Budapest has resisted the European Union’s proposal to ban Moscow’s oil and gas, with its prime minister arguing that the bloc’s sanctions only work “on paper”.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that an agreement on the proposed EU embargo of Russian oil and gas is “very unlikely” to come in the coming days. He went on to argue that the lack of consensus between the European leaders indicated the unproductivity of discussing the sanctions package.
“Looking at the gravity of the issues still open, it is very unlikely that a comprehensive solution could be found before the special meeting of the European Council on 30-31 May,” Orban wrote in a letter to EU Chief Charles Michel, cited by AFP.
The Hungarian prime minister went on to recommend against addressing the issue at upcoming meeting.
Hungary’s stance on the proposed Russian oil embargo remains steadfast, with Budapest continuing to resist Brussels’ move to ban Russia’s energy products. Orban has argued that his country cannot support sanctions against Moscow that undermine Hungarian energy security.
On the contrary, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock voiced optimism that the European Union will reach a consensus on the sixth package of anti-Russian sanctions “soon”, boasting about the EU’s “solidarity”.
According to the German foreign minister, Berlin is also on track to become fully independent from Russian energy in the near future.
Last week, the EC rolled out a €210 billion plan titled REPowerEU that established a bold goal of ditching Russian energy resources by 2027. However, as the Hungarian prime minister pointed out, the plan lacked “[funding] envelopes for the most concerned landlocked member states”. According to him, the proposed sanctions would trigger “serious supply problems” for Budapest and undermine Hungary’s economy.
Fears are starting to mount for the safety of Robby Mook after the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign manager gave a bombshell testimony exposing his former boss last week.
On Friday, Mook testified under oath that Hillary Clinton approved the Russia Hoax and ordered her team to spread it in the media.
Mook said that Clinton wanted the hoax, which falsely linked President Donald Trump to Russia’s Alfa Bank, to be pushed to the media even though her campaign doubted the information.
The news comes after years of claims from the Left that Russia was working with President Trump to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.
On Friday, one of Clinton’s inner circle finally went on the record to confirm Hillary was behind the hoax.
However, many are now warning that Mook may be in danger after his explosive testimony.
Over the weekend, people have been taking to social media to express their concerns for Mook after throwing Hillary under the bus.
Top tier elite journalist, court historian, and Establishment Studies hagiographer, Evan Thomas, discusses his book, The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA. Thomas had previously authored The Man to See: The Life of Edward Bennett Williams, and co-authored (with Walter Isaacson) The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.
[Frank]Wisner and [Allen] Dulles (the latter even when not in the government) were powerful because of their central position in the New York overworld of law, banking, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the New York Social Register.
This overworld milieu pushed for the creation of the CIA, but while awaiting its creation, Allen Dulles and William Donovan took steps to establish a private alternative. There are various stories describing how Allen Dulles, as a private Wall Street lawyer after World War II, organized, “on his own authority . . . a [private] spy organization clandestinely.” According to Peter Grose, Donovan later purported to have been shocked by Dulles’ plan. But as we shall see, the evidence suggests rather that he proceeded to implement something like it: the World Commerce Corporation, which included among its founders the legendary British intelligence chief William Stephenson and Nelson Rockefeller.
As Richard Helms narrates in his memoirs, in 1946 General Vandenberg, as director of Central Intelligence (DCI), recruited Allen Dulles, then a Republican lawyer at Sullivan and Cromwell in New York, “to draft proposals for the shape and organization of what was to become the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.” Dulles promptly formed an advisory group of six men, all but one whom were Wall Street investment bankers or lawyers. In 1948 Truman appointed Dulles chairman of a committee to review the CIA’s performance, and Dulles again appointed two New York lawyers to assist him.
In its first years the CIA, like OSS before it, was dominated internally by the aristocratic elements of the New York overworld. All seven of the known deputy directors of the CIA at the time came from the same New York legal and financial circles, and no less than six of these seven (including both Dulles and Wisner) were listed in the New York Social Register as well. (page 27)
The men Allen Dulles chose as his advisory group were Kingman Douglas, managing partner of Dillion, Read; William H. Jackson and Frank Wisner of Carter, Ledyard and Milburn; Paul Nitze of Dillon, Read; and former DCI Admiral Sidney Soucers, who in 1946 retired to become a St. Louis investment banker.
When it comes to the economy and money, you can’t “fake it until you make it.” If you try to fake it, you’ll never make it. Ever since the founding of the Federal Reserve in 1913, America has been on a path to economic calamity. There aren’t many grains of sand left in the hour glass. Major changes will have to be made soon.
In his analysis, Rothbard applies a tactic he frequently uses, to devastating effect. He takes an argument he opposes and shows it leads to the opposite conclusion its proponents draw from it.
Many people criticize the free market as “materialistic”; it reduces everything to monetary values. Murray Rothbard analyzes this charge against the free market, and in this week’s column, I’d like to consider his distinct perspective. He first sets the stage:
One of the most common charges levelled against the free market (even by many of its friends) is that it reflects and encourages unbridled “selfish materialism” Even if the free market—unhampered capitalism—best furthers man’s “material” ends, critics argue, it distracts man from higher ideals. It leads man away from spiritual or intellectual values and atrophies any spirit of altruism.
Rothbard answers this criticism in a striking way. He says that money is just a means, not an end. People seek money to get whatever they want, but the ends people have need not be “selfish” or “materialistic.” It’s up to each person to decide that for himself. He says,
In the first place, there is no such thing as an “economic end.” Economy is simply a process of applying means to whatever ends a person may adopt. An individual can aim at any ends he pleases, “selfish” or “altruistic.” Other psychic factors being equal, it is to everyone’s self-interest to maximize his monetary income on the market. But this maximum income can then be used for “selfish” or for “altruistic” ends. Which ends people pursue is of no concern to the praxeologist. A successful businessman can use his money to buy a yacht or to build a home for destitute orphans. The choice rests with him. But the point is that whichever goal he pursues, he must first earn the money before he can attain the goal.
An objection that might occur to you is that some people take it as their goal to make as much money as they can. They don’t want the money to buy other things: they just want more and more money. But Rothbard could answer this by saying that this is just another goal. The free market doesn’t tell people to pursue it.
Rothbard next turns to what I regard as his best point. Suppose you think that people ought to devote themselves totally to serving others: they ought to be complete altruists. Rothbard, I hasten to add, doesn’t hold this view. But, he says, even if you do hold this position, you should still support the market, People who make money in the free market are those who best satisfy consumers. If you want to help others, then, you should try to make as much money as you can. The contemporary “effective altruism” movement has accepted this argument, or a variant of it, although I doubt they got it from Rothbard. People in this movement think that you should try to get a high-paying job so that you can donate what you make to others.
Whichever moral philosophy we adopt—whether altruism or egoism—we cannot criticize the pursuit of monetary income on the market. If we hold an egoistic social ethic, then obviously we can only applaud the maximization of monetary income, or of a mixture of monetary and other psychic income, on the market. There is no problem here. However, even if we adopt an altruistic ethic, we must applaud maximization of monetary income just as fervently. For market earnings are a social index of one’s services to others, at least in the sense that any services are exchangeable. The greater a man’s income, the greater has been his service to others. Indeed, it should be far easier for the altruist to applaud the maximization of a man’s monetary income than that of his psychic income when this is in conflict with the former goal. Thus, the consistent altruist must condemn the refusal of a man to work at a job paying high wages and his preference for a lower-paying job somewhere else. This man, whatever his reason, is defying the signaled wishes of the consumers, his fellows in society.
If, then, a coal miner shifts to a more pleasant, but lower-paying, job as a grocery clerk, the consistent altruist must castigate him for depriving his fellowman of needed benefits. For the consistent altruist must face the fact that monetary income on the market reflects services to others, whereas psychic income is a purely personal, or “selfish,” gain.
As I mentioned, Rothbard isn’t adopting altruistic ethics. To the contrary, he rejects them. He points out that a consistent altruist would have to reject the pursuit of leisure. If you rest from work, you are depriving others of time you could spend helping them. Rothbard uses this point to criticize W.H. Hutt’s version of consumer sovereignty, but the point applies also to contemporary altruists such as Peter Singer.
But protecting Ukraine’s democracy is no longer the stated goal of the Administration. Defense Secretary Austin outlined the Administration’s new intention not long ago when he said that the real goal is to weaken Russia.
Biden’s neocons are fighting a war with Russia, but once again Congress has no interest in voting on a war declaration or even in debating whether war with Russia 30 years after the end of the Cold War is a good idea.
Last week, President Biden signed a massive $40 billion military aid bill for Ukraine. Who cares that inflation is killing the American economy and mothers can’t even get baby formula. For Washington, spending on war and empire always seems to trump America’s interests.
To put this giveaway to Ukraine in perspective: just since late February, the US has provided nearly $60 billion in “assistance” to Ukraine. That is almost half that country’s entire 2020 GDP! Washington has literally adopted Ukraine in our name and on our dime.
The Biden Administration claims that Ukraine is winning the war with Russia and that such an expenditure to protect Ukraine’s borders is critical to our national interests and worth risking a nuclear war over.
But protecting Ukraine’s democracy is no longer the stated goal of the Administration. Defense Secretary Austin outlined the Administration’s new intention not long ago when he said that the real goal is to weaken Russia.
Biden’s neocons are fighting a war with Russia, but once again Congress has no interest in voting on a war declaration or even in debating whether war with Russia 30 years after the end of the Cold War is a good idea.
There is a reason our Constitution grants war powers to the legislative branch. Forcing Members of the House and Senate to declare the US to be in a state of war also enables them – through the powers of the purse-string – to define the goals of the war and particularly what a victory looks like. That prevents the kind of mission-creep ahd shifting objectives that have characterized our endless wars in the 21st century – including this current proxy war with Russia.
Even the US mainstream media is beginning to notice. Last week the New York Times’ Editorial Board published an editorial originally titled, “What is America’s Strategy in Ukraine?” complaining that the Biden Administration has yet to answer any questions to the American people regarding its involvement in Ukraine.
While, as could be expected, the paper attacked the “isolationists” in the US Congress who opposed the $40 billion giveaway, the NY Times editorial board nevertheless registered what can only be seen as the first major sign of dissent among the usual media war cheerleaders.
They wrote:
…it is still not in America’s best interest to plunge into an all-out war with Russia, even if a negotiated peace may require Ukraine to make some hard decisions. And the US aims and strategy in this war have become harder to discern, as the parameters of the mission appear to have changed.
While warning that Americans’ interest in Ukraine will begin to wane without more clarity from Washington as to its goals, the paper went on to directly contradict the Biden Administration’s predictions of a Ukraine victory:
A decisive military victory for Ukraine over Russia, in which Ukraine regains all the territory Russia has seized since 2014, is not a realistic goal.
Congress – with very few exceptions – has opened a financial spigot to the government in Kiev without asking a single question about how and why the money is to be spent. When Senator Paul simply asked for someone to keep track of the $60 billion we shipped over there he was met with near-unanimous opposition.
An endless supply of US taxpayer money to Ukraine with zero stated goals and zero oversight. Isn’t it time to stand up and demand that both parties in Congress start asking some hard questions?
There is to my knowledge no East-Coast Straussian equivalent to the late Angelo Codevilla and to William Voegeli, both of whom critically examined the modern administrative state as a departure from America’s constitutional republican traditions. Such are not the typical views of get-along establishment conservatives.
Glenn Ellmers, the diligent biographer of Harry Jaffa, has called attention to the insufficiently understood friendship between Lincoln scholar and Lincoln admirer Harry Jaffa and the Southern conservative M.E. Bradford. Most historians of the conservative movement know that these two titans of post-World War II conservatism battled furiously in the pages of Modern Age starting in 1975. Given the ferocity of their polemics, it is generally assumed the two debaters must have disliked each other personally. As Ellmers demonstrates in statements taken from his deceased teacher, however, Jaffa and Bradford were close personal friends and even encouraged each other’s work. When Bradford died in April 1993, Jaffa wrote a long, moving eulogy in National Review, which Ellmers provides in full in American Greatness.
In 1959 when Harry Jaffa brought out his magnum opus Crisis of a House Divided, the populist conservative Willmoore Kendall published a memorable critical review. Although we paleos are inclined to quote Kendall’s animadversions about fighting endless wars in the name of natural rights and the dangers of a succession of American Caesars in the image of Jaffa’s Lincoln, Kendall also praises Jaffa’s exalted prose and moral tone. What may have contributed to the Bradford-Jaffa debates was Jaffa’s broadside against a book Kendall prepared with George Carey, Basic Symbols of the American Tradition, which was published in 1970, three years after Kendall’s death. Jaffa tore into that book with obvious passion for ignoring the natural rights tradition that from his perspective lay at the heart of the American Founding.
Jaffa’s critics complain about how savagely he attacked the deceased Kendall and explain that it was Bradford who came to the aid of a fallen comrade and his followers. As someone who stands much closer to Burkean conservatism than the natural rights camp, let me point out the obvious here: vigorous debate about historical subjects is the lifeblood of my discipline. I enjoyed reading the polemics produced on both sides of the questions raised about the American Founding in Modern Age.
Most importantly, however, we should recall the framework in which these debates occurred. The participants respected their opponents and were personal friends. Well into the 1980s, the conservative movement included both West-Coast Straussians and the historically based, traditionalist Right, just as it had room for both traditionalists and libertarians. Indeed, the Right of yesteryear often looked and sounded like a debating society, which was certainly true of National Review in the 1960s, when Frank Meyer, Russell Kirk, James Burnham, and other editors went at each other hammer and tongs. It is necessary to see these battles in perspective. Although the conservative movement was then well to the right of where it is now, especially on social issues, and was united by opposition to a dangerous Communist challenge, it was open to philosophical differences and far-ranging dissent on political questions. This did not stop debating opponents from socializing or keep Kendall from extolling Jaffa’s elevated tone in a book that in other respects he disagreed with.
David Frisk, a Kendall biographer, has made available to me a statement that his subject made in an article published in Intercollegiate Review in 1965:
yet the Strausses and Voegelins and Jaffas and Weavers continue to ply their trade, and produce books that breathe confidence, a confidence that the apt pupil will quickly learn to recognize and value: that the ultimate effect of their books will be to purge the intellectual climate of ideology, and to restore true philosophy to its rightful place of honor and influence.
Note how Kendall places Jaffa, his supposed adversary, among thinkers he obviously admired. He also mentions Crisis as a work of great scholarly value.
In the coming days, the Nations that adhere to the World Health Organization (WHO) will vote on resolutions regarding the WHO’s management of pandemics. These resolutions will transfer sovereignty regarding the health of citizens to a supranational body that is largely financed by the pharmaceutical industry and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. If these resolutions are approved by a majority, the WHO will have exclusive international authority in the case of a pandemic to impose all the rules, including quarantines, lockdowns, obligatory vaccinations, and vaccine passports. It should also be borne in mind that this organization enjoys immunity, and thus its members cannot be either tried or convicted if they commit crimes. Unelected technocrats will paradoxically have more power than that which citizens confer on their representatives by means of their democratic vote.
Given that the yielding of sovereignty is considered the crime of high treason by the laws of every nation, and that parliaments may not legislate against the interests of the Nation, much less violate the natural liberties and fundamental rights of the citizens whom they represent, I believe that it will not escape anyone’s notice that this attempt by the WHO to appropriate a power that properly belongs to individual nations is intended to impede any sort of opposition to the “Agenda 2030,” which in the field of healthcare also aims to accomplish the drastic reduction of medical and hospital services, the privatization of the health industry, and disease prevention by means of vaccines.
Pandemic treaty empowers criminal WHO over nations
The psycho-pandemic has demonstrated the enslavement of rulers, the political system, the media, the judiciary, the entire medical industry, and even the Holy See itself to the diktats of a group of functionaries of a supranational entity that has a blatant conflict of interest. The disastrous adverse effects of the experimental mRNA serum are only now being recognized, while there are many who rightly expect that those responsible for these decisions ought to be held accountable before an independent court.
It therefore sounds absurd, to say the least, that there is now a desire to give binding decision-making power to the WHO, when in its management of the recent pandemic emergency and the vaccine campaign the greatest damage was done in terms of the number of deaths and of patients who have suffered permanent damage to their health. In addition to the impunity it enjoyed for the crimes it has committed thanks to the silence of the mainstream media, the WHO also has total discretion over how to respond to the upcoming emergencies that are obviously being planned by the pharmaceutical lobby. The marginalization of health personnel who appeal to the Hippocratic Oath risks becoming the norm by which to eliminate every voice of dissent.
In this regard, it is significant that the Nations that oppose the New World Order – like Russia and Brazil – are aware of the very serious consequences that the ratification of these resolutions would entail, and for this reason they are opposed to their approval. During his term of office, President Donald Trump also sent an unequivocal signal by halting funding from the U.S. Treasury to the WHO. This was one of the reasons why the deep state blocked his re-election in 2020, supporting a compromised and corrupt individual whose son Hunter is involved in financing American biolabs in Ukraine.
By Joe Lauria in London Special to Consortium News
At some point during the next nine days, British Home Secretary Priti Patel will decide whether or not to extradite imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange to the United States to face espionage charges for publishing accurate information revealing U.S. war crimes.
Pressure is building from both sides on the home secretary. Press freedom and human rights organizations, a Nobel laureate, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, journalists and Assange supporters have appealed to Patel to let Assange go.
While it would be deemed improper for outside influence to be brought on judges, it would not be fanciful to imagine that behind the scenes Patel is getting the message from the U.S. Department of Justice and possibly from U.S. and U.K. intelligence services about what is expected of her.
The home secretary should know without prodding what the U.S. and British governments want her to do. Patel is a highly-ambitious politician who no doubt will calculate how her decision will impact her career.
“Politicians think about their next election, they think about their voters … that’s what makes them tick,” Kristinn Hrafnnson, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, told Consortium News at a protest outside the Home Office in London last Wednesday. “For the first time it’s in the hands of a politician, and Priti Patel, if she wants to think about her legacy … she should do the right thing.”
“Politics is a strange beast,” Hrafnsson said. “Anything can happen. I’m hoping this is something that will be taken up in the Cabinet here. Let’s not forget that Boris Johnson was a journalist. He was part of the media community and should have better understanding of this case than many others.”
Patel is acting after the U.K. Supreme Court refused to hear Assange’s appeal of a High Court decision to overturn a lower court ruling barring Assange’s extradition on health grounds and the danger of U.S. prisons. The High Court decided solely on conditional U.S. promises that Assange would be well treated in custody.
With the courts no longer involved and the decision solely in Patel’s hands, the case now is purely political, meaning political pressure can be brought to bear on the home secretary.
“The home secretary has the discretion to block this extradition, and there is a lot of pressure from civil society and press freedom groups for her to do so,” said Stella Assange at a film screening on Thursday.
She said the “heaviest” pressure had come from Dunja Mijatovic, the human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe, “urging Patel to block it.” Mijatovic wrote to Patel on May 10, saying:
“I have been following the developments in Mr Assange’s case with great attention. In the judicial proceedings so far, the focus has mainly been on Mr Assange’s personal circumstances upon his possible extradition to the United States. While a very important matter, this also means, in my opinion, that the wider human rights implications of Mr Assange’s possible extradition, which reach far beyond his individual case, have not been adequately considered so far.
In particular, it is my view that the indictment by the United States against Mr Assange raises important questions about the protection of those that publish classified information in the public interest, including information that exposes human rights violations. The broad and vague nature of the allegations against Mr Assange, and of the offences listed in the indictment, are troubling as many of them concern activities at the core of investigative journalism in Europe and beyond.
Consequently, allowing Mr Assange’s extradition on this basis would have a chilling effect on media freedom, and could ultimately hamper the press in performing its task as purveyor of information and public watchdog in democratic societies.”
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquive has also written to Patel. “I join the growing collective concern about the violations of the human, civil and political rights of Mr. Julian Assange,” the Argentine wrote. He called the extradition request “illegal and abusive” and said it imperiled press freedom and could bring “potentially fatal consequences” to Assange.
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