Eric Zemmour
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You Feel Like A Stranger In Your Own Country. You Are Inner Exciles.
Posted by M. C. on March 6, 2022
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Talking About Stoicism 164 The Shock of Being Wrong About Someone
Posted by M. C. on March 6, 2022
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Ukraine: Why the Pentagon and the CIA Hate Julian Assange
Posted by M. C. on March 6, 2022
In other words, Burns’s cable constitutes conclusive proof that the Pentagon and the CIA knew with absolute certainty what Russia’s response would be if they threatened to have NATO absorb Ukraine.
As most everyone knows, the hatred that U.S. officials have for Julian Assange has no bounds. For years, they have relentlessly and obsessively done everything they can to destroy, isolate, persecute, prosecute, incarcerate, torture, and hound the guy to death. They have even contemplated assassinating him through their omnipotent, dark-side, non-reviewable power of assassination, a power that the U.S. national-security establishment wields and exercises on a regular basis without any interference by the federal judiciary or the Congress.
Why do they hate Assange so much? Because he disclosed to the American people dark-side secrets of the U.S. national-security establishment. In a national-security state form of governmental structure, that is among the gravest offenses that a person can ever commit.
Consider, for example, a certain cable that Assange’s organization WikiLeaks revealed to the world. The cable was sent in 2009 — 13 years ago — by William J. Burns, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia. It stated in part:
NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains “an emotional and neuralgic” issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene. Additionally, the GOR and experts continue to claim that Ukrainian NATO membership would have a major impact on Russia’s defense industry, Russian-Ukrainian family connections, and bilateral relations generally….
….During his annual review of Russia’s foreign policy January 22-23 (ref B), Foreign Minister Lavrov stressed that Russia had to view continued eastward expansion of NATO, particularly to Ukraine and Georgia, as a potential military threat. While Russia might believe statements from the West that NATO was not directed against Russia, when one looked at recent military activities in NATO countries (establishment of U.S. forward operating locations, etc. they had to be evaluated not by stated intentions but by potential…. While Russian opposition to the first round of NATO enlargement in the mid-1990’s was strong, Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully to what it perceives as actions contrary to its national interests.
Now, keep in mind something important: U.S. Ambassador Burns became CIA director on March 19, 2021. Why is that important? Because Burns has been the director of the CIA for almost a year before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In other words, Burns’s cable constitutes conclusive proof that the Pentagon and the CIA knew with absolute certainty what Russia’s response would be if they threatened to have NATO absorb Ukraine. As I and others have pointed out, by threatening to absorb NATO, the Pentagon and the CIA knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately cornered Russia into making an untenable choice: (1) permit Ukraine to join NATO, which would thereby enable the Pentagon and the CIA to install military bases, missiles, tanks, troops, and other weaponry on Russia’s border, or (2) invade Ukraine to prevent that from happening. (See my articles “Dismantle the U.S. National Security State, Now” and “The Evil and Malevolence of the Pentagon’s Brilliant Strategy in Ukraine.” Also see “It All Comes Back to NATO” by Ron Paul.”)
Do you see why they hate Assange so much? Do you see why they have gone after him so viciously? If WikiLeaks had not revealed Burns’s cable, the Pentagon and the CIA could have acted innocent and labeled anyone who outlined their strategy as a “conspiracy theorist.” The disclosure of Burn’s cable foreclosed that possibility and revealed as an absolute certainty that both the Pentagon and the CIA knew that Russia, when placed in the corner in which the Pentagon and the CIA maneuvered it, would choose to invade Ukraine rather than permit the Pentagon and the CIA to install their military bases, missiles, tanks, troops, and other weaponry on Russia’s border.
I ask you a simple question: Which is more evil: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the Pentagon’s and CIA’s political gamesmanship that brought about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? After all, at the risk of stating the obvious, simply because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is evil doesn’t convert the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s strategy to induce Russia to invade Ukraine into something good. Despite the evil of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s political gamesmanship that produced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remains evil as well and is possibly even more evil.
Notice something important about the U.S. mainstream press. They focus exclusively on the evil of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They don’t even mention the evil of the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s political gamesmanship that brought about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Why is that?
The Pentagon and the CIA have lots of assets within the mainstream press. Anyone who honestly thinks that the CIA abandoned its Operation Mockingbird program after it became public is suffering from extreme naïveté. Why would the CIA abandon a program in which mainstream journalists are available to spout the national-security establishment’s propaganda whenever called upon to do so?
But what about American statists, especially those who are expressing outrage over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Why aren’t they as outraged over the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s political maneuvering as they are at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They too are focusing exclusively on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with no focus whatsoever on the evil of the role that the Pentagon and the CIA have played in producing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. After all, the condemnation of both events are not mutually exclusive. One can easily condemn both. See, for example, Andrew Bacevich’s excellent article, “US Can’t Absolve Itself of Responsibility for Putin’s Ukraine Invasion.”
The answer lies in the extreme refusal of American statists to criticize or condemn the U.S. national-security establishment. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, which are the three principal components of the U.S. national-security establishment, are a triune god to American statists, no different from the triune god that American Christians worship on Sundays. That’s why, for example, American statists cheered when the Pentagon and the CIA were doing to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan the same thing that Russia is now doing to the people of Ukraine.
After all, for the past several years or even months there could have been massive protests by American statists against how the Pentagon and the CIA were using NATO to intentionally, knowingly, and deliberately bring about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Those protests could have conceivably pressured the Pentagon and the CIA to direct President Biden to publicly foreswear NATO’s absorption of Ukraine. If Biden had just made that simple announcement, there never would have been a Russian invasion of Ukraine, and all those dead Russian soldiers and Ukrainian people would still be alive today.
But as we all know, no such protests ever took place. Given the unswerving devotion to their political triune god, American statists could not even conceive of going down what to them would be an “unpatriotic” road — a road that entailed open opposition to their triune political god. That’s undoubtedly the big reason for the silence that characterizes American statists today toward what the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s political gamesmanship toward Russia has wrought for the people of Ukraine.
It’s worth mentioning the outcome of the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s political gamesmanship. Massive death and destruction in Ukraine. A new (and old) official enemy for the U.S. that is now garnering the ire of the entire world. A massive rallying to the Pentagon and the CIA, possibly even more so than during the Cold War or after the 9/11 attacks. Unlimited tax-funded largess flooding into the coffers of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA and their ever-growing army of “defense” contractors. Ever-growing omnipotent power of the national-security establishment within America’s federal governmental structure. Ever more federal spending, debt, and inflation. The ever-expanding destruction of the rights and liberties of the American people. Greater possibility of all-out nuclear war between Russia and the United States.
But at least the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s deadly, vicious, and destructive gamesmanship is there for all who care to see it. Is it any wonder why they hate Julian Assange?
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Watch “This Was Forbidden To Talk About” on YouTube
Posted by M. C. on March 6, 2022
A study featured in the New York Times once again reprises the assertion that the COVID-19 pandemic began in a Wuhan market, not a lab. Case closed then, right?
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Watch “Hayek’s Contribution to Liberty” on YouTube
Posted by M. C. on March 6, 2022
What were Friedrich Hayek’s major contributions to the principles of the free market and the free society? Join FFF president Jacob G. Hornberger and Citadel professor Richard M. Ebeling as they address that question in this week’s episode of The Libertarian Angle.
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Gazing into the Fog of War Surrounding Ukraine
Posted by M. C. on March 5, 2022
It is my view that the risk of America getting dragged into this war is low but not negligible. There are those who openly call for the US to attack Russia, like NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engle, who tweeted that the West should attack the main Russian column advancing on Kyiv, while others use barely concealed euphemisms such as “no-fly zone,” which is code for “shoot down Russian planes and attack Russian air defenses within Russia.” Either of these risks a nuclear escalation.
https://mises.org/wire/gazing-fog-war-surrounding-ukraine
The Russian regime’s invasion of Ukraine has shocked and horrified the world, in no small part because it is the first war of this scale in Europe since the end of the Second World War and also because it is the first large-scale war to be fought with contemporary and high-tech armaments. The situation is changing rapidly, but the amount of devastation, death, and suffering this war has inflicted is already immense and will only grow larger as the war continues.
It goes without saying that the people who make up the Russian regime are agents with free will who bear moral responsibility for instigating this unjust and evil war. However, we live in a fallen world, where people do many evil things. Morality requires that our actions comport not with how we wish the world were but with how it actually is. For years, realist thinkers such as John Mearsheimer have been sounding the alarm that Western efforts to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the borders of Russia will cause an immense amount of trouble.
Background to the War
In brief, in 2008, NATO announced that it welcomed Ukraine and Georgia eventually joining NATO. Vladimir Putin hit the roof and declared that Russia (in this article meaning the Russian regime) would find such a move unacceptable. However, the West did not really pay attention. As a result of this action, Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 to secure two breakaway provinces (because NATO will not accept any members with territorial disputes). Later, in 2014, as a result of a pro-Western coup in Ukraine, Putin swiftly moved to take over Crimea (to secure the home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet based at Sevastopol and prevent NATO naval vessels from securing a port so close to Russia) and supported two breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine, thus ensuring that Ukraine would also be mired in territorial disputes and be unable to join NATO.
The Western reaction to these events has largely been driven by moral condemnation and proclamations that as a sovereign state, Ukraine has the right to decide its future for itself. Unfortunately, when it comes to international relations, might makes right. In the words of Thucydides’s Melian Dialogue, “The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.” To acknowledge this fact about reality is not to condone it, but recognizing it to be true allows one to better prepare to reduce the amount of conflict and suffering that takes place. The failure to acknowledge this has contributed a great deal to the current crisis.
To understand more of the background to this conflict, it would be wise to consult John Mearsheimer’s 2014 essay “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault” and his related 2015 speech on the same subject. The key takeaway is that Russia considers the alignment of Ukraine to be an issue of extreme importance. In contrast, the Western states have very little to no national interest in Ukraine. Thus, Russia is willing to go to much more effort and pain to secure these goals than the West is. That is why no Western states have declared war on Russia and come to the military assistance of Ukraine. Russia has nuclear weapons, and the costs of war would far outweigh any potential benefits.
I must admit that until recently, I was not expecting Russia to undertake this drastic of a move; however, once the troop buildup began and diplomatic efforts seemed to make clear that Western states did not seem to even comprehend Russia’s security demands, let alone be willing to compromise to find a solution, I began to fear that war was more likely.
What Does This Invasion Mean?
It is still too early to know what Russia’s specific end goal is. It may be to annex large amounts of Ukrainian territory and turn the rest into a rump buffer state. It may be something less extreme than that. And circumstances on the ground will, of course, affect the outcome as well.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Crimea, Fog Of War, John Mearsheimer, Ukraine | Leave a Comment »
War Sanctions
Posted by M. C. on March 5, 2022
Jeff and Bob discuss Biden’s SOTU, the immorality of sanctions, and Fed chair Powell’s pregnant comments.
Authors:
Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute. He previously worked as chief of staff to Congressman Ron Paul, and as an attorney for private equity clients. Contact: email; Twitter.
Robert P. Murphy is a Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute. He is the author of numerous books: Contra Krugman: Smashing the Errors of America’s Most Famous Keynesian; Chaos Theory; Lessons for the Young Economist; Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action; The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism; Understanding Bitcoin (with Silas Barta), among others. He is also host of The Bob Murphy Show.
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So, Are Putin and the Russians as Good as These Guys? You Decide – – –
Posted by M. C. on March 5, 2022
Wars are good if you are the “good guy”.
April, 2004: In the attack on Fallujah, which ended after 3 weeks in defeat of the “coalition”:
“Forces bombed the power plant at the beginning of the assault; The town was placed under siege; the ban on bringing in food, medicine, and other basic items was broken only when Iraqis en masse challenged the roadblocks. After initial instances in which people were prevented from leaving, U.S. forces began allowing everyone to leave except for what they called ‘military age males,’ men usually between 15 and 60. Keeping noncombatants from leaving a place under bombardment is a violation of the laws of war.
“The main hospital in Fallujah is across the Euphrates from the bulk of the town. Right at the beginning, the Americans shut down the main bridge, cutting off the hospital from the town. This hospital closing (not the only such that I documented in Iraq) also violates the Geneva Convention.
“In addition to the artillery and the warplanes dropping 500, 1000, and 2000-pound bombs, and the murderous AC-130 Spectre gunships that can demolish a whole city block in less than a minute, the Marines had snipers criss-crossing the whole town. For weeks, Fallujah was a series of sometimes mutually inaccessible pockets, divided by the no-man’s-lands of sniper fire paths. Snipers fired indiscriminately, usually at whatever moved. Of 20 people I saw come into the clinic only five were ‘military-age males.’ I saw old women, old men, a child of 10 shot through the head
“One thing that snipers were very discriminating about every single ambulance I saw had bullet holes in it. Two I inspected bore clear evidence of specific, deliberate sniping. Friends of mine who went out to gather in wounded people were shot at. When we first reported this fact, we came in for near-universal execration. Many just refused to believe it. Some asked me how I knew that it wasn’t the mujahedin. Interesting question. Had, say, Brownsville, Texas, been encircled by the Vietnamese and bombarded and Brownsville ambulances been shot up, the question of whether the residents were shooting at their own ambulances, I somehow guess, would not have come up. Later, our reports were confirmed by the Iraqi Ministry of Health and even by the U.S. military.
“The best estimates are that roughly 900-1000 people were killed directly, blown up, burnt, or shot. Of them, my guess, based on news reports and personal observation, is that 2/3 to 3/4 were noncombatants.“
— “Fallujah and the Reality of War,” –Rahul Mahajan, CounterPunch, Nov. 6, 2004
Act II
“A hospital has been razed to the ground in one of the heaviest U.S. air raids in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Witnesses said only the facade remained of the small Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the center of the city. A nearby medical supplies storeroom and dozens of houses were damaged as US forces continued preparing the ground for an expected major assault.“
— “U.S. strikes raze Fallujah hospital,” BBC, Saturday, Nov. 6, 2004
“In a series of actions over the weekend, the United States military and Iraqi government destroyed a civilian hospital in a massive air raid, captured the main hospital, and prohibited the use of ambulances in the besieged city of Fallujah.“
“NEAR Fallujah, Iraq Nov. 12, 2004 — Hundreds of men trying to flee the assault on Fallujah have been turned back by U.S. troops following orders ‘We assume they’ll go home and just wait out the storm or find a place that’s safe,’ one 1st Cavalry Division officer, who declined to be named, said Thursday. Army Col. Michael Formica, who leads forces isolating Fallujah, admits the rule sounds ‘callous.’ But he insists it’s key to the mission’s success.
“Tell them ‘Stay in your houses, stay away from windows and stay off the roof and you’ll live through Fallujah,’ [Army Col. Michael] Formica, of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 2nd Brigade, told his battalion commanders in a radio conference call Wednesday night.
“Troops have cut off all roads and bridges leading out of the city. Relatively few residents have sought to get through On Wednesday and Thursday, American troops sunk boats being used to ferry people across the river. “
— “GIs Force Men Fleeing Fallujah to Return,” Associated Press, Nov. 16, 2004
“Insurgent attacks across Iraq stretched American forces to their limits yesterday when rebels appeared to be in control of at least two cities, and the operation in Fallujah entered its most dangerous phase. Some of the toughest street fighting encountered so far erupted during the day as rebels reemerged in areas already secured by U.S. Marines in the north of the city. Gunmen resumed positions on the roofs of mosques which had earlier been cleared
“‘I’m supposed to shoot into the houses before our troops go in,’ said Marine Cpl. Will Porter “
— “U.S. troops stretched to limit as insurgents fight back,” Robin Gedye, Nov. 13, 2004
“Her shins, shattered by bullets from U.S. soldiers when they fired through the front door of her house, are both covered by casts. Small plastic drainage backs filled with red fluid sit upon her abdomen, where she took shrapnel from another bullet.
“Fatima Harouz, 12 years old, lives in Latifiya, a city just south of Baghdad. Just three days ago soldiers attacked her home. Her mother, standing with us says, ‘They attacked our home and there weren’t even any resistance fighters in our area.’ Her brother was shot and killed, and his wife was wounded as their home was ransacked by soldiers. ‘Before they left, they killed all of our chickens,’ added Fatima’s mother, her eyes a mixture of fear, shock and rage.“
— Slash and Burn, Dahr Jamail, November 17, 2004
“Journalists with the troops speak of a city that is gradually being devastated. Scarcely a single house does not bear some form of weapons scar and many have been rendered uninhabitable.
“Tactics handed down from years of urban warfare in Israel mean that troops sometimes search rows of buildings by punching holes through walls with high velocity bullets rather than moving from house to house through doors, thus reducing the risk of booby traps and increasing the element of surprise.“
— “The Telegraph: U.S. troops stretched to limit as insurgents fight back,” Robin Gedye, Nov. 13, 2004
“The 33-year-old Associated Press photographer [Bilal Hussein] stayed behind to capture insider images during the siege of [Fallujah] In the hours and days that followed, heavy bombing raids and thunderous artillery shelling turned Hussein’s northern Jolan neighborhood into a zone of rubble and death. The walls of his house were pockmarked by coalition fire.
“‘Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no one to come and help them. U.S. soldiers began to open fire on the houses, so I decided that it was very dangerous to stay in my house,’ he said. Hussein moved from house to house — dodging gunfire — and reached the river. ‘I decided to swim but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river.’
“He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. ’I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some U.S. snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim.’“
— “AP Photographer Flees Fallujah,” Katarina Kratovac, Nov. 14, 2004
“No outside aid has reached civilians in the city since the offensive began last Monday, and yesterday U.S. forces kept an Iraqi Red Crescent aid convoy of seven trucks and ambulances waiting at the main hospital near a bridge on the edge of the city. Reports from within Fallujah yesterday said bodies lay in the streets, homes and mosques were destroyed, and power and telephone lines were down.
“However, [Marine] Col. [Mike] Shupp said the Red Crescent did not need to deliver aid to civilians in Fallujah and questioned whether there were any. He said: “There is no need to bring supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people.
“[U.S.-chosen Iraqi Prime Minister] Mr. [Iyad] Allawi also said he doubted reports of civilians in the city. This contradicted accounts from residents inside the city
“‘Our situation is very hard,’ said one resident [Abu Mustafa] contacted by telephone in the central Hay al Dubat neighborhood. ‘We don’t have food or water. My seven children all have severe diarrhea.’
“‘One of my sons was wounded by shrapnel last night and he’s bleeding, but I can’t do anything to help him.’
“It is thought about half of Fallujah’s 300,000 people fled the fighting in the city. In April, 2,000 U.S. Marines fought for three weeks and failed to take Fallujah. This time, six times that number were sent Major General Richard Natonski of the U.S. Marine Corps: ‘We had the green light this time and we went all the way.’ [M]ore than 20 different types of planes were used in bombing swarms as U.S. soldiers began clearing weapons and fighters from every one of Fallujah’s 50,000 buildings, bands of insurgents were still roaming freely in some neighborhoods.“
— “Bodies litter streets in rubble of Fallujah,” Calum MacDonald, Nov. 15, 2004
“[T]he command in Baghdad thought there were at least 2,000 insurgents, and perhaps as many as 5,000. But the coalition forces have failed to find large clusters and now think that there might have been less than 1,000, military sources said yesterday. The senior defense official said some generals now think there might have been 600 or fewer.“
— “U.S. suspects many insurgents have fled,” Rowan Scarborough, Nov. 12, 2004
“Fallujah has been under relentless aerial and artillery bombardment and without electricity since Monday. Reports have said residents are running low on food. An officer here said it was likely that those who stay in their homes would live through the assault, but agreed the city was a risky and frightening place to live.
“U.S. military says it does all it can to prevent bombing buildings with civilians inside them.“
— “GIs Force Men Fleeing Fallujah to Return,” Associated Press, Nov. 16, 2004
“You read about precision strikes, and it’s true that America’s GPS-guided bombs are very accurate when they’re not malfunctioning, the 80 or 85 percent of the time that they work, their targeting radius is 10 meters, i.e., they hit within 10 meters of the target. Even the smallest of them, however, the 500-pound bomb, has a blast radius of 400 meters.“
— “Fallujah and the Reality of War,” –Rahul Mahajan, CounterPunch, Nov. 6, 2004
“Once the battle ends, military officials say all surviving military-age men can expect to be tested for explosive residue, catalogued, checked against insurgent databases and interrogated about ties with the guerrillas. U.S. and Iraqi troops are in the midst of searching homes, and plan to check every house in the city for weapons.“
— “GIs Force Men Fleeing Fallujah to Return,” Associated Press, Nov. 16, 2004
“[A]ll the excuses Mr. Bush gave for attacking the people of Iraq were either wrong or lies. We’ll only mention in passing that the domestic price for ‘our’ sarkar attacking Iraq, a country with no WMD, no al-Qaeda links, and no connections to 9/11 so far has been $87 billion, a good chunk of our civil liberties — and 1,239 or so American soldier’s lives, not to mention a minimum of approximately 8,000 more wounded and/or maimed.“
— L. Reichard White, “The Only Way to Make Your Vote Count,” Oct. 31, 2004
So, are Putin and the Russians as good at invading countries and murdering men, women and children as these guys?
>HERE for updates, additions, comments, and corrections.
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L. Reichard White [send him mail] taught physics, designed and built a house, ran for Nevada State Senate, served two terms on the Libertarian National Committee, managed a theater company, etc. For the next few decades, he supported his writing habit by beating casinos at their own games. His hobby, though, is explaining things he wishes someone had explained to him. You can find a few of his other explanations listed here.
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Oliver Stone’s Fascinating Interview With Abby Martin
Posted by M. C. on March 5, 2022
By Ginny Garner
Lew,
Oliver Stone’s interview with Abby Martin is fascinating. He discusses the JFK assassination, the media blackout on his latest documentary JFK: Revisited, JFK the peacemaker, at 37:30 how today’s Left is cool with the CIA, at 40:00 Ukraine-Russia. the deep state and the intelligence agencies, and how an unexpected twist of fate can be a cause for hope.
Ginny Garner is a writer, editor, researcher, and music lover. She took the red pill many years ago and has been an avid reader of Lew’s website for the last 22-23 years. Write her at ginnygarner@protonmail.com .
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About those 600,000 Barrels . . .
Posted by M. C. on March 5, 2022
It was only about a year ago that America didn’t need oil from Russia. It was only about a year ago that America was on the verge of being a net exporter of oil – perhaps to places like Russia.
In that case, America could have turned off the spigot – without Americans having to pay three times as much for a gallon of gas as they just may, soon, than they were paying when Orange Man Bad.
By eric
If you think gas (and food) are expensive now, give it a week.
That’s all it may take for the thing styled the “media” to whip up enough hysteria about the Danger of Putin to cause something far worse and even more idiotic than the pouring out of Russian Vodka into the sink.
That thing being the turning off of the Russian spigot.
America currently imports something on the order of 600,000 barrels of Russian oil every day – an amount about 200,000 barrels shy of the number of barrels America would not have to import from Russia, had the Biden Thing not cancelled the Keystone Pipeline, among other things.
The deficit of those 200,000-something barrels per day – along with the other things of-a-piece done by the Biden Thing to reduce the supply of oil available to Americans – has helped to almost double the price of a gallon of gas over the course of a little more than one year since Orange Man Bad. And while he may, indeed, have been very bad – as by declaring (and continuing) an “emergency” when there wasn’t one and by turgidly Warp Speeding dangerous drugs not merely into existence but facilitated the forcing of them into the bodies of tens of millions of Americans – he was very good on the energy front.
It was only about a year ago that America didn’t need oil from Russia. It was only about a year ago that America was on the verge of being a net exporter of oil – perhaps to places like Russia.
In that case, America could have turned off the spigot – without Americans having to pay three times as much for a gallon of gas as they just may, soon, than they were paying when Orange Man Bad.
Americans ought to consider what that will mean – and whether it’s a cost they’re wanting (are able) to bear.
At $6 per gallon, it will cost the average American just shy of $100 to fill up the 15 gallon tank of the average compact-sized economy car; something in the Toyota Corolla class of car.
Assuming a once-a-week fill-up, the average American will be paying about $400 per month to get to work, in order to pay for that. Assuming it stays at just $6 per gallon – an unsafe assumption, if the Biden Thing stops importing Russian oil to punish the Russians by punishing Americans – the average American will be spending close to $5,000 annually on gas. For the same gas that he spent $30 to buy a tankful of when Orange Man Bad – or $120 per month ($1,440 per year).
His work is not likely going to give him a raise to compensate him for the difference.
Nor for the difference in what it costs him to eat.
Americans may not understand where their food comes from – nor how it is produced – much as they do not understand why the Russians are unsettled about this business of having a Western military alliance ensconced right up against the border of their country. But here’s the spoiler.
It requires oil.
A great deal of it, to create the fertilizer upon which crops depend. Upon which livestock depends, to grow into hamburger and pork chops. Without oil – or rather, without affordable oil – it not only gets more expensive to grow the crops, it gets harder to grow them. Modern industrial agriculture “guzzles” a great deal more gas – in the form of oil – than any V8-powered SUV.
Than all of them, combined.
Without the oil, you get the double whammy. Less food that costs more. And more to get that food to you. Trucks using oil, you see.
As well as for you to get to it.
Think about that a little bit.
How about $10 for a pound of ground round? How about no ground round, at all? It is a delicious irony – for those who appreciate it – that as the American regime fulminates against the Russian regime, America looks more and more like the Soviet regime.
Well, American supermarkets begin to look more and more like Soviet-era supermarkets, full of empty shelves and high prices. A kopek for your thoughts, comrade? American roads, too.
Or rather, soon will.
Lots of open roads – for the Party nomenklatura, people like the Biden Thing. They don’t have to worry about the cost of filling up, because they don’t have to pay it. The nomenklatura – whether then or there or here and now – never has to worry about such things. What they do worry about is a comfortable, well-fed population of citizens who don’t need them and for that reason can ignore them.
This is harder to do when your stomach – and your tank – are empty.
Or when you can’t afford to fill either.
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