Paul Craig Roberts on the Death of America

Paul Craig Roberts says what needs to be said about the unlawful execution of a U.S. citizen by his government: The Day America Died.

To be clear, the execution of American citizens without Due Process is something that the U.S. government had engaged in numerous times in its checkered past.  What makes this murder different is, as PCR says, "never prior to President Obama has a President asserted the power to murder citizens." 

Think about it: even Dubya didn't go that far, and he was despised by Obama supporters. 

What shocked me-- and it shouldn't have-- is "liberals" like Bill Maher and Salman Rushdie were all for murdering Awlaki when people like them had problems with something far less serious-- indefinite detention of foreign citizens-- when Dubya was doing it.

Let's face it, Americans of all political stripes have entered an era that history will judge as one when Americans only "Thought They Were Free."

This is what the American flavor of fascism looks like.

Paul Craig Roberts' Take on S&P's Downgrade of the US

He views it as all part of a war between the FIRE sector and the military/security complex.

Interesting stuff.

One-Two CounterPunch: Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts

Michael Hudson and Paul Craig Roberts have new pieces up today over at CounterPunch.

Hudson goes for the jugular in his piece, which is entitled "Obama's Greatest Betrayal: The Coming Sell-Out to the Super Rich and What it Means for the Rest of Us."  I've only skimmed it, but there are some tasty nuggets in it, like this one:

Baudelaire quipped that the devil wins at the point where he manages convince the world that he doesn’t exist. Today’s financial elites will win the class war at the point where voters believe it doesn’t exist – and believe that Obama is trying to help them rather than shepherd them into debt peonage as the economy settles into debt deflation.

Where Hudson is focused strictly on domestic policy, Paul Craig Roberts turns his attention to the latest news out of Burma to illustrate "The Stench of American Hypocrisy."  The opening paragraph is devastating:

Ten years of rule by the Bush and Obama regimes have seen the collapse of the rule of law in the United States. Is the American media covering this ominous and extraordinary story? No the American media is preoccupied with the rule of law in Burma (Myanmar).

On civil liberties issues, Paul Craig Roberts is like Glenn Greenwald, but with a spine and a clenched fist.

Paul Craig Roberts Nails It. Again.

In his post today at CounterPunch, Paul Craig Roberts concisely summarizes how we went from a two-party system of political competition to a one-party sytstem of political theater.  His concluding paragraphs are sobering (and correct):

On top of all the other factors that have made American elections meaningless, voters cannot even get correct information from the media about the problems that they and the country face. 

As the economic situation is likely to continue deteriorating, the anger will grow. But the oligarchs will direct the anger away from themselves and toward the vulnerable elements of the domestic population and  “foreign enemies.”