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World War I: The Great War Was also the Great Enabler of Progressive Governance

Posted by M. C. on November 19, 2022

While the war industries were poised to rake in record profits, Marine major general Smedley Butler, who was awarded his second Congressional Medal of Honor in 1917, provides details on the fighting men’s share in this bonanza:

https://mises.org/wire/world-war-i-great-war-was-also-great-enabler-progressive-governance

George Ford Smith

Commentaries about World War I frequently discuss causes and consequences but almost never mention the enablers. At best, they might mention them approvingly, as if we were fortunate to have had the Fed and the income tax, along with the ingenuity of the liberty bond programs, to finance our glorious role in that bloodbath.

Economist Benjamin Anderson, whose Economics and the Public Welfare has contributed greatly to our understanding of the period 1914–46 and is a book I highly recommend, nevertheless takes as a given that the Fed and the income tax had a job to do, and that job was supporting US entry into World War I. After citing figures purporting to show how relatively restrained bank credit expansion was during the war, Anderson writes:

We had to finance the Government with its four great Liberty Loans and its short-term borrowing as well. We had to transform our industries from a peace basis to a war basis. We had to raise an army of four million men and send half of them to France. We had to help finance our allies in the war, and above all, to finance the shipment of goods to them from the United States and from a good many neutral countries.

We had to do none of these things. Only the government made them necessary, and the government was not acting on behalf of its constituents when it formally entered the war in April 1917. The US was not under serious threat of attack. The population at large, Ralph Raico tells us, “acquiesced, as one historian has remarked, out of general boredom with peace, the habit of obedience to its rulers, and a highly unrealistic notion of the consequences of America’s taking up arms.” He reports:

In the first ten days after the war declaration, only 4,355 men enlisted; in the next weeks, the War Department procured only one-sixth of the men required.

Bored with peace they may have been, but it was hardly reflected in the number of volunteers.

Winners and Losers

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Inflation Is Not Price Increases. Inflation Causes Price Increases.

Posted by M. C. on November 19, 2022

Inflation is not about a general increase in prices; it is about increases in the money supply. Consequently, to find out the status of inflation, there is no need for various price indices; all that required is to pay attention to the money supply’s growth rate.

https://mises.org/wire/inflation-not-price-increases-inflation-causes-price-increases

Frank Shostak

Why is inflation regarded as bad news? What kind of damage does it do? Popular commentators maintain that inflation causes speculative buying, which generates waste. Inflation, it is maintained, also erodes the real incomes of pensioners and low-income earners and causes a misallocation of resources.

Despite all these assertions regarding the side effects of inflation, the popular way of thinking cannot tell us what causes all these bad effects. Why should a general rise in prices hurt some groups of people and not others? Why should a general rise in prices weaken real economic growth? Or how does inflation lead to the misallocation of resources? Moreover, if inflation is just a rise in prices, surely it is possible to offset its effects by adjusting everybody’s incomes in the economy in accordance with this general price increase.

Why Price Indices Cannot Establish the Status of Inflation

Despite its popularity, the idea of a consumer price index (CPI) is flawed. It is based on the view that it is possible to establish an average of prices of goods and services, which is not possible.

Suppose two transactions were conducted. In the first transaction, one loaf of bread is exchanged for $2. In the second transaction, one liter of milk is exchanged for $1. The price, or the rate of exchange, in the first transaction is $2/one loaf of bread. The price in the second transaction is $1/one liter of milk. In order to calculate the average price, we must add these two ratios and divide them by two; however, it is conceptually meaningless to add $2/one loaf of bread to $1/one liter of milk.

On this Murray N. Rothbard wrote:

Thus, any concept of average price level involves adding or multiplying quantities of completely different units of goods, such as butter, hats, sugar, etc., and is therefore meaningless and illegitimate. Even pounds of sugar and pounds of butter cannot be added together, because they are two different goods and their valuation is completely different.

Defining Inflation

Historically, inflation occurred when a country’s ruler such as the king would force his citizens to give him all their gold coins under the pretext that a new gold coin was going to replace the old one. In the process, the king would falsify the content of the gold coins by mixing it with another metal and return diluted gold coins to the citizens.

Because of the dilution of the gold coins, the ruler could now mint more coins and pocket for his own use the extra coins minted. What was now passing as a pure gold coin was in fact a gold alloy coin. The increase in the number of coins brought about by this debasement of gold coins is what inflation is all about.

It follows then that the subject matter of inflation is embezzlement. On this Ludwig von Mises wrote:

To avoid being blamed for the nefarious consequences of inflation, the government and its henchmen resort to a semantic trick. They try to change the meaning of the terms. They call “inflation” the inevitable consequence of inflation, namely, the rise in prices. They are anxious to relegate into oblivion the fact that this rise is produced by an increase in the amount of money and money substitutes. They never mention this increase. They put the responsibility for the rising cost of living on business.

According to Ayn Rand:

Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people’s savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist government.

When inflation is seen as a general rise in prices, then anything that contributes to price increases is called inflationary. It is no longer the central bank and fractional-reserve banking that are the sources of inflation, but rather various other causes. In this framework, not only does the central bank have nothing to do with inflation, but on the contrary, the bank is regarded as an inflation fighter.

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Forever War at the End of the World

Posted by M. C. on November 19, 2022

The Raytheon board member (Lloyd Austin https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/rev_summary.php?id=82688) turned Pentagon chief has vowed Americans will support and arm Kiev “as long as it takes” to “take back all of the territories” within its “sovereign borders.” This includes the Crimean Peninsula, the Russian controlled areas in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, as well as the Donbas Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

by Connor Freeman

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/forever-war-at-the-end-of-the-world/

nuclear mushroom cloud 757

Uncle Sam now has nuclear weapons held to humanity’s head. Washington’s recently released Nuclear Posture Review clarified that launching nuclear weapons in a first strike is indeed on the table, to “achieve U.S. objectives if deterrence fails.” This came after President Joe Biden acknowledged that his administration’s proxy war in Ukraine has brought humanity closer to nuclear “Armageddon” than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This month, the Pentagon announced it is setting up a new command, based in Germany, overseeing the training and equipping of Ukraine’s military during its fight with Russia. The command is named Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, or SAG-U. The New York Times reported the command will give the proxy war a “formal structure…roughly modeled on U.S. train-and-assist efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades.” The American people may have largely rejected the “forever wars” of the last twenty years, but the American Empire is eager to launch “long term” conflicts with Russia and China.

A possible reason for the decision to establish this new command may be to obscure the level of funding going to the proxy war, making it more difficult for American civilians and journalists to discern where the money comes from and just how much is being spent.

As Kelley Vlahos, Editorial Director at Responsible Statecraft, has written,

[Dan Caldwell, senior advisor to Concerned Veterans of America] suggests this could allow the Pentagon to carve out a protected fund for the war. “Establishing a formal, named-mission or military task-force specifically for Ukraine could further open the door to moving funding for the war in Ukraine to the Overseas Contingency Operations budget, which is essentially the Pentagon’s slush fund. That could be one of the primary motivations here—the Pentagon wants a steady stream of funding from a source that Congress has shown a lack of willingness to properly oversee.”

This news was paired with the Pentagon’s announcement of yet another $400 million arms package to Ukraine, including tanks and drones. Sabrina Singh, the deputy Pentagon press secretary, told reporters this new command ensures “we are postured to continue supporting Ukraine over the long term.” She added the U.S. remains “committed to Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February, Washington has funded Ukraine with over $67 billion, mostly in weapons, a figure greater than Moscow’s entire 2021 military budget. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has said the current policy aims to see Russia “weakened.”

Members of both parties in Congress are reportedly planning another massive aid package for Ukraine that is said to cost as much as $60 billion which would bring total spending on the war to more than $125 billion. This week, the White House requested $37.7 billion in additional funding for Ukraine. Again, this is mostly military aid, and Congress will likely compete amongst themselves to add billions more.

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Rents and Race – A Great Weekend Read

Posted by M. C. on November 19, 2022

https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=947

Rents and Race
Legacies of Progressive Policies
By William L. Anderson, David Kiriazis

This article appeared in the Summer 2013 issue of The Independent Review.

Could it be that the institutional racism of Jim Crow occurred not despite the Progressive era but because of it? Not only did the Progressive reforms create new economic rents that could be exploited by whites and by the politicians who enacted those reforms, but many leading Progressives espoused views on racial purity and segregation that put them in the vanguard of the American apartheid system.

Download PDF (19 pages)

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Goodbye G20, hello BRICS+

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2022

Meanwhile, the role of the BRICS’s New Development Bank (NDB) as well as the China-led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will be enhanced – coordinating infrastructure loans across the spectrum, as BRICS+ will be increasingly shunning dictates imposed by the US-dominated IMF and the World Bank.

https://thecradle.co/Article/Columns/18477

By 

Pepe Escobar

The redeeming quality of a tense G20 held in Bali – otherwise managed by laudable Indonesian graciousness – was to sharply define which way the geopolitical winds are blowing.

That was encapsulated in the Summit’s two highlights: the much anticipated China-US presidential meeting – representing the most important bilateral relationship of the 21st century – and the final G20 statement.

The 3-hour, 30-minute-long face-to-face meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart Joe Biden – requested by the White House – took place at the Chinese delegation’s residence in Bali, and not at the G20 venue at the luxury Apurva Kempinski in Nusa Dua.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs concisely outlined what really mattered. Specifically, Xi told Biden that Taiwan independence is simply out of the question. Xi also expressed hope that NATO, the EU, and the US will engage in “comprehensive dialogue” with Russia. Instead of confrontation, the Chinese president chose to highlight the layers of common interest and cooperation.

Biden, according to the Chinese, made several points. The US does not seek a New Cold War; does not support “Taiwan independence;” does not support “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan”; does not seek “decoupling” from China; and does not want to contain Beijing.

However, the recent record shows Xi has few reasons to take Biden at face value.

The final G20 statement was an even fuzzier matter: the result of arduous compromise.

As much as the G20 is self-described as “the premier forum for global economic cooperation,” engaged to “address the world’s major economic challenges,” the G7 inside the G20 in Bali had the summit de facto hijacked by war. “War” gets almost double the number of mentions in the statement compared to “food” after all.

The collective west, including the Japanese vassal state, was bent on including the war in Ukraine and its “economic impacts” – especially the food and energy crisis – in the statement. Yet without offering even a shade of context, related to NATO expansion. What mattered was to blame Russia – for everything.

The Global South effect

It was up to this year’s G20 host Indonesia – and the next host, India – to exercise trademark Asian politeness and consensus building. Jakarta and New Delhi worked extremely hard to find wording that would be acceptable to both Moscow and Beijing. Call it the Global South effect.

Still, China wanted changes in the wording. This was opposed by western states, while Russia did not review the last-minute wording because Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had already departed.

On point 3 out of 52, the statement “expresses its deepest regret over the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and demands the complete and unconditional withdrawal of armed forces from the territory of Ukraine.”

“Russian aggression” is the standard NATO mantra – not shared by virtually the whole Global South.

The statement draws a direct correlation between the war and a non-contextualized “aggravation of pressing problems in the global economy – slowing economic growth, rising inflation, disruption of supply chains, worsening energy, and food security, increased risks to financial stability.”

As for this passage, it could not be more self-evident: “The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible. The peaceful resolution of conflicts, efforts to address crises, as well as diplomacy and dialogue, are vital. Today’s era must not be of war.”

This is ironic given that NATO and its public relations department, the EU, “represented” by the unelected eurocrats of the European Commission, don’t do “diplomacy and dialogue.”

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America: Broken By Digital Hallucinogens

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2022

This is the eve after a broken election, as broken machines count broken vote tallies, and as broken media “calls” outcomes. Everyone in legacy media is waiting “for AP to call the outcome,” which is sadly hilarious, given that AP has a Memorandum of Understanding that it won’t disclose fully to our Congress, with the news agency Xinhua, the CCP’s chief propaganda arm.

https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/america-broken-by-digital-hallucinogens


Dr Naomi Wolf

This is the eve after a broken election, as broken machines count broken vote tallies, and as broken media “calls” outcomes. Everyone in legacy media is waiting “for AP to call the outcome,” which is sadly hilarious, given that AP has a Memorandum of Understanding that it won’t disclose fully to our Congress, with the news agency Xinhua, the CCP’s chief propaganda arm.

Treasonous media call a treasonous election process. [https://blog.ap.org/announcements/ap-response-to-questions-about-recent-xinhua-meeting]

In one state, the outcome is being overseen by one of the two main contestants — which is itself a true banana-republic level situation. [https://azsos.gov/about-office/secretaries-since-statehood/katie-hobbs].

In my own state, New York, the opposition candidate conceded, to my disgust, when there were still 1.4 million uncounted votes. [https://nypost.com/2022/11/09/lee-zeldin-to-concede-to-kathy-hochul-in-2022-ny-gov-race-campaign/] Why? Well, “NBC called” it – the day before. [https://nypost.com/2022/11/09/lee-zeldin-to-concede-to-kathy-hochul-in-2022-ny-gov-race-campaign/]

All those voters were disenfranchised.

The Statue of Liberty holds up her torch in the dark harbor, disregarded. It’s pretty much Moscow on the Hudson here.

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The Man You’re Not Allowed to Hear – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2022

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/11/thomas-woods/the-man-youre-not-allowed-to-hear/

By Tom Woods

From the Tom Woods Letter:

We all know there are certain topics that the Big Tech platforms — YouTube especially — won’t let you discuss.

Or, put more precisely, since so much content is released on these platforms they probably won’t be able to take down literally every post on a particular topic, but you always have to be looking over your shoulder, wondering if your post — or indeed your entire account — will be deleted.

One of those topics, of course, is the 2020 election.

I have seen people have YouTube videos removed simply for mentioning that other people have questioned the results. That’s how ridiculous it is.

Well, here’s a bizarre twist.

You’ll remember the guy known as the Q Shaman, the guy with the horns sitting in Mike Pence’s seat in the Senate on January 6.

To be honest, he seems (to put it delicately) like rather an oddball to me. But because I’m a curious person, I see no reason why I shouldn’t be able to listen to what he has to say.

But Twitter and the other platforms sure do.

My longtime friend Jason Rink recently completed a three-part documentary series on the Q Shaman, called Q Sent Me. It makes no ideological judgments. It simply tells the story, and lets the man and those close to him (including his mother) say what they want to say. That’s it.

For heaven’s sake, we’ve let Jeffrey Dahmer and George W. Bush speak to the public; what possible reason could there be for banning anything that involves Jacob Chansley (the Q Shaman)?

But the day after I interviewed Jason, Twitter removed the film’s account.

And of course there’s no chance YouTube will allow the film.

Again, serial killers have been interviewed and their interviews posted online. But not a guy with horns on his head?

I rather doubt people are going to be converted to his cause by listening to Chansley talk about the “quantum realm.” But you’re still not even allowed to see even a straightforward telling of his story.

Here’s my conversation with filmmaker and all-around good guy Jason Rink about the subject and the ordeal. We also discuss the independent platform Movies Plus, which does feature the film and which is another example of a new alternative platform that goes against the grain.

Enjoy:

Ep. 2236 The Man Whose Words Are Forbidden

Also, I mentioned yesterday a free event that’s going on soon that I feel sure is bound to be of interest to some of you good folks:

A rancher who goes by the name Texas Slim, whom I’ve featured on the Tom Woods Show, is putting on a one-day Food Resiliency Town Hall.

Instead of all the weird fake meat products and all the hideous ingredients going into our food (and indeed into the animals being raised for us to eat), Texas Slim offers a simple plan:

  • Decentralize the food supply.
  • Localize everything.
  • Build relationships between consumers and farmers and ranchers.
  • Create a “parallel economy” in the food industry.

And, he says, return to “a simple life of connecting with our land, the food that comes from it, and the people that raise it.”

We’re all about parallel economies around this here newsletter, so I thought you’d like to know about this event.

It’s free to attend online; if you’d like to attend in person (just outside of Austin, Texas) there’s a small fee.

Check it out:

http://www.tomwoods.com/goodfood

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The Road to Totalitarianism (Revisited) – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2022

At this point, it isn’t the mask and “vaccination” mandates themselves that are important. They are simply the symbols and rituals of the new official ideology, an ideology that has divided societies into two irreconcilable categories of people: (1) those who are prepared to conform their beliefs to the official narrative of the day, no matter how blatantly ridiculous it is, and otherwise click heels and follow the orders of the global-capitalist ruling establishment, no matter how destructive and fascistic they may be; and (2) those who are not prepared to do that.

The global-capitalist ruling establishment couldn’t care less whether you are a “progressive,” or a “conservative,” or a “libertarian,” or an “anarchist,” or whatever you call yourself. What they care about is whether you’re a Normal or a Deviant.

CJ Hopkins

It feels like it’s finally over, doesn’t it, the whole “apocalyptic pandemic” thing? I mean, really, really over this time. Not like all those other times when you thought it was over, but it wasn’t over, and was like the end of those Alien movies, where it seems like Ripley has finally escaped, but the alien is hiding out in the shuttle, or the escape pod, or Ripley’s intestinal tract.

But this time doesn’t feel like that. This time it feels like it’s really, really over. Go out and take a look around. Hardly anyone is wearing masks anymore (except where masks are mandatory) or being coerced into submitting to “vaccinations” (except where “vaccination” is mandatory), and the hordes of hate-drunk New Normal fanatics who demanded that “the Unvaccinated” be segregated, censored, fired from their jobs, and otherwise demonized and persecuted, have all fallen silent (except for those who haven’t).

Everything is back to normal, right?

Wrong. Everything is not back to normal. Everything is absolutely New Normal. What is over is the “shock-and-awe” phase, which was never meant to go on forever. It was always only meant to get us here.

Where, you’re probably asking, is “here”? “Here” is a place where the new official ideology has been firmly established as our new “reality,” woven into the fabric of normal everyday life. No, not everywhere, just everywhere that matters. (Do you really think the global-capitalist ruling classes care what people in Lakeland, Florida, Elk River, Idaho, or some village in Sicily believe about “reality”?) Yes, most government restrictions have been lifted, mainly because they are no longer necessary, but in centers of power throughout the West, in political, corporate, and cultural spheres, in academia, the mainstream media, and so on, the New Normal has become “reality,” or, in other words, “just the way it is,” which is the ultimate goal of every ideology.

For example, I just happened upon this “important COVID-19 information,” which you need to be aware of (and strictly adhere to) if you want to attend a performance at this Off-Broadway theater in New York City, where “everything is back to normal.”

I could pull up countless further examples, but I don’t want to waste your time. At this point, it isn’t the mask and “vaccination” mandates themselves that are important. They are simply the symbols and rituals of the new official ideology, an ideology that has divided societies into two irreconcilable categories of people: (1) those who are prepared to conform their beliefs to the official narrative of the day, no matter how blatantly ridiculous it is, and otherwise click heels and follow the orders of the global-capitalist ruling establishment, no matter how destructive and fascistic they may be; and (2) those who are not prepared to do that.

Let’s go ahead and call them “Normals” and “Deviants.” I think you know which one you are.

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CNN Banned From Ukraine After Showing N@zi Salute

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2022

See @ 4:00 for comments regarding US supported Nazi militias.

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2022/11/16/cnn-banned-from-ukraine-after-showing-nzi-salute/

by Jimmy Dore Comedy

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US Empire Views Ukrainians And Russians As Lab Rats For Weapons Testing

Posted by M. C. on November 17, 2022

A former Lithuanian president is quoted as saying, “We’re learning in Ukraine how to fight, and we’re learning how to use our NATO equipment,” adding, “It is shameful for me because Ukrainians are paying with their lives for these exercises for us.”

I’m glad Eastern Europe can finally figure out how to use the $billions in (likely) US taxpayer supplied weapons. Lucky they weren’t attacked before now. They would have looked pretty stupid.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/us-empire-views-ukrainians-and-russians?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Caitlin Johnstone

A surprisingly frank article by The New York Times titled “Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons” describes how the imperial war machine is capitalising on the US proxy war to test its weapons for future use.

“Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems, and new ways to use them, that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come,” write’s NYT’s Lara Jakes.

Jakes writes that “new advances in technology and training in Ukraine are being closely monitored for the ways they are changing the face of the fight.” These new technological advancements include an information system known as Delta, as well as “remote-controlled boats, anti-drone weapons known as SkyWipers and an updated version of an air-defense system built in Germany that the German military itself has yet to use.”

A former Lithuanian president is quoted as saying, “We’re learning in Ukraine how to fight, and we’re learning how to use our NATO equipment,” adding, “It is shameful for me because Ukrainians are paying with their lives for these exercises for us.”

Yeah, no shit.

Ben Norton @BenjaminNorton

US government mouthpiece the New York Times admits that NATO imperialists are using Ukraine as a laboratory to test new weapons and technology. The military-industrial complex makes more and more money while Ukrainians and Russians die

New York Times World @nytimesworld

Ukraine has become a testing ground for state-of-the-art weapons and information systems that Western political officials and military commanders predict could shape warfare for generations to come https://t.co/ngB0gaVQ2H1:59 AM ∙ Nov 16, 20221,056Likes500Retweets

At some point The New York Times article was re-titled from “Western Allies Look to Ukraine as a Testing Ground for Weapons” to the slightly less obvious “For Western Weapons, the Ukraine War Is a Beta Test.”

News that the west is using Ukraine to test weapons systems for future wars aligns with recent comments by the commander of the US nuclear arsenal that the proxy war is a test run for a much bigger conflict that’s on its way.

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