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Bribe Money for Ukrainian Officials?

Posted by M. C. on June 20, 2022

For skeptics, I refer to an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal whose title pretty much tells it all: “High-Ranking Afghan Officials Escaped to Luxury Homes Abroad.” The opening paragraph states, “Some senior Afghan officials and their families spent millions purchasing expensive homes in the U.S. and abroad in the final years of the war, which became luxurious landings when they escaped the escalating violence in Afghanistan.”

by Jacob G. Hornberger

In my blog post of May 18, 2022, I raised the possibility that the $40 billion aid package that Congress quickly approved for Ukraine was going to be used, at least in part, to pay multimillion dollar bribes to Ukrainian officials. After all, why else would the members of Congress, as well as the Pentagon’s assets within the mainstream press, react so vociferously against the idea of having the Inspector General monitor how the money is being used? And what better way to ensure that Ukrainian officials remain on board for perpetual war than the payment of bribes to officials serving in what is perhaps the most corrupt regime on the planet?

For skeptics, I refer to an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal whose title pretty much tells it all: “High-Ranking Afghan Officials Escaped to Luxury Homes Abroad.” The opening paragraph states, “Some senior Afghan officials and their families spent millions purchasing expensive homes in the U.S. and abroad in the final years of the war, which became luxurious landings when they escaped the escalating violence in Afghanistan.” The article then goes on to detail some of those “luxurious landings.”

Okay, yes, it is conceivable that those Afghan officials are all honest politicians and bureaucrats in an impoverished nation who became millionaires by dutifully saving portions of their government salaries. 

But there is another possibility, a much more likely one in my opinion. Do you remember those planeloads of U.S.-taxpayer-provided hundred-dollar bills that Pentagon officials were shipping into Afghanistan? Do you recall how there wasn’t any Inspector General monitoring how all that moolah was being disbursed? I think there is a very good chance that it was being handed out to Afghan officials as bribes to bring them on board in support of the U.S. invasion and occupation of their country. 

I’m reminded of the CIA’s plan to prevent Salvador Allende from becoming president of Chile after he received a plurality of votes in the 1970 presidential election. Since the election was thrown into the Chilean congress, the CIA decided to secretly bribe the members of the Chilean Congress with U.S.-taxpayer money as a way to induce them to vote against Allende. 

The CIA also initiated a scheme designed to induce the Chilean national-security establishment to implement a violent coup that would keep Allende from taking office and, most likely, leave him dead in the process. As I detail in my new book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, when the overall commander of Chile’s armed forces, Gen. Rene Schneider, refused to go along with the CIA’s evil and illegal scheme, the CIA orchestrated his kidnapping/assassination, which left Schneider shot dead on the streets of Santiago. 

Ironically, the strong public reaction in Chile against Schneider’s assassination doomed the CIA’s bribery plot, and the Chilean congress ended up confirming Allende as president. Three years later, the CIA’s regime-change operation succeeded when the Chilean national-security establishment, with the full support of the U.S. national-security establishment, took control over the government, leaving the democratically elected Allende dead in the process. 

As I have repeatedly written, the war in Ukraine is not about freedom. It’s about membership in the old, rotten Cold War dinosaur known as NATO. Ukrainian officials were willing to sacrifice thousands of their citizens and the destruction of their country ostensibly for the sake of joining NATO. The question that obviously arises is: Was there something else — like the payment of multimillion bribes from U.S.-taxpayer-provided moolah — that induced crooked and corrupt Ukrainian officials to sacrifice their citizens and their country?

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‘ESG,’ the Threat to Liberty You Haven’t Heard Of

Posted by M. C. on June 20, 2022

When Coca-Cola, Gillette, Disney, BP, and other multinational corporations act counter to good business practices to advance a political agenda antithetical to the beliefs of most of their consumer base it is an effort to improve the new value-based credit score known as ESG.

by Tommy Salmons

In March of 2020 COVID-19 spread to the shores of the United States, introducing a medical threat that had all the signs of devastating families from sea to shining sea. But in the shadows, slipping in under the veil of a potentially deadly pandemic, another threat loomed. This threat, known as ESG, was not airborne or viral in the traditional sense. This threat was birthed in the imaginations of banks, corporations, and governments, and much like COVID, this threat is going to alter the life of millions of people worldwide.

ESG is an acronym that stands for Environmental, Social (Justice), and (Corporate) Governance. The goal of ESG, as World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab stated in Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is to utilize investors to move corporations into a more socially progressive direction; moving technologies and businesses away from the current models of doing business to a new stakeholder method of business.

“Entrepreneurs and Investors are the vanguard when it comes to marrying a values-based approach to technological development…It makes sense that thinking about broader social impact at this stage would have significant cascading effects. Investors, on the other hand, have the carrot with which to direct the development of technologies…The values of entrepreneurs and organizational leaders have a tremendous influence on the workplace and how technologies are developed. Leading from the front can transform company culture and prioritize societal values.”

When Coca-Cola, Gillette, Disney, BP, and other multinational corporations act counter to good business practices to advance a political agenda antithetical to the beliefs of most of their consumer base it is an effort to improve the new value-based credit score known as ESG. As corporations respond to investors and the credit score used to determine societal value, they push agendas intended to move the Overton Window and cultural acceptance towards a more progressive agenda.

Proponents of ESG metrics utilize the famous libertarian mantra of private companies being able to do whatever they feel is best for their company and fiduciary responsibilities, but there’s nothing private about ESG. In March of 2020 the SEC announced they would be forming an ESG Taskforce. The initiative has expanded to requiring publicly traded firms to make detailed disclosures on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. As with all regulations ESG is being sold as serving the greater good at the cost of business, costing the consumer more money.

Proponents of ESG make a litany of arguments to justify their regulatory dreams:

  1. “ESG is crucial because it offers a focused framework through which governments, businesses, and citizens can work consistently toward solving serious global challenges.”
  2. “ESG, at its core, is a means by which companies can be evaluated with respect to a broad range of socially desirable ends.”
  3. “ESG criteria can help investors avoid investment losses when companies engaged in risky or unethical practices are held accountable.”

But they will never address in any detail how ESG metrics will be utilized to make these changes to society. And if ESG is just a tool to help investors make decisions why is the SEC mandating ESG data disclosures? And who is considered an investor?

Chart published by the Ethics and Compliance Initiative

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“Your not putting those in this room!”

Posted by M. C. on June 19, 2022

Audio diffusers vs absorbers

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Spelling Bee Contestant Asks The Definition of “Woman”

Posted by M. C. on June 18, 2022

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Watch “Talking About Stoicism 179 Achieving Goals” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on June 18, 2022

https://youtu.be/toKEzsHHABk

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Rothbard on Today’s Progressive War Jingoism | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on June 18, 2022

Today, as always, the real antiwar movement finds its traction far outside the Beltway and the commentariat. Average people, less affluent and war weary after our two decades in the Middle East, dare to worry more about gas prices and rent than Ukraine. Trump listened to those people. Will Joe Biden? Or will he succumb to the modern-day Walter Lippmanns? 

https://mises.org/wire/rothbard-todays-progressive-war-jingoism

Jeff Deist

Readers of Murray Rothbard’s articles and speeches on war collectivism will immediately recognize the progressive pietist fervor surrounding today’s progressive war jingoism: everywhere is Ukraine! The atavistic need to analogize today’s situation to 1938, with Vladimir Putin as Adolf Hitler and war skeptics as Neville Chamberlain at Munich, is proof of this. The lessons of 1914, where a series of tragic blunders turned a regional conflict into a conflagration across Europe, are far more apposite.

The obvious interest for the US is containment of the war as a terrible but internecine (and ongoing) fight between Russians and Ukrainians. Absent what ought to be defunct obligations to nearby NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) countries, absolutely no US role should be remotely contemplated.

The war chorus, however, is not to be underestimated. It sings loudest from the neoconservative Left.

Outlets like The Bulwark, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Fox News, and MSNBC are all natural habitats for the war promoters seeking to sit on Joe Biden’s shoulder and yell in his ear. Will the president, reeling from bad poll numbers and bad economic news at home, succumb to the voices urging escalation and promising the glory to a strong commander in chief?

To date, Biden’s public statements have been reasonably reassuring. He earlier insisted no US troops would be sent into the country and has repeated this since. A proposed three-way deal—sending American F-16 fighters to the Poles, freeing up their Soviet MiGs for Ukrainian pilots—appears to have been scuttled over fears of escalation. The establishment of a no-fly zone in Ukraine, which would compel NATO (including US) pilots to intercept and destroy Russian fighters and bombers, is off the table for now.

But Biden’s disastrous trip to address NATO in Brussels last week resulted in several gaffes that raise questions as to his real thinking. Is regime change the real but unstated US policy for Russia? Did he misspeak when telling members of the Eighty-Second Airborne what they might “see” in Ukraine? Getting rid of Putin is no easy task, and an old-fashioned land war in Eastern Europe with a nuclear foe is an unbelievably daunting notion. Does he face the same kinds of active insubordination from war hawks in his own cabinet, Pentagon, Joint Chiefs, and CIA that plagued JFK and Donald Trump? Is he falling prey to the Victoria Nuland wing of the State Department?

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The Fed Can’t Replace The Market To Find The Best Interest Rate

Posted by M. C. on June 18, 2022

The failure of central planning is manifesting in our world again, this time from The Fed. There’s no “right way” to plan the economy, or to manipulate interest rates, or to counterfeit money. It’s all wrong and destructive! The only fix is to End The Fed and to use sound money once again.

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No, It’s Not “Greed” or “Price Gouging” That’s Driving up Gas Prices

Posted by M. C. on June 18, 2022

This has certainly succeeded in driving crude prices above what they would have otherwise been. Fortunately, the plan has also partly failed. China and India have been buying up large amounts of Russian crude, ensuring that supply remains in the global market. This means global supplies are not strained as much as would have occurred had the Biden administration’s attempt at isolating Russia succeeded.

But while access to crude has not evaporated as the US regime intended, refinery capacity continues to lag. This has driven up gasoline prices to higher peaks than crude.

https://mises.org/wire/no-its-not-greed-or-price-gouging-thats-driving-gas-prices

Ryan McMaken

Both consumer and producer prices rose near multidecade highs last month. Price inflation rose to 8.6 percent while wholesale producer prices rose by more than 10 percent.

In both cases, a significant factor behind rising prices—but certainly not the only factor—was high energy prices. This has been reflected in prices related to transportation and shipping. Prices for air travel, for example, have seen some of the biggest price increases in recent months, while gasoline (naturally) has fueled sticker stock for households across the nation.

Perhaps most notable to the average consumer has been the increase in gas prices. In June, gasoline prices have risen on average to a new nominal high of over $5 per gallon.

Short of recession (or depression), relief will likely have to come in the form of increasing supply. The easy-money policies of the central bank have fueled spikes in demand for nearly all products, but this leads to a problem: rising demand has not come with rising production. In other words, the regime can easily increase the supply of money, by simply creating money out of thin air. But the regime can’t do the same with oil or gasoline. Unlike fiat money, oil and gasoline must actually be extracted and processed.

So, we end up with increasing supplies of dollars chasing oil and gas supplies that are increasing at a much slower pace. The result is rising price inflation.

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be much relief on the horizon. US bans on Russian oil have disrupted global oil markets and cut off the US consumer from ready imports. This certainly hasn’t helped bring crude oil prices down. But when it comes to gasoline prices, another sizable factor is the fact refineries are running below past capacity. Even when US markets have access to crude oil, gasoline production lags.

Much of this is being blamed on logistical problems stemming from covid lockdowns and the 2020 collapse in demand. As governments across the US forcibly closed businesses and issued stay-at-home orders, many refineries became unprofitable and closed. Shortly thereafter, an avalanche of newly created money whipsawed demand in the opposite direction, and refineries could not keep up. Prices spiked.

Ultimately, the situation only illustrated what more astute observers had pointed out: claims that policy makers can “pause” the economy, and that we need only wait for the “V-shaped recovery” for everything to bounce back to normal were very wrong.

Oil Prices and Gasoline Prices

During the worst days of the covid lockdowns, gasoline prices fell to around a dollar per gallon in many areas. The national average fell to near $2 per gallon in 2022 dollars.

But by late 2021, fueled by trillions in newly printed money, gasoline prices surged to ten-year highs. As of June 2022, gasoline prices have hit new highs of over $5 per gallon. Even in inflation-adjusted terms, gasoline will soon hit some of the highest prices seen in many decades.

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The UK’s Decision to Extradite Assange Shows Why The US/UK’s Freedom Lectures Are a Farce

Posted by M. C. on June 18, 2022

The Assange persecution is the greatest threat to Western press freedoms in years. It is also a shining monument to the fraud of American and British self-depictions.

Real journalists often face threats of prosecution, imprisonment or even murder, and sometimes even mean tweets. Much of the American corporate media class has ignored Assange’s persecution or even cheered it precisely because he shames them, serving as a vivid mirror to show them what real journalism is and how they are completely bereft of it.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-uks-decision-to-extradite-assange?utm_source=email

The eleven-year persecution of Julian Assange was extended and escalated on Friday morning. The British Home Secretary, Priti Patel, approved the U.S.’s extradition request to send Julian Assange to Virginia to stand trial on eighteen felony charges under the 1917 Espionage Act and other statutes in connection with the 2010 publication by WikiLeaks of thousands of documents showing widespread corruption, deceit, and war crimes by American and British authorities along with their close dictatorial allies in the Middle East.

This decision is unsurprising — it has been obvious for years that the U.S. and UK are determined to destroy Assange as punishment for his journalism exposing their crimes — yet it nonetheless further highlights the utter sham of American and British sermons about freedom, democracy and a free press. Those performative self-glorifying spectacles are constantly deployed to justify these two countries’ interference in and attacks on other nations, and to allow their citizens to feel a sense of superiority about the nature of their governments. After all, if the U.S. and UK stand for freedom and against tyranny, who could possibly oppose their wars and interventions in the name of advancing such lofty goals and noble values?

Having reported on the Assange case for years, on countless occasions I’ve laid out the detailed background that led Assange and the U.S. to this point. There is thus no need to recount all of that again; those interested can read the granular trajectory of this persecution here or here. Suffice to say, Assange — without having been convicted of any crime other than bail jumping, for which he long ago served out his fifty-week sentence — has been in effective imprisonment for more than a decade.

In 2012, Ecuador granted Assange legal asylum from political persecution. It did so after the Swedish government refused to pledge that it would not exploit the WikiLeaks founder’s travel to Sweden to answer sex assault accusations as a pretext to turn him over to the U.S. Fearing what of course ended up happening — that the U.S. was determined to do everything possible to drag Assange back to U.S. soil despite his not being a U.S. citizen and never having spent more than a few days on U.S. soil, and intending to pressure their long-time-submissive Swedish allies to turn him over once he was on Swedish soil — the government of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa concluded Assange’s core civic rights were being denied and thus gave him refuge in the tiny Ecuadorian Embassy in London: the classic reason political asylum exists.

When Trump officials led by CIA Director Mike Pompeo bullied Correa’s meek successor, ex-President Lenin Moreno, to withdraw that asylum in 2019, the London Police entered the embassy, arrested Assange, and put him in the high-security Belmarsh prison (which the BBC in 2004 dubbed “the British Guantanamo”), where he has remained ever since.

After the lowest-level British court in early 2021 rejected the U.S. extradition request on the ground that Assange’s physical and mental health could not endure the U.S. prison system, Assange has lost every subsequent appeal. Last year, he was permitted to marry his long-time girlfriend, the British human rights lawyer Stella Morris Assange, who is also the mother of their two young children. An extremely unusual unanimity among press freedom and civil liberties groups was formed in early 2021 to urge the Biden administration to cease its prosecution of Assange, but Biden officials — despite spending the Trump years masquerading as press freedom advocates — ignored them (an interview conducted last week with Stella Assange by my husband, the Brazilian Congressman David Miranda, on Brazil’s Press Freedom Day, regarding the latest developments and toll this has taken on the Assange family, can be seen here).

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Deflationary Tsunami On Deck: A “Tidal Wave” Of Discounts And Crashing Prices

Posted by M. C. on June 18, 2022

Not everything is set for a deflationary crash: don’t expect luxury items to see price cuts. If anything, luxury prices for things like handbags and shoes are poised to keep climbing, said Oliver Chen, a retail analyst for Cowen: “Demand is so strong, and it’s a supply-constrained industry, generally, so quite the opposite rebalancing is happening.”

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/deflationary-tsunami-deck-tidal-wave-discounts-and-crashing-prices

Three weeks ago, we showed readers what happens when the infamous “Bullwhip effect” reversal takes place by presenting the unprecedented surge in the “Inventory to Sales” ratio for a broad range of US retailers covering the furniture, home furnishings and appliances, building materials and garden equipment, and a category known as “other general merchandise,” which includes Walmart and Target. Since then, this ratio has only gotten even more extended, and as shown below it is now at the highest level since the bursting of the dot com bubble!

What does this mean for retailers and the price of goods? Three weeks ago we said “Think: widespread inventory liquidations” and added…

To be sure, not every product will see its price cut: commodities, whose bullwhip effect take much longer to manifest itself, usually lasting several years in either direction, are only just starting to see their price cycle higher. However, other products – like those carried by the Walmarts and Targets of the world – are about to see a deflationary plunge the likes of which we have not seen since the global financial crisis as retailers commence a voluntary destocking wave the likes of which have not been seen in over a decade.

Today both Wall Street and the mainstream media have caught up, with both predicting unprecedented deflationary price cuts in the coming weeks.

We start with Morgan Stanley’s bearish strategist Michael Wilson, who in his latest bearish weekly note (available to pro subs) focused on shrinking margins in general, and on retailer discounting in particular, and wrote that while there is a modest pick up in over sales, the far more concerning issue is that “inventory across the sector is up about 30% YOY and sales growth is up about 0% YOY translating to approximately 30% YOY of excess inventory” and while mark down/margin pressure did not hit in 1Q it should hit June/July. Indeed, “store checks show that aggressive discounting has already started as of the Memorial Day holiday weekend. Discounting pressure could accelerate through July.”  And since more retailers are now discounting, “companies are having to offer even bigger discounts to compel consumers to buy, and it is a race to the bottom in margins in order to clear through inventory.”

It gets much worse, however, because courtesy of the delayed nature of the bullwhip effect, Morgan Stanley thinks it will be some time before retailers can cut back on forward inventory orders! Companies are no longer in a position to order 6 months in advance because of delays in the supply chain, and are currently working with about an 8 month lead time. Shockingly, this means decisions today to cut forward orders could begin to eliminate the inventory problem in 1Q23, but not likely before then.

As a result, Wilson concludes, “we are likely to see a tidal wave of discounts that carry us through December because 2022 inventory orders have already been placed.“

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