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Posted by M. C. on November 7, 2019

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Time To Crush the Bad Guys: What Is Warrior Flow? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on November 7, 2019

Good people, liberty-loving people, should stop turning to the government for protection and instead seek to realize that potential warrior within themselves.

It’s time for the violent scum who in a past life would have preyed upon the decent to now fear, with a paralyzing fear, becoming the prey themselves.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/11/jack-kerwick/time-to-crush-the-bad-guys-what-is-warrior-flow/

By

There isn’t a day that passes that we aren’t informed of multiple accounts of senseless, i.e. evil, acts of violence befalling otherwise innocent human beings.

Whether the perpetrators of this wickedness are internationally-recognized terrorists, gangsters, run-of-the-mill street “tough guys,” or political zealots unleashing violence against those who they brand “fascists” and “white supremacists,” the bottom line is this:

The decent need to have both the capability and the will to defend themselves, their loved ones, and other innocents against the predatory machinations of those who would prey upon them.

The decent need to possess both the capability and the will to make the predator into the prey, to instill fear into the savages who live for the sake of making the decent fearful.

This is the message communicated in no uncertain terms by Warrior Flow, a variant of a broader tradition of self-defense/combat generally known as, “Close-Quarter World War II Combatives.”

Warrior Flow is founded by Al Ridenhour, a retired Lieutenant-Colonel of the United States Marine Corps who engaged in multiple tours of duty and some 100 combat operations in such hellholes as Iraq and Afghanistan.  Having already acquired a reasonably extensive background in the martial arts, Ridenhour was tasked with the responsibility of training his Marines in armed and unarmed, hand-to-hand combat.

Today, Colonel Al has four decades of martial arts training behind him.  The last three of these decades have been spent ascending through the ranks of Guided Chaos—a revolutionary self-defense system founded by retired Yonkers, New York law enforcement officer John Perkins—to become its Senior Master-Instructor.

Now, after having spent countless hours experiencing, observing, and analyzing the principles and concepts of Guided Chaos; after having pursued the implications intimated by their own logic, implications that have yet to be explored to the extent that he is now exploring them, Master Al is founding Warrior Flow.

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel the need to reveal that this art is the art in which I am training.  I am making not a penny from promoting it.  I share the good news about Warrior Flow because I am convinced—I know—that just as it is changing my life, so too does it promise to change other people’s lives for the better.

Most importantly, I want for good people to be able to decimate the thugs and punks who would otherwise maim and kill them.

I am still but a student (of course, its instructors, masters, and Master Al himself would all insist, as any remotely decent teacher in any discipline would be the first to insist, that since the learning never stops, they too are always and forever students).  This overview of Warrior Flow consists of my own reflections on it.  If I am mistaken, I most assuredly will be corrected.

Go Big or Go Home: Real Self-Defense—not Sport

Warrior Flow belongs to a fundamentally different league than that of which any of the pugilistic sports and arts of a piece.  It is a system of self-defense that, as such, is not only incompatible with all “combat” systems designed for competitive purposes; Warrior Flow is incommensurable with the latter as well: The terms—the training modalities—of the one can’t even be translated into those of the other.

The legendary Bradley Steiner, founder of American Combato and teacher of self-defense/combat for over 50 years, summed up the philosophy behind this approach back in the 1970s:

“Self-defense is war in microcosm.”

Master Al echoes this sentiment when he says that real fights are akin to war.  What this in turn means is that if a person must fight, then he has but one of two options: He must either “go big” or “go home.” He must either neutralize the threat by whichever means necessary or else he has no business fighting in the first place.

To put it another way, the way that Master Al usually frames this same point, anyone who must fight must have not just the skill but, more importantly, the will, the “ruthless intent,” to kill the bad guys—and regardless of how many bad guys there are.  This is correct: Warrior Flow seeks to equip the good guys (and gals) with the resources (in ability and will) to defeat multiple attackers.  Master Al is unequivocal on this score: “If you have more than one attacker, then every one of them must die.”

Yes, training to be a warrior in Warrior Flow is not just a matter of learning how to strike from every physiologically possible angle; it just as much, at least as much, consists in transforming the mind.  A warrior’s psyche is such that, while it is always oriented toward peace, it can—it will—at less than a second’s notice, and for the sake of that peace, visit unrelenting violence upon those who would preclude peace by savaging innocents.

To the objection that this prescription is excessive, that since most street attackers do not intend to kill those upon whom they set their sights, they do not deserve to be killed by those on whom they prey, Master Al has a reply ready at hand:

Predators are trying to kill their victims.

Admittedly, they may not, and possibly often are not, subjectively motivated by a desire to murder their victims.  But, as it seemed obvious to everyone around the world before Descartes facilitated the shift to modern philosophy, actions are distinguished on account of, not the subjective intentions of their agents, but the logic of the act itself.  This explains why and how it is that a person who inadvertently kills another while, say, driving while intoxicated is prosecuted for vehicular manslaughter: That the driver didn’t subjectively intend to harm, much less kill, anyone is utterly irrelevant to the question regarding his guilt in the matter.

Similarly, a person who physically attacks another, though he may not deliberately seek to murder the latter, nevertheless engages in an action that can lead to the death of the person attacked.  At any rate, it’s self-evident that he means to harm the person upon whom he unleashes violence, and this is all the justification that a person attacked needs to “attack the attacker,” as Professor Bradley Steiner long ago put it.

Warrior Flow is designed to enable people of any age and body type to achieve the level of “subconscious competence,” i.e. a state at which it will become second nature for them to move within their own bodies, with whichever injuries and handicaps they acquired over their lives, in such a way as to become both “unavailable” to an attacker’s onslaught and, crucially, “unavoidable.” 

In other words, this body mastery that Warrior Flow cultivates in its students allows them to pummel an offender with “bone-crushing power,” as Master Al has referred to it, while evading the enemy’s strikes.

Regrettably, neither the dominant intellectual traditions of Western civilization nor contemporary political discourse pay sufficient attention to the role of the body, the physical, in life.  But in relegating it to the periphery, if not eliminating it from consideration altogether, Western thought has edited out of the human condition one of its essential dimensions.  Consequently, its airy theoretical characterizations of human life have determined the topics of which it has sought to make issues, issues having little to nothing to do with the role of raw, physical fear in everyday decision-making—including the decision-making of those in the “opinion-making” fields.

One of the unique insights of Warrior Flow’s founder and a theme around which this art coalesces is that fear is felt first and foremost in the body; it’s not experienced primarily as thoughts in the head.  What this means is that attempts to manage or rid oneself of fear by way of so many proverbial conversations on the psychologist’s couch fail because they are bound to fail.

They fail because the body is ignored.

As an antidote to this situation, Master Al, in what strikes this observer as a fundamentally revolutionary move, seeks to help his students manage and channel their own raw fears by way of helping them achieve bodily mastery.

The potential warrior resides in everyone.  This is the major premise of Warrior Flow.  Good people, liberty-loving people, should stop turning to the government for protection and instead seek to realize that potential warrior within themselves.

It’s time for the violent scum who in a past life would have preyed upon the decent to now fear, with a paralyzing fear, becoming the prey themselves.

Warrior Flow can make this transformation from one era to another happen.

Be seeing you

Isshinryu Karate: Donald Bohan's Memorial Website: Tatsuo ...

 

 

 

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Propaganda and Post-Truth, by Thierry Meyssan

Posted by M. C. on November 7, 2019

https://www.voltairenet.org/article208229.html

by Thierry Meyssan

For 18 years, we have been debating the strange evolution of the media, which seems to place less and less value on facts. We attribute this phenomenon to their democratization through social networks. It would be because from now on any person can become a journalist, that the quality of information would have collapsed. The right to speak should therefore be reserved for the elites.
What if it’s exactly the opposite? If the censorship we are considering was not the answer to the phenomenon, but its continuity?

Propaganda

In political systems where Power needs the participation of the People, the purpose of propaganda is to get as many people as possible to adhere to a particular ideology and to mobilize them to apply it.

The methods used to convince are the same whether one is acting in good or bad faith. However, in the 20th century, the use of lies and repetition, the elimination of different points of view, and recruitment into mass organizations were first theorized by British MP Charles Masterman, US journalist George Creel and especially German minister Joseph Goebbels with the devastating consequences that we know [1]. This is why, at the end of the two World Wars, the United Nations General Assembly adopted three resolutions condemning the use of deliberate lies in the media to provoke war and enjoining Member States to ensure the free flow of ideas, the only prevention of intoxication [2].

While propaganda techniques have been perfected over the past 75 years and are systematically used in all international conflicts, they are gradually giving way to new techniques of influence in countries at peace: it is no longer a question of making the public adhere to an ideology and act in the service of power, but on the contrary of dissuading it from intervening, paralysing it…

Post-truth

Let us take the example of the recent execution of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. We all know that a helicopter squad cannot fly low across northern Syria without being seen by the population or spotted by Russian air defence systems. The narrative that is told to us is clearly impossible. However, far from questioning what we consider propaganda, we are discussing whether the Caliph, cornered by the US Special Forces, blew himself up with two or three children.

At other times, we would have agreed that an essential element of this story being impossible, we cannot take seriously the other elements that are before us, starting with the death of the Caliph. Now we think otherwise. We accept that this factual element has been falsified, a priori for reasons of national security, and we consider the rest of the narrative as authentic. In the long run, we will forget our concern with this or other elements and publish encyclopedias that will tell this beautiful story with its most unlikely elements.

In other words, we instinctively understand that this narrative does not tell facts, but conveys a message. We are therefore not positioning ourselves in the face of the facts, but in the face of the message as we have understood it: as Osama bin Laden, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was executed; Power remains in the United States of America…

Antidote

For the past 18 years, we have been told that by offering everyone the ability to express themselves on a blog or social networks, technological progress has devalued public speech. Anyone can say anything. In the past, only politicians and professional journalists had the opportunity to express themselves. They ensured the quality of their interventions and writings. Today the vulgum pecus, the ignorant crowd, takes bladders for lanterns and spreads fake news.

However, it is exactly the opposite. Leading politicians, starting with President George Bush Jr. and Prime Minister Tony Blair, have assumed inconsistent speeches to inhibit the reactions of the public in general and their constituents in particular. This technique substitutes absurdity for truth as others substituted lies. It has destroyed the functioning of the democratic systems that ordinary people are trying to restore with their means.

CRT televisions display 625-line images. It suffices that one of them be blurred for us to perceive so it alone in the image. On the same principle, it is enough to hear a single different point of view for the lies of omnipresent propaganda to be obvious. That is why propaganda, when it lies, requires relentless censorship. But if the lie introduces an inconsistency into the discourse so that this inconsistency becomes voluntarily obvious, alternative points of view should no longer be censored. On the contrary, we must let them express themselves and highlight them by publicly denouncing some of them as fake news.

The antidote to post-truth is not the verification of facts, this has always been the basis of the work of journalists and historians, it is the restoration of logic. This is why a new form of censorship is needed today. Most Facebook users have been logged out at one time or another. In countless cases, users are unable to understand why they have been censored. They search in vain for which prohibited word would have been detected by a computer, or which uncivil position would have been prohibited by a supervisor. In reality, what they are often accused of and arbitrarily sanctioned for is restoring logic to their reasoning.

 

Translation
Roger Lagassé

 

 

 

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FBI admits (or concocts) mind-boggling mistake on notes taken on General Flynn interview that resulted in guilty plea

Posted by M. C. on November 7, 2019

Look, I spent about 30 years doing interviews, taking notes, reading (or attempting to read) notes taken by other agents. I guarantee you that in my experience no notes looked like the “notes” you’ll see at the link.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/11/fbi_admits_or_concocts_mindboggling_mistake_on_notes_taken_on_general_flynn_interview_that_resulted_in_guilty_plea.html

By Thomas Lifson

Sidney Powell, Gen. Michael Flynn’s replacement lawyer, is pulling on a thread that is unraveling the conspiracy to generate a crime with which to bludgeon him into cooperating in incriminating President Trump in the Russia hoax.  Late yesterday, The FBI made an admission — or claim — that strains credulity: that it has for years misattributed authorship of the notes used in preparing the Form 302 interview summaries that were themselves altered to incriminate Flynn.

Here is the letter (hat tip: Conservative Treehouse):

Sundance summarizes:

The entire FBI case against Flynn; meaning the central element that he lied to FBI investigators (he didn’t); is predicated on the FD-302 interview reports generated by the two FBI agents; later discovered to have been edited, shaped and approved by Andrew McCabe….  And for almost two years the entire outline of their documented evidence has been misattributed? (snip)

Obviously what triggered this re-review of the notes was a smart sur-surreply from the defense that highlighted how Peter Strzoks notes were far too neat, organized and well constructed to have been written during an actual interview. [SEE HERE]

For the prosecution to now reverse course and say the agent attribution was transposed, is either the biggest screw-up in a high profile case…. OR, the prosecution now needs to reverse the note-takers due to the exact, and common sense, reasons highlighted by the defense.

Here is the Sur-reply in which Powell lays out her case.  She refers to it in this interview last night with Shannon Bream:

There is every reason to suspect that skullduggery lies behind this claim of an authorship mistake.  Retired 30-year FBI agent Mark Wauck comments on his blog, Meaning in History:

Here’s the real problem. There were two sets of notes, one long, neatly written, and detailed, and the other seemingly scribbled, as one would expect in an interview setting. Van Grack’s explanation is this: by switching the attribution of the two sets of notes, he’s saying that the long, detailed set of “notes” belongs to Pientka–the “primary note taker”–rather than Strzok, as we’ve been told up to now. That’s supposed to solve the difficulty of the lead interviewer–Strzok–also taking remarkably detailed notes. But that switch doesn’t really solve the credibility problem. Here’s why: The long set of notes actually looks like a handwritten draft of a 302. A rough, first draft–subject to approval from others–but a draft rather than notes taken in an interview setting. If you’ve taken a look at the “notes” that were originally attributed to Strzok–which we’re now supposed to believe were taken by Pientka, the “primary notetaker” during the Flynn interview–you’ll see what I mean. Follow this link and go to page 19. (P. 19 gets you into Exhibit 1, i.e., p 19 out of the full 46 page pdf.)

Look, I spent about 30 years doing interviews, taking notes, reading (or attempting to read) notes taken by other agents. I guarantee you that in my experience no notes looked like the “notes” you’ll see at the link. As I said–they look like like a rough draft done after the interview.

Which leads to another question: Who does a handwritten rough draft of an interview these days? I stopped doing that decades ago. Once I had access to a computer I took my notes and sat down in front of the computer and started typing. Why would Joe Pientka–or Peter Strzok, as the case might be–bother to produce a handwritten draft (if we accept that what we’ve been shown are simply not “notes”).

This is why. Because that handwritten draft could be changed at will, whereas nowadays, once you save something under a case file number–even as a draft–that’s recoverable. There’s an audit trail, which is what Powell keeps asking for. So, if you’re an “investigator” and you’re not sure how you want to make that interview sound, then you delay creating that discoverable digital trail. And that’s a sure indicator of dishonest intent. [emphasis added]

The big mistake the FBI made here is that they apparently said, woops! we need some interview notes in Joe Pientka’s handwriting. Hey, Joe, your rough draft will do! Or maybe they didn’t even ask Joe. Maybe they just said, hey, we need some credible notes, notes in Joe’s handwriting. Do we still have Joe’s rough draft? Ok, that’ll work.

Somebody is lying. Maybe, probably, more than just one person.

The railroading of General Fynn almost succeeded.  Sidney Powell has done a huge service to our country.  Getting to the bottom of this is imperative.  Judge Sullivan will not be amused.

Be seeing you
martin luther king | Tumblr

 

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How To End the Drug Cartel Violence in Mexico – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on November 7, 2019

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/11/john-j-baeza/how-to-end-the-drug-cartel-violence-in-mexico/

By

Nine Americans-including three women and six children-were gunned down by drug cartel members in Mexico’s northern state of Sonora. Eight young children survived the gunmen’s attack. Although violence of this type occurs in Mexico on a regular basis this attack caught the attention of the American news media due to the citizenship of those killed.  They were U.S. citizens with dual Mexican citizenship.  And it was a horrible attack.

Both President Trump and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) have come up with solutions to stop the cartel violence.

President Trump made his solution very clear in the following tweet:

“If Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively,” Trump tweeted. “The great new President of Mexico has made this a big issue, but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!”

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador refused the offer and proposed his own solution-“hugs not bullets.” Obrador also thinks that helping the poor is in some way going to affect the way the drug cartels operate.

Both leaders are dead wrong. There is only one way to end the drug cartel violence in Mexico and that is to end the drug war by legalizing all drugs immediately. This would also end the drug violence we see in cities across the United States. When alcohol prohibition was ended we didn’t see Coors and Budweiser shooting it out on the street for territory. They had courts to take care of business. They no longer needed mobsters. And when drugs are legalized we will see the same peaceful transition.

The drug war industrial complex is very big and very powerful. There are only a few politicians who would dare to propose legalization of all drugs. But this is what is needed if we want to end the cartel violence in Mexico and here in the United States.

The cartel violence we have seen take thousands upon thousands of lives in Mexico is blowback from our failed domestic policy on drugs. It is the U.S. demand for drugs that drives the market and the violence. We are at least partially responsible for the failed Mexican state. A state where every politician and every policeman are corrupt.

As a former frontline drug warrior I know ending the drug war is the only way out of this mess. All the task forces, narcotics courts, and military cooperation will not stop it.

End the drug war now!

Be seeing you

fast_and_furious.jpg

 

 

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The Bank of Japan Shrinks the Pocket Money of Japanese ‘Salarymen’ | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on November 6, 2019

This could mean that a few rich Japanese, who are holding large amounts of stocks and other assets, may be the only ones who benefited from the new stock price inflation. In contrast, the majority of Japanese continues to tighten their belts, as real wages continue to fall in the face of sluggish productivity gains. This points to the unjust distribution effects of the Abenomics, which make the rich richer and all others poorer. This phenomenon cannot only be observed in Japan, but also in the euro area where Christine Lagarde is expected to follow the Japanese monetary policy pattern.

https://mises.org/wire/bank-japan-shrinks-pocket-money-japanese-%E2%80%98salarymen%E2%80%99?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=5c1466ac47-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-5c1466ac47-228343965

In December 2012, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe set out three arrows in his quiver to pull the country out of the more than 20 years lasting stagnation. Immense purchases of assets by the Bank of Japan, huge government spending programs and structural reforms should deliver a sustained recovery to the Japanese people. In the meantime, it is becoming evident that so-called Abenomics is – despite buoyant stock prices – a damp squib. Inter alia, this is indicated by the pocket money of Japanese “salarymen,” male white-collar workers who commute day-to-day in dark suits by stuffed trains to the central business districts of the Tokyo metropolitan area.

Nikkei 225 and Pocket Money of Japanese ‘Salarymen’

bojarticle_1024.png
Source: Shinsei Bank, Nikkei.

Traditionally in Japan the men earn the money and the wives manage the household. A Japanese proverb says that the wife controls the purse strings, with the women being quite generous. In 2019, the Japanese male white-collar workers still received on average 36,747 yen (almost 340 US dollars) per month for bars, restaurants and other leisure activities in which their wives are typically not involved.

But the good times are long gone.

In the second half of the 1980s, when sharp interest-rate cuts by the Bank of Japan inflated during the so-called “bubble economy,” stock and real estate prices – as well as wages and bonuses – the pocket money of salarymen skyrocketed. Between 1985 and 1990, both stock prices and pocket money grew by about 50 percent each (see chart). At the top of the bubble in 1989, pocket money averaged almost 80,000 yen (a good 600 US dollars) per month. At that time, drinking every night in the bars without limits symbolized the exuberance.

Since the bursting of the Japanese bubble in the early 1990s, both stock prices and pocket money have steadily declined. By the time Abenomics started in January 2013, stock prices had fallen by 73 percent and the pocket money of salarymen fell by 51 percent. The efforts of the Bank of Japan to cushion the crisis by cutting interest rates to zero and pioneering on unconventional monetary policy measures could not prevent Japanese housewives from pulling the string of the purses tighter and tighter. The wives seem to have been guided by both the doldrums on financial markets, and the gradually declining wages since the 1998 financial crisis.

Thus, the pocket money indicator also says something about the success of Abenomics from the viewpoint of the ordinary Japanese people. Since Haruhiko Kuroda took office as president in March 2013, the Bank of Japan has bought government bonds, corporate debt, ETFs and J-REITs amounting to 405,000,000,000,000 yen (approx. 3,700,000,000,000 dollars) to jumpstart the Japanese economy. Nevertheless, Kuroda could not convince the Japanese housewives to loosen the purse strings. While the Abenomics have, to date, boosted the Nikkei stock index by 130 percent, the pocket money continued decreasing near to the level of 37 years ago (34,100 yen in 1982). This indicates that in the sentiment of the Japanese people the post-bubble crisis has never ended up to the present.

This could mean that a few rich Japanese, who are holding large amounts of stocks and other assets, may be the only ones who benefited from the new stock price inflation. In contrast, the majority of Japanese continues to tighten their belts, as real wages continue to fall in the face of sluggish productivity gains. This points to the unjust distribution effects of the Abenomics, which make the rich richer and all others poorer. This phenomenon cannot only be observed in Japan, but also in the euro area where Christine Lagarde is expected to follow the Japanese monetary policy pattern.

Be seeing you

Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman [1989] - internetplans

 

 

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How to prevent the next Hitler: stop caring | The Daily Bell

Posted by M. C. on November 6, 2019

So who is the next Hitler? Oh just ask around, you’ll get plenty of answers, usually divided along (pretty convenient and suspect) political fault lines.

Instead of caring about this fight, lead by example, make the changes in your own life you want to see in the world. That is the most effective way to manifest your vision of how the world should be.

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/how-to-prevent-the-next-hitler-stop-caring/

By Joe Jarvis

Hitler cared.

Hitler really really cared about a lot of things. He was passionate. He was dedicated. And he was effective.

Hitler was also a horrible human being. No one to be glorified or emulated.

But you can’t deny he cared about Germany. His passion for righting the wrongs done to Germany led him down a path which caused millions of deaths. Hitler was dedicated to making Germany the ruling power of the earth because he was so god-damn sure in himself, the Aryan people, and their divine destiny.

I apologize for the cliche. They say, whenever someone brings up Hitler, you should leave the conversation. And in general, that’s a good rule of thumb. Usually, at that point, the conversation has devolved into one “side” accusing another of being the most Hitler-like.

Hitler is an easy comparison, the embodiment of evil. I could have said Stalin, or Mao–they did just as much damage if not much more– but then I’d have to explain myself. Hitler gives a nice emotional shot to the brain.

And that’s why Hitler comes out when people get emotional. They accuse someone–or a political party, or a movement–of being like Hitler because they care. They really freakin’ care about the point they are trying to get across. They are passionate about their beliefs and dedicated to their cause.

Which is why “Hitler” is a great signal to stop caring about what they say. Time to walk away and say, you know what, I just don’t care.

And I’m not saying they are necessarily wrong. Maybe they are right to be so passionate. Maybe they see the truth and are just so frustrated and bitter that they can’t help but lash out.

But for every one of those, I guarantee there are a hundred little Hitlers. They’ll never have the opportunity to be as effective as Hitler, thank god, but they would reach such evil heights if they could. And they would do it in the name of their righteous cause that they care so deeply about.

But you can’t tell the difference. So the solution is simple, don’t join a side, don’t evangelize a cause, just stop caring.

Let me pause here before you think I am getting cynical and nihilistic.

Things matter. I’m not saying it doesn’t all make a difference.

Hitler was elected, after all. So it makes sense to have passionate, dedicated people who really care about making sure another Hitler isn’t elected to cause the same destruction.

There were people in Germany who surely saw Hitler for what he was.

Many passionately dedicated themselves to spreading the truth about the evils of Naziism.

Some of these were communists– the same type that got their guy to power in Soviet Russia. Great job guys…

Some were patriots. They just wanted to live a happy life and leave something for their children in the motherland. They probably died, likely turned in to the Gestapo by their own children for grumblings against the Nazis.

And some left. They didn’t care enough to defend the homeland, or elect a communist, or join the Nazis. They lived and thrived. They had children who had children. They passed ideas along, they built things.

So who is the next Hitler? Oh just ask around, you’ll get plenty of answers, usually divided along (pretty convenient and suspect) political fault lines.

But the truth is, everyone has their counterpart on the other side, all passionately screaming to wake up the sheep because– you guessed it– they care.

Look, there is a lot that I care about. I’m not faulting anyone for caring. But in the past, I cared Hitler-style. I was so passionately caught up in what I knew to be right, that I just ended up contributing to the screaming match.

It’s the same screaming match I’m sure you’ve noticed, in which our society is currently engaged. It makes passions flare, it makes people angry, it creates zealots dedicated to their righteous cause.

The problems in society right now are not due to a lack of caring. Apathy is not causing the problems. People care. They just care about different things and haven’t figured out that the best way to solve them doesn’t involve forcing everyone else to bend to your demands.

Instead of caring about this fight, lead by example, make the changes in your own life you want to see in the world. That is the most effective way to manifest your vision of how the world should be.

But if your first inclination is to force everyone else to care about what you care about, try having a little empathy. Maybe that’s not the issue for them. And maybe that doesn’t make them a piece-of-shit Nazi or Commie-scum or whatever.

Maybe it makes them just another human with unique wants and needs, who has had different experiences that put emphasis on different values.

If you don’t care, stay strong, I commend you. Because at least you know you’re not supporting the next Hitler.

Be seeing you

 

 

 

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Jeffrey Epstein: ABC stopped report ‘amid Palace threats’ – BBC News

Posted by M. C. on November 6, 2019

James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas strike again.

Looking more and more like Epstein was suicided.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50296742

Amy Robach and Jeffrey EpsteinDepartment of Justice/ Getty
Image caption ABC journalist Amy Robach (left) and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein

Leaked footage shows a US TV anchor complaining that editors “quashed” a story about paedophile Jeffrey Epstein due to pressure from the Royal Family.

ABC’s Amy Robach is seen in the clip griping that her interview with an alleged victim of Epstein and Prince Andrew never made it to air.

“The Palace found out and threatened us a million different ways,” she says.

ABC News said there was “zero truth” to the claim, while Buckingham Palace told the BBC “this is a matter for ABC”.

Epstein, a wealthy and well-connected financier, was found dead in a jail cell in August while awaiting trial for sex crimes. His death was ruled a suicide by investigators.

In the video, Ms Robach vents frustration that her 2015 interview with Virginia Giuffre – formerly Virginia Roberts – was never broadcast.

The clip was leaked on Tuesday by Project Veritas, a group that seeks to expose perceived liberal bias in the mainstream media.

Ms Giuffre, 35, alleges she was abused by Epstein and was ordered to have sex with powerful men including Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.

In court documents she said she was forced to have sex with the British royal on three separate occasions while she was under the legal age of consent.

Prince Andrew has denied having “any form of sexual contact or relationship” with Ms Giuffre.

In 2015, a judge ruled that the allegations made by Ms Giuffre regarding Prince Andrew were “immaterial and impertinent” and ordered them to be removed from a claim against Epstein.

Image copyright Virginia Roberts
Image caption Ms Giuffre says she was abused by Prince Andrew several times

What does the video show?

“I’ve had this story for three years. I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts,” says Robach, speaking to someone off-camera.

“We would not put it on the air. First of all, I was told, ‘who’s Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.’

“Then the Palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways.

“We were so afraid that we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will.

“That also quashed the story,” the host of ABC’s 20/20 programme added.

In a statement to BBC News a spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said it was “a matter for ABC”.

Robach also says that the interview included allegations against former US President Bill Clinton.

“We had everything,” she continues. “I tried for three years to get it on, to no avail.

“And now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations and I freaking had all of it.”

Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption Ms Robach (second from right) was in London to cover the 2013 birth of Prince George

How have ABC responded?

In a statement after the footage leaked, ABC stood by its decision not to air the interview, saying the reporting did not meet its standards.

“But we have never stopped investigating the story,” the statement continues, adding that “substantial resources” had been dedicated to investigating Epstein.

In a separate statement, Robach said she “was caught in a private moment of frustration” last summer as the Epstein story unfolded.

She said she was “upset that an important interview I had conducted with Virginia Roberts didn’t air because we could not obtain sufficient corroborating evidence” to meet ABC’s editorial standards.

“My comments about Prince Andrew and her allegation that she had seen Bill Clinton on Epstein’s private island were in reference to what Virginia Roberts said in that interview in 2015.

“I was referencing her allegation – not what ABC News had verified through our reporting.”

She added that “in the years since no one ever told me or the team to stop reporting” on Epstein.

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The Switch: ‘Liberal’ Thought Police and Endless War – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on November 6, 2019

https://original.antiwar.com/Danny_Sjursen/2019/11/05/the-switch-liberal-thought-police-and-endless-war/

by

“People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders…All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
~Hermann Goering, Nazi Field Marshal and Hitler henchman

Somehow I’m always a “traitor.” At least according to my critics. It’s a rather odd thing, however. See, I’ve been penning antiwar screeds for over five years, much of it done whilst still on active duty. During just under three of those years Obama was president. Back then, when I criticized Bush’s old wars and Obama’s new ones, my ubiquitous hate mail – “love it or leave it,” “you’re a communist,” “you’re a disgrace to the uniform” – came from the hawkish right. That much I expected.

Then my universe inverted. The moment Trump was elected, if ever I dared cheer his anti-interventionist rhetoric (though rarely his deeds), my “friends” on left attacked me with even more intensity than the neocons. But the language was mostly the same. I was still a “traitor,” still “anti-American,” only now I was also a “Trump-apologist,” even a “Putin-puppet.” Once purportedly antiwar liberals were horrified that I hoped, and sought to encourage, that Trump might end even a couple of the hopeless American conflicts. Born again hawks, these folks now rose like a mythical Phoenix to support the wars Trump theoretically opposed. As a tiny band played “The World Turned Upside Down” on repeat in my head, it occurred to me that this turn of events represented something profound: liberal thought policing, consensus disciplining, and the limits of Democrats’ antiwar activism.

Look, I’m a lefty, for the most part. My academic specialty is in African-American civil rights history. Eugene Debs is one of my heroes. The morning after the 2016 election I said unspeakable, hateful things – the sort you can’t really take back – to my Trump-voting father. In my last year in the army, I was even under a serious, pension-threatening, investigation according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ,” for the crime of publishing language “contemptuous” of President Trump.

The editors here at Antiwar.com accept my “progressive” sins because we’re in the end-the-endless-war trenches together. But of course, my libertarian friends enjoy treating me to a good ribbing. So you can understand why it seems so odd, so preposterous, this recent spate of attacks leveled against me as a “Trump apologist,” even a “Trump supporter.” I mean I’m not. Still, the fact that my ostensible compatriots – at least the mainstream liberals – are the ones directing these attacks is instructive. Their hysterical critiques define these alarmist times. Consider it Red Scare 2.0: Russia Strikes Back.

On some level, this is nothing new…

Large majorities of all Americans, but especially Democrats, seem eminently persuadable to support a new war, this time with Iran. Just as 42 percent of the public believed – even after the invasion of Iraq – that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and 55 percent thought he directly supported Al Qaeda (neither was even remotely true), so too are the citizens of today misinformed about Iran. In a poll conducted late last month, 84 percent of Americans said they were concerned that Iran was developing nuclear weapons (it is not), including 89 percent of Democrats. Say what?

Lastly, there’s the, perhaps even more dangerous, liberal establishment’s policing of foreign policy thought, which narrows the range of “acceptable” discourse, and threatens (small d) democracy. That’s where the attacks on my writing, my character, and my “Americanism,” come in. But it isn’t just me. Hillary Clinton, the New York Times, and the CNN-MSNBC duo’s absurd slander that Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard – an antiwar long shot presidential contender and serving major in the US Army – is a “Russian asset,” being “groomed,” perhaps by the Republicans, for a third-party run, personifies the current fit of national delirium. Tulsi’s combat tours (what branch did Hillary or Rachel serve in?) couldn’t save her from accusations of treason – a crime punishable by death for a serving soldier – and my 18 odd years in uniform won’t protect me from the new breed of Democratic neo-McCarthyism.

Mind you, the establishment liberal thought police have not, and will not, provide a shred of evidence that I, Tulsi, and our like-minded brothers and sisters are “un-American” “traitors.” They don’t have to. Even muted praise for Trump’s few sensible pronouncements, or the use “Putin talking points” like ending regime change wars, is today a sin punishable by libel, by professional and intellectual exile. Proof, evidence, truth – these concepts no longer matter. As a Bush official pronounced back in the Iraq War days, “We’re an empire now.” And as the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy so presciently wrote, “When it comes to Empire, facts don’t matter…”

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Disproportionalities: Whose Fault? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on November 6, 2019

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/11/walter-e-williams/disproportionalities-whose-fault/

By

Jews have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes in economics, 30% of those in medicine, 25% in physics, 20% in chemistry, 15% in literature and 10% of the Nobel Peace Prizes. Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been just over 900 Nobel Prizes awarded. Since Jews are only 2% of the world’s population, instead having 22% of Nobel Prizes, 206, they should have won only two, according to the proportionality vision of justice. There’s an even greater domestic violation of the proportionality vision. Jews are less than 3% of the U.S. population but 35% of American Nobel Prize winners. Several questions come to mind. Does the disproportionately high number of Jewish winners explain why there are so few black or Hispanic Nobel Prize winners? Who’s to blame for ethnic disproportionality among Nobel Prize winners, and what can be done to promote social justice?

Proportionality injustice doesn’t end with the Nobel Prize. Blacks are about 13% of the U.S. population but close to 70% of the players in the National Football League. Blacks are greatly overrepresented among star players and highly paid players. While the disproportionality injustice runs in favor of black players in general, they are all but nonexistent among the league’s field goal kickers and punters. Perhaps the only reason why football team owners are not charged with hiring discrimination is that the same people who hire quarterbacks and running backs also hire field goal kickers and punters. Proportionality and diversity injustice is worse in the National Basketball Association, with blacks being over 80% of the players. Plus, it’s not uncommon to watch college basketball games and see that 90 to 100% of the starting five players are black.

Most readers know that I teach economics at George Mason University and have done so for nearly 40 years. However, that doesn’t mean the field of economics doesn’t have its problems. Many see economics as neither a welcoming nor a supportive profession for women or blacks. Former Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen, in addressing a Brookings Institution audience said: “Within the economics profession, women and minorities are significantly underrepresented. And data compiled by the American Economic Association’s Committees on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession and the Status of Minority Groups in the profession show that there has been little or no progress in recent decades. Women today make up only about 30 percent of Ph.D. students. Within academia, their representation drops the higher up one goes in the career ladder. The share of Ph.D.s awarded to African Americans is low; and it has declined slightly in recent decades.” Yellen says that diversity in economics is a matter of “basic justice.”

Had I been in the audience, I would have asked Yellen whether there’s basic justice in the nursing field, where less than 10% of nurses are men. What about the gross lack of proportionality in incarceration? According to 2015 figures released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the overall U.S. prison and jail population is 90.6% male and 9.4% female. The only way that I see to remedy such a gross disproportionality injustice is to either incarcerate more female prisoners or release male prisoners.

Back to Janet Yellen: It is pathetic and professionally incompetent that she can ignore decades of research — some of it by female researchers — that shoots down the idea that disparities prove discrimination. Moreover, if one carries the notion that disparities prove discrimination far enough, they’d look like true fools. According to a study conducted by Bond University in Australia, sharks are nine times likelier to attack and kill men than they are women. Despite the fact that men are 50% of the population, and so are women, men are struck by lightning six times as often as women. Of those killed by lightning, 82% are men. One can only wonder what social justice warriors would do about these and many other disproportionalities.

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