Debt is the killer. Debt is a means to embed a tentacle in the jugular of a person or a country, making it ever after unable to extract itself from the death grip, like student loans in the U.S. that are basically a way to turn people into slaves for the rest of their lives. Why do people fall for the temptation of borrowing? Do they really think a free lunch is waiting at the end? Are they really being coerced to go along? And where does all the money go?

Roberts is not talking about true capitalism but about the cancerous tumor it has become that has woven itself into a power structure against which there is no defense. Calling that "capitalism" is a semantic aberration. It operates on force and fraud.

No wonder many people are beginning to drop out, grow their own food and "get off the grid" to survive. Talk about shrugging...

You idealists defending pure Randian capitalism should understand that that is not under attack here. It is still the "unknown ideal". What is going on in the world is the other extreme: gangs of people sacrificing others for their own sake. Rational ethics? Not a chance while wars are being rationalized.

I don't like, or agree with the take on the Boeing example. I am very familiar with it. But, you don't have to be familiar to see that Boeing probably shouldn't have been required to pay that money, anyway. I used to work there. The state and local governments have, as any leftist one would do, latched on to Boeing like mistletoe on a healthy tree.

Counterpunch - after a few minutes perusal I reckon it is a publication so warped that
- it is not even wrong.
The main topics are global warming, Israel, and the capitalist/banking conspiracy.
The usual green, left, and Islamist rants.

John Pilger (political fantasist), Sheldon Richman (socialist libertarian) and Peter Gleick (global warming alarmist) are contributors but I do see not the perennial Chomsky or Goebbels or Rachael Carson.

What a bunch of BS. Let's take one snippet that I know a bit about... Diego Garcia, it's not a 'bomber base', it's a depot because it happens to be an atoll in the middle of the pacific, it wasn't inhabited when discovered in the 1500s and wasn't settled [by the French] until the 1800s. It was transferred to the Brits as part of the Napoleonic Wars surrender, but was later transferred to the US for operations during WWI, the Germans had attacked it and the UK needed our help, but we needed a base of operations to work with (I believe).

Let's forget for a moment that all the dictatorships & communist banana republics are completely looted by their dear leaders... They are definitely not some unwitting defenseless creatures. Let's take Greece, they were not 'held up' to borrow money from US banks or the IMF. They kept borrowing to keep providing free sh*t to their populace that basically doesn't work. They had already nationalized almost all of their businesses, staffed them with people that don't do anything - open at 11, close at noon for lunch, come back @ 2, close at 3 for a siesta, then open up again for 10 minutes before its time to go home. You get the idea, but its the truth. None of the nationalized businesses make anything.. so they suck more taxpayer money to keep them 'afloat'. Did at one time Greece think that maybe its a good idea to stop giving handouts and tell the people to get a job? NO! The riots were over raising the taxpayer-provided retirement age from 50 to 52 for heaven's sake. The 'forced' austerity is the EU that is giving it a lifeline, we don't have anything to do with it. And you know, if you are a beggar looking for someone else to pay your bills from the parties & the free stuff you gave away, maybe they have a say in how that money is spent? Or you can just print your own money with no assets to back it and see how long that lasts...

We saw this when I was a kid... it was called "The Ugly American"... that we were crushing the little people's rights to form their own communist dictatorships...

Here's the better answer, maybe when we do intervene, its because we know they are going to suck us into the cesspool later at sometime, likely costing us blood & treasure. I don't believe we should be the world's policeman, but obviously, the other extreme is a problem - look at Syria/Libya/Egypt/Yemen/Pakistan.

Paul Craig Roberts disappoints me. He used to be a level-headed man. What is he doing, lending credence to leftists?

Take the Boeing case. Mr. Roberts would have us labor under the misconception that an excuse from a tax that the government ought never have been empowered to lay or collect, constitutes a subsidy. I define "subsidy" as "direct government check, made payable to the order of the subsidee." But Mr. Perkins--whose book Roberts was reviewing--seems to think "subsidy" means "getting out of paying what any given writer or speaker thinks is a fair share."

If the State of Washington did anything wrong in the Boeing case, it lay in not repealing those ridiculous taxes for everyone. If governments mete out special treatment for those who protest the loudest against an injustice, that doesn't make the regular treatment any more just or any less unjust.

I found the paragraph below particularly apt.
It's what we call the NWO, black ignoble central bankers...they used us, infected our government and everyone elses. They are the Kakistocracy. They are the parasitical humanoids, that I talk about in my book; devoid of conscience, not conscious and therefore not human. These creatures have been around since Babylon and Sumeria. A genetic retardation that should have never survived and could not without us...they very well might be related to the fallen idiots in the book of Enoch...if not directly then definitely in character and mindless set.

“A major change is that this EHM system, today, is also at work in the United States and other economically developed countries. It is everywhere. And there are many more variations on each of these tools. There are hundreds of thousands more EHMs spread around the world. They have created a truly global empire. They are working in the open as well as in the shadows. This system has become so widely and deeply entrenched that it is the normal way of doing business and therefore is not alarming to most people.”

I find it interesting that government always says that reducing taxes is done to promote business. The fact of the matter is that its the tax itself that retards business, and reducing the tax only reduces that impediment to business thriving.

I wish they would tell the truth.

the evil empire is the associated business people
who wreak havoc on us commoners? . do we have
a tighter definition? -- j
.

This is another example of mixing statism with crony capitalism to impugn the name of true capitalism. Notice that the only way this procedure works is that GOVERNMENTS are being coerced. There is no free market in any of this. Yes, some crony companies are involved, but notice that the only victims and perpetrators that were mentioned are ALL government entities.

I don't believe that the United States has been
involved in lending in order to try to ruin other
countries economically.