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Die for Ukraine? – LewRockwell LewRockwell.com

Posted by M. C. on January 30, 2022

The saddest part of this whole manufactured crisis is that it should make absolutely no difference to us whether Russia controls Ukraine. How is that a threat to the United States? Whatever Biden and his neocon advisers say, America should stay out of conflicts that are none of our business.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/?post_type=article&p=833075

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

You would think that the problems facing the United States would be enough for brain-dead Biden. With massive inflation, the economy is teetering on the brink of ruin. We face tyrannical control because of harmful vaccine mandates.  Bogus propaganda about “climate change” threatens to cripple American industry. The government seeks to monitor all our financial transactions. We threaten China with a new Cold War. But it isn’t enough. Now, Biden wants to ignite a war with Russia that could easily turn nuclear and destroy us.

Why is this happening? Biden says that Putin is about to invade Ukraine. We can’t let this happen because that would be “aggression.” If Putin does invade, we will impose massive sanctions on him. But the neocons who control American foreign policy are the real aggressors. As Larry Johnson says, “Look at this situation from Russia’s perspective. The United States promised not to expand NATO:

U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous ‘not one inch eastward’ assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

We lied. Instead of maintaining the status quo, we have expanded NATO towards Russia’s border. Make no mistake–Russia considers the expansion of NATO as a direct military threat. . . the United States has been conducting regular military exercises in countries bordering Russia for more than 20 years. If you think these exercises are of no concern to Russia you are worse than a damn fool. Now we are arming the Ukraine with weapons that will be used against Ukrainians with strong ties to Russia. This is madness that carries a genuine risk of sparking a nuclear conflagration. Russia will not be bullied and will not cower.”

The great expert on Russia Stephen Cohen warned us over two years ago that trouble lay in store for us: “Ukraine is not ‘a vital US national interest,’ as most leaders of both parties, Republican and Democrat alike, and much of the US media now declare. On the other hand, Ukraine is a vital Russian interest by any geopolitical or simply human reckoning. Why, then, is Washington so deeply involved in Ukraine?. . . The short but essential answer is Washington’s decision, taken by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, to expand NATO eastward from Germany and eventually to Ukraine itself. Ever since, both Democrats and Republicans have insisted that Ukraine is a ‘vital US national interest.’ Those of us who opposed that folly warned it would lead to dangerous conflicts with Moscow, conceivably even war. Imagine Washington’s reaction, we pointed out, if Russian military bases began to appear on Canada’s or Mexico’s borders with America. We were not wrong: An estimated 13,000 souls have already died in the Ukrainian-Russian war in the Donbass and some 2 million people have been displaced.”

If Biden doesn’t want Putin to invade Ukraine, he should remove the NATO bases around Russia and take away the missiles. If he won’t don’t this, a Russian invasion can still be stopped. All that’s required is that a pro-Russian government take power in Ukraine. This is what Putin wants, but Biden has threatened sanctions against him if he supports this. According to Henry Austin of NBC News, “Britain’s accusation that the Kremlin is seeking to install a pro-Russian regime in Ukraine is ‘deeply concerning,’ a National Security Council spokesperson said. ‘The Ukrainian people have the sovereign right to determine their own future, and we stand with our democratically-elected partners in Ukraine,’ the spokesperson, Emily Horne, said in a statement late Saturday. ’This kind of plotting is deeply concerning,’ she added.”

If Ukraine does get a pro-Russian government, this would not be Russian “aggression.” It would restore the situation in Ukraine before a US-backed coup overthrew a government friendly to Russia.  In February 2014, the US pushed out Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich by orchestrating demonstrations against him:  As Eric Zuisse noted in an article in Modern Diplomacy  in June, 2018, “If America’s successful February 2014 overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s democratically elected neutralist Government doesn’t soon produce a world-ending nuclear war (World War III), then there will be historical accounts of that overthrow, and the accounts are already increasingly trending and consolidating toward a historical consensus that it was a coup — that it was imposed by ‘somebody from the new coalition’ — i.e., that the termination of the then-existing democratic (though like all its predecessors, corrupt) Ukrainian Government, wasn’t authentically a ‘revolution’ such as the U.S. Government has contended, and certainly wasn’t at all democratic, but was instead a coup (and a very bloody one, at that), and totally illegal (though backed by The West).”

If the US does become involved in Russia, the result might be nuclear annihilation. Eric Margolis  says, “Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at the US and its allies.  No one in their right mind should contemplate a nuclear confrontation.  Russia has repeatedly made clear that if backed into a corner, it may well use tactical nuclear weapons.”

The saddest part of this whole manufactured crisis is that it should make absolutely no difference to us whether Russia controls Ukraine. How is that a threat to the United States? Whatever Biden and his neocon advisers say, America should stay out of conflicts that are none of our business. As usual, Murray Rothbard put it best. “In the context of the 1980 Afghan war, he quoted Canon Sydney Smith – a great classical liberal in early 19th century England who wrote to his warmongering Prime Minister, thus:

“For God’s sake, do not drag me into another war!

I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I must think a little of myself.

I am sorry for the Spaniards – I am sorry for the Greeks – I deplore the fate of the Jews; the people of the Sandwich Islands are groaning under the most detestable tyranny; Baghdad is oppressed, I do not like the present state of the Delta; Tibet is not comfortable. Am I to fight for all these people?

The world is bursting with sin and sorrow. Am I to be champion of the Decalogue, and to be eternally raising fleets and armies to make all men good and happy?

We have just done saving Europe, and I am afraid the consequence will be, that we shall cut each other’s throats. No war, dear Lady Grey! – No eloquence; but apathy,  selfishness, common sense, arithmetic!”

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail], former editorial assistant to Ludwig von Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor of LewRockwell.com. He is the author of Against the State and Against the Left. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

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Where is JFK When You Need Him? – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on January 30, 2022

What are the chances that President Biden will stand up to the Pentagon and the CIA and come up with a satisfactory resolution of the Ukraine crisis? Slim and none. No president since Kennedy has been willing to stand up to the national-security establishment. It’s not difficult to understand why.

https://www.fff.org/2022/01/26/where-is-jfk-when-you-need-him/

by Jacob G. Hornberger

President Kennedy had a unique way of viewing his communist adversaries during the Cold War. He would put himself in their shoes and try to figure out what was motivating them to take the actions they were taking. He would then attempt to fashion a solution to a particular crisis that satisfied the other side’s concerns. 

America’s Cold War generals lacked the mental capacity to think at that level. Their mindsets were always in terms of black and white: Communists are bad and cannot be trusted. There can never be negotiation with communists. Kill all communists. 

A good example of this dichotomy occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the United States and the Soviet Union to within an inch of all-out nuclear war. 

When Pentagon and CIA officials discovered that the Soviets were installing nuclear missiles in Cuba, their position was that Kennedy needed to immediately start bombing Cuba and then follow up with a full-scale ground invasion. Their position was much the same as the Russian position today with respect to Ukraine: They didn’t want Russian nuclear missiles pointed at the U.S. from only 90 miles away, just as today Russia doesn’t want U.S. nuclear missiles pointed at Russia from along Russian borders. 

Thus, for the generals, the situation was black and white. In their minds, the only way to deal with this problem was to show toughness by bombing and invading Cuba. For them, failure to do that would display “weakness,” which would only encourage the worldwide communist movement. 

Much to the anger and even rage of the generals, Kennedy took a different position. He tried to figure out what was motivating the Russians to engage in this dangerous nuclear brinkmanship. 

Rather than immediately start bombing and invading Cuba, Kennedy imposed a blockade on the island, which he called a “quarantine.” It prohibited any Soviet ships with missiles from proceeding to Cuba. 

At the same time, Kennedy figured out that the Soviets had placed their missiles in Cuba for two reasons: 

One, the Soviets and the Cubans knew that the Pentagon and the CIA were hell-bent on effecting regime-change in Cuba through violence. Even though the CIA’s invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs had failed miserably, the Soviets and the Cubans knew that the Pentagon and the CIA were more determined than ever to oust the Cuban communist regime from power and install another pro-U.S. dictatorship, either through assassination, terrorism, or outright military invasion.

That, of course, is what the CIA’s assassination plots against Castro, in partnership with the Mafia, were all about. The Soviets and the Cubans were also right about the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s insistence on invading Cuba. Consider, for example, Operation Northwoods. That was a top-secret plan that was unanimously approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that provided fraudulent pretexts for war with Cuba. To Kennedy’s everlasting credit, he rejected any and all plans that entailed fraudulent pretexts for war with Cuba.

Two, the U.S. government had nuclear missiles based in Turkey that were pointed at the Soviet Union. Given such, the Soviet position was that it had as much right to install its nuclear missiles in Cuba that were pointed at the United States.

Kennedy figured all this out and decided to fashion a solution based on his insights into why the Soviets were behaving in that way. The solution entailed a promise that the United States would not invade Cuba, along with a separate secret side promise to remove U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey. The Soviets, for their part, agreed to remove their missiles from Cuba and take them home. The crisis was over.

But not the war between Kennedy and the Pentagon and the CIA, which had gotten increasingly worse after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The generals were livid with Kennedy. During the crisis, Gen. Curtis LeMay, who loathed Kennedy, compared his actions to those of Neville Chamberlain at Munich. After the crisis was over, LeMay called Kennedy’s resolution of the crisis the biggest defeat in U.S. history. 

There is no reasonable doubt that this was when the national-security establishment decided that Kennedy needed to be removed from office and replaced by Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, who was on the same Cold War page as the Pentagon and the CIA. By his failure to provide needed air support for the Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs, followed by his failure to approve Operation Northwoods, through his decision to leave Cuba permanently in communist hands, and by his decision to withdraw America’s nuclear missiles from Turkey, as far as the Pentagon and the CIA were concerned, Kennedy had proven that he was not capable of confronting and defeating the supposed communist threat to America.

For his part, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy realized the role that the Pentagon and the CIA had played in causing the crisis. If the Pentagon and the CIA had not been hell-bent on bringing about regime change in Cuba and had not installed U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey aimed at the Soviet Union, the Soviets would not have placed their nuclear missiles in Cuba.

More important, Kennedy came to the realization that the entire Cold War was nothing but a highly dangerous and destructive racket. Therefore, in June 1963, he delivered his famous Peace Speech at American University, where he effectively declared an end to the Cold War and called for peaceful and friendly relations with the Soviet Union and the rest communist world. If there was anyone in the military and CIA hierarchy who still had doubts that Kennedy needed yo be removed from office in order to save America from a communist takeover, those doubts would have been eliminated after JFK’s Peace Speech. 

Don’t forget, after all, that establishing peaceful and friendly relations with the communist world is why the CIA violently ousted the democratically elected Guatemalan president, Jacob Arbenz, in 1954 and why the CIA would orchestrate the violent ouster of Chile’s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, from 1970 through 1973.

Kennedy was not a dumb man. He knew the dangers he was facing from his national-security establishment. That was why he helped to make the novel Seven Days in May, which posited the danger of a military takeover, into a movie. He wanted to warn the American people of the dangers posed by the national-security state governmental system, which America had adopted after World War II. Before you call Kennedy a “conspiracy theorist” though, keep in mind that President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, had also warned the American people of the dangers that the military-industrial complex posed to America’s democratic processes. Keep in mind also President Truman’s op-ed that was published in the Washington Post only a month after the Kennedy assassination stating that the CIA had become a sinister force in American life.

What are the chances that President Biden will stand up to the Pentagon and the CIA and come up with a satisfactory resolution of the Ukraine crisis? Slim and none. No president since Kennedy has been willing to stand up to the national-security establishment. It’s not difficult to understand why. EMAIL

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Why Price Deflation Is Always Good News | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on January 30, 2022

A general decline in the prices of goods and services in response to an increase in the pool of wealth is always good news for individuals. Furthermore, a general decline in prices, which is associated with the bursting of various bubbles, is also good news. The less nonproductive bubble activities, the better things will be for wealth generators and hence for the overall pool of wealth.

https://mises.org/wire/why-price-deflation-always-good-news

Frank Shostak

Most commentators are currently preoccupied with large increases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is labeled as inflation. The yearly growth rate of the CPI stood at 7.0 percent in December against 6.8 percent in November and 1.4 percent in December 2020.

shos1

Pundits have been blaming the strong increase in the momentum of the CPI on the supply disruptions because of covid-19, but the key behind this strong increase in the momentum of the CPI is reckless monetary pumping by the Fed. Observe that in January 2000 the Fed’s balance sheet stood at $0.6 trillion. By the end of 2021, it had climbed to $8.8 trillion.

shos

As a result of this pumping, the yearly growth rate of the Austrian money supply metric increased by a massive 79 percent in February 2021 from 4.8 percent in January 2020. (Note that some of the increases in money supply are the result of the monetization of large government outlays).

shos

On account of the sharp decline in the yearly growth rate of the Austrian money supply measure, from 79 percent in February 2021 to 15.4 percent in November 2021, the momentum of the CPI is likely to peak toward the end of 2022. Afterwards a strong decline in the momentum is likely to emerge.

shos

A possible decline in the yearly growth rate of prices coupled with a likely decline in economic activity could ignite expectations of a general decline in the prices of goods and services, i.e., deflation.

Most Commentators Fear Deflation

For most economic commentators, a general decline in prices is considered as bad news. According to these observers, a general decline in prices generates expectations for further declines in prices and slows down individuals’ propensity to spend. This in turn undermines the aggregate demand. A decline in the aggregate demand because of the decline in consumer expenditure leads to a decline in the aggregate supply and thus to a decline in economic growth.

All this sets in motion an economic slump. As the slump further depresses the prices of goods, the pace of economic decline intensifies.

The view that consumers postpone their buying of goods because prices are expected to decline is, however, questionable.

This would mean that people have abandoned any desire to live in the present. Without the maintenance of life in the present, no future life is conceivable.

According to Menger, the founder of the Austrian school of economics, “An imperfect satisfaction of needs leads to the stunting of our nature. Failure to satisfy them brings about our destruction. But to satisfy our needs is to live and prosper. Thus the attempt to provide for the satisfaction of our needs is synonymous with the attempt to provide for our lives and wellbeing. It is the most important of all human endeavors, since it is the prerequisite and foundation of all others.”

Is the Fall in Prices Bad News for the Economy?

What characterizes industrial market economy under a commodity money such as gold is that the prices of goods follow a declining trend.

According to Joseph Salerno, 

In fact, historically, the natural tendency in the industrial market economy under a commodity money such as gold has been for general prices to persistently decline as ongoing capital accumulation and advances in industrial techniques led to a continual expansion in the supplies of goods. Thus throughout the nineteenth century and up until the First World War, a mild deflationary trend prevailed in the industrialized nations as rapid growth in the supplies of goods outpaced the gradual growth in the money supply that occurred under the classical gold standard. For example, in the US from 1880 to 1896, the wholesale price level fell by about 30 percent, or by 1.75 percent per year, while real income rose by about 85 percent, or around 5 percent per year.

In a free market, the rising purchasing power of money, i.e., declining prices, is the mechanism that makes the great variety of goods produced accessible to many people.

See the rest here

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Watch “FREEDOM CONVOY Traffic Jam Canada” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on January 29, 2022

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Watch “FREEDOM CONVOY 2022 from AIR” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on January 29, 2022

In case your TV news and favorite rag missed the (largest?) peaceful protest.

https://youtu.be/fQ9BjjIDWLc

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Old Man, Look at Your Life…. | Kunstler

Posted by M. C. on January 29, 2022

It’s worth paying attention to just how disordered Mr. Young’s thinking is because it summarizes everything that has gone awry on the political Left: He is wrong two ways: 1) morally, and 2) on the facts of the matter — which is as wrong as you can be….

Today the Left is not only all-in on speech suppression, but also censorship of print and broadcasting, and is especially avid for the diverse punishments of cancellation — ruining careers, reputations, livelihoods, and families of anyone who opposes Woke right-think. Alternate views are not tolerated, labeled “unacceptable” (Mr. Young put it exactly that way), and flagged as “misinformation” (ditto Mr. Young).

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/old-man-look-at-your-life/

Rock’n’roller Neil Young’s conniption over having to share the Spotify platform with Joe Rogan affords a glimpse into the glutenous mire that is a mind bethinking itself “progressive” these drear days of American unraveling. For those of you not tuned in: Joe Rogan is a comedian and martial arts maven who runs the most popular podcast in the world, renowned for long-form interviews (three hours sometimes!) often with high-powered intellectuals. A month ago, he interviewed the mRNA developer Dr. Robert Malone, who has become an outspoken opponent of the Covid-19 mRNA “vaccines,” and of the US-led world pandemic policy in general under Dr. Anthony Fauci, going as far as to call for an immediate end to the world-wide vaxxing program because, Dr. Malone says, the vaxxes don’t work and they kill and disable people. Hearing that, Mr. Young called for Joe Rogan to be cancelled for spreading “misinformation.”

It’s worth paying attention to just how disordered Mr. Young’s thinking is because it summarizes everything that has gone awry on the political Left: He is wrong two ways: 1) morally, and 2) on the facts of the matter — which is as wrong as you can be. Like virtually everyone on the Democratic Party / Woke / Progressive axis, he is obviously in favor of suppressing free speech. Since when did that become okay for old hippies?

If I remember correctly (cuz I was there) the youth movement of the 1960s was all about freedom to say pretty much anything, except yell “fire” in a crowded theater — based on the idea that ordinary people were equipped to sort out the truth. During the War in Vietnam, we hippies were especially averse to the official lying that emanated from the Department of Defense, the FBI, the CIA, and the White House under both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. We founded “alternative” newspapers in defiance of the establishment’s propaganda. We applauded Daniel Ellsberg’s purloined Pentagon Papers, revealing the mendacity of the war effort. Altogether, this activity made it more difficult for the government to prosecute that war, and to defend the strategy behind it.

Today the Left is not only all-in on speech suppression, but also censorship of print and broadcasting, and is especially avid for the diverse punishments of cancellation — ruining careers, reputations, livelihoods, and families of anyone who opposes Woke right-think. Alternate views are not tolerated, labeled “unacceptable” (Mr. Young put it exactly that way), and flagged as “misinformation” (ditto Mr. Young). It’s gotten to the point where the word misinformation has acquired a distinct odor that signals bad faith in everyone who flogs it. These days, the charge of misinformation is deliberate misinformation.

Today, the Left is all-in for FBI home invasions, DOJ malicious prosecutions, CIA manipulations of public opinion, a fake president fronting for an unseen cabal, and a news media that wouldn’t know the actual shape and substance of reality if it jumped up and bit Jim Acosta on the lips. Ideas and principles don’t really matter to the Left; they’re just window-dressing for their sole interest, which is pushing other people around, in a word: coercion. That is the moral quagmire the Left is in and, having captured so many institutional transmitters of our polity, that is the nature of the evil they represent.

On the facts of Dr. Malone’s public statements about Covid-19 public health policy and the “vaccines,” Neil Young doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s just dead wrong, uninformed, possibly ignorant. The vaxxes have been a disaster from the start and the damage gets worse every week that the insane policy of coercing more vaxxes goes on. The vaxxes are a false magic talisman for a psychotic cargo cult of disordered minds who cannot face the actual quandaries in this momentous Fourth Turning of our foundering civilization — namely, our dwindling energy resources, the economics based on them, the malfunctioning operations of money, our over-investments in techno-complexity, and the out-of-scale dynamics of just about everything in daily life.

Fortunately, enough Americans now see through this matrix of bad faith and mendacity that the opposition is poised to wipe up the floor with the Left in next November’s election. The Left has screwed things up so completely that the end of Covid will expose every broken thing on the landscape — and now it’s up to others to try to repair it all, if possible. One thing is certain to happen a little less than a year from now, the day a new Congress is sworn in: “Joe Biden,” if he is still alive, and still in office, will be impeached. And unlike his several predecessors — Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump — “Joe Biden” will be convicted in the Senate, too, and of serious crimes against his country, not just trivialities because the evidence is there. He’ll be convicted of the very things spelled out in the constitution: treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

The laptop computer belonging to the Biden family bag-man, Hunter Biden, is not only still in the negligent possession of the FBI, but many faithful copies of its hard-drive were mindfully distributed to safe hands outside the agency. The email, contracts, and memoranda on it contain a clear record of bribery from foreign nations and money laundering to conceal the trail of all that grift. “Joe Biden’s” deliberate open border policy, and the purposeful transport of unvetted illegal aliens from scores of foreign countries to cities all over the USA, certainly represents an arrant and treasonous failure to uphold the law. It remains to be seen what kind of fiasco his misadventures in Ukraine may foment, but we’ll know presently.

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The Cold War Racket Never Ended for the U.S. – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on January 29, 2022

Too bad President Biden is unable to do that. What Biden should do is declare an end to the Cold War and abolish NATO immediately. Unlike Kennedy, however, Biden is deferring to the power of the Pentagon and the CIA and, in the process, letting them continue their dangerous and destructive Cold War racket.

https://www.fff.org/2022/01/27/the-cold-war-racket-never-ended-for-the-u-s/

by Jacob G. Hornberger

There is something important to recognize about the Cold War: It was not ended by the U.S. government. Instead, it was ended by the Soviet Union. If it had been up to the U.S. national-security establishment, the Cold War would have gone on forever because it is the best racket in U.S. history, one that continually expanded the tax-funded largess, power, and influence of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

In a sense, the U.S. national-security establishment considered the Soviet Union’s unilateral decision to end the Cold War a betrayal. The Soviets weren’t supposed to do that. The supposed international communist conspiracy to conquer the United States that was supposedly based in Moscow was serving as a fantastic boogeyman that was used to frighten the American people into supporting the continuation of the Cold War racket. 

There is something else to recognize about the Cold War: For the U.S. government, it really never ended. They weren’t about to let the Reds dictate the end of their racket. They were bound and determined to figure out some way to keep the racket going.

That’s what keeping NATO around was all about, along with the gradual absorption of former Warsaw Pact countries (without the express approval of Congress), which enabled NATO forces to get closer and closer to Russia’s borders. 

We should keep in mind that the reason that NATO, which is controlled by U.S. officials, was called into existence after World War II was to protect Western Europe from a Soviet attack. Never mind that the possibility of such an attack was virtually non-existent. Let’s not forget the massive death and destruction suffered by the Soviet Union at the hands of the Nazi army. The Soviets had lost more than 20 million people. That’s 20 million! Moreover, the German invasion of the Soviet Union had left the entire country in ruins. By the end of the war, Russia’s industrial capacity was decimated. 

Stalingrad 1942

Thus, why in the world would the Soviet Union want to start another war, especially knowing that it would be fighting the United States, its World War II partner and ally, whose officials had nuclear weapons and were more than willing to use them against populated cities? 

What about the continued Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe? It wasn’t justifiable but it certainly was understandable. The Soviets had just been invaded by the Nazi army, which had come very close to conquering the Soviet Union. Once they pushed the German army back and then defeated it, the last thing the Soviets were going to do was give up their Eastern European buffer against future German invasions. Moreover, we mustn’t forget something important: At the Yalta Conference, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt agreed that the Soviets could have Eastern Europe. 

When the Soviets unilaterally dismantled their empire and exited Eastern Europe in 1989, the United States had an excellent opportunity to do its part to restore a peaceful and harmonious world. It should have dismantled NATO immediately. NATO’s ostensible mission of protecting Western Europe from the Soviet Union was over. If NATO had been abolished, there wouldn’t be a crisis in Ukraine today. It’s because the Pentagon and the CIA kept NATO in existence and, even worse, began absorbing former Warsaw Pact countries that there is a crisis in Ukraine today. 

Just as U.S. officials go ballistic at the thought of Russia installing missiles in Cuba, Russian officials go ballistic over the thought of NATO installing missiles in Ukraine, which is on Russia’s border. U.S. interventionists claim that Russia is being paranoid. They say that the U.S. government is a peace-loving nation that would never attack Russia. 

Really? I wonder if the Iraqi people and the Afghan people would agree about that peace-loving bit. But there is something else to consider: It’s not just the U.S. that is in NATO. So is Germany — the nation that invaded the Soviet Union in World War II and wreaked massive death and destruction there. Why would it surprise anyone that Russia might be reticent about having German troops and missiles on Russia’s borders?

Germany seems to get this, which would explain its refusal to send weaponry to Ukraine. Other NATO members are chiding Germany for being “weak” in the face of Russian “aggression.” In actuality, Germany is showing that it understands Russia’s position.

Yesterday, I wrote about how President Kennedy would do his best to step into the shoes of an adversary in order to try to understand why his opponent was taking certain actions. In that way, JFK was able to fashion a solution to a crisis that would take into consideration his opponent’s concerns. That’s how Kennedy was able to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis without going to nuclear war with the Soviets, much to the anger and even rage of his enemies within the Pentagon and the CIA.

Too bad President Biden is unable to do that. What Biden should do is declare an end to the Cold War and abolish NATO immediately. Unlike Kennedy, however, Biden is deferring to the power of the Pentagon and the CIA and, in the process, letting them continue their dangerous and destructive Cold War racket.

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Meet the Capitol Police’s New Spy Chief › American Greatness

Posted by M. C. on January 29, 2022

Capitol police, acting as the Stasi of the Democratic Party, will collect dirt on Republicans under the pretense of national security then leak gossipy details to an always-compliant news media.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/27/meet-the-capitol-polices-new-spy-chief/

By Julie Kelly

hen most Americans hear the term “Capitol Police,” they likely conjure visions of uniformed officers manning metal detectors at the numerous congressional buildings or helping tourists navigate the sprawling Capitol grounds: a D.C. version of a mall cop.

That imagery, however, is in stark contrast to reality as Democrats have weaponized yet another federal agency to target their political enemies on the Right. 

After January 6, 2021, Capitol Police officials announced plans to expand beyond the legislatively authorized purview of the agency and open offices in Florida and California, as well as in other states. Congress overwhelmingly supported a bill last year to fork over $2.1 billion in new funding to the Capitol Police. Now flush with cash and immune from any serious public oversight, the agency is returning the favor by spying on dissidents of the Biden regime.

According to Politico, Capitol Police investigators are preparing secret dossiers on lawmakers, congressional staff, donors, and even constituents who visit their representatives in public or in private. 

“After the Jan. 6 insurrection (sic), the Capitol Police’s intelligence unit quietly started scrutinizing the backgrounds of people who meet with lawmakers,” reporters Betsy Woodruff Swan and Daniel Lippman wrote. “Several Capitol Police intelligence analysts have already raised concerns about the practice to the department’s inspector general,” one source told Politico.

Investigators are asked to scour social media accounts and even examine “tax and real estate records to find out who owned the properties that lawmakers visited.” In one example, Capitol Police analyzed a fundraiser held in a private home for Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.). Donors to House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was shot by a Bernie Sanders supporter in 2017, also are under Capitol police scrutiny.

Far from ensuring the safety of legislators and their staffs, the underlying political motive is obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention the past several years: the Capitol Police, acting as the Stasi of the Democratic Party, will collect dirt on Republicans under the pretense of national security then leak gossipy details to an always-compliant news media.about:blankReport Adabout:blankReport Ad

Journalists will then source the leaks to anonymous “intelligence officials” to legitimize any incriminating disclosures, which in turn will prompt Democrats to call for immediate investigations and criminal referrals—see the January 6 select committee for how this successful formula works.

In fact, an official from the Obama Administration, the birthplace of Russiagate and other political espionage efforts, is heading up the new endeavor. 

“Major changes in the Capitol Police intelligence unit started in fall of 2020, when the department brought on former Department of Homeland Security official Julie Farnam to help run its intelligence unit, which is housed in its Intelligence and Interagency Coordination Division,” Politico confirmed.

Who is Julie Farnam? In October 2014, Farnam was hired by the Obama Administration to serve as the acting chief of staff for the Homeland Security department’s field operations in Washington, D.C. The following year, Farnam was promoted to senior advisor on immigration issues. According to her LinkedIn profile, Farnam represented the Customs and Immigrations Services at “high-level meetings within the Agency, Department, other Federal agencies, and the White House.” She also “briefed senior officials on matters with national impact or controversy.”

One senior official with whom Farnam presumably worked at the White House would have been Lisa Monaco, Obama’s Homeland Security Advisor during his second term. Herself a key architect of Russiagate and an unabashed partisan, Monaco now serves as the deputy attorney general, responsible for the Justice Department’s sprawling and punitive investigation into January 6. Monaco’s prosecutors are handling at least 730 criminal cases related to the Capitol protest, with new arrests announced every week.about:blankReport Ad

Monaco’s street cred as a political operative is stellar. Chief of staff to former FBI Director Robert Mueller, Monaco is moving at open throttle not just to round up trespassers who objected to Joe Biden’s election but to hand down criminal indictments against Trump loyalists such as Steve Bannon and investigate alleged “fake electoral slates” in seven states sent to the National Archives in December 2020

Farnam seems to be following in Monaco’s footsteps—or taking her marching orders—to whip up frenzy about the imaginary threat posed by Trump voters. 

See the rest here

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Israel is overrun with Covid. The vaccines have failed. The experiment must stop.

Posted by M. C. on January 29, 2022

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/israel-is-overrun-with-covid-the/comments?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozMTczNjk0NywicG9zdF9pZCI6NDc4MDg4NDEsIl8iOiJGV2FLTiIsImlhdCI6MTY0MzM5MzMzMSwiZXhwIjoxNjQzMzk2OTMxLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzYzMDgwIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.RBfrqAsONsybh7bhgzc2o5q-SeJgUB9nRzmigKUPrnU

Alex Berenson

Israel has always been the most important country to judge the mRNA Covid vaccines.

Why?

It has nearly total adult vaccine coverage. Efforts to blame “the unvaccinated” for whatever is happening won’t hold. Israel has good data – far more complete and up-to-date than American figures. And it vaccinates quickly, so whatever impact the vaccines are having rolls through the population (and the data) quickly.

But most of all, Israel matters because Israel was first. It mass vaccinated with Pfizer’s mRNA first and it boosted first. And human biology is the same everywhere.

So what happens in Israel happens in all the other mRNA countries eventually. As the chief scientific officer of Pfizer said in September, Israel is a “sort of laboratory” for the vaccines.

Here’s how the Israeli experiment is going.

This chart tracks serious Covid cases (basically intensive care hospitalizations) in Israel from early 2020, the beginning of the epidemic:

(The United States has 36 times as many people as Israel, so 1,000 ICU patients translates into 36,000. Israel also has a relatively young population, meaning Covid will be less severe overall than in the US.)

See the rest here

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Watch “The “Experts” Will Not Save Us — What Will?” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on January 29, 2022

Over the last century, Americans willingly (and unwillingly) traded in the “American Dream” and freedom for a corporatist system of “rule by experts” and obedience. It was a very bad trade for the people, and a very good trade for the so-called “experts.” Benjamin Franklin said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” He was right.

https://youtu.be/3urQk0YhI00

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