Greece and Other Musings On July 4th By Paul Craig Roberts

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If you become stuck in a boring July 4 hot air speech, distract yourself with this question: Are the values that Western civilization allegedly represents still extant? You don’t need to get heavy into philosophy. See if you can find any of the professed values reflected in current events.

For example, Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks was granted asylum by Ecuador in order to protect Assange from persecution by Washington. Washington is determined to persecute Assange, because he did his job as a journalist and published leaked information that revealed US government crimes and machinations against other countries including US allies. Assange did what the New York Times did in 1971 when the newspaper published the Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg. Assange has now spent three years inside the Ecuadoran embassy in London, because Washington has instructed its UK vassal state not to honor Assange’s grant of asylum and allow him free passage to Ecuador. What is happening to Assange is precisely what happened to Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, who was granted political asylum by the United States in 1956 and spent 15 years inside the US embassy in Budapest because the Soviet government instructed its Hungarian vassal state not to honor the grant of asylum. The Anglo-American world has morphed into the Soviet world.

Currently the US is attempting to overthrow the government in Ecuador in order to return the country to Washington’s control. If Washington succeeds in establishing a vassal state in Ecuador, Assange’s asylum will be revoked, and he will end up in Washington’s hands. Perhaps recognizing the threat to Assange, France’s Minister of Justice, Christiane Taubira, raised the possibility of political asylum for Assange in France. Assange responded to the opening and asked President Hollande for asylum and was immediately refused. Clearly, what was considered in 1971 to be heroic action in defense of democracy and a free press by Daniel Ellsberg and the New York Times has been transformed four decades later into a crime against the state. A civilization that can lose such important values in four decades is clearly in retreat from the values it professes. Today the professed values serve only as a cloak behind which the West hides its crimes.

Or consider the Greek referendum on Sunday, the day after July 4th. When the Greek government announced that it would let the Greek people decide their own fate, Western political leaders and media denounced the Greek government for practicing democracy. As far as Europe’s leaders are concerned, foreign elites, not the Greek people, have sovereignty over Greece.

One criticism of the Soviet Union was that it lacked a free press. Today the entire West lacks a free press...

MUCH MORE, ABOUT GREECE, THE US, AND DEMOCRACY OR ITS LACK THEREOF...

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.