” If passed, the AUMF will allow President Joe Biden to deploy American troops to defend Ukraine if Russia uses chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.”
But aren’t the US/UK the ones with chem/bio labs in Ukraine?
On Sunday, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) announced a new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). If passed, the AUMF will allow President Joe Biden to deploy American troops to defend Ukraine if Russia uses chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.
The Congressman issued a press release saying the legislation would establish important redlines and echoed Biden’s plea that “Putin must be stopped.”
“I’m introducing this AUMF as a clear redline so the Administration can take appropriate action should Russia use chemical, biological, and/or nuclear weapons. We must stand up for humanity and we must stand with our allies.
“As the President of the United States has said, Putin must be stopped. Accordingly, the Commander in Chief to the world’s greatest military should have the authority and means to take the necessary actions to do so.”
Similar to the 2002 AUMF, the legislation gives the President nearly a blank check to wage war. The bill does not include oversight on the determination of WMD use or sunset date.
Kinzinger announced the bill on Meet the Press, telling host Margret Brennan, “I don’t think we need to be using force in Ukraine right now. I just introduced an AUMF giving the president basically congressional leverage for permission to use it if WMDs, nuclear, biological or chemical are used in Ukraine.”
In a speech just days before voting for the 2002 AUMF, then-Senator Joe Biden likewise downplayed the risk President George W. Bush would use the authority to go to war in Iraq. “I will vote for this because we should be compelling Iraq to make good on its obligations to the United Nations…Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable.”
One of the political paternalist tricks is to insist that any economic policy failure is more “proof” of the bankruptcy of the market economy. Once again, this worn-out device is employed by Columbia University professor and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz. Any and all such presumed market “failures” are placed by Stiglitz under the umbrella term, “neoliberalism.”We are facing the consequences of the interventionist and regulatory state. [Click to Tweet]
Neoliberalism has become one of the most elastic terms in the political paternalist lexicon. It amounts to whatever the paternalist dislikes or to any interventionist welfare-state policy that has turned out badly from his own point-of-view, but which cannot be admitted to have been caused by some aspect of his own policy agenda. Never having to say you are sorry for your own social engineering failures is central to this mindset.
In a recent article at Project Syndicate, Stiglitz calls for “Shock Therapy for Neoliberals.”(April 5, 2022). He insists that for the last several decades. America and indeed the world have been caught in the mesmerizing grip of the idea that free markets work. And even worse, the free-market ideology has guided and directed U.S. economic policy from Ronald Reagan to the present.
This may come as a surprise to some who lived through the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations and considered especially Obama’s to be committed to a fairly “progressive” agenda, a capstone of which was the (un)Affordable Care Act and its many false promises. In addition, for many limited-government conservatives and classical liberals, the two Bush administrations, along with Donald Trump’s, seemed far from any noticeable free-market agenda as well.
Stiglitz says recent crises all caused by neoliberalism
Stiglitz points, in particular, to the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the coronavirus crisis of the last two years, and now the war in Ukraine as all examples of the failure of free market-based neoliberalism to be able to steer clear of instability and to restore and maintain economic balance. In Stiglitz’s reading of 21st-century history, you would never know that for the five years before the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve had artificially manipulated key interest rates down to near zero and, when adjusted for inflation, were actually in the negative range for most of that time. This had been made possible with a nearly 50 percent increase in the money supply (M-2) during this half-decade.
Matching this had been a heavily government-created housing boom. Two federal agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, had guaranteed and bought up huge portions of the home-mortgage market. The private sector home-mortgage lenders were told by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that they could loan with reckless abandon, with these agencies bearing most or even all the risk if any home loans went delinquent or general bad times were to set in. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended up “covering” about half of all the outstanding mortgages in the United States.
The financial and housing crisis of 2008-2009 had been made in Washington, D.C. The instability and discovered imbalances in the financial and housing markets had on them the fingerprints of the Federal Reserve System and the federal agencies that created the “moral hazard” of unsustainable home mortgages once the bubble burst. A free market had nothing to do with it because these markets were (and remain) hostages of governmental control and manipulation. (See my article, “Ten Years On: Recession, Recovery and the Regulatory State”.)
Coronavirus crisis was made by restrictive government planning
Turning to the Covid-19 disaster of 2020, Stiglitz refers to the U.S “economies’ lack of resilience. America, the superpower, could not even produce simple products like masks and other protective gear, let alone more sophisticated items like tests and ventilators.” I fear that Stiglitz is starting to suffer from short-term memory loss, at least when it comes to economic policy. It is only two years since the federal and state governments decided to follow the Chinese totalitarian model of extensive lockdowns and shutdowns in the attempt to stop the spread of the virus. This brought production and employment to a grinding halt over many parts of the American economy. It was a perverse system of government central planning designed to bring society to an intentional standstill to assure no one came closer than six feet from any other human being.
Furthermore, it was the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that brought about the delays and hindrances to entrepreneurially innovative responses to the medical crisis. These government agencies prohibited private enterprises from marketing improvised, but no less effective, substitutes for more standard ventilator equipment, face masks, hand sanitizers, and testing kits.
No matter how serious the medical and related healthcare and equipment shortages, nothing could be supplied without the slow-motion approvals of the restrictive regulatory gate-keepers. More lives were put at risk or lost, medical needs were left unsatisfied for a longer period of time, and human suffering and anxiety were increased precisely because resilient and robust competitive market responses to the coronavirus crisis faced the impenetrable and shut doors of the American regulatory bureaucracy for many months in 2020. (See my articles, “To Kill Markets is the Worst Possible Plan” and “Leaving People Alone is the Best Way to Beat the Coronavirus“and “The Conquest of America by Communist China“.)
War and government sanctions are causing new disruptions
The upshot is that if people’s values are not consistently pro-liberty, it won’t matter in the long run much what the Constitution “says,” and if they are pro-liberty, then it won’t matter whether there is a written constitution — or a state for that matter.
“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain—that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist” – Lysander Spooner
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, as if we needed another demonstration, that little stands between the government and our liberty. Champions of individual freedom have been properly disturbed by how much power governments at all levels have seized since the pandemic hit in 2020.
To make matters worse, officeholders and public-health officials object when the judicial branch occasionally overturns their power grabs because judges are said to be unqualified to rule on “medical” matters. So, if judges furnish constitutional and other legal grounds against power grabs, we’re supposed to ignore them because they in fact are issuing medical opinions for which they are not qualified. That’s pretty inventive reasoning, but unfortunately it is in the service of tyranny and serfdom.
Some judges have made good, that is, power-limiting, decisions during the pandemic, though they might well have gone the other way. (See John Hasnas’s “The Myth of the Rule of Law.”) It’s only a slight exaggeration to say the judicial process is a coin toss.
When judges get it right, the devout constitutionalists among us cheer: “The system works!” But what about all the times the rulings went the other way? Where does that leave the constitutionalists? They will say that the problem isn’t with the Constitution; it’s with the judges. But considering that the Constitution doesn’t interpret itself, who were they expecting to interpret it? Robots that have been correctly programmed? Who would do the programming? Even people within the competing schools of constitutional interpretation don’t agree on everything.
Since it’s people all the way down and the process is internal, not external to society, don’t the constitutionalists have a wee problem?
James Madison called the Bill of Rights, which he wrote, a “parchment barrier.” But he couldn’t have really meant that because parchment is a poor material for making the heavy-duty, barrier liberty requires due to the predatory nature of politicians. The only real barriers in this regard are the people themselves — people, that is, who refuse to give, carry out, or obey unjust orders. Paraxodically, orders require consent, and that can be withheld. (Think of the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian in which Brian tells a prison guard that he doesn’t have to follow orders and the guard replies, “I like orders.”)
Strictly speaking, constitutions and statutes cannot compel unjust conduct or compliance. They are merely words. When governors ordered “non-essential” businesses and schools to shut down and people to stay home in 2020, those politicians didn’t point guns at anyone. People obeyed, but I suspect that only a few did so lest they be punished. If someone had disobeyed, armed agents of the state might have been dispatched, but why did they obey orders? No gun was held to their heads. They might have been fired and others put in their place places, but no one would have been subjected to force.
I cannot help but to be reminded of Hitler’s classified “useless eaters.” Like those at the WEF, Hitler believed there was a class of humans among society who simply consumed but did not contribute. Instead of hoping they’d rely on government aid, he simply murdered them. Be on high alert when a global agency begins referring to portions of the population as “useless.”
Yuval Noah Harari, a self-described historian and one of Schwab’s loudest mouthpieces, believes that we will see the rise of the “useless class.” Harari noted how during the industrial revolution, people went from working on the farm to working in a car factory. He described it as transferring from one low-skilled job to another low-skilled job.
Since automation is leading the new world, future job prospects in 20 to 30 years are unknown. Harari believes it is impossible to know what to teach children today to make them productive citizens in the future. There will be “a new massive useless class that has no military or economic usefulness, and therefore no political power,” he stated. This is another push toward the World Economic Forum’s goal of government control – you need us but we don’t need you.
History tells us that farming is certainly not a low-skill profession. Look at what happened when Mao killed off all the farmers in China. A low-paying profession does not mean it is low-skilled. Our society could not function without farmers or automotive workers. Additionally, he does not take into account the beauty of creative destruction cited by Schumpeter. The brick and mortar retail stores may be gone in 20 years, but new positions will arise and people will develop skills and adapt to those roles. As for education, schools can begin by teaching children to think independently and question everything (not their gender). Claiming that there will be countless people out of work, “useless” to society, opens the door to government welfare programs becoming commonplace.
I cannot help but to be reminded of Hitler’s classified “useless eaters.” Like those at the WEF, Hitler believed there was a class of humans among society who simply consumed but did not contribute. Instead of hoping they’d rely on government aid, he simply murdered them. Be on high alert when a global agency begins referring to portions of the population as “useless.”
But even if they were allowed a vote, the Ukrainians understood what antisecessionist Americans refuse to admit: cultural minority groups that are out of favor with the central government’s elites have a better chance at true self-determination through secession rather than unity and democracy. Although Ukraine was the most important non-Russian component of the USSR, it was nonetheless in the minority. At the time, Ukrainian separatists believed Russian ethnics would dominate politics within a post-Soviet democracy. They were probably right.
By now, it should be abundantly clear to all that the official US regime narrative on Ukraine is that one is supposed to be in favor of Ukrainian political independence. That is, we’re supposed to support the idea that Ukraine is a separate state that is politically independent from the Russian state. By extension, of course, the idea that Ukraine is a sovereign state also implies it is separate from all other states as well.
But how did Ukraine get that way? States, of course, don’t appear out of nowhere. They generally come into being through one of two ways, or a combination of both. States can be formed out of two or more smaller states through a process of conquest or voluntary union. And states can result when a part of a state secedes to form its own state.
In the case of Ukraine, it is a state that was created out of a piece of the Soviet Union thirty years ago. This occurred via secession. Indeed, Ukraine was part of a remarkable trend toward decentralization and secession that occurred in the early 1990s. These secession movements, of course, were opposed by the “legitimate” central government in place at the time.
Put another way, to “stand with Ukraine” today is to “stand with secession.” But don’t expect to hear it phrased this way on MSNBC or at the New York Times. No, the “s word” is still a no-no in political discourse in America. Also a no-no is to advocate for the process that brought about Ukrainian secession: to hold an election—against the central government’s wishes—as to whether a region will secede.
The Ukrainians did that, and today we’re supposed to cheer that and accept that election’s outcome. Many American pundits even believe it’s worth fighting a war over. But to suggest something similar for a region of the United States? Well, we’re told that’s just plain wrong.
Ukraine Formed Out of Secession
The modern Ukrainian state was necessarily born out of secession because the Ukrainian state was not always separate nor sovereign. The history of Ukraine is a long history of various territories and polities that were, over time, incorporated into the Russian Empire beginning in the seventeenth century. What we now know as Ukraine more or less only came into being in the late nineteenth century. But then it was subject to the Russian czar and (later) to the Soviet Communists. Consolidated, sovereign Ukraine came into being only in December 1991, when a referendum was held and a majority of the voters voted for independence.
Ukraine soon after enjoyed both de facto and de jure independence because the Soviet State was too weak to do anything about it. Ukraine was not alone. By late 1991, the Baltic states had already declared independence, in moves that were opposed by the Soviet state and deemed illegal. A total of fifteen new states were carved out of the Soviet Union during this time. Secessionism extended beyond even the USSR, with Slovenia declaring independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. In 1993, Czechs and Slovakians both seceded from their state, dissolving Czechoslovakia altogether.
It is instructive to note that the United States regime and American pundits generally opposed these secession movements. Washington was late to recognize and accept the independence of the Baltic states. This was in spite of the fact the US had never even officially recognized the Soviet Union’s annexation of the states after the Second World War.
2014 saw two pivotal events that led to the current conflict in Ukraine.
The first, familiar to all, was the coup in Ukraine in which a democratically elected government was overthrown at the direction of the United States and with the assistance of neo-Nazi elements which Ukraine has long harbored.
Shortly thereafter the first shots in the present war were fired on the Russian-sympathetic Donbass region by the newly installed Ukrainian government. The shelling of the Donbass which claimed 14,000 lives has continued for 8 years, despite attempts at a cease-fire under the Minsk accords which Russia, France and Germany agreed upon but Ukraine backed by the US refused to implement. On February 24, 2022, Russia finally responded to the slaughter in Donbass and the threat of NATO on its doorstep.
Russia Turns to the East – China Provides an Alternative Economic Powerhouse.
The second pivotal event of 2014 was less noticed and in fact rarely mentioned in the Western mainstream media. In November of that year according to the IMF, China’s GDP surpassed that of the U.S. in purchasing power parity terms (PPP GDP). (This measure of GDP is calculated and published by the IMF, World Bank and even the CIA. Students of international relations like economics Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, Graham Allison and many others consider this metric the best measure of a nation’s comparative economic power.) One person who took note and who often mentions China’s standing in the PPP-GDP ranking is none other than Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
From one point of view, the Russian action in Ukraine represents a decisive turn away from the hostile West to the more dynamic East and the Global South. This follows decades of importuning the West for a peaceful relationship since the Cold War’s end. As Russia makes its Pivot to the East, it is doing its best to ensure that its Western border with Ukraine is secured.
Following the Russian action in Ukraine, the inevitable U.S. sanctions poured onto Russia. China refused to join them and refused to condemn Russia. This was no surprise; after all Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China had been drawing ever closer for years, most notably with trade denominated in ruble-renminbi exchange, thus moving toward independence from the West’s dollar dominated trade regime.
The World Majority Refuses to Back U.S. Sanctions
But then a big surprise. India joined China in refusing to honor the US sanctions regime. And India kept to its resolve despite enormous pressure including calls from Biden to Modi and a train of high level US, UK and EU officials trekking off to India to bully, threaten and otherwise attempting to intimidate India. India would face “consequences,” the tired US threat went up. India did not budge.
India’s close military and diplomatic ties with Russia were forged during the anti-colonial struggles of the Soviet era. India’s economic interests in Russian exports could not be countermanded by U.S. threats. Now India and Russia are now working on trade via ruble-rupee exchange. In fact, Russia has turned out to be a factor that put India and China on the same side, pursuing their own interests and independence in the face of U.S. diktat. Moreover with trade in ruble-renminbi exchange already a reality and with ruble-rupee exchange in the offing, are we about to witness a Renminbi-Ruble-Rupee world of trade – a “3R” alternative to the Dollar-Euro monopoly? Is the world’s second most important political relationship, that between India and China, about to take a more peaceful direction? What’s the world’s first most important relationship?
India is but one example of the shift in power. Out of 195 countries, only 30 have honored the US sanctions on Russia. That means about 165 countries in the world have refused to join the sanctions. Those countries represent by far the majority of the world’s population. Most of Africa, Latin America (including Mexico and Brazil), East Asia (excepting Japan, South Korea, both occupied by U.S. troops and hence not sovereign, Singapore and the renegade Chinese Province of Taiwan) have refused. (India and China alone represent 35% of humanity.)
Add to that fact that 40 different countries are now the targets of US sanctions and there is a powerful constituency to oppose the thuggish economic tactics of the U.S.
Finally, at the recent G-20 Summit a walkout led by the US when the Russia delegate spoke was joined by the representatives of only 3 other G-20 countries, with 80% of these leading financial nations refusing to join! Similarly, a US attempt to bar a Russian delegate from a G-20 meeting later in the year in Bali was rebuffed by Indonesia which currently holds the G-20 Presidency.
Nations Taking Russia’s side are no longer poor as in Cold War 1.0.
These dissenting countries of the Global South are no longer as poor as they were during the Cold War. Of the top 10 countries in PPP-GDP, 5 do not support the sanctions. And these include China (number one) and India (number 3). So the first and third most powerful economies stand against the US on this matter. (Russia is number 6 on that list about equal to Germany, number 5, the two being close to equal, belying the idea that Russia’s economy is negligible.)
These stands are vastly more significant than any UN vote. Such votes can be coerced by a great power and little attention is paid to them in the world. But the economic interests of a nation and its view of the main danger in the world are important determinants of how it reacts economically – for example to sanctions. A “no” to US sanctions is putting one’s money where one’s mouth is.
We in the West hear that Russia is “isolated in the world” as a result of the crisis in Ukraine. If one is speaking about the Eurovassal states and the Anglosphere, that is true. But considering humanity as a whole and among the rising economies of the world, it is the US that stands isolated. And even in Europe, cracks are emerging. Hungary and Serbia have not joined the sanctions regime and of course most European countries will not and indeed cannot turn away from Russian energy imports crucial to their economies. It appears that the grand scheme of U.S. global hegemony to be brought about by the US move to WWII Redux, both Cold and Hot, has hit a mighty snag.
For those who look forward to a multipolar world, this is a welcome turn of events emerging out of the cruel tragedy of the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. The possibility of a saner, more prosperous multipolar world lies ahead – if we can get there.
“I want the ordinary citizens of Western countries to hear me as well: they are now trying to persuade you that all your difficulties are the result of some hostile actions of Russia, that your own purse should be used to pay for the fight against the mythical Russian threat. All of this is a lie.
The truth is that the current problems faced by millions of people in the West are the result of years of action, error, short-sightedness, and ambition on the part of the ruling elites of their states. These elites are not thinking about how to improve the lives of their citizens in Western countries. They are obsessed with their own self-interest and super profits.
This is evidenced by data from international organizations, which clearly show that social problems, even in the leading Western countries, have only worsened in recent years, that inequality, the gap between rich and poor, and racial and national conflicts are on the rise. The myth of a Western welfare society, of the so-called golden billion, is crumbling. I repeat, today the entire planet has to pay the price for the West’s ambitions, for its attempts to maintain its elusive dominance by any means.
The imposition of sanctions is a logical continuation, a concentrated expression of the irresponsible, short-sighted policy of the governments and central banks of the United States and EU countries. It is they who in recent years have with their own hands unleashed a spiral of global inflation, their actions have led to an increase in global poverty and in inequality, to new flows of refugees around the world. And the question arises: Who will now be responsible for the millions of starving deaths in the world’s poorest countries due to growing food shortages? Again, this is a serious blow to the entire global economy and trade, to the credibility of the U.S. dollar as the main reserve currency.”
MCViewPoint 