Paul Craig Roberts

I have known for a long time that US news is agenda-driven. Tonight (December 18) I was made aware of the extent to which agenda-driven US news drives the news of the rest of the world.

For reasons unbeknownst to me, Russia Today Moscow requested a live TV interview via Skype about the Newtown, Connecticut, school shootings that killed 20 young children and several adults. I was interested to know what was Moscow’s interest in the shootings, and I agreed to the interview.

I was surprised to see that RT Moscow’s interest was to spread the official US story of the shootings and to ask me if I thought “assault weapons” would be banned as a consequence.

Many things can be an assault weapon. A baseball bat, a knife, a fist, a foot, a single shot .22 rifle, a double-barrel shotgun, a fireplace poker, a six-shot revolver, a brick, a sword, a bow and arrow, a lance. A person can add many items to this short list.

Gun-control advocates have defined “assault weapon” to be a semi-automatic civilian version of military weapons, such as AR-15, the civilian version of the military M-16, and AK-47. During the Clinton administration the civilian version of these weapons was not permitted to have various harmless features because the features made the rifles have a military appearance, and the weapons were restricted to magazines that held no more than ten rounds.

Today 20 and 30 round magazines are available. For a professional, the capacity of the magazines is immaterial. With experience a person can change clips in a second. A button is pushed, the clip drops out and a new one is inserted. For reasons hard to follow, gun control advocates think that a ten-round clip turns an “assault weapon” into something else.

I told RT Moscow that the United States was the most complete police state in human history. Thanks to modern technology, Washington is able to spy on its subjects far beyond the capabilities of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Even George Orwell’s imagination in his dystopian novel, 1984, has been surpassed by Washington’s current practice. The “war on terror” is the excuse for the American Police State.

A police state, I said, was inconsistent with an armed population, and as all other constitutional amendments have fallen, the sole remaining amendment, the Second Amendment, will not survive much longer.

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Eric Peters

"[A large amount of] ammunition has been solicited by the DHS. Within the next 4 years, they expect to acquire 200,000 million rounds of .223 rifle bullets. For training snipers, DHS have ordered two types of .308 caliber rounds – blanks and 168 grain hollow point boat tail ammunition. This new purchase adds to the 1.8 billion rounds of ammunition they have solicited for months in preparation for...something." (Susanne Posel)

If guns are bad, how come all high politicians – including Dear Leader Obama and Gauleiter Bloomberg – are surrounded by heavily armed guards? If guns are bad, how come there is never a mass shooting at a police station?

There is virtually no “gun crime” in Switzerland, even though the Swiss are armed to the teeth, with full-auto military combat rifles in the hands of nearly every adult male between the ages of 18 and 45?

Guns save so many lives each year – including most recently the lives of numerous potential victims of a mass shooting in Oregon at the Clackamas Town Center Mall, where concealed carry permit holder Nick Meli confronted armed killer Jacob Tyler Roberts – who had already shot two people dead … and prevented him from shooting more people dead?

Rural areas tend to have high concentrations of guns relative to urban areas – yet “gun crime” is inexorably higher in urban areas while it is almost nonexistent in the rural areas...

If guns are bad, how come concealed carry permit holders are less likely to be involved in an unjustified (non-defensive) shooting than a cop? If guns are bad, how come the Obama administration “walked” 2,000 high-powered rifles to Mexican drug cartels?

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Stephen Lendman

A previous article explained what's at stake. Both parties agree on destroying America's social contract. Fiscal cliff hokum conceals their agenda. Media scoundrels don't explain.

Ongoing debate refers to expiring yearend tax breaks and unemployment benefits. Automatic sequestered/largely discretionary yearend $1.2 trillion in cuts address them for starters. Trillions more will follow.

Bipartisan agreement occurred long ago. Daily reports conceal what's ongoing and planned. Ordinary households will be hardest hit.

Wall Street, war profiteers, other corporate favorites, and America's super-rich can rest easy. Their gain is middle and poor America's loss.

It's baked in the cake and agreed. Final language remains to be reported. Expect something by yearend or sooner. Headline news won't explain what's happening and why it matters.

The New York Times reflects scoundrel media misreporting. It conceals what readers most need to know. Its November 9 editorial headlined "The Fiscal Cliff Opener," saying:

Voters "re-elected a president who promised to fight for higher taxes on the wealthy, for more public investment and for careful cuts in spending."

"Three days later, President Obama challenged Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, right now, and said he would not accept a deal that does not require the wealthy to pay a bigger share."

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