland koste wat kost willen dat het 'prestige' van 'Amerika' wordt 'hersteld'? Welk belang heeft hij daarbij?
Gangster State America– Paul Craig Roberts
Gangster State America
Where Is America’s Democracy?
Where Is America’s Democracy?
Paul Craig Roberts
Anyone who looks carefully behind the veil of words cannot find democracy in America. For years I have been writing that the US government is no longer accountable to law or to the people (see, for example, my book, How America Was Lost). The Constitution has been set aside, and the executive branch is degenerating into Caesarism.
Government is used to impose agendas that result from the symbiotic relationship between the neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony and the economic interests of powerful private interest groups, such as Wall Street, the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and extractive industries (energy, mining, and timber). Dollar imperialism, threats, bribes, and wars are means by which US hegemony is extended. These agendas are pursued without the knowledge or approval of the American people and in spite of their opposition.
Professor Martin Gilens at Princeton University and Professor Benjamin Page of Northwestern University have examined American governance and have concluded that the US is an oligarchy ruled by powerful rich private interest groups and that the US government has only a superficial resemblance to a democracy. Their analysis is forthcoming in publication in the journal, Perspectives on Politics.
Their conclusions are striking:
“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”
“When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose.”
“In the United States, our findings indicate that the majority does not rule–at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.”
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
A number of factors have contributed to the demise of democracy and accountable government in the US. One factor is the concentration of the US media in a few hands. During the last years of the Clinton regime, a formerly diverse media with significant independence was concentrated in five mega-corporations. The value of these corporations consists largely of their federal broadcast licenses. To insure the renewal of these licenses, the media avoids challenging the government on significant issues.
Another factor is the offshoring of US industrial and manufacturing jobs. This development destroyed the manufacturing and industrial unions, which were the backbone of the Democratic Party’s financial support. Now the Democrats have to appeal to the same interest groups as the Republicans–Wall Street, the military/security complex, and the polluting industries that despoil the environment. As both political parties are now financed by the same private interests, both political parties serve the same masters. There is no longer any countervailing power. The Obama regime is simply a continuation of the George W. Bush regime.
Two recent rulings by the Republican majority on the US Supreme Court are another decisive factor. The court ruled that it is merely an exercise of free speech for oligarchs to purchase the US government (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission). A corrupt Supreme Court has invented a “constitutional right” for corporations and oligarchs to use their vast financial resources to form a government of their choosing.
Private interest groups in the US are so powerful that they can purchase immunity from law. On March 27 a retiring Securities and Exchange Commission prosecutor, James Kidney, said that his prosecutions of financial criminals at Goldman Sachs and other giant US banks were blocked by SEC political appointees who “were focused on getting high-paying jobs after their government service.”
In a recent test to ascertain the responsiveness of members of Congress to monied interests in comparison to voters, two letters were sent to congressional offices. One letter asked for the representative to meet with community groups in his district. The other letter asked for the representative to meet with a group of active donors. The latter letter received by far the most responses from members of Congress.
In the US and Europe there is constant propaganda about “gangster state Russia.” According to this propaganda, President Putin is a tool of oligarchs who use Putin to rule Russia and loot the people. In my opinion, this propaganda originates in the Washington-funded NGOs that constitute a US fifth column inside Russia. The purpose of the propaganda is to destroy Putin’s legitimacy and that of his government in hopes of bringing to power a Washington-compliant government in Moscow.
My impression is that the Russian government has curtailed activities of some of the oligarchs who used the privatization era to seize control of resources, but that the government’s actions are consistent with the rule of law. In contrast, in the US oligarchs control the law and use it to acquire immunity from law.
The real gangster state is the US. Every institution is corrupt. Regulators sell protection from law for well-paying jobs in the industries that they are supposed to regulate. The Supreme Court not only permits money to purchase the government but also sells out the Constitution to the police state. The Supreme Court has just refused to hear the case against indefinite detention of US citizens in the absence of due process. This is an unambiguous unconstitutional law, yet the Supreme Court refuses to even hear the case, thus granting unchecked police power to the gangster state.http://rt.com/usa/156172-scotus-ndaa-hedges-obama/
Another defining characteristic of a gangster state is the criminalization of dissent and truth tellers. Washington has done everything in its power to criminalize Julian Assange and Edward Snowden for revealing the US government’s illegal, unconstitutional, and criminal actions. Washington reeks of hypocrisy. On April 26 the State Department announced its third annual Free The Press campaign, a propaganda exercise directed at foreign countries that are not Washington’s puppets. The very same day the Justice Department told the Supreme Court to reject the protection US journalists have under the Constitution against being forced to reveal their confidential sources so that James Risen can be imprisoned for reporting a government misdeed.https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/04/state-dept-launches-free-press-campaign-while-doj-supreme-court-force-reporter
Another defining characteristic of a gangster state is the criminalization of dissent and truth tellers. Washington has done everything in its power to criminalize Julian Assange and Edward Snowden for revealing the US government’s illegal, unconstitutional, and criminal actions. Washington reeks of hypocrisy. On April 26 the State Department announced its third annual Free The Press campaign, a propaganda exercise directed at foreign countries that are not Washington’s puppets. The very same day the Justice Department told the Supreme Court to reject the protection US journalists have under the Constitution against being forced to reveal their confidential sources so that James Risen can be imprisoned for reporting a government misdeed.https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/04/state-dept-launches-free-press-campaign-while-doj-supreme-court-force-reporter
In the 21st century Washington has squandered trillions of dollars on wars that have destroyed countries and killed, maimed, and displaced millions of people in seven or eight countries. Declaring its war crimes to be a “war on terror,” Washington has used the state of war that it created to destroy US civil liberty.
In the 21st century it is difficult to find a significant statement made by Washington that is not a lie. Obamacare is a lie. Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction is a lie. Assad’s use of chemical weapons is a lie. Iranian nukes are a lie. Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea is a lie. No fly zones are a lie. Russian aggression against Georgia is a lie. 9/11, the basis for Washington’s destruction of civil liberty and illegal military attacks, is itself a lie. The fantastic story that a few Saudi Arabians without government or intelligence agency backing outwitted the entire national security apparatus of the Western world is unbelievable. It is simply not credible that every institution of the national security state simultaneously failed. That Washington would tell such a fantastic lie shows that Washington has no respect for the intelligence of the American people and no respect for the integrity of the American media. It shows also that Washington has no respect for the intelligence and integrity of its European and Asian allies.
Washington won’t even tell the truth about little things in comparison–jobs, unemployment, inflation, GDP growth, economic recovery. Washington rigs the markets in order to cover up its sacrifice of the economy for the benefit of a few special interests. In the name of “privatization,” Washington hands over public assets and government responsibilities to rapacious private interests.
The conclusion is inescapable that the US is a gangster state. Indeed, the US is worse than a mere gangster state. The US is a shameless exploitative tyranny.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/05/06/gangster-state-america-paul-craig-roberts-2/
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