Paul Craig Roberts

Buchanan is concerned that America might not survive until 2025. Instead, shouldn’t we be concerned that the American police state could last that long? Shouldn’t we be worried that the police state will survive yet another presidential election, or even one more day?

Pat Buchanan’s latest book, Suicide of a Superpower, raises the question whether America will survive to 2025. The question might strike some readers as unduly pessimistic and others as optimistic. It is unclear whether the US, as we have known it, will survive its next presidential election.

Consider the candidates. Liberal law professor Jonathan Turley, who was likely to have been an early Obama supporter, now wonders if Obama is “the most disastrous president in our history.” Despite Obama’s failure, the Republicans can’t come up with anyone any better. One Republican candidate admires Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman who gave us financial deregulation and the financial crisis. Another is ready for a preemptive strike on Iran. Yet another thinks the Soviet Union is a grave threat to the United States. None of these clueless dopes are capable of presiding over a government.

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that the “superpower” is over-extended financially and militarily. The US is currently involved in six conflicts with Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Pakistan on the waiting list for full fledged military attacks and perhaps invasions. Russia is being encircled with missile bases, and war plans are being drawn up for China.

Where is the money going to come from when the country’s debt is bursting at the seams, the economy is in decline, and unemployment on the rise?

Washington thinks that the money can simply be printed. However, enough has already been printed that the rest of the world is already suspicious of the dollar and its role as reserve currency.

As John Williams has said, the world could begin dumping dollar assets at any time. I don’t think we can dismiss Buchanan’s concern as pessimistic.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged global leaders to condemn the alleged Iranian plot to kill a Saudi Arabian ambassador (Belfast Telegraph)

Since Iran's 1979 revolution and US hostage crisis, Washington's been spoiling for a fight. The Carter administration considered invading and seizing its oil fields.

Washington exploited Iran/Iraq tensions and encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack. Earlier Iran's Shah was supported. After 1979, US foreign policy shifted.

The Carter Doctrine pledged Middle East military intervention if US interests were threatened. Reagan escalated Carter policies short of committing US forces in combat. Saddam then got US backing. A decade of war followed. America pretended support for both sides, but mostly gave it to Iraq.

US/Iranian relations remain tense. Washington's sought regime change in Tehran for years. Various confrontational tactics include on and off saber rattling, sanctions, and direct meddling in Iran's internal affairs, perhaps including covert US Special Forces and CIA operatives there causing trouble.

Why not? They do it in dozens of countries globally, using death squads and other destabilizing tactics.

Washington also makes baseless accusations of anti-US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. It calls Tehran a threat to world peace, saying its commercial nuclear program plans nuclear weapons development. Unmentioned is Israel's known arsenal and willingness to use it preemptively.

US media scoundrels regurgitate official lies and suppress vital truths. New York Times writers and commentators play lead roles. The latest alleged plot is laughable on its face. But it's headline news across America, including on The Times' front page, saying "US Accuses Iranians of Plotting to Kill Saudi Envoy."

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Stephen Lendman

Fighting across Libya continues. NATO and cutthroat rebels commit daily war crimes. The appalling humanitarian crisis worsens. Diplomatic initiatives are absent to end it.

On October 9, BBC claimed National Transitional Council (NTC) forces

"made significant gains in the battle for the city of Sirte. (NTC) commanders said they had captured the main hospital, the university and the Ouagadougou conference center." Sirte is "close to falling." After it's taken, NTC officials "say they will declare national liberation, even if Gaddafi remains at large." "NTC chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil told reporters in Tripoli" that Sirte and Bani Walid liberation "will happen within this week."

On October 10, BBC headlined, "Sirte ready to fall," repeating the same canard. More on that below.

On October 10, AP headlined, "Libyan revolutionary forces celebrate gains but fierce fighting persists over Gaddafi hometown," saying:

"Jubilant revolutionary forces have raised their tri-color flag over a convention center in Sirte that long served as a base for (Gaddafi) loyalists, even as fighting rages elsewhere in the fugitive leader's hometown." Sirte commander "Younis al-Abdally....says his troops have surrounded pro-Gaddafi fighters in a small area in the upscale neighborhood of Dollar Street."

On October 9, New York Times writer Kareem Fahim headlined, "Fighters Enter City Once Home to Qaddafi," saying:

Anti-Gaddafi "fighters battled their way into the heart of this coastal city on Sunday, seizing a sumptuous conference center (and) nearby Ibn Sina hospital...." "By Sunday afternoon, anti-Qaddafi fighters were speaking confidently about their chances of finally taking (Sirte), as a coordinated ring of troops closed in on loyalists in their remaining pockets."

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Rodrigue Tremblay

“Men accept change only when it is a necessity, and they see a necessity only in a crisis.” ~ Jean Monnet (1888-1979), French political economist and statesman

Our world has become very complex, and, as a consequence, it is increasingly open to macro crises of huge proportions.

Indeed, what makes our time such a dangerous period, I think, is the fact that we are facing simultaneously at least five intractable worldwide crises that it will take years to solve or to outlive. They are a financial crisis that it will take at least twenty years to jugulate, an energy crisis that's looming on the not too far horizon and which threatens the very foundation of the economic prosperity of the last half century, a double-barreled demographic crisis of a magnitude never encountered during the entire history of humankind, a political crisis that is related to the ingrained inability of governments most everywhere to solve society's problems, and, as a general background, a moral crisis that corrupts most institutions and makes them ineffective in promoting the common good.

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