The Big Brothel on the Potomac

Weekend Edition
July 3-5, 2009

Republic of the Insouciant

The Big Whorehouse on the Potomac

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

As Americans celebrate July 4, they can contemplate that the union of “free and independent states,” like the former British colonial power, has evolved into its final manifestation--a complete whore house. While Members of Parliament in London charge their expense accounts with every personal expenditure, including the rental of adult xxx-rated films, an American newspaper put the reporting of public policy out to bids until politico.com blew the whistle.

In Washington, everything is for sale, including journalistic integrity. The Washington Post, which abandoned investigative reporting eons ago, decided to boost its sagging revenues by spreading her legs. The Post’s business division put out a flier offering lobbyists access at the Post’s CEO’s gracious home to “those powerful few” in the Obama administration, Congress, and among the Post’s editors and reporters who decide the nation’s policies, such as health care.

The Washington Post’s flyer offered a Wal-Mart low cost of a mere $25,000 for one “salon” to interact with decision makers and $250,000 for eleven interactions.

Alas, people with an old fashioned sense of integrity impugned the Washington Post’s new business model, and the Post’s boss, Katharine Weymouth, had to rescind the offer that would have rescued the newspaper by turning it into a “facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters.”

I say damn the old fashioned moralists. America would be much better served if the Washington Post was selling access to lobbyists instead of selling the US government’s PSYOPS operations in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Serbia, Venezeula, Honduras, and everywhere else, for which the paper receives a pittance: the reporter can tell his editor that he has a deep source within the government, hardly an adequate recompense for wars that cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when Americans cannot pay the mortgages on their homes.

America would be better off if the Washington Post whored for lobbyists than for the US Imperial State, which has failed to adjust its imperial ambitions to its bankruptcy. As an example of its whoring for US Imperialism, on July 2, the Washington Post reported President Obama’s claim that Russian Prime Minister Putin is a person who lives partly in the past, with “one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.”

If Putin has “one foot in the new,” he is ahead of Obama who has both feet in the past.

Obama said that Putin needs to learn that “the old Cold War approaches” to relations with the US are “outdated.”

The Post reported this as if a failure of Putin’s is endangering US/Russian relations. The Post did not point out that it is Obama, not Putin, who has wars of aggression against three independent countries--Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, with a fourth war threatened with Iran. We know for a fact these wars originated in the Bush administration’s lies and deceptions, but Obama continues the occupations and expands the wars, thus endorsing the deceptions.

It is the Washington whorehouse that unilaterally abrogated the anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia and begin constructing anti-ballistic missile sites designed to negate Russia’s nuclear deterrent. If Russia’s nuclear weapons can be made useless, Russia can be knuckled under to accept America’s hegemonic will, and US hegemony takes another step forward.

It is Washington that is surrounding Russia with military bases: an anti-ballistic missile base in Poland, an anti-ballistic missile radar site in the Czech Republic, American-made “color revolutions,” which have installed US puppet governments in Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, with failures in former constituent parts of Soviet central Asia.

NATO, once a European/American alliance against Soviet invasion of Western Europe is now a mercenary US force fighting for America in Afghanistan and attempting to encircle Russia from the Baltics to Central Asia.

Obama will soon be on his way to Russia to discuss whether or not Russia is willing to give in to US demands to prostrate itself before US hegemony. Obama hopes to drive a wedge between Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev, like the wedges Washington has facilitated between the ambitious ruling ayatollahs in Iran. If Obama can get Putin and Medvedev at odds, Russia will be neutralized.

That would leave China alone as an obstacle to US world hegemony.

The US has no media. But it does have a Ministry of Propaganda. Americans were programmed with days of propaganda that Islamic Iran, a member of the US-designated “axis of evil,” stole the election from the Iranian people. According to the US Ministry of Propaganda, the Iranian people are allied with the US government against the Iranian government.

Even people who are regarded as Iran experts said, without any evidence, that the elections were stolen. One of their arguments is that three hours were not enough time to count all the votes, yet it was announced that Ahmajdinejad won. The ignorance of “experts” made theft a certainty for American TV audiences.

The “experts” who make this assertion are obviously ignorant of Iran’s electoral procedures. For the ignorant “experts” and the Americans deluded by them, here is the way it works:

There are more than 45,000 voting places, which means less than 1,000 votes per voting place, an easy number to count and report in three hours. At each voting place there are a dozen or more observers, including every candidates’ representatives, representatives of the Guardian Council, and the local police. The votes are counted in the presence of all, and all sign documents attesting to the count.

The vote totals are forwarded to a central office in the region that has representatives of the candidates and the Guardian Council, where they are verified by a dozen or a dozen and a half of witnesses. From here the vote count goes to the Minister of the Interior, where the vote is announced.

Unless these procedures were not followed, and no evidence has been provided that the procedures were not followed, it is impossible to steal an Iranian election. It is much easier to steal an American one, which happens routinely.

There are thousands, indeed tens of thousands of witnesses, perhaps hundreds of thousands of witnesses, to the Iranian vote. Yet, only Mousavi and his corrupt supporters among the high living Iranian elite, who are fighting for personal power in Iran, contest the vote. The kids in the street were the usual dupes. At this stage in history, how can anyone believe that there is a pure candidate that wants to bring freedom and justice to the people? Anywhere. In any country, the US included.

Ignorant “experts” made a great noise about the fact that 50 cities or towns had votes in excess of registered voters. Again, this is a demonstration of the total ignorance of “Iranian experts” . In Iran, voters can vote wherever they happen to be at the day of election. Vacationers, business people on travel, commuters, and the partial absence of distinct voting districts, can produce a vote count in excess of the local registered population.

The Guardian Council examined these differences, added them up, and noted that if every additional vote was fraudulent, the number was insufficient to affect the outcome.

The Guardian Council has agreed to post every vote count.

Did you learn of these facts from Fox News, CNN, the New York Times, or from the CIA and Mossad bloggers? Of course not. Every time “your” media opens its mouth lies jump out that serve the US government’s hegemonic propaganda.

America’s salvation lies with Charles Pelton and the Washington Post’s business side managers. Once the American media is obviously a whorehouse, which it is, Americans might pull themselves out of their stupor and learn to recognize facts and to think for themselves.

But don’t hold your breath. From what I have seen, with few exceptions, Americans are as dumb and insouciant as they come. And they think they are the salt of the earth.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.