Federal Courts Say Foreigners, Not US Citizens, Are Entitled To Due Process

citizensPaul Craig Roberts – The US Constitution applies to US citizens, and the amendments known as the Bill of Rights guarantee due process as a protection of US citizens’ civil liberties. That’s the theory but not the practice.

Trump’s travel ban applies to non-US citizens, primarily to refugees from the Bush/Obama bombings of numerous Muslim countries. Some of these refugees, whose families and countries were destroyed by American troops, could harbor feelings of revenge against Americans. The Ninth Circuit Panel’s injunction against Trump’s executive order gives the Constitution’s protection of US citizens to non-citizens, apparently on the basis of due process and religious discrimination arguments. The panel of judges said that Trump’s executive order “runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.”

So too does bombing numerous Muslim countries over the course of the past 16 years, about which nothing has been done. One would think that, with the Democratic Party’s merger with Identity Politics and with the liberal/progressive/left leaning of the Ninth Circuit, more of a stink would have been raised about bombing Muslims gratuitously than by placing a mere ban on their entry into the US. But it all depends on who does the bombing and who does the ban. Identity Politics requires “America’s First Black President” to be supported at all costs, and Trump, a white heterosexual male billionaire, to be hated at all costs.

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The Social Cost of GMOs

PaulCraigRoberts  May 22 2014

PaulCraigRobertsEcological economists such as Herman Daly write that the more full the world becomes, the higher are the social or external costs of production.

Social or external costs are costs of production that are not captured in the price of the products. For example, dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico that result from chemicals used in agriculture are not included as costs in agricultural production. The price of food does not include the damage to the Gulf.

Food production is a source of large social costs. Indeed, it seems that the more food producers are able to lower the measured cost of food production, the higher the social costs imposed on society.

Consider the factory farming of animals. The density of operations results in a concentration of germs and in animals being fed antibiotics. Lowering the cost of food in this way contributes to the rise of antibiotic resistant superbugs that will impose costs on society that will more than offset the savings from lower food prices.

Monsanto has reduced the measured cost of food production by producing genetically modified seeds that result in plants that are pest and herbicide resistant. The result is increased yields and lower measured costs of production. However, there is evidence that the social or external costs of this approach to farming more than offsets the lower measured cost. For example, there are toxic affects on microorganisms in the soil, a decline in soil fertility and nutritional value of food, and animal and human infertility.

When Purdue University plant pathologist and soil microbiologist Don Huber pointed out these unintended consequences of GMOs, other scientists were hesitant to support him, because their careers are dependent on research grants from agribusiness. In other words, Monsanto essentially controls the research on its own products. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/05/18/gmo-foods-inflammation.aspx Continue reading

Elite Domination [Video]

Boom Bust  May 22 2014

Our lead story: US telecom giant AT&T plans to buy satellite TV operator DirecTV for $48.5 billion, gaining more than 38 million subscribers and increasing the merger mania sweeping the telecom media and technology industries. Edward tells you why this is a bad deal. 

[youtube=http://youtu.be/_UqIrYMA2Dw?t=3m43s&w=500]

Then Erin sits down with economist Paul Craig Roberts to talk about elite domination in the US economy and politics. Roberts talks about imbalance of influence of interest groups in American economy, and he gives his take on Tim Geithner’s new book “Stress Test.” Check it out.  Continue reading

Propaganda Rules The News

PaulCraigRoberts  March 5 2014

PaulCraigRobertsGerald Celente calls the Western media “presstitutes,” an ingenuous term that I often use. Presstitutes sell themselves to Washington for access and government sources and to keep their jobs. Ever since the corrupt Clinton regime permitted the concentration of the US media, there has been no journalistic independence in the United States except for some Internet sites.

Glenn Greenwald points out the independence that RT, a Russian media organization, permits Abby Martin who denounced Russia’s alleged invasion of Ukraine, compared to the fates of Phil Donahue (MSNBC) and Peter Arnett (NBC), both of whom were fired for expressing opposition to the Bush regime’s illegal attack on Iraq. The fact that Donahue had NBC’s highest rated program did not give him journalistic independence. Anyone who speaks the truth in the American print or TV media or on NPR is immediately fired.

Russia’s RT seems actually to believe and observe the values that Americans profess but do not honor.

I agree with Greenwald. You can read his article here: Greenwald is entirely admirable. He has intelligence, integrity, and courage. He is one of the brave to whom my just published book, How America Was Lost, is dedicated. As for RT’s Abby Martin, I admire her and have been a guest on her program a number of times.

My criticism of Greenwald and Martin has nothing to do with their integrity or their character. I doubt the claims that Abby Martin grandstanded on “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” in order to boost her chances of moving into the more lucrative “mainstream media.” My point is quite different. Even Abby Martin and Greenwald, both of whom bring us much light, cannot fully escape Western propaganda.

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