by Paul Craig Roberts
PaulCraigRoberts.org
Recently by Paul Craig Roberts: The Greatest Gift for All
In March 2010 when I resigned from my column with Creator’s Syndicate
and put down my pen, I received so many protests from readers that two
months later I began writing again. This renewed activity has resulted
in this new year in a website of my own.
My columns will first appear on my site. Sites on which readers are
accustomed to find my columns are permitted to continue to post my
columns as long as they link to my site and indicate my copyright. The
site will stay up if reader support justifies it. Otherwise, I will
conclude that the cost of the site exceeds the value of what I have to
say.
This past year has not been a good one for the 99%, and the new year
is likely to be even worse. This column deals with the outlook for
liberty. The next will deal with the economic outlook.
The outlook for liberty is dismal. Those writers who are critical of
Washington’s illegal wars and overthrow of the US Constitution could
find themselves in indefinite detainment, because criticism of
Washington’s policies can be alleged to be aiding Washington’s enemies,
which might include charities that provide aid to bombed Palestinian
children and flotillas that attempt to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The Bush/Obama regimes have put the foundation in place for
imprisoning critics of the government without due process of law. The
First Amendment is being all but restricted to rah-rah Americans who
chant USA! USA! USA! Washington has set itself up as world prosecutor,
forever berating other countries for human rights violations, while
Washington alone bombs half a dozen countries into the stone age and
threatens several more with the same treatment, all the while violating
US statutory law and the Geneva Conventions by torturing detainees.
Washington rounds up assorted foreign politicians, whose countries
were afflicted with civil wars, and sends them off to be tried as war
criminals, while its own war crimes continue to mount. However, if a
person exposes Washington’s war crimes, that person is held without
charges in conditions that approximate torture.
Bradley Manning is the case in point. Manning, a US soldier, is
alleged to be the person who released to WikiLeaks the "Collateral
Murder" video, which, in the words of Marjorie Cohn, "depicts U.S.
forces in an Apache helicopter killing 12 unarmed civilians, including
two Reuters journalists. People trying to rescue the wounded were also
fired upon and killed."
One of the Good Samaritans was a father with two small children. The
video reveals the delight that US military personnel experienced in
blowing them away from the distant skies. When it became clear that the
Warriors Bringing The People Democracy had blown away two small
children, instead of remorse we hear an executioner’s voice saying:
"that’s what he gets for bringing children into a war zone."
The quote is from memory, but it is accurate enough. When I first saw
this video, I was astonished at the brazen war crime. It is completely
obvious that the dozen or so murdered people were simply people walking
along a street, threatening no one, unarmed, doing nothing out of the
ordinary. It was not a war zone. The horror is that the US soldiers were
playing video games with live people. You can tell from their
commentary that they were having fun by killing these unsuspecting
people walking along the street. They enjoyed killing the father who
stopped to help and shooting up his vehicle with the two small children
inside.
This was not an accident of a drone, fed with bad information,
blowing up a school full of children, or a hospital, or a farmer’s
family. This was American soldiers having fun with high tech toys
killing anyone that they could pretend might be an enemy.
When I saw this, I realized that America was lost. Evil had prevailed.
I was about to write that nothing has been done about the crime. But
something was done about it. An American soldier who recognized the
horrific war crime knew that the US military knew about it and had done
nothing about it. He also knew that as a US soldier he was required to
report war crimes. But to whom? War crimes dismissed as "collateral
damage" are the greatest part of Washington’s 21st century wars.
A soldier with a moral conscience gave the video to WikiLeaks. We
don’t know who the soldier is. Washington alleges that the soldier is
Bradley Manning, but Washington lies every time it opens its mouth. So
we will never know.
All we know is that retribution did not fall on the perpetrators of
the war crime. It fell upon the two accused of revealing it – Bradley
Manning and Julian Assange.
Manning was held almost two years without charges being presented to a court.
In December’s pre-trial hearings all Washington could come up with
was concocted accusations. No evidence whatsoever. The prosecutor, a
Captain Fein, told the court, if that is what it is, that Manning had
been "trained and trusted to use multiple intelligence systems, and he
used that training to defy that trust. He abused our trust."
In other words, Manning gave the world the truth of a war crime that
was being covered up, and Washington and the Pentagon regard a truth
teller doing his duty under the US military code as an "abuser of
trust."
In the 1970 My Lai Courts-Martial of Captain Ernest L. Medina, the Prosecution Brief states:
" A combat commander has a duty, both as an individual and as a
commander, to insure that humane treatment is accorded to noncombatants
and surrendering combatants. Article 3 of the Geneva Convention relative
to the Treatment of Prisoners of War specifically prohibits violence to
life and person, particularly murder, mutilation, cruel treatment, and
torture. Also prohibited are the taking of hostages, outrages against
personal dignity and summary judgment and sentence. It demands that the
wounded and sick be cared for. These same provisions are found in the
Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time
of War. While these requirements for humanitarian treatment are placed
upon each individual involved with the protected persons, it is
especially incumbent upon the commanding officer to insure that proper
treatment is given.
Additionally, all military personnel, regardless of rank or position,
have the responsibility of reporting any incident or act thought to be a
war crime to his commanding officer as soon as practicable after
gaining such knowledge. Commanders receiving such reports must also make
such facts known to the Staff Judge Advocate. It is quite clear that
war crimes are not condoned and that every individual has the
responsibility to refrain from, prevent and report such unwarranted
conduct. While this individual responsibility is likewise placed upon
the commander, he has the additional duty to insure that war crimes
committed by his troops are promptly and adequately punished.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mylai/Myl_law3.htm
At the National Press Club on February 17, 2006, General Peter Pace,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that "It is the absolute
responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is
either illegal or immoral." General Pace said that the military is
prohibited from committing crimes against humanity and that such orders
and events must be made known.
However, when Manning followed the military code, his compliance with
law was turned into a crime. Captain Fein goes on to tell the "court"
[a real court would throw out the bogus charges, but Amerika no longer
has real courts] that "ultimately, he aided the enemies of the United
States by indirectly giving them intelligence through WikiLeaks."
In other words, the "crime" is an unintended consequence of doing
one’s duty – like the "collateral damage" of civilian casualties when
drones, bombs, helicopter gunships, and trigger-happy troops kill women,
children, aid workers, and village elders. Why is Washington only
punishing Manning for the collateral damage attributed to him?
Captain Fein could not have put it any clearer. If you tell the truth
and reveal Washington’s war crimes, you have aided the enemy. Captain
Fein’s simple sentence has at one stroke abolished all whistleblower
protections written into US statutory law and the First Amendment, and
confined anyone with a moral conscience and sense of decency to
indefinite detention and torture.
The illegal detention and treatment of Manning had a purpose,
according to a number of informed people. Naomi Spencer, for example,
writes that Manning’s long detention and delayed prosecution is designed
to coerce Manning into implicating WikiLeaks in order that the US can
extradite Julian Assange and either prosecute him as a terrorist or lock
him away indefinitely in a military prison without any recourse to the
courts, due process or the law.
Assange’s case is mysterious. Assange sought refuge in Sweden, where
he was seduced by two women. Both admit that they had sexual intercourse
with him voluntarily, but afterwards they have come forth with claims
that as they were sleeping with him in the bed, he again had sexual
intercourse with them, and that they had not approved this second
helping and that he was asked to use a condom but did not.
The Swedish prosecutorial office, after investigating the charges,
dismissed them. But, strangely, another Swedish prosecutor, a woman
suspected of connections to Washington, resurrected the charges and is
seeking to extradite Assange to Sweden from the UK for questioning.
The legal question is whether a prosecutor can seek extradition for
investigative purposes. The UK Supreme Court thinks that this is a valid
question, and has agreed to hear the case. Normally, extradition
requests come from courts and are issued for persons formally charged
with a crime. Sweden has not charged Assange with a crime.
The real question is whether the Swedish prosecutor is acting on
behalf of Washington. Many who follow the case believe that Washington
is behind the prosecutor’s re-opening of the case, and if Sweden gets
hold of Assange Sweden will send him to Washington to be put in
indefinite detention and tortured until he says what Washington wants
him to say – that he is an Al Qaeda operative.
This is the way that Washington intends to absolve itself of its war crimes revealed, allegedly, by Manning and Assange.
Meanwhile, Washington in a brazen display of hypocrisy accuses other
countries of human rights abuses, while Congress has passed and
President Obama has signed an indefinite detention and torture bill that
US Representative Ron Paul says will accelerate America’s "slip into
tyranny" and "descent into totalitarianism."
In signing the Bill of Tyranny, President Obama indicated that he
thought that the tyranny established by the bill did not go far enough.
He announced that he was signing the bill with signing statements that
reserved his right, regardless of any law, to send American citizens,
deprived of due process and constitutional protection, abroad to be
tortured.
This is the US government that claims to be a government of "freedom
and democracy" and to be bringing "freedom and democracy" to others with
bombs and invasions.
The past year gave us other ominous tyrannical developments.
President Obama announced that he had a list of Americans whom he
intended to assassinate without due process of law, and Homeland
Security, itself an Orwellian name, announced that it had shifted its
attention from terrorists to "domestic extremists." The latter are
undefined and consist of whomever Homeland Security so designates.
None of this was done behind closed doors. The murder of the US
Constitution was a public crime witnessed by all. But like Kitty
Genovese, who was stabbed to death in New York in 1964 in front of
onlookers who failed to come to her aid, the media, Congress, bar
associations, law schools, and the American public failed to come to the
defense of the Constitution.
In my lifetime the collapse in respect for, and authority of, the
Constitution has been an horrific event. Compare the ho-hum response to
the Obama regime’s police state announcements with the public anger at
President Richard Nixon over his enemies list.
Try to imagine President Ronald Reagan announcing that he had a list
of Americans marked for assassination without impeachment proceedings
beginning forthwith.
Local and state police forces have been militarized not only in their
equipment and armament but also in their attitude toward the public.
Despite the absence of domestic terror attacks, Homeland Security
conducts warrantless searches of cars and trucks on highways and of
passengers using public transportation. A uniformed federal service is
being trained to systematically violate the constitutional rights of
citizens, and citizens are being trained to accept these violations as
normal. The young have no memory of being able to board public
transportation or use public roadways without intrusive searches or to
gather in protest without being brutalized by the police. Liberty is
being moved into the realm of myth and legend.
In such a system as is being constructed in public in front of our
eyes, there is no freedom, no democracy, and no liberty. What stands
before us is naked tyranny.
While America degenerates into a total police state, politicians
constantly invoke "our values." What are these values? Indefinite
imprisonment without conviction in a court. Torture. Warrantless
searches and home invasions. An epidemic of police brutality.
Curtailment of free speech and peaceful assembly rights. Unprovoked
aggression called "preemptive war." Interference in the elections and
internal affairs of other countries. Economic sanctions imposed on
foreign populations whose leaders are not in Washington’s pocket.
If the American police state were merely an unintended consequence of
a real war against terror, it could be dismantled when the war was
over. However, the evidence is that the police state is an intended
consequence. The PATRIOT Act is a voluminous and clever attack on the
Constitution. It is not possible that it could have been written in the
short time between 9/11 and its introduction in Congress. It was waiting
on the shelf.
The dismantling of constitutionally protected civil liberties is
purposeful, as is the accumulation of arbitrary and unaccountable powers
in the executive branch of government. As there have been no terrorist
events within the US in over a decade except for those known to have
been organized by the FBI, there is no terrorist threat that justifies
the establishment of a political regime of unaccountable power. It is
being done on purpose under false pretenses, which means that there is
an undeclared agenda. The threat that Americans face resides in
Washington, D.C.
Of the presidential candidates, only Ron Paul addresses the
Constitution’s demise.Yet, the electorate is concerned with matters
unimportant by comparison. Propagandized 24/7 by the Ministry of Truth,
Americans are not sufficiently aware of their plight to elect Ron Paul
president.
It might be too late for even a President Ron Paul to turn things
around. A president has no power unless his government supports him.
What prospect would President Ron Paul have of getting his appointees
confirmed by the Senate? The military/security complex is not going to
vacate power. Powerful monied interests would block his appointments. If
he persisted in being a problem for the Establishment, he would be
victimized by a scandal and fail to be reelected if not forced to
resign.
Remember what the Washington Establishment did to President Carter.
His budget director and chief of staff were framed, thus depriving
Carter of the powers of his office. Even Ronald Reagan had to give away
more than half of his government, including the White House
chief-of-staff and vice presidency, to the Establishment. President
Reagan told me that he wanted to end stagflation in order that he could
end the cold war, but that he could not sign a tax bill if I could not
get one out of his administration that he could send to Congress.
I do not know, but I suspect that turning things around internally
through the political system is not in the cards. Our chance to
resurrect liberty might come from Washington’s hubris. Imperial
ambitions and drive for power can produce unmanageable upheavals and a
loss of allies. Overreach abroad with a demoralized, unemployed and
downtrodden population at home are not the ingredients of success.
How much longer will the Russian government permit NGOs funded by the
US Endowment for Democracy to interfere in its elections and to
organize political protests? How much longer will China confuse its
strategic interests with the American consumer market? How much longer
will Japan, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Egypt,
and the Middle East oil states remain US puppets? How much longer can
the dollar retain the reserve currency role when the Federal Reserve is
monetizing vast quantities of debt?
How much longer can a "superpower" survive when it is incapable of producing political leadership?
America’s salvation will come when Washington suffers defeat of its hegemonic ambitions.
Many readers, especially those who watch Fox "News" and CNN and read
the New York Times, might see hyperbole in my outlook for 2012. Surely,
many believe, the draconian measures put in place will only be applied
to terrorists. But how would we know? Indefinite detention and torture
require no evidence to be presented. The American public has no way of
knowing whether tortured detainees are terrorists or political
opponents. The decision to detain and torture is an unaccountable
decision. It relies on nothing but the subjective arbitrary decision of
someone in the executive branch. Why are Americans prepared to take the
word of a government that told them intentionally the lie that Saddam
Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to America?
Like cancer, tyranny metastasizes. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet
Union’s most famous writer, was a twice-decorated World War II Red Army
commander. He made mild critical comments about Stalin’s conduct of the
war in a private letter to a friend, and for this he was sentenced, not
by a court, but in absentia by the NKVD, the secret police, to eight
years in the Gulag Archipelago for "anti-Soviet propaganda." Not even
Stalin had indefinite detention. The closest the Soviets came to this
medieval practice resurrected by the Bush and Obama regimes was internal
exile in distant parts of the Soviet Union.
During much of the Soviet era, even art, literature and music were
scrutinized for signs of "anit-Soviet propaganda." America’s Dixie
Chicks suffered a similar, but more frightening, fate. Bush did not need
the NKVD. The American public did the job for the secret police.
Wikipedia reports:
"During a London concert ten days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
lead vocalist Maines said ‘we don't want this war, this violence, and
we're ashamed that the President of the United States (George W. Bush)
is from Texas.’ The statement offended many Americans, who thought it
rude and unpatriotic, and the ensuing controversy cost the band half of
their concert audience attendance in the United States. The incident
negatively affected their career and led to accusations of the three
women being "un-American", as well as hate mail, death threats, and the
public destruction of their albums in protest."
In Nazi Germany, the mildest criticism could bring a midnight knock at the door.
People with power use it. And power attracts the worst kind of
persons. As Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prove, democracies are not immune
to the evil use of power. Indeed, identical inhumane treatment of
prisoners goes on inside the US prison system for ordinary criminals. A
December 30, 2011, search on Yahoo for police brutality produced 20
million results.
Over-fed goon cop thugs taser little children and people in wheel
chairs. They body slam elderly grandmothers. The police are a horror.
They represent a greater threat to citizens than do criminals.
Preventative war, indefinite imprisonment, rendition, torture of
people alleged to be "suspects" (an undefined category), and
assassination are all draconian punishments that require no evidence.
Preventative war is an Orwellian concept. How do you prevent a war by
initiating a war? How do we know that a country that did not attack us
was going to attack us in the future? Preventative war is like Jeremy
Bentham’s concept of preventing crime by locking up those thought by the
upper crust to be predisposed to criminal activity before they commit a
crime. Punishment without crime is now the American Way.
The concepts that the Bush/Obama regimes have institutionalized are
totally foreign to the Anglo-American concepts of law and liberty. In
one decade the US has been transformed from a free society into a police
state. The American population, to the extent it is aware of what has
occurred, has simply accepted the revolution from the top. Ron Paul is
the only American seeking the presidency who opposes the tyranny that
has been institutionalized, and he is not leading in the polls.
This tells us all we need to know about the value Americans place on
liberty. Americans seem to welcome the era of tyranny into which they
are now entering.
January 4, 2012
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury
and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been
reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new
edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with
Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the
protection of law, has been released by Random House. Visit his website.
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FOX president Kevin Reilly says that the proposed 
1.
Joan’s real name was Jehanne d’Arc, Jehanne Tarc, Jehanne Romée or
possibly Jehanne de Vouthon—but she didn’t go by any of these.
