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 [send
him mail], 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.

Copyright
© 2012 Paul
Craig Roberts

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