Paul Craig Roberts

Photo: The sign outside Camp Delta says INTEGRITY. Integrity? Guantánamo Bay is where an evil that knows no bounds is free from all constraint. "Arbeit macht frei" is another one that comes to mind. This is a German phrase meaning "work makes (you) free". The slogan is known for having been placed over the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps during World War II, including most infamously Auschwitz concentration camp. - What we're seeing here is a disgusting pretense of representing virtue, which in reality is a cover for the vilest depravity and state-sanctioned perversions. - Editor (Wikipedia)

How does Washington get away with the claim that the country it rules is a democracy and has freedom? This absurd claim ranks as one of the most unsubstantiated claims in history. - There is no democracy whatsoever.

Voting is a mask for rule by a few powerful interest groups. In two 21st century rulings (Citizens United and McCutcheon), the US Supreme Court has ruled that the purchase of the US government by private interest groups is merely the exercise of free speech. These rulings allow powerful corporate and financial interests to use their money-power to elect a government that serves their interests at the expense of the general welfare.

The control private interests exercise over the government is so complete that private interests have immunity to prosecution for crimes. At his retirement party on March 27, Securities and Exchange Commission prosecutor James Kidney stated that his prosecutions of Goldman Sachs and other “banks too big to fail” were blocked by superiors who “were focused on getting high-paying jobs after their government service.” The SEC’s top brass, Kidney said, did not “believe in afflicting the comfortable and powerful.” In his report on Kidney’s retirement speech, Eric Zuesse points out that the Obama regime released false statistics in order to claim prosecutions that did not take place in order to convince a gullible public that Wall Street crooks were being punished.

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Stephen Lendman

On February 22, 2014, Ukrainian freedom died. Western-supported fascist putschists seized power. They ousted Ukraine's democratically elected government. Mob rule replaced it. Illegitimate xenophobic, ultranationalist, neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic thugs run things. They do so with full US backing.

A barricade in front of the seized police station in the eastern
Ukraine town of Slovyansk (Associated Press/Daily Mail)

Eastern Ukrainians reject Kiev putschists. They want democracy. They want the real thing. They want what Americans don't have. They're going all-out to get it. They're a role model for freedom fighters everywhere. They deserve universal support.

They continue rallying across Eastern Ukraine. They seized government buildings. They're peaceful. They're courageous. They want local autonomy. They want Crimean-style referendum authority to decide. They want their democratic rights respected. They're entitled to demand them. So do people everywhere.

Illegitimate putschist prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk backed off from earlier threats. He promised legislation granting regional referenda. He spoke as a 48-hour deadline given protesters to evacuate public buildings expired. He'll support greater autonomy, he said. His U-turn was short-lived. He ordered crackdowns on Slavyansk protesters. Kiev calls them terrorists. They're in Donetsk's industrial region. They're under attack. Transport helicopters ferried in troops. They besieged the city. Fighting erupted. Gunfire was heard. Injuries were reported.

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Paul Craig Roberts

American Cold War propaganda had little, if anything, to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, by dramatizing Soviet mendacity it made the world blind to Washington’s mendacity.

When Soviet authorities refused to publish prominent Soviet writer Boris Pasternak’s masterpiece, Dr. Zhivago, the CIA turned it into a propaganda coup.

An Italian journalist and Communist Party member learned of the suppressed manuscript and offered to take the manuscript to the Italian communist publisher in Milan, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who published the book in Italian over Soviet objections in 1957. Feltrinelli believed that Dr. Zhivago was a masterpiece and that the Soviet government was foolish not to take credit for the accomplishment of its greatest writer. Instead, a dogmatic and inflexible Kremlin played into the CIA’s hands.

The Soviets made such a stink about the book that the controversy raised the book’s profile. According to recently declassified CIA documents, the CIA saw the book as an opportunity to make Soviet citizens wonder why a novel by such a prominent Russian writer was only available abroad. The CIA arranged for a Russian language edition to be published and distributed to Soviet citizens at the World Fair in Brussels in 1958. The propaganda coup was complete when Pasternak received the Nobel Prize for literature in October 1958.

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