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Just Say No to the New Forever War | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on January 18, 2023

The only way this was ever going to end, outside of escalation to a war between Russia and NATO and the likely end of human civilization, was through a negotiated settlement. It seems preferable that any division be done with a pen rather than a gun.

A recent comment on RonPaul’s Liberty Report-US has spent well in excess of Russia’s annual military budget on Ukraine.

https://mises.org/wire/just-say-no-new-forever-war

Joseph Solis-Mullen

Whenever asked about whether the US will change its policy regarding the conflict in Ukraine, to start pushing for Kyiv to enter negotiations rather than apparently providing as much money and as many weapons as they ask for, the Biden administration’s refrain has been a consistent variation of “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing as long as it takes.”

As long as it takes for what?

For Ukraine to “win” its war against Russia, taking back all land occupied or annexed by Russia since 2014.

While it isn’t clear this is possible, and even less clear that pursuing such a maximalist outcome is in the American national interest, Joe Biden and his administration officials continually play dumb at the notion they could end the war, or they feign offense at the suggestion that the decision isn’t one entirely up to the Ukrainians, a decision the Biden administration cannot and should not in any way influence—it was the Ukrainians, after all, who elected Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a war platform.

Except, of course, that he was voted in on a peace platform.

As is now openly acknowledged, instead of then backing Zelenskyy when he tried to get the ultranationalists in the eastern part of Ukraine to submit to central authority and agree to elections per the Steinmeier Formula to implement Minsk II, as negotiated by the governments of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany, the Trump administration shrugged and told Zelenskyy to take a hike. The frontline ultranationalists who told Zelenskyy to go to hell—those are the guys the US government has been working with since 2014 and arming with heavy weapons since 2017.

Not that all the weapons are getting to them, as no one was surprised to find out—nor much of the money for that matter. The situation has gotten so unacceptable that the Washington Post, while it still cheers the hurried passage of every new appropriation earmarked for Ukraine, has dared to openly question where all the guns and money that aren’t going to Ukraine are going. CBS released an entire documentary, which was then almost immediately partially retracted under pressure, casting a critical eye on the policy, which is corporate media speak for “This is a huge problem!”

Rather than halting or slowing the process in response to these justified objections, the Pentagon went ahead in October and put US troops in Ukraine to supervise.

Um. What?

But while the deaths pile up and the stalemate continues, Americans should keep in mind that this is all part of the plan: to get other people killed so the US government can weaken Russia and intimidate China. At least, that is what they think the plan is doing. It is hard to say for sure. Russia will be economically and technologically less robust over the long term, and no one likes running afoul of the US Treasury, but it obviously seems to push Russia and China closer together. Was that part of the plan? If so, was it a good plan?

Other than finally admitting what we already knew, which was that flushing weapons down a black hole half a world away in one of the most corrupt countries in the industrialized world was a bad idea, the so-called Fourth Estate really has been failing abysmally. Though predictable, the corporate press has never met a war it doesn’t love; the copy the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have been publishing is naked war porn: daydreams about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) blowing up the Russian ships blockading Odessa or about seizing the advantage from China and militarizing, or rather further militarizing, the Taiwan Strait in order to show Beijing that Uncle Sam isn’t going to be intimidated.

Because, you know, that’s how the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved without blowing up the world.

Yikes.

See the rest here

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Isn’t it Time For Adam Schiff to be Expelled From Congress?

Posted by M. C. on January 17, 2023

Let’s not forget: Rep. Jim Trafficant was expelled from Congress for asking his staffers to wash his boat. Shouldn’t there be at least equal punishment for Senators and Members who are lying us into World War III?

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/january/16/isnt-it-time-for-adam-schiff-to-be-expelled-from-congress/

written by ron paul

With each new release of the “Twitter Files” we learn more and more about the deep corruption in Washington. We sensed during Covid that something was really wrong – for example the bizarre denial of natural immunity. But thanks to Elon Musk’s decision to open the books, our worst fears have been proven true. Each new release seems to show something even more criminal inside America’s rotten ruling class.

In the latest release, thanks to the excellent reporting of independent journalist Matt Taibbi, we see outgoing Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), continuously pressuring Twitter to validate his fantasies of “Russian bots” manipulating US politics.

The short version of what Taibbi reported comes from around the time then-Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) was about to release his Committee’s findings about the FBI misuse of the FISA Court to spy on the Trump presidential campaign. The FBI, it turns out, relied exclusively on the widely-discredited “Steele Dossier” – paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign – as justification to spy on the Trump campaign.

When pressure grew to release the Nunes findings, Twitter exploded with users demanding that Congress “release the memo.” That’s where then-ranking Member Schiff and his staff began relentlessly pressuring Twitter to show that the accounts demanding the release of the memo were actually Russian agents, out to help their supposed favorite, Donald Trump. Schiff was not alone. Fellow “Russiagate” hoaxers like Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) also pressured Twitter to find Russians behind the demand to release Nunes’ findings.

Over and over, Twitter – which was hardly sympathetic to Trump – told Schiff and his colleagues there was simply no evidence of Russian involvement. As much as some Twitter employees may have liked to report the opposite, to their credit they refused to participate in the scam.

Even after Twitter had informed Schiff and his fellow hoaxers that there was no Russian involvement, Sen. Blumenthal released a statement he knew was not true: “We find it reprehensible that Russian agents have so eagerly manipulated innocent Americans.” Again, this was right after he had been informed by Twitter employees – who were by-and-large strongly opposed to Trump – that there was just no evidence to back up such a statement.

We are moving closer and closer to a nuclear showdown with Russia over Ukraine. For political gain the Democrats – and plenty of Republicans – have been pushing the “Russiagate” hoax and in so doing have fertilized the ground for the obsessive Russia hatred prevalent in the US today.

I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that if US/Russia relations had not been poisoned by the lie of “Russiagate” for pure political gain, we would not be anywhere near our current state of near-direct conflict with the largest nuclear power on earth, Russia.

It is shocking that Schiff and his “Russiagate” allies would potentially sacrifice millions of dead Americans to defeat Trump and other political enemies. 

Let’s not forget: Rep. Jim Trafficant was expelled from Congress for asking his staffers to wash his boat. Shouldn’t there be at least equal punishment for Senators and Members who are lying us into World War III?

Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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Glug Glug, Gurgle Gurgle – Kunstler

Posted by M. C. on January 17, 2023

“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”—Edmund Burke

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/glug-glug-gurgle-gurgle/

James Howard Kunstler

You thought the Titanic sinking was an astounding spectacle? Looks like the ship of the Deep State got some holes ripped in its hull and may be fixing to go down sometime in 2023. The fun-and-games about voting for Speaker of the House are over. Time to get down to bidness and compel some folks to do some ‘splainin’ under oath. You don’t know for sure who will be chair of exactly which congressional committee, but there will be several of them running investigations at the same time, looking to shake out some verifiable truth from the dumpster of misrule, sedition, and perfidy that America fell into the past decade. Here are a bunch of my top outlines for inquiries.

     Covid-19. Forget about Fauci for the moment. First, subpoena the various deputies working under him going back as far as the twentieth century and see what they know about the twisted path that gain-of-function research on coronaviruses traveled from the DOD’s DARPA to the labs of Dr. Ralph Baric at the U of North Carolina, to labs in Canada, Ukraine, and finally to Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Then put Dr. Fauci’s ass in the witness chair and wring out the ‘splainin.’ Ask about the patents on the various parts of C-19 and on the mRNA “vaccines” cooked up to fight it, and who got the royalties emanating from all of that. Ask him how and why he continued gain-of-function research post-2014 after the White House directed it to stop. Ask him to ‘splain’ his relations with one Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance.

     Ask Deborah Birx to ‘splain’ exactly what was going on in that White House C-19 task force. Why did the public health officers demonize early treatments with known, safe drugs and censor anyone who spoke out against their insane policies? What did the task force know about Pfizer and Moderna’s “vaccine” trials? Ask Rochelle Walensky how come she and the CDC kept pushing mRNA shots and boosters long after a broad array of injuries and deaths presented from their use. Put Bill Gates’s ass in the chair and have him ‘splain’ the labyrinth of funding mechanisms he set up to push “vaccines” all over the globe and how his tentacles happen to penetrate into the World Health Org (WHO). Ask him if he ever had conversations with the leadership of the WHO and the World Economic Forum (WEF) about population reduction and methods for achieving it.

       Weaponization of Government. Time for FBI Director Christopher Wray to ‘splain’ how come he sat silently in possession of the Hunter Biden laptop — stuffed as it was with deal memoranda about payoffs from Ukraine and other foreign lands — through the first impeachment of Mr. Trump in late 2019 and early 2020, from the initial House hearings into the Senate trial… when said laptop was full of exculpatory evidence (“Brady material”)proving that Mr. Trump had a good reason to inquire about those matters in a phone call with V. Zelensky. Ask Mr. Wray what he knows about the roles of “whistleblower” (CIA agent) Eric Ciaramella and Intel Agency Inspector General Michael Atkinson and their relations with former House Intel Committee chair Adam Schiff. Ask Mr. Wray how many federal agents were involved in the January 6 riot at the Capitol building, both inside and outside. Ask him why one Ray Epps was never indicted for incitement captured on video. Ask him why the FBI never made a murder or manslaughter referral in the death of Ashli Babbitt. Don’t let him bullshit the committee about “ongoing investigations” blah blah. Ask Mr. Wray if he directly ordered his agents to monitor and censor social media companies, and, if not him, who did?

     Summon the ghost of James Comey to ‘splain’ the finer points of RussiaGate: how he fell for Hillary Clinton’s Steele Dossier prank; how he used Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman to leak info about confidential meetings with Mr. Trump; whether he ordered Peter Strzok’s sandbagging operation on Gen. Mike Flynn, the FISA court shenanigans, the hiring of CrowdStrike instead of using FBI forensic experts to vet evidence; the run-up to “Crossfire Hurricane” the roles of international men of mystery Stefan Halper and Josef Mifsud in the operations to incriminate Trump appointees, Nellie Ohr’s role as a DOJ-FBI go-between with the Fusion GPS company.

     Let’s hear from former CIA director John Brennan about the “17 Intel Agencies” who swore Russia was behind 2016 election interference and then about the 50-odd distinguished intel officers and other high officials who swore that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russia put-on job. 

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Taxation=Theft – Doug Casey’s International Man

Posted by M. C. on January 17, 2023

But, there’s a significant difference in the US tax haven states and the tax havens overseas. Overseas havens are open to anyone, including the local populations. The US-based havens are open to anyone except Americans.

https://internationalman.com/articles/taxation-theft/

by Jeff Thomas

Theft is defined as “the taking of another person’s property or services without that person’s permission or consent.”

Almost invariably, governments pass tax laws and set tax rates without any consultation with the citizenry. Further, no final approval is sought by the citizenry that they consent to the tax or the rates. It is simply imposed.

Most of us tend not to regard taxation as theft, yet, by definition, that’s exactly what it is.

But some countries, notably the US, go further in disguising the theft, by stating that the payment of tax is “voluntary.” I personally am not aware of a single instance in which an individual or corporation decided not to pay a tax and, if discovered, was allowed to go unpunished. A typical penalty is a fine equal to the tax amount, plus compounded interest on both the tax and the fine. Such a condition is anything but voluntary.

The US also has a tradition of treating the payment of tax as being “patriotic.” Avoiding tax is deemed unpatriotic—therefore, citizens should take pride in paying tax and, in fact, many Americans do claim that they’re proud to pay tax. It would also seem likely that some resent taxation, but want to appear patriotic, whilst others truly wear taxation as a hair shirt with pride.

However, if we define taxation as what it is—theft—it would be far less likely that either of these factions would be taking this position. After all, no one takes pride in being robbed

Some countries (again, notably the US) describe tax havens as jurisdictions that seek to undermine the tax regimes of other jurisdictions. As such, the havens are harassed and threatened by the latter and referred to as criminal money-laundering centres.

Well, let’s clear the air on that one while we’re at it.

A tax haven is quite simply a jurisdiction that has a low-tax or no-tax regime. It either steals less of people’s money than high-tax jurisdictions, or steals none of their money.

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Top 20 Most Cringeworthy Zelensky PR Moments

Posted by M. C. on January 17, 2023

Caitlin Johnstone

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/top-20-most-cringeworthy-zelensky?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The US empire’s proxy war in Ukraine has had many jaw-dropping instances of imperialist sociopathy, propagandistic audacity and brazen journalistic malpractice that we’ve discussed in this space many times, but one of the most cringeworthy and degrading aspects of the globe-spanning narrative control campaign surrounding this war has been the way the nation’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has been turned into an ever-present corporate mascot for the most aggressive ad campaign ever devised. The way the most powerful institutions in the western world have been throwing their puppet in everyone’s face to sell the empire’s proxy warfare puts Ronald McDonald to shame.

Here are 20 of the cringiest moments of establishment PR using Zelensky to market the McProxy War to the western world, in no particular order.

1. A House Republican introducing a bill to place a bust of Zelensky in the US Capitol building

Antiwar.com @Antiwarcom

House Republican Introduces Resolution to Place Bust of Zelensky in the Capitol Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and other conservative GOP members blasted the idea by Dave DeCamp @DecampDave @RepMTG @RepThomasMassie #Zelensky #Zelenskyy #Ukraine news.antiwar.com/2023/01/12/hou…

Image

6:06 PM ∙ Jan 12, 2023

120Likes34Retweets

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes:

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) introduced a bill this week that would place a bust of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the House wing of the US Capitol building, an idea that was strongly criticized by more conservative GOP members.

2. The fake Hollywood action hero-sounding “I need ammunition, not a ride” quote

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TGIF: Where Socialists Go Wrong | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on January 17, 2023

Here Hayek extended Ludwig von Mises’s fatal critique of socialism; namely, that

  1. without tradeable private property in the means of production, markets for resources and producers’ goods don’t exist;
  2. without such markets, true prices can’t exist; and
  3. without prices, rational economic calculation is impossible;
  4. therefore, socialism is impossible; it’s “planned chaos.”

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-where-socialists-go-wrong/

by Sheldon Richman 

r

R

Since socialism is “in” today — even though many people who say they favor it have no idea what it is — F. A. Hayek’s last book, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), is worth checking out. Hayek, the late great Nobel-laureate economist of the Austrian school, begins this way:

This book argues that our civilisation depends, not only for its origin but also for its preservation, on what can be precisely described only as the extended order of human cooperation, an order more commonly, if somewhat misleadingly, known as capitalism. To understand our civilisation, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread by means of an evolutionary selection — the comparative increase of population and wealth — of those groups that happened to follow them. The unwitting, reluctant, even painful adoption of these practices kept these groups together, increased their access to valuable information of all sorts, and enabled them to be ‘fruitful, and multiply…’ This process is perhaps the least appreciated facet of human evolution.

Socialists take a different view of these matters.

Well, that last sentence is quite an understatement. By socialism Hayek didn’t mean the welfare state or continuing government efforts to manipulate market outcomes according to some notion of equity. That would be interventionism or the mixed economy. No, socialism is the abolition of the market order and its necessary condition, private property: the replacement of free private enterprise with centralized bureaucracy. Let’s cut to the chase:

The main point of my argument is, then, that the conflict between, on one hand, advocates of the spontaneous extended human order created by a competitive market, and on the other hand those who demand a deliberate arrangement of human interaction by central authority based on collective command over available resources is due to a factual error by the latter about how knowledge of these resources is and can be generated and utilised. As a question of fact, this conflict must be settled by scientific study. Such study shows that, by following the spontaneously generated moral traditions underlying the competitive market order (traditions which do not satisfy the canons or norms of rationality embraced by most socialists), we generate and garner greater knowledge and wealth than could ever be obtained or utilised in a centrally-directed economy whose adherents claim to proceed strictly in accordance with ‘reason’. Thus socialist aims and programmes are factually impossible to achieve or execute; and they also happen, into the bargain as it were, to be logically impossible.

Hayek is saying that once we understand how information about resources is produced and transmitted, we realize that central planners can’t deliver the goods. Socialism can’t keep its (earlier) promises of plenty. (Nor of justice, but that’s for another time.)

Here Hayek extended Ludwig von Mises’s fatal critique of socialism; namely, that

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Stop The Amendments to the International Health Regulations

Posted by M. C. on January 17, 2023

Sent to me by a friend that pays attention.

These documents seek an international agreement that would dissolve national sovereignty and replace it with a global medical and financial dictatorship, which would take away the United State’s sovereign authority, individual State authority under the 10th Amendment as well as the people’s unalienable right to privacy regarding health matters and freedom to travel.

The International Health Regulations Review Committee (IHRRC) of the World Health Organization (WHO) has been meeting in secret in order to finalize what is now a 46 page document that includes proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR).

https://alignact.com/go/stop-the-amendments-to-the-international-health-regulations?mibextid=Zxz2cZ

The proposed amendments would:

1. Change the overall nature of the World Health Organization from an advisory organization that merely makes recommendations to a governing body whose proclamations would be legally-binding. (Article 1)

2. Greatly expand the scope of the International Health Regulations to include scenarios that merely have a “potential to impact public health.” (Article 2)

3. Seek to remove “respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of people.” (Article 3)

4. Give the Director General of the WHO control over the means of production through an “allocation plan for health products” to require developed states parties to supply pandemic response products as directed. (Article 13A)

5. Give the WHO the authority to require medical examinations, proof of prophylaxis, proof of vaccine and to implement contact tracing, quarantine and TREATMENT. (Article 18)

6. Institute a system of global health certificates in digital or paper format, including test certificates, vaccine certificates, prophylaxis certificates, recovery certificates, passenger locator forms and a traveller’s health declaration. (Articles 18, 23, 24, 27, 28, 31, 35, 36 and 44 and Annexes 6, 7 and 8)

7. Redirect unspecified billions of dollars to the Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex with no accountability. (Article 44A)

8. Allow the disclosure of personal health data. (Article 45)

9. Greatly expand the World Health Organization’s capacity to censor what they consider to be mis-information and dis-information. (Annex 1, page 36)

10. Create an obligation to build, provide and maintain IHR infrastructure at points of entry. (Annex 10)

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US to Boost Aid to Micronesia in Exchange for More Military Access – News From Antiwar.com

Posted by M. C. on January 17, 2023

They receive economic assistance from the US and fall under the protection of the US military in exchange for allowing US forces to operate in the countries.

I was worried we were running short of out of the way places for our son’s and daughters to die.

https://news.antiwar.com/2023/01/15/us-to-boost-aid-to-micronesia-in-exchange-for-more-military-access/

The US and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) are nearing a deal that would give more economic aid to the Pacific nation in exchange for more US military access to the islands, FSM President David Panuelo said on Friday.

The deal will be an extension of an agreement the US has with several Pacific island nations, known as the Compact of Free Association. Under these deals, the Pacific countries are treated similarly to US territories. They receive economic assistance from the US and fall under the protection of the US military in exchange for allowing US forces to operate in the countries.

The US is also allowed to deny other foreign militaries access to the Pacific Island nations. Extending the agreements and other US military expansion planned for the region is viewed in Washington as vital to US plans to confront China.

FSM President David Panuelo said negotiations with the US are almost done, and under the new deal, his country will receive $140 million in annual grants from the US, an increase of $50 million from current levels. He said residents should expect an increase in US military activity over the next few years.

See the rest here

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The Martin Luther King Jr. Speech You Need to Hear Today | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on January 16, 2023

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-martin-luther-king-jr-speech-you-need-to-hear-today/

by Libertarian Institute

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Just Like An Apple A Day

Posted by M. C. on January 14, 2023

January 1st Control and Choice

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control…”

Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4-5

” The single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t…”

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