FRA's Gordon T Long talks financial repression and the decline in democracy
with Paul Craig Roberts. Paul is the chairman of the institute for political
economy, he was also the former assistant secretary of the US treasury for
economic policy in the Reagan administration.
"As far as I can tell not only has democracy departed the western world
but also compassion empathy for others, morality integrity respect for truth
justice fairness self-respect western civilization has become a hollow shell
there is nothing left but greed and coercion and the threat of coercion."
He believes this outcome is based on the behavior and statements of the government
and the public's acceptance of it. Part of the reason the public doesn't care,
is due to a lack of information as about 90% of the American media is owned
by 6 large mega corporations that manipulate the news.
"The story that is told by the American media is Washington's propaganda
line and of course whatever the corporation's propaganda line is and there
is no challenge to either."
On the republican debates, Paul questions the aggressive stands that most
of the candidates seemed to have towards foreign policy. He states that this
stand will simply create distrust among nuclear wielding powers.
"Every American president since John F Kennedy worked with the soviet leadership
to diffuse the nuclear issue."
He says that this shift in culture across the candidates is a combination
of both campaign finance and a shift in culture.
"There's no such thing as a free market in the United States, it requires
many producers none of which can affect price.......look at the banks, the
banks are so concentrated that they are too big to fail. How do you have
capitalism if a failed enterprise doesn't close down instead it is bailed
out by the people or by the Federal Reserve printing money to buy its worthless
portfolio. This not capitalism, there's no capitalism here, this is an oligarchy!"
"What has the government said that's true? Think of anything, can you think
of anything they've said that's true? We know that the unemployment rate
they're reporting is false, inflation rate is false, and the gross domestic
product is false. We know all of this, we know that Saddam Hussein did not
have weapons of mass destruction, he did not have Al Qaeda connections, that
Assad of Syria did not use chemical weapons. We know Russia did not invade
Ukraine but they say this over and over and over. I can't think of one thing
that the government or corporate world has said in 20 years that's true".
