To avoid the charge of status quo bias, they need to give a reason why $10 or anything close to it is preferable to the new market price. And just saying “Because that’s the way it used to be” is not a good reason.
We used to light our homes with kerosene lamps. That’s not a good reason to keep doing it when the world has changed.
People often believe that price gouging is so obviously immoral that making it illegal is the equivalent of criminalizing theft. In their minds, sellers who drastically hike their prices after a supply or demand shock are simply cruel capitalists taking advantage of poor consumers, who are practically forced to hand over their money.
The student of economics, of course, would sooner laud this practice than condemn it. After all, price changes are an important part of the market process because they help us economize scarce resources.
In theory, then, all that must be done is to explain this process to the public. A little bit of reasoning and a few graphs are all it should take to dispel this misguided objection to market prices. Yet somehow, it rarely seems to work. Economists have been trying for decades to break the irrational opposition to price gouging, but they have had little success. As it turns out, the art of shaping public opinion is somewhat different from the art of explaining economic phenomena.
Ludwig von Mises draws attention to this distinction in the final pages of Human Action. “The flowering of human society,” he writes, “depends on two factors: the intellectual power of outstanding men to conceive sound social and economic theories, and the ability of these or other men to make these ideologies palatable to the majority.”
How, then, can public opinion be shaped? Perhaps the answer lies in psychology. After all, “irrational” is a psychological word, not an economic one. So maybe the key is not so much to explain economic principles, but to identify and debunk the various biases that give rise to the public’s antimarket beliefs.
Price gouging, I believe, provides an illustrative example of how this can be done.
YouTube, which won’t allow adults to have conversations about COVID, has announced a fresh campaign of removing content, this time about Ukraine.
So in the midst of a war, when the truth is always hard to come by, you will have access only to the allowable sources — sources which, in the past, have done nothing but lie to you about overseas events.
In response, Glenn Greenwald commented: “Full-scale global censorship regime from Google breezily announced in these tweets. This war is being exploited to implement a scheme of information control previously unseen in the West, that is not going anywhere once this war is over. Decide for yourself if you’re comfortable.”
Now if I were to point out that no such campaign was launched in the case of dubious invasions by the U.S. regime, or regarding the situation in Yemen — which makes Ukraine seem like a Girl Scout convention — I would be accused of “whataboutism.”
But these are legitimate questions, because they prove that whatever the stated intentions of the censors, those cannot be their real intentions. If those who would protect us from allegedly dangerous information were truly moved by their superior moral sense, that moral sense would have prompted the same response to these other cases.
Since it didn’t, we can be sure that a pristine moral sensibility is not what is motivating the current fanaticism about silencing people.
Here is the YouTube announcement, via Twitter:
As I said last week: I think I’ve had just about enough of being told what I can and cannot read, what is and what isn’t “disinformation,” and naive people who think these designations are for our own good and being put to benign purposes.
I’m Armenian. I would not demand or expect YouTube to silence voices out of Azerbaijan, and I would be insulted if anyone thought I wanted such a thing.
And for heaven’s sake, if some people pointed out that Armenians weren’t exactly Boy Scouts themselves, I wouldn’t idiotically accuse them of being “Azerbaijani assets” or think name-calling was a substitute for argument.
Meanwhile, we have the hopeless Mitt Romney warning us about the “treasonous lies” of Tulsi Gabbard. “Treasonous lies” is regimespeak for dissident thoughts the establishment prefers the public not hear.
The establishment is getting more authoritarian and less tolerant of dissidents all the time.
Hence the ongoing value and importance of my no-censorship group, where freethinkers are still welcome.
It’s one of many goodies my good and kind supporters get.
The US has Biolabs, 130 according to sources, and has REFUSED to allow international inspections. This is NOT the type of government we voted for regardless of whether you are Democrat or Republican. Nuland has worked there clandestinely through all administrations and the tactic is always the same – demonize your opponent to justify war even when the facts are total bullshit
There are Biolabs in Ukraine funded by the US. There was never any real question if they existed or not. The rumor two days after the Russian invasion began, the claim was that Russia was targeting them for destruction. I wrote on February 26, 2022, that such a rumor was false and I pointed out that Russia would never target those labs for destruction. Instead, they would prefer to capture them to illustrate that people like Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, a notorious Neocon, who just wants war has for decades played the Neocon agenda of offensive war against everyone other than the United States – yes even Europe.
Victoria Nuland is a strategic player in government for the Neocons who have led US foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years while avoiding accountability. Nobody really understands that these people are directing the country without Congressional knowledge or the approval of the people.
They pretend America always wears the white hat when in fact their objectives are offensive and not defensive. They lie awake at night dreaming how they can destroy Russia and China for they wallow in hatred and never accepted that communism actually fell for they demonized Chinese and Russians where politics became irrelevant. The Neocons sabotage any effort whatsoever to further world peace. It was shocking that President Joe Biden has nominated Victoria Nuland for the third-highest position at the State Department, Under Secretary for Political Affairs with her history of manipulating the endless policy of war that the American people are against.
Yes, I know Bill Kristol and he even spoke at our WEC I believe back in 1996. Once upon a time, we were friends until I came to see his true colors. Bill has become a hard-core Neocon and his book on Iraq provided the blueprint for the overthrow of Saddam. Bill Tweeted that Russia would stage a filmed invasion to justify invading Ukraine. That was total nonsense and the Neocons will NEVER admit to the dark history of supporting Ukrainian Nazis or the false flag of shooting down the Malaysian passenger flight and blaming Russia to try to support WWIII. Neocons are notorious for making up BS that can be anything to support war as they did about the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq that never existed.
Bill Kristol was against Trump because Trump was against the Neocon agenda of endless war. People have to know that there is a sub-element inside the US government that is NOT elected and always pushing their own hateful agenda regardless if it is Republican or Democrat. They are a unique force all their own and people fall for their manipulation techniques to demonize their enemy to cover up their own hatred and covert agenda. Speak against them and they will paint you as a traitor, yet nobody even gets to votes on their agenda.
Back then, US Senator Rand Paul urged President Trump not to choose neoconservative Elliott Abrams to serve in the No. 2 spot at the US State Department. In an op-ed published in the libertarian website Rand Paul argued:
“Elliott Abrams is a neoconservative too long in the tooth to change his spots, and the president should have no reason to trust that he would carry out a Trump agenda rather than a neocon agenda.”
From 2003 to 2005 Victoria Nuland was THE principal foreign policy advisor to VP Dick Cheney who in fact helped to both plan and manage the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Nuland was advising and assisting the Bush administration’s case for a preemptive military strike against Iraq for what they alleged were weapons of mass destruction. She argued that removing Saddam Hussein and installing a US “ally” would be simple and secure the Middle East – WRONG!. Nuland was also for the occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Both were to be a strategic acquisition for her neocon agenda.
During the spring of 2011, Victoria Nuland became State Department spokesperson under Hillary Clinton. It was Nuland who pushed for “regime change” to also overthrow Moammar Ghaddafi of Libya.UN Security Council resolution 1973 authorized a “No Fly Zone” for the protection of civilians so she claimed. Then Nuland turned to try to do the same in Syria. Instead of looking at how dangerous Nuland was becoming to world peace, the Clintons retained Nuland for she argued to overthrow Ghaddafi who they always paint as the devil just as she did with Saddam. Demonizing these heads of state, Nuland turned the same strategy on Assad of Syria. She has always demonized her opponent to justify sending in arms to insurgents seeking to overthrow this time the Syrian government. In January 2012, Nulandclaimed that the US is“on the side of those wanting peaceful change in Syria.” She has lied to the people every time to support her neocon agenda that people of the United States are never allowed to vote on. While professing she wanted a peaceful overthrow of the regime, she was supplying weapons for the violent overthrow. This was confirmed insecret DOD documents which state:
“During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the [Qaddafi] regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria.”
If this war continues to unfold in a manner that is slow, painful and ugly, China and Russia are likely to establish far better relations with each other than either has with the United States.
In an interview with Reuters, Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman for decades, made a startling offer. Moscow could end the Ukraine war immediately, said Peskov, if four conditions were met.
Ukraine should cease all military action, recognize Crimea as part of Russia, accept the independence of the Luhansk and Donetsk separatist enclaves, and enact a constitutional commitment to “neutrality,” which would prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO.
Were this to be done, said Peskov, the war “will stop in a moment.”
As this would restore the situation in Ukraine to the “status quo ante” that existed before Putin ordered the invasion, Peskov’s offer seemed not to be believable.
Yet, according to The New York Times, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky “seemed surprisingly open to the idea.”
Zelensky “said he had ‘cooled down’ on joining NATO, saying it was clear the western alliance ‘is not prepared to accept Ukraine.’”
As for Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea, said Zelensky, “We can discuss and find a compromise on how these territories will live on.”
Monday, Ukraine and Russia held a fourth session of peace talks, and expressions of optimism were heard from both sides.
Ukrainian negotiator Mykhailo Podolyak volunteered that Russia is beginning to talk constructively. “I think that we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days.”
Yet, Russia’s strategic goals, manifest in its unfolding military action, seem to go far beyond the moderate demands of Peskov.
Three weeks into this war, what do Russia’s goals appear to be?
First, besiege and bring down the Kyiv government of Zelensky and replace it with a Russian client regime.
Second, divide Ukraine along the lines of the Dnieper River, which bisects the country north to south, and create an East Ukraine as a pro-Russian state.
Third, seize and occupy the entire coast of the Sea of Azov, turn it into a Russian lake, and capture all of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast from the Donbas to Mariupol, Crimea, Kherson, Odessa and Transnistria, the last a slice of seceded Moldovan land Moscow now controls.
This would leave a landlocked rump state of west Ukraine, which would be a buffer between NATO nations Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland — and Russia-backed East Ukraine.
The Wall Street Journal said Monday that Russia’s realization of these goals would be tantamount to victory in Putin’s war:
“A Ukraine divided in two, with Russia in control of the east, and a rump, Western Ukraine cut off from the coast might look like a victory to Mr. Putin — especially if sanctions are removed in some cease-fire agreement.”
With this kind of peace in hand, Putin could then warn the NATO nations that if they attacked East Ukraine directly, or indirectly by arming insurgents, they would face “consequences you have never seen.”
As no NATO nation risked war to save Georgia from Russia in 2008, or to save Ukraine from the Crimean and Donbas amputations of 2014, it is not likely NATO would risk war with Russia, and a potential third world war, if Russia declared a truce once it got full control of eastern Ukraine.
Where would that leave the West?
The Americans and British would likely treat Putin as a pariah and never meet with him again. But would President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany cut off all communication with Russia, when they have been making daily phone calls to Putin and regular visits to Moscow, even as Putin’s war of aggression was raging?
If Russia and Ukraine reached a ceasefire and a truce, would the EU and NATO nations of Europe not swiftly stand down themselves, rather than keep the Ukrainian resistance fighting?
If Kyiv falls to a Russian strategy of encirclement and strangulation, capitulation and conquest, how long would it be before EU nations seek an end to Russia’s isolation and a new era of detente?
Or would the continued existence of a regime headed by Putin mean permanent hostility?
Three years after Nikita Khrushchev sent Soviet tanks into Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Soviet premier was riding up Pennsylvania Avenue in an open convertible with Dwight Eisenhower to spend the night at Blair House before a 12-day tour as the guest of the president of the United States.
As of now, the winner of this Russia-Ukraine war appears to be China.
Given the severity of U.S. sanctions and the ostracism of Russia from the West, China is the only partner nation and economy to which Moscow can turn to recoup its losses.
If this war continues to unfold in a manner that is slow, painful and ugly, China and Russia are likely to establish far better relations with each other than either has with the United States.
But how is China, which is engaged in cultural genocide against its Uyghur minority of 10 million, a racial and ethnic persecution featuring reeducation camps, rapes, forced abortions and sterilizations, a morally superior regime to Putin’s?
THE WAR in Ukraine is the most dangerous international conflict since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Understanding its root causes is essential if we are to prevent it from getting worse and, instead, to find a way to bring it to a close.
There is no question that Vladimir Putin started the war and is responsible for how it is being waged. But why he did so is another matter. The mainstream view in the West is that he is an irrational, out-of-touch aggressor bent on creating a greater Russia in the mould of the former Soviet Union. Thus, he alone bears full responsibility for the Ukraine crisis.
But that story is wrong. The West, and especially America, is principally responsible for the crisis which began in February 2014. It has now turned into a war that not only threatens to destroy Ukraine, but also has the potential to escalate into a nuclear war between Russia and NATO.
The trouble over Ukraine actually started at NATO’s Bucharest summit in April 2008, when George W. Bush’s administration pushed the alliance to announce that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members”. Russian leaders responded immediately with outrage, characterising this decision as an existential threat to Russia and vowing to thwart it. According to a respected Russian journalist, Mr Putin “flew into a rage” and warned that “if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the eastern regions. It will simply fall apart.” America ignored Moscow’s red line, however, and pushed forward to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. That strategy included two other elements: bringing Ukraine closer to the EU and making it a pro-American democracy.
These efforts eventually sparked hostilities in February 2014, after an uprising (which was supported by America) caused Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to flee the country. In response, Russia took Crimea from Ukraine and helped fuel a civil war that broke out in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
The next major confrontation came in December 2021 and led directly to the current war. The main cause was that Ukraine was becoming a de facto member of NATO. The process started in December 2017, when the Trump administration decided to sell Kyiv “defensive weapons”. What counts as “defensive” is hardly clear-cut, however, and these weapons certainly looked offensive to Moscow and its allies in the Donbas region. Other NATO countries got in on the act, shipping weapons to Ukraine, training its armed forces and allowing it to participate in joint air and naval exercises. In July 2021, Ukraine and America co-hosted a major naval exercise in the Black Sea region involving navies from 32 countries. Operation Sea Breeze almost provoked Russia to fire at a British naval destroyer that deliberately entered what Russia considers its territorial waters.
The links between Ukraine and America continued growing under the Biden administration.
Mar 14 – As the Russian invasion of Ukraine moves past its third week, there are slight hopes that negotiations between the two sides may soon produce a ceasefire. But with the shrill warmongering talk in Washington, it almost seems like the US government would hate to see that happen.
Congress and the US Administration seem determined to drag the United States into a war with Russia over Ukraine. Senator Lindsay Graham is openly calling for someone to kill the Russian president and many in the US House have demanded that the Administration establish a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine.
Are they insane? A no-fly zone means you destroy anything and everything that can prevent total US air dominance. That means an attack on Russian missile and air defense systems within Russia. In other words, World War III.
We can all feel disgust at the destruction in Ukraine, but is it really necessary for us to gamble with our own nuclear annihilation?
Sadly, a large bipartisan group in Congress seems to think so.
Much of what is happening in Ukraine can be traced back to the Obama Administration. State Department officials like Victoria Nuland and Antony Blinken planned and executed the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014. This is what set us on this path to conflict, as the government put in place after the coup began demanding NATO membership.
Blinken, Nuland, and the others responsible for this heinous act returned to government in more senior positions under President Biden and they have continued to push their Ukraine agenda.
Last week Secretary of State Blinken – our top diplomat – sought to send Soviet-era Polish fighter jets into Ukraine to shoot Russians. When the Poles said they’d be happy to ship the planes to a US base in Germany and let the Pentagon transfer them to Ukraine, the Pentagon finally stepped in to quash an extraordinarily high-risk move that even the Pentagon said would have no real effect on the outcome of the war.
The State Department is trying to get us into a war and the Pentagon is trying to keep us out. How ironic!
Back when I was on the campaign trail I would say that we have a few thousand diplomats in government, it might not be a bad idea to use them. But I certainly did not mean that we should use them to try and get us further involved in a war!
Three weeks into this terrible war, the US is not pursuing talks with Russia. As Antiwar.com recently reported, instead of supporting negotiations between Ukraine and Russia that could lead to a ceasefire and an end to the bloodshed, the US government is actually escalating the situation which can only increase the bloodshed.
The constant flow of US and allied weapons into Ukraine and talk of supporting an extended insurgency does not seem designed to give Ukraine a victory on the battlefield but rather to hand Russia what Secretary of State Blinken called “a strategic defeat.”
It sounds an awful lot like the Biden Administration intends to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. The only solution for the US is to get out. Let the Russians and Ukrainians reach an agreement. That means no NATO for Ukraine and no US missiles on Russia’s borders? So what! End the war then end NATO.
The Russians have made it amply clear what they want. They want a neutral Ukraine that is free of NATO. This is a reasonable demand. To start World War III over this would be an act of most regrettable foolishness.”
As you would expect from brain-dead Biden and the people controlling him, American policy has been moving in the wrong direction. Whatever you think about the situation in the Ukraine, one thing is obvious. It’s a crisis. Shouldn’t we try to stay out of danger? Instead, the US has led the way in imposing drastic economic sanctions on Russia, backing Putin to the wall. What if he gets desperate and uses atomic weapons? This could result in the end of civilized life on our planet. Is this what Americans want?
The danger isn’t just something I and other critics of American policy have conjured up. “President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday [March 5] that Western sanctions on Russia were akin to a declaration of war and warned that any attempt to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would lead to catastrophic consequences for the world. . . ‘These sanctions that are being imposed are akin to a declaration of war but thank God it has not come to that,’ Putin said, speaking to a group of flight attendants at an Aeroflot training centre near Moscow. He said any attempt by another power to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would be considered by Russia to be a step into the military conflict.”
The neocon warmongers brush this danger aside. They say that “we” have to do something to defend the Ukraine from an unprovoked Russian attack. But this totally distorts what is happening there. The Ukrainian government started things by moving against Donbass, a territory that declared independence and is allied with Russia. According to the Ukrainian government, the Ukrainians can secede from Russia but people can’t secede from the Ukraine. As Rick Rozoff pointed out in an article on February 2, “Two-thirds of Ukrainian army servicemen have been amassed along the Donbas contact line, Eduard Basurin, spokesman for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) militia, said on Thursday.
‘Another three brigades are on their way [to Donbas], which is 20,000 to 25,000 troops more. The total number will reach 150,000, not to mention the nationalists. This is about two-thirds of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ personnel,’ Basurin said on the Rossiya 1 television channel (VGTRK) on Thursday.
The Ukrainian troops are stationed along the 320-kilometer front line, he said. . . The situation in Donbass has reached a critical mark in the past week due to Ukraine’s aggressive actions, Donetsk People’s Republic representative at the Minsk talks, DPR Foreign Minister Natalia Nikonorova said on Thursday.”
But the provocative actions against Russia go much further back. Vasko Kohlmayer gives an excellent account of these and highlights the danger of nuclear war that reckless American policy has caused: “The war drums are, of course, beating for US involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.
‘Declare a NoFlyZone over Ukraine,’ tweeted Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.).
Lindsey Graham, a powerful US Senator, went so far as to publicly advocate the assassination of the Russian head of state. Tweeted he:
Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country – and the world – a great service.
Such brazen incitement to murder by a highly positioned US official could be construed as a war act by the other side.
Abu Zubaydah, whom the CIA once mistakenly alleged was a top Al-Qaeda leader, was waterboarded 80-plus times, subjected to assault in the form of forced rectal exams, and exposed to live burials in coffins for hundreds of hours. Zubaydah sobbed, twitched and hyperventilated. During one waterboarding session, he became completely unresponsive, with bubbles coming out of his mouth. “He became so compliant that he would prepare for waterboarding at the snap of a finger,” Neil Gorsuch wrote in his 30-page dissent in United States v. Zubaydah.
On March 3, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court dismissed Zubaydah’s petition requesting the testimony of psychologists James Mitchell and John Jessen, whom the CIA hired to orchestrate his torture at a secret CIA prison (“CIA black site”) in Poland from December 2002 until September 2003. Zubaydah was transferred to other CIA black sites before being sent to Guantánamo in 2006, where he remains today with no charges against him.
Abu Zubaydah in pre-2008 photo. (DoD, Wikimedia Commons)
Zubaydah sought information: (1) to confirm that the CIA black site in question was located in Poland; (2) about his torture there; and (3) about the involvement of Polish officials. First the Trump administration — now the Biden administration — claim that confirming the location of the CIA black site in Poland is a “state secret” that would significantly harm U.S. national security interests. Zubaydah needs Mitchell and Jessen’s testimony to document his treatment from December 2002 to 2003 at the CIA black site in Poland for use in the ongoing Polish criminal investigation of Poles complicit in his torture. Those details have not been publicly documented.
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo wrote in a declaration that although the enhanced interrogation techniques are no longer classified, the location of the CIA black site in question remains a state secret. Pompeo maintained that soliciting information about the involvement of Polish nationals in Zubaydah’s treatment could compromise national security.
But the location of the Polish CIA black site has been publicly acknowledged in several venues. The 683-page report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, published in 2014, detailed the CIA detention and interrogation program, including details about Zubaydah’s torture prior to being sent to the CIA’s black site in Poland. In 2007, the Council of Europe issued a long report that found Zubaydah was held at the Polish CIA black site after his capture in 2002. The former president of Poland told reporters in 2012 that the CIA black site in Poland was established with his knowledge. In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights concluded beyond reasonable doubt that Zubaydah was held in Poland from December 2002 to September 2003.
Moreover, in 2017, the U.S. government allowed Mitchell and Jessen to testify about how they developed the idea of waterboarding, that they asked the CIA to stop using “enhanced interrogation techniques” (aka torture) on Zubaydah, and how the CIA leadership refused. Once again, in 2020, the U.S. government permitted the two psychologists to testify at military commission hearings at Guantánamo about how Zubaydah was waterboarded and kept awake for 120 consecutive hours.
Zubaydah’s attorneys sought to elicit information about Zubaydah’s conditions of confinement and the details of his treatment without risk to any state secrets. They asked that the two psychologists be allowed to testify without confirming the location of the black site or the cooperation of foreign nationals. They offered to use code words to avoid specific reference to Poland or the involvement of Polish officials.
“The Polish prosecutor already has information [that it happened in Poland] and doesn’t need U.S. discovery on the topic,” David Klein, Zubaydah’s attorney, told the court during oral argument. “What he does need to know is what happened inside Abu Zubaydah’s cell between December 2002 and September 2003. So I want to ask simple questions like, how was Abu Zubaydah fed? What was his medical condition? What was his cell like? And, yes, was he tortured?”
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