On episode #2129 (yes, I’ve been at this that long) of the Tom Woods Show, released just yesterday, I discuss a topic that’s on the minds of lots of decent people: the forthcoming “pandemic treaty” from the World Health Organization (WHO).
This can’t be good.
The current director general of the WHO placed the treaty in the content of strengthening his organization “as the leading and directing authority on global health, at the center of the global health architecture.” Well, we certainly don’t want that.
He went on: “We all want a world in which science triumphs over misinformation; solidarity triumphs over division; and equity is a reality, not an aspiration.” We now know that “science” means the latest b.s. from people like him, and “misinformation” is when people like you and me try to correct it. “Solidarity” means socialism, and “equity” means socialism.
And then this: “We are one world, we have one health, we are one WHO.”
Creepy.
We can only speculate right now on what this new pandemic plan might contain, but we definitely have plenty to go on, and we know more than enough to conclude that we don’t want it.
I spend some time, too, talking about the issue of whether a treaty can trump the Constitution, which is what these creeps will try to claim.
Here’s the link, and while you’re there, click one of the links to subscribe to the Tom Woods Show so you get content like this delivered automatically to your device for free every weekday:
In celebration of part 4/4 of “The Adventures of Pinocchio and Free Speech” compilation series (available in audio-only format on the JBP Podcast), we decided to revisit a classic lecture from Dr. Peterson’s 2015 Maps of Meaning series discussing the 1940 Disney classic Pinocchio.
The point I am trying to make is that we human beings face problems, serious ones. Several can mean the end of life as we know it. The more serious ones can eventuate in the death of all of us, children and grandchildren included. Do we really want to risk this? Are we really going to fritter our way out of saving ourselves by fighting each other?
How will human life on the third rock from the sun end? A comet, or a bug, or nuclear war, or alien creatures might come and kick us all in the posterior.
Actually, probably, well, possibly, one of these millions of years, all life will cease on our planet, except for very hardy micro-organisms. What are the candidates to do the evil deed?
First up in the batter’s box is some sort of super-duper bug that will make Covid look like a walk in the park. Second in the batting order will be a nuclear war between human beings. In third place? A gigantic comet will come crashing down upon us, obliterating the entire planet. That one will challenge even our fellow micro-organism creatures. In the clean-up position? Who knows. Maybe advanced powerful alien creatures from the planet Zorgon who want to eat us all.
But whatever is this threat, the danger will be enhanced by human error. What kind of mistake are we making? We are fighting each other. Mary Tyler Moore used to say that “love is all around us.” We can now opine, more accurately, unfortunately, that “hostility is all around us.” Wars abound; there are more of them than you can shake a stick at. Violent crime is seemingly ever erupting.
What is the source of all of this? The sociobiological explanation might well be the most accurate: we humans needed a nasty streak in order to fight off the saber tooth lions and their brethren of field and stream when all we had was sticks and rocks at our disposal. But the residue of such behavior is still with us, when it is no longer needed; when it is positively harmful to our well-being. Any 90-pound weakling of our species with the proper equipment can nowadays make minced meat of the most ferocious mega fauna now bestriding the earth or swimming around in its waters. And this goes as well for dinosaurs should they ever pop up again, several movies to the contrary notwithstanding.
The point I am trying to make is that we human beings face problems, serious ones. Several can mean the end of life as we know it. The more serious ones can eventuate in the death of all of us, children and grandchildren included. Do we really want to risk this? Are we really going to fritter our way out of saving ourselves by fighting each other? Can we not resolve to cease and desist from what in effect might possibly become species annihilation? If not, we will be committing mass suicide.
The first step, it seems to me, is to somehow orchestrate a cease fire and then a lasting peace between Russia and Ukraine. Part and parcel of this would be that the former should obligate itself not to topple the government of the latter, nor criminalize any of its leaders; in response, the latter should give up all efforts to join NATO. That organization should be disbanded in any peace treaty, not further expanded in an eastward direction. Let’s say no to the entrance of Finland and Sweden.
There are equally serious conflagrations continually occurring in Africa. A large part of this emanates from the fact that Europeans all too often set up national boundaries that totally ignored ethnicity. This is a recipe for disaster. Secession might well be the best way out of this morass. But that will take understanding and willingness to see the other side’s view that unhappily is in all too short supply. Why should it be alright for the thirteen colonies to secede from England, but not, say, for California or Texas, to depart from the United States? A peaceful secession would also dampen down the threat of war in Spain.
Is this too much to ask from our fellow humans? Probably it is, given our history of murdering each other. But, happily, we can now at least ask. Maybe, pray for peace and good will toward each other. As for those aliens, why not reserve our nastiness for them?
From her days as Bush/Cheney propagandist, to her stint on The View, to her role as beloved-by-Democrats MSNBC host, Wallace has perfected the art of sociopathic lying. Watch our original video.
Glenn Greenwald
Screen shot from our new original video about Nicolle Wallace, “The Typhoid Mary of Disinformation” (credit: Matt Orfalea)
The most blatant and shameless liars from the first term of the Bush/Cheney administration have, revealingly, enjoyed great success in media and journalism. That is because serial deceit is not a liability for a thriving career in corporate journalism but rather a vital asset — provided that the lies are in service of ruling class policies. Tawdry propagandists who helped drive post-9/11 America into a bottomless pit of lies and self-destruction have become the most highly-paid and beloved stars of liberal media. They include:
Former Bush White House speechwriter David Frum of The Atlantic and CNN;
Bush/Cheney CIA and NSA Director Gen. Michael Hayden of CNN;
Ubiquitous amoral neocon warmonger Bill Kristol of MSNBC and various #NeverTrump groups;
Pro-war Florida GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough, now a multi-million host of MSNBC’s flagship morning show and anchor of its corporate brand; and,
Rep. Liz Cheney, long-time vocal supporter of her father and now a literal “hero” to American media liberals.
But few Bush-era propagandists have thrived more, made more money, and developed a more devoted and swooning liberal fan base than the official Communications Director of the Bush/Cheney White House and 2004 Bush/Cheney-reelection campaign, Nicolle Wallace. Having catapulted from her work as Jeb Bush’s Press Secretary to the White House to senior adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign (working for her close friend, Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt, who recently performed one of the most public and sustained nervous breakdowns in the history of the internet), Wallace was always beloved by the DC press corps.
In 2005, when she was named Bush White House Communications Director, The New York Times lavished her with praise, claiming that she “comes from a different mold than the small band of Texans who carry out the White House press policy” and admiringly noted that “she was once fired for being too nice to reporters.” She endeared herself further to corporate journalists by repeatedly sabotaging the McCain campaign from which she was collecting a paycheck, leaking negative stories about McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (whose selection as Vice Presidential candidate was driven primarily by liberal icons Bill Kristol and Steve Schmidt).
Freedom of speech won this Wednesday after the Biden Administration suspended its controversial Disinformation Board. Former disinformation tzar Nina Jankowicz announced her departure today, citing an uncertain future, and, of course, disinformation. “It is deeply disappointing that mischaracterizations of the Board became a distraction from the Department’s vital work, and indeed, along with recent events globally and nationally, embodies why it is necessary. “I maintain my commitment to building awareness of disinformation’s threats and trust the Department will do the same,“ Jankowicz said.
Jankowicz has a long history of spreading false news and gaslighting the public to believe that the Bidens are not a completely corrupt family. She firmly denied the existence of Hunter’s laptop, and perhaps it is no coincidence that the contents of that laptop are slowly being leaked to the public.
Although this Orwellian plan has been temporarily suspended, censorship will continue discreetly.
Americans have every right to be steamed over the cynical use of borders kept open to create a permanent Democratic majority. Among the prices being paid for this outrageous, unconstitutional action are the flooding of our country with fentanyl (much of it originating in China) and Central American criminal gangs. The attempt of Biden and his administration and their media drones to link these justified complaints to psychopathic mass murderers (mind you, only the white racist not the black racist ones) has left me livid with rage.
In an exercise in guilt by nonassociation, Associated Press reporter David Bauder explains in what pretends to be a balanced news story that there is widespread, “right-wing” hate behind the Buffalo shooting. This misfortune, he says, is related to Joe Biden’s decision to open the southern U.S. border to those who may wish to join us in this country. Lots of unkind Americans have questioned allowing millions of illegal aliens to enter the United States and providing them with de facto amnesty, together with government-financed transportation to the interior of the country. Tens of millions of Americans, apparently quite irrationally, view these steps as an attempt to create a permanent Democratic electoral majority.
For Bauder, such speculation is evidence of widespread bigotry, and he cites Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism about a “mainstream view,” which “baselessly suggests that Democrats are encouraging immigration from Latin America so that like-minded potential voters replace ‘traditional’ Americans.”
Many of those who hold such apparently baseless suspicions also adhere to a “great replacement conspiracy theory,” which argues a concerted effort is underway by American elites to use immigration to replace a predominantly white population with a nonwhite one. The chant by Charlottesville demonstrators in 2017 that white Americans would not be replaced was only the tip of a racist iceberg; and Bauder and Pitcavage link this war against being “replaced” to among others Fox News host Tucker Carlson and U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.). Both have accused Biden and the Democrats of using illegal immigration to establish a permanent Democratic majority. Stefanik, although depicted as a very centrist Republican, delivered a supposedly frightening tirade last year about how “radical Democrats” were engaged in a “permanent election insurrection” by granting amnesty to undocumented immigrants. Bauder and Pitcavage associate such rhetoric not only with the Buffalo shooting but also with white racist violence in Norway, New Zealand, and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018.
Equally dangerous, it would seem, was the bookLe Grand Remplacement published by the gay French deconstructionist Renaud Camus in 2011. According to Camus, “Europe was being invaded by Black and brown immigrants from Africa;” and this was creating a cultural and political crisis. Camus, whom we are led to believe published something comparable to the pro-Nazi Turner Diaries, allegedly provided a theoretical foundation for the recent disturbing manifestations of white supremacy ideology that Bauder and Pittcavage see all around us.
Except for the following facts, that Camus published Le Grand Remplacement, that Stefanik did warn (and quite properly so) against the use of illegal immigration as a Democratic electoral tool, and that the Buffalo killer hated blacks, there is nothing in Bauder’s partisan propaganda that is even vaguely true.
Americans have every right to be steamed over the cynical use of borders kept open to create a permanent Democratic majority. Among the prices being paid for this outrageous, unconstitutional action are the flooding of our country with fentanyl (much of it originating in China) and Central American criminal gangs. The attempt of Biden and his administration and their media drones to link these justified complaints to psychopathic mass murderers (mind you, only the white racist not the black racist ones) has left me livid with rage.
Moreover, Camus’ book, which I have actually read, is not a racist tract but a careful examination of the implications of the demographic changes that France is now undergoing. A detailed literature on the correlation between increased crime and increased African immigration into France already exists, as does printed evidence of the increasing Islamization of the country and the weakening of its Christian or traditional republican character. Pointing out such problems is hardly an invitation to murder. It is data that citizens should be able to weigh in making electoral decisions in a country that still describes itself as a constitutional democracy.
Vovan and Lexus, Russian pranksters known for trolling Western politicians, celebrities, and other public figures, revealed Tuesday that they had tricked George W. Bush into speaking with them. The former president played an instrumental role in the second wave of NATO’s eastward expansion, and the first Euromaidan crisis in Ukraine in 2004.
The United States didn’t keep its word to Moscow on NATO’s eastward expansion due to shifting circumstances, and the Bush administration always wanted to see Ukraine join the Western alliance, George W. Bush has revealed in a candid interview with Vovan and Lexus.
“I wanted [Russia] on the fringe of NATO, I wanted Ukraine into NATO”, Bush, who served as US president between 2001 and 2009, told the pranksters, who posed as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a portion of the interview that aired Thursday at a Russian educational forum.
“I thought for a while that Russia would be more cooperative. And then [Vladimir] Putin changed dramatically”, Bush said.
“I felt that Ukraine needed to be in the EU and in NATO”, he added.
“Listen, times change. Baker was the secretary of state with my dad, which was years ago, and so, uh, the United States must be flexible, adjusting to the times. And that’s why you’re trying to show our support for your country now”, he said.
Asked whether he agreed with the sentiment that the conflict in Ukraine was really a confrontation between the West and Russia, Bush answered curtly “Yeah”.
As for the argument that the US recognition of Kosovo in the 2000s on the grounds of its right to “self-determination” from Serbia paved the way for Russia’s recognition of the Donbass republics, Bush appeared briefly stumped, before assuring that “if you prevail, or when you prevail, a lot of these various issues are gonna be off the table”.
“Your mission is to destroy as many Russian troops as you can, and the question is, will you continue receiving the help you need. And I certainly hope so”, Bush said. He added that it was “very important” for the US to “continue to lead” in assisting Ukraine in achieving its goals.
George W. Bush presided over the second wave of NATO’s post-Cold War expansion, welcoming Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia into the bloc in 2004. Between 1999 and 2020, 14 nations of the defunct Warsaw Pact, the former Yugoslavia, or the ex-USSR itself were absorbed by NATO. At its Bucharest summit in 2008, the alliance recognised Ukraine and Georgia’s “aspirations” toward eventual NATO membership.
Vladimir “Vovan” Kuznetsov and Alexei “Lexus” Stolyarov are a Russian comedy duo that has spent more than a decade trolling politicians, celebrities, royals, and other public figures around the world.
Their YouTube channel was taken down in March after they released videos of intimate conversations with British Defence chief Ben Wallace and Home Secretary Priti Patel, revealing the true extent of covert UK military support for Ukraine, and the possibility of seizing Russian tycoons’ properties in London and handing them over to members of Ukraine’s political elite.
Health authorities in the two continents have thus far identified only a few dozen cases. And while there’s no reason for concern at the moment, here’s what convinced me to put this on your radar.
Late last night, the U.S. government decided to order millions of doses of monkeypox vaccine.
According to a press release from European pharma company Bavarian Nordic, the United States exercised a $119 million option on the doses. The vaccines were purchased through the The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). The U.S. government has an additional $180 million in options if it so chooses to exercise them.
Additionally, on Thursday, Bavarian Nordic announced that they were going to supply “an undisclosed European country” with Monkeypox vaccinations.
The U.S. likely has first dibs on the product because the vaccine was developed with American support. Anthony Fauci’s NIAID has supported Bavarian Nordic with well over $100 million in grants. Whether Fauci and his colleagues will receive kickbacks and royalties for this vaccine remains unknown.
Bavarian Nordic received FDA approval for its vaccine in September of 2019, just two months before the commencement of COVID Mania.
The FDA statement included the possibility that this vaccine was necessary for the market in case of a biowarfare event concerning the “intentional release” of smallpox.
Bavarian Nordic’s president and CEO released a statement Thursday:
“While the full circumstances around the current monkeypox cases in Europe remain to be elucidated, the speed of which these have evolved, combined with the potential for infections beyond the initial case going undetected, calls for a rapid and coordinated approach by the health authorities, and we are pleased to assist in this emergency situation. Infection control has been a high priority for societies during COVID-19, and this situation is an unfortunate reminder that we cannot let our guard down, but must continue to build and strengthen our infectious disease preparedness to keep the world open.”
According to the CDC: “Monkeypox was first discovered in 1958 when two outbreaks of a pox-like disease occurred in colonies of monkeys kept for research, hence the name ‘monkeypox.’ The first human case of monkeypox was recorded in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo during a period of intensified effort to eliminate smallpox. Since then monkeypox has been reported in humans in other central and western African countries.”
Monkeypox is currently understood as a rare infection primarily spread by wild animals in West Africa. Its symptoms are said to be similar to that of chickenpox. Case fatality rate estimates for human obtained monkeypox in Africa range from 1% to 15%.
Early reports from Europe seem to indicate that Monkeypox is only spreading within the gay community, as cases are being reported exclusively in gay men. The transmission dynamics remain unclear, but that hasn’t stopped the usual panic promoters from making hysterical claims.
As expected, those who want safety at all costs will clamor for more gun control measures (if not at an outright ban on weapons for non-military, non-police personnel), widespread mental health screening of the general population and greater scrutiny of military veterans, more threat assessments and behavioral sensing warnings, more surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities, more “See Something, Say Something” programs aimed at turning Americans into snitches and spies, more metal detectors and whole-body imaging devices at soft targets, more roaming squads of militarized police empowered to do random bag searches, more fusion centers to centralize and disseminate information to law enforcement agencies, and more surveillance of what Americans say and do, where they go, what they buy and how they spend their time.
All of these measures play into the government’s hands.
As we have learned the hard way, the phantom promise of safety in exchange for restricted or regulated liberty is a false, misguided doctrine that serves only to give the government greater authority to crack down, lock down, and institute even more totalitarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.
Add the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board” to that mix, empower it to monitor online activity and police so-called “disinformation,” and you have the makings of a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.
After all, it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.
Yellen’s inability and unwillingness to articulate the Fed’s role in creating lowered purchasing power among the poor is maddening but not surprising. Porter’s comments beg the question: If inflation goes to zero, then does the need for abortions among the poor go away as well?”
In a moment that would have made the progressive eugenicist Margaret Sanger proud, former Fed chair Janet Yellen extoled the virtues of high abortion rates among poor women, as they allow them to have higher labor force participation rates. Paraphrasing Sanger, who is the intellectual founder of the modern abortion industry, Yellen’s argument was plain: it is cruel for parents to bring children into a state of poverty; therefore, it is humane to incentivize abortion among the poor.
California representative and chair of the Progressive Caucus of the Democratic Party Katie Porter expressed a similar sentiment before a CNBC audience, remarking that “things like inflation can happen” as a justification for the Democrats’ now failed attempt to enshrine unfettered abortion access in federal law.
Yellen’s inability and unwillingness to articulate the Fed’s role in creating lowered purchasing power among the poor is maddening but not surprising. Porter’s comments beg the question: If inflation goes to zero, then does the need for abortions among the poor go away as well?”
While no reasonable person should hold their breath for an answer from either of these politicians, their comments unwittingly reveal an important causal link in human action. That is, in a modern, wealthy society, the households that are harmed by lost purchasing power from money supply expansion are less likely to bring children into the world, all things held equal.
The qualification of “modern wealthy society” leans on Gary Becker and Robert Barro’s contention that real net costs in raising children reduce total fertility in families. While all human action is based on individual subjective valuations it’s safe to say that an ongoing loss of real income and wealth can be among the data points that people use to derive their preferences. As the interventions of the Fed alter the structure of prices, income, and wealth it is certainly plausible that these changes can impact fertility choices. With that said, one could simply think about the reality that the poor in the US are among those harmed by money supply expansion as articulated by Richard Cantillon. The increasing lack of purchasing power over time, creates the tendency for these households to have fewer children than they otherwise would have. This results because each childbirth represents a net loss in real wealth. The reasons for this outcome in a developed economy are quite simple. In most wealthy nations, child labor and panhandling are unnecessary because those nations have enriched themselves via the international division of labor. This has also had the welcome effect of eliminating a household’s perceived need to supply children to traffickers, which sadly remains a scourge of the developing world.
What Becker and Barro fail to account for is that wealthy and poor nations alike may also allow fiat central banking. What this omission fails to capture is the reality of a harmed class who lose purchasing power over time under inflationary regimes. It is just such households that Yellen and Porter have described as having a need for abortion access due to their financial distress.
The destruction of human life (or potential life, for some) resulting from central banking is implied by Jörg Guido Hülsmann’s attack on fiat currency. His observation is that such regimes are socially destructive and that they tend to increase the financial fragility of households. This fragility can be particularly crushing among the poorer classes, as fiat inflation is deemed to be a “juggernaut of social, economic, cultural, and spiritual destruction.” It turns out that part of this social destruction may very well include the negation of the society shared between mother, father, and yet-to-be-seen (or, as some might say, unseen) child.
Even if one gives the pro-choice/proabortion faction the full benefit of the doubt by conceding that they don’t want ANY abortions to occur and would prefer that the only pregnancies were wanted pregnancies, thus eliminating the need for abortion, the logic that connects inflationism to abortionism still stands. It could be additionally reasoned that inflationism represents a boon to the contraception industry as a whole. While such a connection might seem trivial, recent observations from Saifedean Ammous noted how inflation is a means to lower the cost of reckless behavior in financial markets. I’m simply suggesting that inflationism might generate moral hazard in sexual behavior as well.
If Yellen and Porter’s shared goal is to continue to boost female labor force participation and engage women in what Josef Pieper called “proletarianization,” where “total work” is the norm, then the inflation-abortion connection is certainly an effective means to achieve it. Yellen further justified this reasoning to Senator Bob Menendez by contending that increased—and presumably federally funded—access to abortion generates better educational and economic outcomes for those children conceived later in a woman’s life. Such irony could only be lost on the most ardent abortionist.
Setting aside the existing moral arguments for or against abortion, an understanding of the connection between money supply increases and the heightened likelihood of abortions among the poor may contribute to the Austro-libertarian discussion on the question of the morality of abortion. If it is indeed the case that an increased likelihood of abortion among the poor is one of the myriad social consequences of the Fed’s currency debasement, then the would-be-born could also rejoice at the central bank’s abortion.
Jeffery L. Degner is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Cornerstone University and a former Mises Summer Research Fellow. He holds Bachelor’s degrees in Economics and History from Western Michigan University where he also earned an M.A. in Applied Economics. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Angers under the direction of Dr. Jorg Guido Hülsmann.
MCViewPoint 