by PaulCraigRoberts.org
Recently by Paul Craig Roberts: Can Americans Escape the Deception?
My German publisher has rights for all European languages and for a Russian edition, which he says he intends to publish.
I hear that the Chinese are interested in publishing my book. Most likely, South America will follow. Strange, isn't it, that no serious work that diverges from the US propaganda line can be published in the United States, the country of "freedom and democracy." What a joke!
In my lifetime, especially the 21st century, the US has become the country of thought control and oppression. The USA today bears no resemblance whatsoever to the country I grew up in. I feel like I am living in a foreign 20th century police state. I have told Press TV (Tehran) and the BBC World Service (London) not to call me any more about controversial issues as, if I speak the truth, it could result in my arrest. Free speech is no longer an American right.
I haven't been able to tell RT this yet, because the female hosts are so beautiful and most of the interviews are from RT's Washington, D.C., studio and not from Moscow. I figure that as long as our overlords in Washington permit RT broadcasts from Washington, DC, they can't arrest me for aiding and abetting "enemies." I mean, it is our overlords' fault, right, that "enemies" call me for interviews from Washington DC The overlords could shut down the "enemies" on their home turf, but as long as they haven't I should be free to speak to RT Washington. Perhaps this is naive, but it seems legally coherent, not that that any longer means anything. Probably RT will quit calling me in order to avoid being shut down by the "freedom and democracy" US government. The "freedom and democracy" government in the UK shut down Press TV, no longer permitted to broadcast to British subjects.
Human Rights attorneys tell me that as the US Constitution is no longer observed by the executive branch, that I can't speak freely according to my Constitutional rights, the First Amendment and all, without running the risk of being arrested.
They tell me that Bradley Manning has been arrested, tortured, and is currently being framed in a phony prosecution for doing his duty according to the US Military Code and revealing massive US war crimes. The dumbshit American population is unable to accept that they and "their" government are responsible for war crimes. After all, we are "the indispensable people," second only to god's chosen people, the Israelis.
Human rights attorneys also tell me that Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has been targeted for his journalistic revelations, protected by the First Amendment, of information leaked to him. Nevertheless, despite his legal protections, he is targeted by Washington for imprisonment, torture, and most likely death.
To comprehend the USA's rapid descent into police state tyranny, compare Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers to Assange's publication of US documents leaked to him by a third party. Unlike Ellsberg, Assange himself did not leak the documents. WikiLeaks is in the role of the New York Times, which published the leak from Ellsberg. Neither Ellsberg nor the New York Times were indicted or prosecuted although they were threatened. Yet, Assange, who is in the secondary role as the publisher, not the leaker, faces indefinite detention and torture if Washington can get its hands on him through the corrupt Swedish prosecutor who has "reopened" without evidence the closed Swedish case against Assange.
When you think about how distant Americans are from the events overwhelming them, light years really, it is very difficult to see any hope. Americans are simply not up to the challenge. Americans are mentally and emotionally too weak, and their ignorance is vast, a totally uninformed people. They have no idea of what is happening to them and to the rest of the world as a result of "their" government's immorality and evil and incessant lies.
Several years ago I had a telephone call from a professor and former dean of a university in Boston. He said that he had been in Washington, D. C., the previous week and had had lunch with some of my former colleagues. He said that when he asked about me, the response was, "poor Craig, if he hadn't turned critic, he would be worth tens of millions of dollars like us." Upon hearing this, my acquaintance said that he stood up and announced that he did not realize he was having lunch with a bunch of whores and departed the lunch.
Obviously, my acquaintance did not need anything from my still-well-connected former colleagues. I replied to him that I was pleased that my former colleagues agreed that my integrity was worth more to me than tens of millions of dollars.
The telephone call confirmed my prior decision to leave Washington and confirmed my conclusion that everyone there was bought and paid for by some interest group. A more corrupt place has never existed on earth. The stench of Washington's corruption and evil even wafts down far into the South, although few of the Republican lemmings can smell it.
That is our government today. It belongs to those who purchase it, courtesy of the Republican US Supreme Court, not to those voters whom the government allegedly represents.
The baldfaced truth is that in America the people have no rights and no representation. The American people are a nonentity. Far from being indispensable, they are totally dispensable, just like the thousands of Arab women and children whose murders are dismissed as "collateral damage" in the hoax war on terror. Washington has taken a page from Mao, "democracy issues forth from the barrel of a gun."