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The “Free World” isn’t looking so free these days

Posted by M. C. on October 21, 2022

The Anglosphere is completely captured by globalist interests.

Jordan Schachtel

The world’s English-speaking nations that share historical and ideological ties — commonly referred to as the Anglosphere — were once understood as the world’s most powerful beacons for the tenets of freedom. Through our elected politicians in 2022, however, this social contract has vanished, and its ideas are completely absent within the halls of political power. In today’s Anglosphere, it’s difficult to find a politician or policymaker, on either side of the dominant political factions of government, who genuinely defends the enlightenment principles that sparked the incredible and unprecedented human flourishing of past decades and centuries.

This morning, British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced her resignation after only 6 weeks in office.

Much of the legacy media cited a “Tory revolt,” leading the Free World normies to believe that perhaps some kind of freedom rebellion has occurred.

In fact, just the opposite is true. Truss, they say, stepped out of line by proposing a “risky plan” to cut taxes.

Today’s U.K. tories believe in what amounts to communism + tax cuts, but the tax cuts are negotiable. And with a global recession and economic crisis underway, the Oxbridge-educated, World Economic Forum-groomed U.K. politicians ousted the British PM after only 44 days.

British political observers now believe that a man named Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, is the tory frontrunner to replace Truss as prime minister.

Sunak went to Oxford, and he speaks like this:

“The challenge of climate change is clear, and it is urgent. We need to ensure a positive and fair transition to net zero.”

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US lawmaker reignites effort to curb presidential war powers

Posted by M. C. on October 21, 2022

Congresswoman Barbara Lee is pushing to pass a bill to repeal the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which gave the White House the power to invade Iraq

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-lawmaker-barbara-lee-effort-curb-presidential-war-powers

By 

Umar A Farooq in 

Washington

US Congresswoman Barbara Lee, the only lawmaker to have voted against the invasion of Afghanistan, is renewing a legislative push to pass a resolution that would limit the White House’s ability to wage war.

In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, Lee, along with anti-war groups and other lawmakers, is mobilising support to repeal the resolution that paved the way for the military intervention, the 2002 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF).

During a webinar on Wednesday evening hosted by anti-war advocacy groups, including Win Without War, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) and Afghans For A Better Tomorrow, Lee said that since 2001, more lawmakers have learned “not to give any president the authority to wage war, for whatever reason, in perpetuity”.

“It’s unfortunate that we’ve had to go 20, 21 years in this, this fight to repeal these authorisations that should have never happened,” Lee said.

The AUMF is a resolution passed by Congress that gives the president permission to wage military action, without the need for Congress’ approval, as laid out in the specific terms set in the measure.

There are currently multiple AUMFs active: a 1991 AUMF and a 2002 AUMF that were both for Iraq; and a 2001 AUMF that gives the president the ability to wage war against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

The authorisations have been continually used by the past four administrations to launch military campaigns and strikes across the Middle East. The 2002 AUMF was used by the Donald Trump administration to assassinate Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.

The 2002 AUMF is close to being repealed, with the House in July voting in favour of revoking the authorisation and companion legislation in the Senate gaining bipartisan support.

“We’re close. Now we’re in the Senate with Senator [Tim] Kaine working and we’ve got to find 10 Republicans,” Lee said.

The repeal also has support from the Biden administration, with the White House issuing a policy statement noting that it supports Lee’s bill that would repeal the 2002 AUMF.

“There is strong bipartisan support for repealing the 2002 Iraq AUMF in both the House and the Senate. There are 11 Republican cosponsors of a Senate bill to repeal the 2002 AUMF,” Heather Brandon-Smith, a legislative director at FCNL, said during the webinar on Wednesday.

“So that’s enough to overcome a filibuster, and what’s more, the White House has even come out in support of this repeal.”

A difficult path to end 2001 AUMF

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Pentagon’s new civilian casualty plan won’t include reopening past cases

Posted by M. C. on October 21, 2022

“If you don’t reopen those cases, you don’t really understand what’s gone wrong,” said Emily Tripp, director of U.K.-based airstrike monitoring group Airwars. “Can you really know if you’re getting to learn your lessons if you don’t know why the thing has gone wrong in the first place?”

Why do I think the new plan consists of better ways not to get caught.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/20/pentagon-wont-reopen-past-cases-of-civilian-deaths-00062737

By LARA SELIGMAN

The Pentagon has decided that an overhaul aimed at reducing risks to civilian casualties will not include reinvestigating past incidents, even those that were erroneously dismissed, according to a department spokesperson.

The plan also will not involve reopening past cases in which civilian casualties were confirmed but the department did not make amends to the victims’ families, Lt. Col. Cesar Santiago-Santini said. The agency will, however, continue its policy of reviewing cases if new evidence emerges, he added.

The Pentagon’s new action plan, released in August, “is a forward-looking document that focuses on how DoD will further refine our capabilities and processes to better mitigate and respond to civilian harm, and provisions relating to reevaluation of past incidents of civilian harm are therefore outside the scope of this plan,” Santiago-Santini said in a statement.

In the near term, in accordance with the new action plan, DoD “will further expand the sources of information used in assessments and investigations so that DoD has access to more information and is more capable of assessing and investigating the results of military operations,” he said.

Outside groups focused on preventing civilian casualties said they were disappointed with the decision. The groups have long urged the Pentagon to provide better accounting of the incidents, many of which they say were improperly adjudicated or summarily dismissed.

The groups have pressed DoD to reopen previous cases as part of the overhaul, in part to learn lessons from past mistakes.

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Liberalism, True and False

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2022

What else are we to think when a president of the United States says that his selection for a new appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court had to be a “black woman,” but when that nominee was asked during the Senate confirmation hearings if she could define a “woman,” she declined, saying that she was not a biologist. So, a “black woman” accepts being nominated for the highest court of the land, but she cannot explain what makes her eligible for that appointment under the declared criteria.

So, to give our own answer to Elliot Dodds’ question, “Is liberalism dead?” Not for as long as there are any who cherish the liberty and autonomy of every human being, along with their own freedom.

by Richard M. Ebeling

The death of liberalism has been hailed or feared for well over a century now. In the United States, the tribal collectivists of identity politics and critical race theory insist that America has never been about freedom. It has always been a racist society born with the institution of slavery. The idea of liberal individualism is a ruse to hide the oppression and exploitation of women and “people of color” by capitalist white males.There was an underlying humility in the older classical liberalism that assumed that each person could better find his own way than to presume that political paternalists could make better decisions for them.
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Among conservatives, liberalism is rejected for not fostering a proper moral sense in people and creating a group loyalty of something outside of and better than “merely” the autonomy of the narrowly self-interested individual, both inside and outside of the marketplace. The role of a properly led political order is to inculcate and instill such views and values in the American citizenry. A renewed sense of national identity and purpose is necessary to save the “soul” of America.

Both on “the left” and among conservatives, there is an intolerance and vehement dislike for many, if not all, forms of intellectual and cultural diversity (the latter having nothing to do with the scam notions of “diversity” among the “politically correct”). There is a deep desire among both these political groups for a far greater homogenization of humanity in thought, deed, and societal identity.

“Progressives” and conservatives want to plan your life

This is reflected in their respective willingness to turn to those in political power to use the coercive authority of government to impose their dogmas on the general population. Those on “the left,” in the name of “racial and gender justice” and saving the world from “climate change,” wish to use the government to control, regulate, and plan the economic and social activities of everyone in society. Their ideal is the centrally planned economy under which “right-thinking” people in government (that is, people like ‘them”) would determine and dictate the wages we could earn and the prices we might pay, the types of employment and workplace environments we would be required to accept, and the variety of goods and services and the means of production to provide them.

Our use of words is to be circumscribed to fit their ideological lexicon of race and gender. But if someone is looking for a revised dictionary of clearly defined new terms and meanings that can serve as a “safe space” to assure one does not offend any in society, they will not find it. Male and female and all imaginable things in-between are now amorphous concepts that have no linguistically certain meanings. What else are we to think when a president of the United States says that his selection for a new appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court had to be a “black woman,” but when that nominee was asked during the Senate confirmation hearings if she could define a “woman,” she declined, saying that she was not a biologist. So, a “black woman” accepts being nominated for the highest court of the land, but she cannot explain what makes her eligible for that appointment under the declared criteria.

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Choosing Sides in the New Cold War

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2022

by Ted Snider

Outside the US, UK and Europe, the war in Ukraine looks more complicated than it does in the US. And many of those countries want to reserve the right to remain nonaligned and want to push for a diplomatic solution to the war. It is not true that the US does not ask those countries to choose sides, that it does “not ask any nation to choose between the United States or any other partner.”

antiwar.com

In his September 21 address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Biden said “We do not seek a Cold War. We do not ask any nation to choose between the United States or any other partner.”

It took a lot of courage to make that claim.

On October 5, OPEC+ announced that they were cutting oil production by two million barrels a day. That represents a 2% reduction of the daily global supply, larger than expected and the biggest cut in over two years.

That cut in oil production comes despite Biden’s plea to Saudi Arabia to increase oil production to offset rising prices caused by Russian sanctions and, crucially, boost the efficacy of sanctions on Russia. Biden offered Saudi Arabia an expanded “strategic partnership,” a “commitment to supporting Saudi Arabia’s security and territorial defense,” and a further commitment to uphold Saudi Arabia as the dominant power in the region.

Biden welcomed the pariah kingdom back into the world community in a trade for siding with the US by increasing oil production. He got rejected. And that is when the White House proved that they do ask nations to choose sides: “It’s clear that OPEC+ is aligning with Russia with today’s announcement,” announced White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

And there is a penalty for not being on America’s side. Several members of congress have called for the US to respond by putting an end to all US military aid to Saudi Arabia. Senator Bob Mendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, promised that, because of Saudi Arabia’s “decision to help underwrite Putin’s war,” he “will not green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine.” Legislation has been introduced to remove US troops and missile systems from Saudi Arabia and to stop all arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The price that Saudi Arabia will pay is not for its decision’s effect on oil markets or anything other than choosing sides: the military relationship could be restarted if Saudi Arabia “reconsiders its embrace of Putin,” said Senator Richard Blumental and Representative Ro Khanna, describing the legislation they have proposed.

The experience of Saudi Arabia is not an isolated example that refutes Biden’s claim that the US does not ask countries to choose sides.

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Joe Biden’s COVID Dictatorship Will Never End

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2022

by Jim Bovard

The Biden administration formally decreed last week that America’s COVID “emergency” continues. That proclamation was tricky to reconcile with President Biden’s announcement last month on 60 Minutes: “The pandemic is over.”  Apparently, that was malarkey—perhaps part of the Democratic messaging for the midterm congressional elections…

Biden’s emergency perpetuation seeks to provide a legal whitewash for his $500+ billion student loan bailout charade. Biden justified the bailout by citing the HEROES Act of 2003—a law passed to assist soldiers and their family members during the Global War on Terror. Law professor Jonathan Turley wrote, “Biden had promised to wipe out tuition debt in the [2020] campaign and simply hijacked the Act for that unintended purpose.” Biden previously admitted that the law would not justify blanket forgiveness of college loans but he and his advisors decided to force Americans to pay any price for Democratic votes in the midterm elections. The administration provided no evidence that the beneficiaries (who earn up to $250,000) have suffered any financial harm from the pandemic. College graduates are doing much better financially than other Americans who will get stuck with the bill for their schooling

In his raging Philadelphia speech last month, Biden declared, “Today, COVID no longer controls our lives.” But Biden has no intent to forfeit any control over Americans that he unjustifiably seized during the pandemic he says no longer exists. Nothing in Biden’s oath of office entitled him to turn the Constitution into COVID road kill…

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Watch “have a good day anyway” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2022

https://youtube.com/shorts/bal5IHbJlT8?feature=share

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Watch: Bill Gates Says European Energy Crisis Is “Good”

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2022

“We need to find non Russian hydrocarbon sources to substitute for those so there’s coal plants running and variety of things..”

Hydrocarbons! Say What! So Europe needs those coal and nuke plants it no longer has after all.

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/watch-bill-gates-says-european-energy-crisis-good

While people in Europe face the prospect of not being able to afford to heat their homes this winter, and experiencing freezing dark blackouts, Bill Gates declared that “in the long run” the energy crisis is a “good” thing.

Touting his Breakthrough Energy Ventures climate-technology (carbon tax) investment company, Gates told CNBC “People did get a little optimistic about how quickly the transition could be done.”

“Without the Russian natural gas being available in Europe… it’s a setback,” Gates continued.

“We need to find non Russian hydrocarbon sources to substitute for those so there’s coal plants running and variety of things, because, you know, keeping, you know, people warm, keeping those economies in decent shape is a priority,” Gates asserted.

He continued, “Now, on the other hand, it’s good for the long run, because people won’t want to be dependent on Russian natural gas so they’ll move to these new approaches more rapidly.”

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Why We Need True History and Good Historians

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2022

https://mises.org/wire/why-we-need-true-history-and-good-historians

Ryan McMaken

[This article is adapted from the introduction to the Historical Revisionism panel at the 2022 Supporters Summit at the Arizona Biltmore.]

In his novel 1984, George Orwell noted the role of the regime in controlling information about the past. After being “re-educated” by the ruling party, the protagonist Winston Smith dutifully recited the party’s wisdom regarding the fact that “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

In other words, the ruling party in the world of 1984 understood that controlling historical narratives is key in influencing the public’s ideological views.

This is difficult to deny.

Speaking on the Industrial Revolution, historian Ralph Raico noted the importance of history in winning ideological and political battles. According to Raico:

It’s a curious fact that of all the disciplines, it seems that history more than philosophy or economics determines people’s political views. We might consider this unfair. We might think that economics has more to say about what people should think about competition and antitrust, philosophy has more to say about what people should think about natural rights. But in fact, most often it seems that its history—or interpretations of history—that will influence the positions that people take.

Some people, of course, will insist that the most important means of convincing people to one position or another involves rigorous logical arguments. This approach no doubt is of special importance to some, and sound economic and philosophical thinking is certainly important when it comes to interpreting and explaining events.

But for most people, it seems—as Raico notes—historical narratives have had an outsized role in influencing and setting ideological views.

We can easily see this by noting several examples.

Among the most important historical narratives that affect people’s ideological views are views of the Industrial Revolution.

Myth as History

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Who Are the “Straussians”?

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2022

By Brion McClanahan

BrionMcClanahan.com

I’ve received several emails over the years asking me to explain what I mean by the “Straussians.”

With the theme of “myths” this week, I thought it was a good time to go into more detail.

The Straussians are a particular type of American conservative based on the teachings of Leo Strauss through perhaps his most important student, Harry Jaffa.

Jaffa became somewhat of a star in the post-World War II conservative movement when he began challenging traditional American conservatives on the War, Lincoln, and the ambiguous term “equality.”

While never directly stating this as his primary motive, it became clear that Jaffa and other “conservatives” worried that American conservatism was intertwined with segregation, racism, and the ghosts of slavery, and thus mainstream Americans would consistently reject traditional conservatives once the Civil Rights Movement had become ingrained in American society.

Nixon may have won with a “Southern strategy” designed to blunt the influence of someone like George Wallace, a man William Buckley hated calling a “conservative”, but the Civil Rights movement had also helped produce Kennedy and Johnson and the Leftist “treasury of virtue.”

To Jaffa, Lincoln offered a rebuttal to this charge. You see, if Lincoln was a conservative–and Jaffa thought he was–and if the War had been fought against racism and slavery–and Jaffa thought it had–and if Lincoln believed in the “proposition that all men are created equal”–and the Gettysburg Address showed that he did–then American “conservatism” was based on an idea, born in the Declaration, defended by blood by Union soldiers and codified in November 1863 at Gettysburg.

Every event leading to civil rights was then a “conservative” reaction to a distortion of the “idea” of America.

Jaffa’s fairy tale, and it was just that, was based on ideology. Jaffa was a brilliant man always willing to engage in intellectual debates, but like Strauss he was an ideologue wrestling with tangible history that did not fit his narrative. The two are incompatible.

More than anything, Jaffa and his students (the Claremont Institute in California) now have an oversized influence on the direction of “conservatism” and it’s public image. It’s clear why. Jaffa took the sting out of being a conservative by allowing his students to point fingers at the antithesis of American history–the South–while feigning the moral high ground.

The one major problem with this interpretation is that the Left never really bought it.

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