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The Tool of Tools – Kunstler

Posted by M. C. on December 10, 2022

“The DNC and Biden Team knew they had friends at Twitter who would do their bidding during the election. And Twitter lied to the FEC about that influence…. But that’s just at the surface….” —TechnoFog on Substack

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-tool-of-tools/

James A. Baker

      At what point in his arduous take-over of Twitter did Elon Musk realize that the package came with a joker in the deck: James A. Baker, formerly general counsel of the FBI? Did he wonder: what is this guy doing here? Were there any conversations between the two? Or did Mr. Musk just quietly observe his presence at a remove in nervous wonder, as one might, say, upon discovering a scorpion in the corner of his hotel room?

    Mr. Baker, you understand, was notoriously at the center of the FBI’s FISA court fuckery that got the ball rolling in the Crossfire Hurricane operation, Act One of RussiaGate, as well as the Alfa Bank caper concocted by Hillary Clinton (disclosed this year by special counsel John Durham), and probably every other sedition pie the FBI cooked in its oven in those years, considering Mr. Baker’s position as chief legal advisor to Director Chris Wray. When the alt-news media caught onto Mr. Baker’s nefarious activities, he became inconvenient to the agency, was re-assigned to some nebulous task (polishing Mr. Wray’s cuff links?), and quit in May, 2018. He landed temporarily — or was he, rather, parked out-of-sight? — at the shadowy R Street Institute, an Intel Community cut-out, one of its countless PR channels in the DC Swamp.

    But then, mysteriously, Mr. Baker got hired by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in June of 2020 — the heat of a presidential election — to work under Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s general counsel (and chief of “legal, policy, and trust” [ha!]), where he remained until just the other day. Is it a stretch to imagine Mr. Baker’s former employer, the FBI — which, let’s face it, operates as a sort of blood-brotherhood — purposely installed Mr. Baker in that sensitive job at Twitter to help “moderate” the national conversation in the central forum that public debate had moved to in our time?

     If so, he apparently did a crackerjack job, and just at the right time, too, after the FBI discovered, in emails they ripped off Rudolph Giuliani’s purloined cloud account, that Donald Trump’s attorney possessed of a copy of the laptop hard-drive of one Hunter Biden, son of presidential candidate Joe Biden — said computer (the FBI knew full-well by then) being stuffed not just with pornographic photos of crack orgies and other personal infelicities, but also a trove of emails and deal memos laying out a bribery and money-laundering scheme that the younger Biden was running all over Eurasia as a family business.

     Of course, the FBI had that selfsame computer in its possession for the better part of a year when The New York Post broke the news of its existence days before the election of 2020. In fact, the Bureau had had possession at the very time that Mr. Trump was busy getting impeached for daring to suggest to Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, that the Bidens were involved in some shady business worth investigating with the Kiev-based Burisma gas company. Evidence of that and much much more — including way-bigger shady deals with CCP cut-outs — lay moldering in the laptop the FBI just silently sat on. Isn’t it a little strange that during the dragged-out impeachment ordeal neither Attorney General William Barr nor FBI chief Chris Wray volunteered to Mr. Trump’s legal defense that they held exculpatory evidence on that laptop for the very thing he was impeached on?

     That was January, 2020, many months before The New York Post took the laptop’s existence public. And whaddaya know… by June of that year, James A. Baker was in place at Twitter, ready to serve! As election day approached, he apparently succeeded in stifling transmission of the Post’s laptop story plus any-and-all conversation about it in the Twitterverse, and was careful not to leave a memo trail of his heroic interventions. Do you suppose he might have had some conversations about all that with his old colleagues at the FBI? At the same time, you understand, the FBI was leaning successfully on that other social network giant, Facebook, to likewise smother the laptop story. And Google, too, having become an Intel Community tool, was avid to tailor its search algorithms to steer the curious away from Hunter’s laptop. And so was fortune’s fool Joe Biden inserted into history….

     Amazingly, after all that huggermugger, James A. Baker still remained in place last week at Twitter — even as his putative boss, censor-in-chief, Vijaya Gadde, got drop-kicked out the door — just as Elon Musk prepared to release a trove of information detailing Twitter’s censorship activities of recent years. Yes! And, evidently, Mr. Baker functioned as a sort of one-man clearing house for all the documents getting shoveled to independent reporter Matt Taibbi, whom Mr. Musk had designated to be the news conduit for these awaited revelations. And, yes, there is every reason to suspect that Mr. Baker censored, or perhaps even tried to destroy, the very documents that Mr. Musk ordered released.

     Was that not like leaving a wolverine in Twitter’s henhouse? How could Mr. Musk not know how absurd it was for Mr. Baker to moderate that release? Well, the chatter is that Mr. Musk was seeking a way to encourage Mr. Baker to inculpate himself, so as to foreclose any lawsuits he might think to bring against Twitter for wrongful termination. I have to say, Mr. Musk would be an idiot if he did not have copies of the server that James Baker had access to and had the opportunity to delete stuff from. I guess we’ll find out.

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The NDAA Rip-Off Is Huge!

Posted by M. C. on December 9, 2022

Kevin McCarthy-Another Raytheon boardmember candidate.

https://rumble.com/v1zn7yy-the-ndaa-rip-off-is-huge.html

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Why the Left Must Destroy Free Speech – or Be Destroyed – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on December 9, 2022

In totalitarian societies, wrote Hayek, truth is not something that is discovered by learning, education, self-study, research, and debate and discussion. Instead, it is “something to be laid down by authority . . .” 

It isn’t just the Left. I see John Bolton is rearing his ugly head.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/12/thomas-dilorenzo/why-the-left-must-destroy-free-speech-or-be-destroyed/

By Thomas DiLorenzo

In Hayek’s famous 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, he warned that the intellectual and political classes of the democracies of that time were embracing some of the same ideas that inspired Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Stalin’s Russia:  comprehensive government planning, hyper regulation of industry,  nationalization, welfare statism, and collectivism in general.  He did not predict that these societies would end up “in serfdom,” however, as some have mistakenly claimed.  Quite the contrary.  In his first chapter he clearly stated that he hoped the ideas in the book would help these countries to avoid that disastrous fate.  He hoped the ideas of the book would be a roadblock on the road to serfdom.

The eleventh chapter of The Road to Serfdom is entitled “The End of Truth,” about the historical imperative in all totalitarian states throughout history to destroy freedom of speech so that the only true belief is “the social plan” imposed by the state, whatever that may be.  This is achieved by relentless institutionalized lying and propaganda, coupled with harsh censorship of all contrary ideas or even questions about the propriety of forcefully imposing one single “social plan.” This is American society today, in other words, in case you haven’t noticed.  (Socialism, Hayek said, has always been about substituting the plans of politicians for the plans that all of the citizens make for themselves.  It’s not a matter of planning versus no planning, but who is to do the planning).

The significance of propaganda in totalitarian countries, Hayek wrote, is that “If all the sources of current information are effectively under one single control, it is no longer a question of merely persuading people of this or that.  The skillful propagandist then has power to mold . . . minds in any direction he chooses . . .”  Jeff Deist, among others, has commented that America today has become a “post-persuasion society” and he is right, almost eighty years after Hayek issued this warning.  The Left is no longer willing to seriously debate anything – at least for the time being while they control the universities, all three branches of government, the media, (laughingly-named) “entertainment” industries, and more.  Even dopey Prince Harry publicly denounced the First Amendment in a pathetic attempt to ingratiate himself with Hollywood Leftists like his wife shortly after divorcing himself from his family and moving to Hollywood.  If you disagree with their latest version of socialist totalitarianism (“woke-ism” coupled with green hysteria and calls for worldwide central planning), then you can be canceled, smeared as a racist, a white supremacist, or even fired from your job and prevented from getting a new one.

The moral consequences of totalitarian propaganda are even more profound.  It is “destructive of all morals” because it “undermines one of the foundations of all morals:  the sense and respect for the truth.”  An avalanche of Official Lies has always been the tool of “various theoreticians of the totalitarian system,” wrote Hayek, citing Plato’s “noble lies” and “social myths” championed by the French philosopher Georges Sorel.  The ends justify the lying means to totalitarians everywhere.  When was the last time a “White House spokesperson” did not lie in public?  (See my 1992 book, Official Lies: How Washington Misleads Us, with James T. Bennett).

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How the Mainstream Media Misses the Money Quote – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on December 9, 2022

The mainstream media’s money quote missed that France, one of the two most powerful members of the EU, insists that a negotiated settlement to the war addresses Russia’s security concerns about NATO at its door and weapons at its border.

Macron is no different. Tell the US one thing, tell his constituents another and keeping to himself what he really thinks.

https://original.antiwar.com/Ted_Snider/2022/12/08/how-the-mainstream-media-misses-the-money-quote/

by Ted Snider

On December 1, French President Emmanuel Macron went to Washington for the first state visit of the Biden administration. After the pageantry, presents, hand holding and flattering words of fraternity and solidarity, Macron faced the gathered press.

“We will never urge Ukrainians to make a compromise that will not be acceptable for them.” “That,” said Helene Cooper of The New York Times, “is the money quote.”

But it wasn’t the money quote by several euros. The money quote came days later when Macron was not standing shoulder to shoulder with Biden in front of an American audience, but standing on his own addressing a French audience. Macron told the French television network TF1, in an interview filmed during his visit to Washington but aired as he left, that “We need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table.” Then Macron made his full meaning clear: “One of the essential points we must address – as President Putin has always said – is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.”

The money quote was that, despite the display of solidarity, there was a canyon between the leader of the US and the leader of the loyal European opposition. The canyon was so wide that it included disagreement over the causes and solutions of the war. Biden and Macron both “strongly condemn Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.” But for Biden, in the beginning, that war was wholly unprovoked, and, in the end, the settlement must reflect that and protect core US values. For Macron, though the war was illegal, Russia had legitimate security concerns that NATO had been pushing, and the settlement must reflect that too.

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The Right to Discriminate

Posted by M. C. on December 8, 2022

The non-government school explanation of Pearl Harbor, property rights and discrimination

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GoFlo6ptWfw&feature=share

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Hakeem Jeffries: How Crude Identity Politics Glorifies Status-Quo-Protecting Politicians

Posted by M. C. on December 8, 2022

Glenn Greenwald

https://rumble.com/v1z99dk-hakeem-jeffries-how-crude-identity-politics-glorifies-status-quo-protecting.html

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Doug Casey on the Struggle Between the Powerful Forces of Centralization and Decentralization

Posted by M. C. on December 8, 2022

As HL Mencken quipped, an election is just an advance auction on stolen goods.

https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-the-struggle-between-the-powerful-forces-of-centralization-and-decentralization/

by Doug Casey

International Man: We’re seeing several disturbing trends converge: currency debasement, increased surveillance, and more travel restrictions.

It seems governments everywhere—and the WEF elite behind them—are waging an all-out war on ordinary people worldwide.

What do you make of this trend, and where is it headed?

Doug Casey: Well, as I said earlier, the World Economic Forum is actually an informal United Nations, which is bad enough.

It’s populated by people who like the idea of powerful government in general, and a powerful world government in particular. When you look at history, you find that there are people who arise from seemingly nowhere and are able to put themselves in positions of huge influence and power. In today’s world, that usually happens through elections. But Bismarck, Napoleon, Mao, Kissinger, Schwab, Gates, and most others didn’t come up through elections for what they’re worth. They came up through force of personality, cleverness, and connections. Elections are essentially an Americanism.

Incidentally, I don’t believe in elections or “democracy” as means for determining who your boss is and who controls you. Elections have rarely been more than popularity contests at best, and more often, mob rule dressed in a coat and tie. As HL Mencken quipped, an election is just an advance auction on stolen goods. Now, more than ever, they’re just rubber stamps for political operators who are adept at using the media and other forms of influence to get the hoi polloi to robotically legitimize their rulers.

Manipulating public opinion has become a fine art using electronic media. It’s especially effective in getting the bottom half of society—let’s call them marginal citizens—who aren’t famous for researching issues or thinking critically, to vote one way or another. Voting can make sense if the voters are virtuous, independent thinkers, at least 21 years old, and property owners. Many today are none of these things. That’s why elections are meaningless shams, more now than ever. They do nothing but legitimize power junkies.

Where is this trend going? As the economy and the dollar deteriorate further, people are likely to look for a strong leader, someone who will promise to make things better if he’s given enough power.

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Budapest Wine Cellar

Posted by M. C. on December 8, 2022

Daytime drinking…

Daniel McAdams

https://open.substack.com/pub/danielmcadams/p/budapest-wine-cellar?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

I was deep diving not long ago among actual physical photos for an old shot to be scanned and included in the print edition of a magazine interview with me about my old days in Budapest and I wanted to offer it up. Perhaps showing a life lived. The desperation of desolation. Maybe even a cautionary tale.

And the deep, slumbering wells of memory re-populated the active cells of the brain.

Daniel McAdams – This is Your World is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribe

I am in front of the Hungarian Parliament in 1993-4, when the winter froze to the bone. We were sixthousandmiles from home and no way back for Christmas. We were broke.

There was a rustic tavern on the southeast side of Castle Hill near the bank of the Danube where you could drop in from the arctic during Christmas shopping for some fried pork and cold beer. It was almost hewn into the hill, as I recall. On the outer edge beyond the tourist zone. There were no Americans there. On the poor side. The smoke in the windowless establishment was Cancer itself rubbing his hands together in anticipation of the coming bounty, but the warmth was a rescue from the deep cold.

Unlike the tidy European and American tourists on the Castle Hill, these were working class Hungarians who liked to drink and liked to smoke. I felt at home among them and I spoke to them in their language (with a strange Miscolc accent – which is another story) as I ordered a soup and a dish of fried pork and deep, dark Hungarian beer, Dreher Bak. It is likely that I began with a large Hungarian szilva palinka – plum brandy – as it was normally the first thing a sensible person turned to when partially frozen. But it well could have been an herbal liquor like Unicum, which softened the mind as it brought one steadily back from the grip of the snow devil. The lusty plates of fried pork arrived as I dabbed it all with bread that moved in a basket from table to table, acquiring, among other things, cigarette ashes as it passed from customer to customer. Most Americans would not accept this. It did not bother me at all.

____

On Vörösmarty tér in the old part of Budapest there was always the Karácsonyi Vásár – the Christmas market. As we anticipated our yearly trip “home” to US, we also punctuated our shopping with stops for forralt bor – hot spiced wine – to keep warm in a world where the ice air crystalized the night. The cold was shocking, breaking through all manner of preparation. Hot red wine, sweetened and steeped in cinnamon and cloves, was available for a dollar a pour. It was an infusion of Christmas, deep into the soul as it burned from the inside. The warmth was anticipation of the arrival of our Lord Jesus Christ. Dicsőség az Istennek. Glory to God.

Our gifts to family in California in those days were brown homespun beeswax candles and tinned pork liver pate. I don’t think, in retrospect, they were very well-received.

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New Twitter Bombshell: ‘Former’ FBI Agent Caught Removing Files Before ‘Twitter Papers’ Release!

Posted by M. C. on December 8, 2022

The “former” FBI Agent at the center of the bogus “Russiagate” operation was brought on by Twitter’s previous management, where he played a key role in suppressing the Hunter Biden bombshell. Musk decided to release the internal communications of “old” Twitter around the censorship and that same “former” FBI agent was caught red-handed removing the evidence before it could be released!

The Ron Paul Liberty Report

https://rumble.com/v1zfdhq-new-twitter-bombshell-former-fbi-agent-caught-removing-files-before-twitter.html

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Remembering Rose Wilder Lane | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on December 8, 2022

Months after The Discovery of Freedom appeared, she wrote an angry postcard to a political commentator in which she criticized Social Security. In response, the FBI dispatched police officers to her home to question her about her “subversion.” To one officer’s questioning, she angrily replied, “I’m as subversive as hell!”—and demanded an apology from J. Edgar Hoover. (The FBI continued to surveil her, however.)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/remembering-rose-wilder-lane/

by Timothy Sandefur

It was on this day in 1886 that the journalist and author Rose Wilder Lane was born in a little house on the prairie that she and her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, would later make famous. A brilliant, moody, and independent spirit, Rose was eventually to become one of the most important voices of American liberty, and in 1943, published The Discovery of Freedom, a pathbreaking book that helped spark the revival of interest in free markets and individualism in the later 20th century.

Ironic, then, that she started out as a socialist.

Lane grew up hating the life on the farm, and decided at an early age to become a journalist and traveler. In the 1920s, she went to Europe to report on the Red Cross’s efforts to help refugees in the wake of World War I, but during her travels, she was horrified by what she witnessed in the new Soviet Union. Bolshevik chiefs had begun confiscating food and forcing the people of Armenia and Georgia into manual labor to get it back. “We intend to redistribute it to the neediest,” one Soviet soldier told her. “We will see that they are the most needy by making them work for it.” After witnessing collectivism in action, Rose returned to the United States prepared to rethink everything she thought she had known about economics and politics.

In 1926, she arrived back at her parents’ farm, and dove into works on politics and history. In a letter to the journalist Dorothy Thompson, whom she had met in Paris, Lane described how her studies opened her eyes to the uniqueness of American freedom. America was criticized for “its lack of form,” she wrote. But now she saw that formlessness—in other words, its social and economic fluidity—as a great blessing: “It’s exactly stability which America discards.… Is it possible for a civilization to be wholly dynamic? Wholly a vibration, a becoming, a force existing in itself, without direction, without an object for its verb? A civilization always becoming, never being, never never having the stability, the form, which is the beginning of death?”

What Lane was describing was the dynamism of a free society, in which individuals are free to discover their own paths—both metaphorically and literally. In her book Give Me Liberty, published in 1936, Lane would explain how the freedom to choose enabled people to establish their own rules of social interaction, and accomplish their own purposes, without being dictated to by the state. She used a simple illustration, comparing the way people leave a theater at the end of a show to the way in which a teacher maintains order in a classroom. “No crowd leaves a theater with any efficiency,” she wrote, “yet we usually reach the sidewalk without a fight.” By contrast, any classroom instructor “knows that order cannot be maintained without regulation, supervision, and discipline.” That distinction underlined the difference between two kinds of societies: that in which people are at liberty to pursue their own goals, and that in which an authority figure controls people’s behavior in order to accomplish some single collective goal that they themselves might not share. Years later, the economist F.A. Hayek would label this the difference between “spontaneous” and “constructed” orders. Simply put, people don’t need an authority figure to tell them how to live—or, as Lane liked to put it, the very idea of Authority with a capital “A,” whether it be in the form of socialism, Nazism, or anything else, is fallacious: wealth, social harmony, and other blessings are not created by kings, dictators, or presidents. They are the result of individual initiative. And if that initiative is stifled by government intervention, the results can be wasteful, foolhardy, or even catastrophic.

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