Forum Post: Unplugging Americans From The Matrix: Paul Craig Roberts
Posted 12 years ago on April 20, 2012, 11:34 a.m. EST by tell10people
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Unplugging Americans From The Matrix
By: Paul Craig Roberts| April 19, 2012
Americans, the British, and Western Europeans are accustomed to thinking of themselves as the representatives of freedom, democracy, and morality in the world. The West passes judgment on the rest of the world as if the West is God and the rest of the world are barbarians in need of chastisement, invasion, and occupation. As readers know, from time to time I raise questions about the validity of the West’s extreme hubris…
China is often a country about which Washington’s moralists get on their high horse. However, China’s “authoritarian” government is actually more responsive to its people than America’s “elected democratic” government. Moreover, however incomplete on paper the civil liberties of China’s people, the Chinese government has not declared that it can violate with impunity whatever rights Chinese citizens have. And it is not China that is running torture prisons all over the globe…”
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/04/19/unplugging-americans-from-the-matrix/
"As the bumper sticker says, “Be nice to America or we will bring democracy to your country.” " Priceless.
Thanx for this excellent & important 'forum-post' ... and from the article :
"Americans have lost control of the government, and governments that are not controlled by the people are not democracies. In America today, Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and the entire social safety net are threatened by the vociferous desire for war profits by armament plutocrats and by financial institutions determined that ordinary citizens bear the cost of the banksters incompetence and fraud.
Unz's comparison of how the Chinese media and government handled the melamine or infant formula scandal and how the American media and government handled Merck’s Vioxx scandal is especially damning. It was China’s controlled media and unaccountable government that punished the infant formula wrongdoers, while America’s free press and accountable government allowed Merck to walk.
Unz’s conclusion is that it is in America, not China, where life is regarded as cheap."
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veritas vos liberabit ...
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[Article - with and all links also available on http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31134.htm ]
This is a matter that Obama, Romney, Holder and every Senator, Congressperson and candidate for those offices should be forced by public uproar to address.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/chinese-melamine-and-american-vioxx-a-comparison/
Thanx for that really excellent link :-) .. paz y luz ...
Thanks. Great piece. Keeping it in perspective:
China - 4,100 years
U.S. - 236 years
Re. "The Matrix" analogy, please also see Max and Stacy Herbert's chat in the first half of today's (21st April,'12) The Keiser Report (Ep. 278) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Mb-1P_rWEw ... (second half is probably for the kids as Max interviews Alec Empire from "Atari Teenage Riot", who does speak a whole load of sense tho' ;-)
respice ; adspice ; prospice ...
You cannot read this link and not be hoping mad afterward:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/chinese-melamine-and-american-vioxx-a-comparison/
Interesting that it's conservatives who are bringing this out. I wonder why?
While I understand Dr. Roberts' frustrations, I'm also in agreement with almost all of what Mr. gforz has said. But I think this was an exchange worth having. Complex problems are unlikely to have simple solutions, accept perhaps at strategic levels. Just my two cents as I was passing by.. -Greg
I guess the Chinese government is really helping all those poor workers at the Foxconn factory making stuff for Apple. I guess the quality of life out in the villages in the countryside where some are dumping grounds for the used batteries of the world is just peachy. I think Americans see things realistically. We are more free than virtually any other country in the world. Even though we shake our heads at some of the civilizations, for instance, in the Middle East or Africa with their dictators, burqas, sharia law, corruption, we realize we cannot, contrary to what some of you will claim, control the actions of the entire world, so we act to protect our interests (which mainly are oil and keeping other countries from being able to attack us or our buddy Israel), which sometimes means supporting these dictators, bribing governments (essentially what we do with Pakistan for instance), and doing a whole host of things we'd rather not do. We could simply sit back and try to set a good example, but it would be naive to try and play the saint. This is kind of what the U.N. does, and everyone ignores them and does what they want. It would please me to no end to not import another barrel of oil from anyone in the ME and leave them to their own cultures. I think most Americans are tired of always being the go-to country for anything that happens in the world, always the aid-provider, lender of last resort, largest funder of the U.N., peace broker in practically every instance. I'd love it if they would tell all the countries who dog us daily to fuck off and fend for themselves, take our bases out of every country in the world or get paid for protecting people. People often learn to resent other people who constantly help them, a strange syndrome, but one that is not I don't believe exclusive to individuals, but also to governments. It fosters feelings of guilt and inferiority however. They never ask us to leave, though, or to stop sending aid.
You really need to read this:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/blog/chinese-melamine-and-american-vioxx-a-comparison/
I read it. I would ask where the FDA was during the long process of bringing Vioxx to market. Merck doesn't just do trials and publish articles and start selling the drug. There are years-long processes of approvals needed. Because you found an example of what appears to be corporate fraud, or corporate/government fraud, doesn't mean a generalization holds that America routinely devalues the lives of their citizens. Look at the total universe of the drugs on the market. Of all those drugs, how many were recalled or determined after being brought to market that they were harmful? A lot of them have side effects, and say so in the literature you get with the prescription, but whose benefits are deemed to outweigh these side effects.
gforz, We are talking about 500,000 premature deaths with no one in the slammer...
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