Truth Is Our Country
By Paul Craig Roberts
Club De Periodistas De Mexico, March 12,
2015
Last week in Mexico at the
annual awards conference of the
Club De Periodistas De Mexico I
was given the International
Award For Excellence In
Journalism. In my speech I
emphasized that Truth is the
country of real journalists.
Unlike presstitutes, the loyalty
of real journalists is to Truth,
not to a government or corporate
advertiser. Once a journalist
sacrifices Truth to loyalty to a
government, he ceases to be a
journalist and becomes a
propagandist.
Paul Craig
Roberts |
Colleagues,
Thank you for this
recognition, for this honor. As Jesus told
the people of Nazareth, a prophet is without
honor in his own country. In the United
States, this is also true of journalists.
In the United States
journalists receive awards for lying for the
government and for the corporations. Anyone
who tells the truth, whether journalist or
whistleblower, is fired or prosecuted or has
to hide out in the Ecuadoran Embassy in
London, like Julian Assange, or in Moscow,
like Edward Snowden, or is tortured and
imprisoned, like Bradley Manning.
Mexican journalists pay an
even higher price. Those who report on
government corruption and on the drug
cartels pay with their lives. The Internet
encyclopedia, Wikipedia, has as an entry a
list by name of journalists murdered in
Mexico. This is the List of Honor. Wikipedia
reports than more than 100 Mexican
journalists have been killed or disappeared
in the 21st century.
Despite intimidation the
Mexican press has not abandoned its job.
Because of your courage, I regard this award
bestowed on me as the greatest of honors.
In the United States real
journalists are scarce and are becoming more
scarce. Journalists have morphed into a new
creature. Gerald Celente calls US
journalists “presstitutes,” a word formed
from press prostitute. In other words,
journalists in the United States are whores
for the government and for the corporations.
The few real journalists
that remain are resigning. Last year Sharyl
Attkisson, a 21-year veteran reporter with
CBS resigned on the grounds that it had
become too much of a fight to get truth
reported. She was frustrated that CBS saw
its purpose to be a protector of the
powerful, not a critic.
Recently Peter Oborne, the
UK Telegraph’s chief political commentator,
explained why he resigned. His stories about
the wrongdoings of the banking giant, HSBC,
were spiked, because HSBC is an important
advertiser for the Telegraph. Osborne says:
“The coverage of HSBC in
Britain’s Telegraph is a fraud on its
readers. If major newspapers allow
corporations to influence their content for
fear of losing advertising revenue,
democracy itself is in peril.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/why-i-have-resigned-from-the-telegraph/5432659
Last summer former New
York Times editor Jill Abramson in a speech
at the Chautauqua Institution said that the
New York Times withheld information at the
request of the White House. She said that
for a number of years the press in general
did not publish any stories that upset the
White House. She justified this complete
failure of journalism on the grounds that
“journalists are Americans, too. I consider
myself to be a patriot.”
So in the United States
journalists lie for the government because
they are patriotic, and their readers and
listeners believe the lies because they are
patriotic.
Our view differs from the
view of the New York Times editor. The view
of those of us here today is that our
country is not the United States, it is not
Mexico, our country is Truth. Once a
journalist sacrifices Truth to loyalty to a
government, he ceases to be a journalist and
becomes a propagandist.
Recently, Brian Williams,
the television news anchor at NBC, destroyed
his career because he mis-remembered an
episode of more than a decade ago when he
was covering the Iraq War. He told his
audience that a helicopter in which he was
with troops in a war zone as a war
correspondent was hit by ground fire and had
to land.
But the helicopter had not
been hit by ground fire. His fellow
journalists turned on him, accusing him of
lying in order to enhance his status as a
war correspondent.
On February 10, NBC
suspended Brian Williams for 6 months from
his job as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC
Nightly News.
Think about this for a
moment. It makes no difference whatsoever
whether the helicopter had to land because
it had been hit by gun fire or for some
other reason or whether it had to land at
all. If it was an intentional lie, it was
one of no consequence. If it was a mistake,
an episode of “false memory,” why the
excessive reaction? Psychologists say that
false memories are common.
The same NBC that
suspended Brian Williams and the journalists
who accused him of lying are all guilty of
telling massive lies for the entirety of the
21st century that have had vast
consequences. The United States government
has been, and still is, invading, bombing,
and droning seven or eight countries on the
basis of lies told by Washington and
endlessly repeated by the media. Millions of
people have been killed, maimed, and
displaced by violence based entirely on lies
spewing out of the mouths of Washington and
its presstitutes.
We know what these lies
are: Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass
destruction. Assad of Syria’s use of
chemical weapons. Iranian nukes. Pakistani
and Yemeni terrorists. Terrorists in
Somalia. The endless lies about Gaddafi in
Libya, about the Taliban in Afghanistan. And
now the alleged Russian invasion and
annexation of Ukraine.
All of these transparent
lies are repeated endlessly, and no one is
held accountable. But one journalist
mis-remembers one insignificant detail about
a helicopter ride and his career is
destroyed.
We can safely conclude
that the only honest journalism that exists
in the United States is provided by
alternative media on the Internet.
Consequently, the Internet
is now under US government attack. “Truth is
the enemy of the state,” and Washington
intends to shut down truth everywhere.
Washington has appointed
Andrew Lack, the former president of NBC
News, to be the chief executive of the
Broadcasting Board of Governors. His first
official statement compared RT, Russia
Today, the Russian-based news agency, with
the Islamic State and Boko Haram. In other
words, Mr. Lack brands RT as a terrorist
organization.
The purpose of Andrew
Lack’s absurd comparison is to strike fear
at RT that the news organization will be
expelled from US media markets. Andrew
Lack’s message to RT is: “lie for us or we
are going to expel you from our air waves.”
The British already did
this to Iran’s Press TV.
In the United States the
attack on Internet independent media is
proceeding on several fronts. One is known
as the issue of “net neutrality.” There is
an effort by Washington, joined by Internet
providers, to charge sites for speedy
access. Bandwidth would be sold for fees.
Large media corporations, such as CNN and
the New York Times, would be able to pay the
prices for a quickly opening website.
Smaller independent sites such as mine would
be hampered with the slowness of the old
“dial-up” type bandwidth. Click on CNN and
the site immediately opens. Click on
paulcraigroberts.org and wait five minutes.
You get the picture. This
is Washington’s plan and the corporations’
plan for the Internet.
But it gets worse. The
Electronic Frontier Foundation, which
attempts to defend our digital rights,
reports that so-called “free trade
agreements,” such as the Trans Pacific
Partnership (and the Trans Atlantic
Partnership) impose prison sentences,
massive fines, and property seizures on
Internet users who innocently violate vague
language in the so-called trade agreements.
Recently, a young
American, Barrett Brown, was sentenced to 5
years in prison and a fine of $890,000 for
linking to allegedly hacked documents posted
on the Internet. Barrett Brown did not hack
the documents. He merely linked to an
Internet posting, and he has no prospect of
earning $890,000 over the course of his
life.
The purpose of the US
government’s prosecution, indeed,
persecution, of this young person is to
establish the precedent that anyone who uses
Internet information in ways that Washington
disapproves, or for purposes that Washington
disapproves, is a criminal whose life will
be ruined. The purpose of Barrett Brown’s
show trial is to intimidate. It is
Washington’s equivalent to the murder of
Mexican journalists.
But this is prologue. Now
we turn to the challenge that Washington
presents to the entire world.
It is the nature of
government and of technology to establish
control. People everywhere face the threat
of control by government and technology. But
the threat from Washington is much greater.
Washington is not content with only
controlling the citizens of the United
States. Washington intends to control the
world.
Michael Gorbachev is
correct when he says that the collapse of
the Soviet Union was the worst thing that
has happened to humanity, because the Soviet
collapse removed the only constraint on
Washington’s power.
The Soviet collapse
released a terrible evil upon the world. The
neoconservatives in Washington concluded
that the failure of communism meant that
History has chosen American “democratic
capitalism,” which is neither democratic nor
capitalist, to rule the world. The Soviet
collapse signaled “the End of History,” by
which is meant the end of competition
between social, political and economic
systems.
The choice made by History
elevated the United States to the
pre-eminent position of being the
“indispensable and exceptional” country, a
claim of superiority. If the United States
is “indispensable,” then others are
dispensable. If the United States is
exceptional, then others are unexceptional.
We have seen the consequences of
Washington’s ideology in Washington’s
destruction of life and stability in the
Middle East.
Washington’s drive for
World Hegemony, based as it is on a lie,
makes necessary the obliteration of Truth.
As Washington’s agenda of supremacy is all
encompassing, Washington regards truth as a
greater enemy than Russians, Muslim
terrorists, and the Islamic State.
As truth is Washington’s
worst enemy, everyone associated with the
truth is Washington’s enemy.
Latin America can have no
illusions about Washington. The first act of
the Obama Regime was to overthrow the
democratic reformist government of Honduras.
Currently, the Obama Regime is trying to
overthrow the governments of Venezuela,
Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina.
As Mexicans know, in the
19th century Washington stole half of
Mexico. Today Washington is stealing the
rest of Mexico. The United States is
stealing Mexico via financial imperialism,
by subordinating Mexican agriculture and
self-sustaining peasant agricultural
communities to foreign-owned monoculture, by
infecting Mexico with Monsanto’s GMO’s,
genetically modified organisms, seeds that
do not reproduce, chemicals that destroy the
soil and nature’s nutrients, seeds that
leave Mexico dependent on Monsanto for food
crops with reduced nutritional value.
It is easy for governments
to sell out their countries to Washington
and the North American corporations.
Washington and US corporations pay high
prices for subservience to their control. It
is difficult for countries, small in
economic and political influence, to stand
against such power. All sorts of masks are
used behind which Washington hides US
exploitation–globalism, free trade treaties
. . .
But the world is changing.
Putin has revived Russia, and Russia has
proved its ability to stand up to
Washington.
On a purchasing power
basis, China now has the largest economy in
the world.
As China and Russia are
now strategic allies, Washington cannot act
against one without acting against the
other. The two combined exceed Washington’s
capabilities.
The United States
government has proven to the entire world
that it is lawless. A country that flaunts
its disrespect of law cannot provide trusted
leadership.
My conclusion is that
Washington’s power has peaked.
Another reason
Washington’s power has peaked is that
Washington has used its power to serve only
itself and US corporations. The Rest of the
World is dispensable and has been left out.
Washington’s power grew
out of World War 2. All other economies and
currencies were devastated. This allowed
Washington to seize the world reserve
currency role from Great Britain.
The advantage of being the
world reserve currency is that you can pay
your bills by printing money. In other
words, you can’t go broke as long as other
countries are willing to hold your fiat
currency as their reserves.
But if other countries
were to decide not to hold US currency as
reserves, the US could go broke suddenly.
Since 2008 the supply of
US dollars has increased dramatically in
relation to the ability of the real economy
to produce goods and services. Whenever the
growth of money outpaces the growth of real
output, trouble lies ahead. Moreover,
Washington’s policy of imposing sanctions in
an effort to force other countries to do its
will is causing a large part of the world
known as the BRICS to develop an alternative
international payments system.
Washington’s arrogance and
hubris have caused Washington to ignore the
interests of other countries, including
those of its allies. Even Washington’s
European vassal states show signs of
developing an independent foreign policy in
their approach to Russia and Ukraine.
Opportunities will arise for governments to
escape from Washington’s control and to
pursue the interests of their own peoples.
The US media has never
performed the function assigned to it by the
Founding Fathers. The media is supposed to
be diverse and independent. It is supposed
to confront both government and private
interest groups with the facts and the
truth. At times the US media partially
fulfilled this role, but not since the final
years of the Clinton Regime when the
government allowed six mega-media companies
to consolidate 90% of the media in their
hands.
The mega-media companies
that control the US media are GE, News Corp,
Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. (GE
owns NBC, formerly an independent network.
News Corp owns Fox News, the Wall Street
Journal, and British newspapers. Disney owns
ABC. Time Warner owns CNN.)
The US media is no longer
run by journalists. It is run by former
government officials and corporate
advertising executives. The values of the
mega-media companies depend on their federal
broadcast licenses. If the companies go
against the government, the companies take a
risk that their licenses will not be renewed
and, thus, the multi-billion dollar values
of the companies fall to zero. If media
organizations investigate wrongful
activities by corporations, they risk the
loss of advertising revenues and become less
viable.
Ninety percent control of
the media gives government a Ministry of
Propaganda, and that is what exists in the
United States. Nothing reported in the print
or TV media can be trusted.
Today there is a massive
propaganda campaign against the Russian
government. The incessant flow of
disinformation from Washington and the media
has destroyed the trust between nuclear
powers that President Reagan and President
Gorbachev worked so hard to create.
According to polls, 62% of the US population
now regards Russia as the main threat.
I conclude my remarks with
the observation that there can be no greater
media failure than to bring back the specter
of nuclear war. And that is what the US
media has achieved.
The speech is published
in Spanish here:
http://vocesdelperiodista.mx/nacional/discurso-completo-del-doctor-paul-craig-roberts-ingles-y-espanol/
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for
Economic Policy and associate editor of the
Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for
Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service,
and Creators Syndicate. He has had many
university appointments. His internet
columns have attracted a worldwide
following. Roberts' latest books are
The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and
Economic Dissolution of the West and
How America Was Lost.