‘Just Noticing’: Observations Of A Blogger
Posted by Michelle Moquin on March 28th, 2010
- Just noticing…that it seems that some of my readers are afraid to post to my blog.
What’s up with that? I will remind them once again that it is easy. They can post anything under an alias or without any name in the name block, and remain completely anonymous.
Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.
Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.
Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”
Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.
Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.
Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.
Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.
Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”
And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”
The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies’ role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.
The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.
And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.
Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.
Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.
I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.
When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.
As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.
Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.
Americans, or most of them, have proved to be putty in the hands of the police state.
Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.
Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.
I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”
For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.
For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.
The American corporate media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.
America’s fate was sealed when the public and the anti-war movement bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory. The government’s account of 9/11 is contradicted by much evidence. Nevertheless, this defining event of our time, which has launched the US on interminable wars of aggression and a domestic police state, is a taboo topic for investigation in the media. It is pointless to complain of war and a police state when one accepts the premise upon which they are based.
These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.
With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.
The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.
Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Readers: Only one ‘just noticing’ today, but nonetheless this article is filled with interesting observations. Any comments or any to add? Blog me.
Po: I missed your comment yesterday. Thank you, but I do not know how much I am helping; I hope more than I think. Our country can be just as corrupt, only our politicians and those in power do it covertly. Our lives, unlike yours, are not threatened at the polls. No, we peacefully punch our vote, elections are surreptitiously stolen, and our lives are threatened through legislation. Thankfully our past elections were not the status quo, and things are looking up for the American people.
And hopefully your election in the coming weeks will not be either. I hear Anonz is there – I believe he has a personal interest in smashing the status quo. I have a feeling he will know best what to do. I wish only a better future for you, and the rest of the people of Darfur. Be safe.
Mike: The tea baggers. But I know you knew that. :)
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my ‘loyal’(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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March 28th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
Thanks for that letter! I understand how you are feeling…
If you take muddy water and still it, it gradually becomes clear
Let it come to rest, and it gradually comes alive
Hold to this way, nurture that hidden life
And you will never desire to be finished
And thus will never wear yourself out
* * * * *
Learn to bend, and you will never break
Learn to turn, and you will never fall
Empty yourself, and you’ll be filled
Release yourself, and you’ll be renewed
* * * * *
If you would lead people, trust them to do the right thing
When a leader accomplishes something using the tao
He steps back, moves on to something else
And lets the people praise themselves
Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu
6th Century B.C.
March 29th, 2010 at 8:52 am
DON’T FIGHT BEING HUMAN
The list of celebrities getting toppled from their perches due to their human failings gets longer and longer… John Edwards, Tiger Woods and Kirstie Alley are just a few recently in the headlines.
Not to mention that our fascination with human weakness has turned into a booming industry known as reality television shows.
But what’s even more fascinating than watching all these beautiful, successful people fall? Seeing how they return from the ruin. The drug abuser who comes clean and writes a book… the fitness trainer who was once obese… the philanderer who rebuilds his commitment to wife and family — these people serve as inspiration we love to embrace.
According to life coach and Daily Health News regular contributor Lauren Zander, CEO of the Handel Group, there is a very good reason why we find them so entrancing: “Focusing on the failures of others allows us to hide from our own weaknesses, reassuring ourselves that we must be fine since we’d never do that.”
IT’S PART OF THE STORY
The truth is that our weaknesses (we all have them) are part of being human. Overcoming them is part of the adventure of life, whereas covering up and hiding from a simple weakness can transform it into an obstacle that holds back personal development, and perhaps even destroys your life.
Have you noticed that people who’ve taken charge of failings and turned them around exude more confidence?
With their stronger sense of self, they’re better and more inspiring teachers than those who have never had to confront their demons.
Since the entire world is facing challenges right now, Lauren says it’s an ideal time to unmask our own weaknesses and take a different approach — embrace them.
She points out that everyone has positive and negative traits, adding “It’s better to be honest about your challenges than to make believe that they don’t exist, since, I promise you, the rest of the world is very aware of your shortcomings.”
Accepting and acknowledging our weaknesses makes us immediately more authentic and real. Furthermore, it is only by admitting to our negative traits that we can begin to work on changing them.
“Inherent in the concept of making something better is that you have to acknowledge that it’s a problem,” says Lauren. “It’s the light emerging from the dark, the yin/yang of life.”
But when you acknowledge what is negative in your life you also introduce a crucial question — are you willing to do the work to make it better?
“It isn’t easy to change the way you live — how you eat, how you talk to others, the routines of your life,” says Lauren.
Making improvements requires awareness, adjustment and commitment. “Avoiding the conversation means that you don’t have to deal with it,” she says.
“But once you figure out that it is possible to turn not-so-great into something you’re proud of, you have the inspiration that leads to making a better life.”
PICTURE THIS
Lauren suggests that one way to get good at admitting your flaws without feeling humiliated is to start a list of your weaknesses in a private journal.
Be utterly honest — the whole point is to realize that we all have human frailties. What are yours? Write down the large and small ones, then review your list to choose what you most want to change.
Use your journal to describe how your life will be transformed if you take control of them.
For example, if you have a tendency to spend too much money, visualize and write about a growing balance in your bank account and how calm you’ll be if you no longer have to worry about whether you’ll be able to pay your bills.
Now that you can picture how your life would be improved if you could turn your weaknesses around, it’s time to decide how to get from here to there.
Using the spending example again, what could you do that would force you to stop spending? Cut up credit cards?
Allow yourself to buy things only with cash? Create a budget? Limit yourself to a certain number of fun purchases a month?
The task of laying out the steps required to change your behavior may lead to some introspection. Do you shop as a way to give to yourself?
Maybe you need more attention from your significant other or to find another way to indulge your need for self-expression and pleasure.
Recognizing such root causes allows you to figure out how to fix the problem, which will then make it easier to actually solve it by cutting back on spending.
LIFE GETS BETTER AND BETTER
Life is all about problem solving, so the challenge of self-improvement never goes away.
As Lauren points out, “Once you have managed to run one mile, you can now push yourself to run two. There is always a better way… more generous love… a deeper connection… more money… greater intimacy… better health… more.”
And since there is no such thing as human perfection, Lauren advises learning to enjoy the process of turning your weaknesses into strengths.
Why not share this project with someone you love, perhaps your sibling or best friend or partner or spouse?
Together you can discuss what change means, what you wish could be different and how you can achieve it. This can (and should) be accomplished with kindness and generosity, says Lauren — no poking fun or being snide about one another’s failings.
“Accept as a fact that we all have negative traits, and try to get comfortable with the intimacy of talking about yours,” she says.
“You can then allow that ease to liberate you by learning to love your failings, embracing them as yours and using them to grow better and stronger throughout the rest of your life.”
Source(s):
Lauren Zander, life coach, chairman and founder of Handel Group, http://www.thehandelgroup.com.