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The Specter of One World Government Looms Large – American Thinker

Posted by M. C. on October 21, 2021

Instead of stressing the word “rights” throughout, as did the original U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the word “rights” appears only once in the Agenda, in Section 19.  Instead of “rights,” the two buzzwords that appear throughout the Agenda are “needs” and “sustainability.”  “Needs” resonates with the Marxist dictum “from each according to his ability; to each according to his needs.”  

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/10/the_specter_of_one_world_government_looms_large.html

By E. Jeffrey Ludwig

The U.N.’s Agenda 2030 is still in place, and the clock is ticking toward its empowerment — only eight years and two-plus months to go.  This Agenda is for a new world government, which will implement the policies of the Agenda.

This new government on our horizon explains many of the failures in policies in these first months of the Biden administration.  The failures are based not so much on mistakes as on deliberate sabotage to weaken our country, dilute the power that undergirds our sovereignty, and prepare us to accept one-world government.

The seed ideas for Agenda 2030 began with Pres. Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations in his Fourteen Points at the end of WWI.  A community of nations could bring pressure for peace in the world that the treaty or alliance system could not do, as shown by the First World War.  While this idea took hold in Europe and other countries, it was unable to gain sufficient traction in the U.S. as it met with Republican resistance in the U.S. Senate on the grounds that it would lead to a dilution of U.S. sovereignty.

With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, all right-thinking persons can see that Woodrow Wilson’s first giant step toward globalism was rightly rejected.  The League was a complete failure in terms of bringing peace to the world.  To the German Nazi government, the League was a joke.  The Japanese left the League after their invasion of China was repudiated.  Yet Republican sway over U.S. governance became diminished by the four-time election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president of the U.S. and the hegemony of the Democrat party for twenty years from 1933 to 1953.

After WWII, the U.N. was conceived of as having duties and functions that the League did not have.  The U.N. would sustain the world in real ways with the establishment of the International Monetary Fund to strengthen currencies worldwide and the World Bank to finance and endorse vast construction projects.  These institutions would together foster peace and “community” in our fragmented world (whispers of the “it takes a village” cliché that would take hold decades later).  After all, is it not true that poverty is ultimately the cause of conflict in our world?

Yes, the U.S. and the other illogical leftists throughout the West and the other parts of the world bought into the Marxist idea that wars are caused by fierce competition for scarce resources.  Even the great Harvard economist Walt Rostow in the 1950s and 1960s had a vision of global financial institutions through the sponsorship of the U.N. as bringing the poorest countries to a “take-off stage.”  There was only one problem with Prof. Rostow’s well-researched and theoretically sound vision: take-off never happened.  All that great Harvard research was not worth the paper it was written on.  The wealth disparities among the developed world, the less developed countries (LDCs), and the less developed developing countries (LDDCs) persisted. 

As a result of the perceived stratification of the world community, there was a paradigm shift in understanding the relations among the different wealth levels of societies.  Many on the left believed that if the whole world were one, then the destitution and resulting despair of the poorer countries could not be dismissed as a failure of local nation-state governments to enact good policies or to be less corrupt.  If, so to speak, all nations were under the same roof or same umbrella, the thought “that’s their problem” could not easily obtain.

“Their problem” automatically would become “our problem,” as we all are together under one government.  This is an updating of the idea first put forward in 18th-century France by Jean-Jacques Rousseau that the best government is not the liberty-centered, individualistic, and rights-oriented government such as projected by John Locke; rather, the best government bypasses all exploitation by expressing the General Will — it is a vision that goes beyond mere teamwork, a vision of all for all.  Any type of individualism or personal achievement is bourgeois and undermines true progress.

That brings us to Agenda 2030.  This Agenda puts forward a plan for a new soft world government by the year 2030.  It was a plan adopted unanimously by the U.N. on September 25, 2015, and has 91 sections.  The Agenda covers every aspect of human experience and thus is a government without using the word government.  Instead of stressing the word “rights” throughout, as did the original U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the word “rights” appears only once in the Agenda, in Section 19.  Instead of “rights,” the two buzzwords that appear throughout the Agenda are “needs” and “sustainability.”  “Needs” resonates with the Marxist dictum “from each according to his ability; to each according to his needs.”  Just as the more wealthy and advanced countries engage in various socialist and social welfare programs to meet the needs of their poorer citizens, the wealthier countries will feel more obligated and be expected to contribute much more to the needs of their fellow citizens in their new global state.  Trans-national identities of persons will replace national identities.  The needs of people will be uppermost in peoples’ minds, not their location in the world, ethnicity, religion, customs, mores, diets, appearances, and gender identities.  All distinctions become subsumed under needs in this new vision of one world.

“Sustainability” also brings us into the sphere of commonality rather than differences.  We all occupy one environment.  Problems with the oceans near one place may have effects on air quality at another — distant — place.  We all have to breathe the air on Planet Earth.  We influence each other all over the world through carbon emissions and through our habits of waste disposal.  Natural resources may be available to some countries more than others, but insofar as we are all residents of one planet, those resources ultimately belong to all.  Sustainability according to this vision is a global issue, and it must be addressed as a global issue through a world government. 

With this evolution of the U.N. before us, are we not better able to understand why the left is so comfortable with the collapse of our borders?  With the capture and availability of so much U.S. military equipment in Afghanistan?  With the overthrow of law and order in our cities so we look more and more like an unruly third-world country with each passing year?  With our budgets so inflated that currency inflation and collapse are almost a certainty?

Yes, this writer is proposing that these recent “mistakes” are connected with the goal of a one-world government, which has already been enunciated and was signed onto by the USA.  The disintegration we are facing in various sectors is, I believe, part of a move toward the collapse of our sovereignty in favor of a world government as outlined in Agenda 2030.

Image: sanjitbakshi via Flickr.

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Yes, They Are Coming for the Oil Companies | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2021

https://mises.org/wire/yes-they-are-coming-oil-companies

William L. Anderson

n his first year in office, President Joe Biden has made it absolutely clear that he wants to make the oil and natural gas industries disappear. While even a progressive like Biden knows that it would be economically (and, one would hope, politically) disastrous to destroy those industries during his brief term, nonetheless Biden is setting things into motion in which the regulatory and law enforcement apparatus of the central government are quietly but effectively declaring war on what has been one of the most productive industries in US history.

The Biden administration and its allies are looking at a multipronged approach, with the first being efforts at trying to starve the industry of capital. As Biden appointees take over the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), they are turning what once was an agency that regulated capital markets into an environmental regulator:

Under the Biden administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will require public companies to disclose how operations contribute to climate change and what is being done to comply with greenhouse gas emission guidelines.

Former Acting SEC Chair Allison Herren Lee released a statement in July that laid out the update to disclosure requirements. The SEC will evaluate how companies follow climate change guidelines from 2010, discuss the climate-related disclosures with companies, then examine the impact of climate risks on the stock market. The commission will then update the guidelines, most likely resulting in an expansion of disclosure from companies on how their business affects the environment. (emphasis mine)

While some have called this “regulatory overreach,” there is nothing surprising or shocking about this. The Biden administration response to anything it can tie to “climate change” is going to be heavy-handed and expansive, especially since regulators now believe they have been near-divinely appointed to bring better weather to planet Earth.

(For numerous reasons, I am not going into the actual scientific claims regarding climate change, except to say that given the history of governmental initiative failures, I am not optimistic that the Biden administration through heavy-handed edicts can reduce hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters that the ancients once called “acts of God.” Furthermore, no logical person can make a direct connection between Biden’s “Build Back Better” program and better weather.)

One only can imagine how far the SEC will take these so-called disclosure requirements. The idea is to mandate actions that appear to make firms look as though they are “fighting climate change.” For example, Amazon has been advertising that it will engage in corporate “responsibility” by making its delivery fleet all electric in the coming year. Likewise, Ford Motor Company has announced plans to spend billions of dollars on new plants that will make batteries and electric vehicles.

Whether these are “wise” business decisions is another matter. Certainly, they are politically wise in that Ford and Amazon will receive praise from the usual progressive suspects for their investment decisions, although I doubt that the progressive ruling class will let up on either company. Amazon’s so-called commitment to “fighting climate change” still is not going to keep the company from being accused of monopolistic behavior and union busting, along with the usual hysterical attacks that emanate from both the New York Times and the New Republic on the left and the American Conservative on the right, and one can be sure that sooner or later, the US Department of Justice and/or the Federal Trade Commission will be filing lawsuits against Amazon.

But investments must have a certain return in order to be worth undertaking, and given the current state of the US electric grids and the reach of present (and near-future) technology, it is doubtful that this multibillion-dollar turn toward going electric is going to have a return on investment that would come close to buying and building conventional gas- and diesel-powered vehicles. One doubts seriously that if the political climate were not so hostile to oil and gas, Ford and Amazon would be running on batteries.

But there is an even bigger threat to the oil industry than just Ford and Amazon wanting to go electric: there is a movement from the left to charge oil and gas executives with “crimes against humanity” that almost surely will engulf the Democratic Party as it continues to become radicalized. For now, those calling for imprisonment of energy industry leaders are publications like Jacobin, Common Dreams, Gizmodo, and The Guardian, but as the Left continues to march through all of the major institutions in Europe and North America, such a scenario easily could become mainstream in a short time.

Of course, the notion that oil executives “knew” something about “climate change” that was hidden from everyone else is sheer nonsense. There is no other way to describe that belief, but we already know from modern experience that nonsense has become the ruling ideology of progressives in this country. For those that believe that justice or the “rule of law” would prevail in an ideological climate, one is reminded of a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago: If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov, who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years, had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed with iron rings; that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the ‘secret brand’); that a man’s genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov’s plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums.

While progressives have not (at least yet) reached the depths of the commissars Bernie Sanders used to admire (and probably still does), nonetheless they understand something about the destruction of a society and its economy and seem eager to do what they can. From the Green New Deal, in which progressives believe they can centrally plan an entire economy, to the current “divestment” movement to keep new capital from the oil and gas industries, progressives believe they can somehow improve American lives by making them substantially poorer.

And it is not just the Far Left that is looking to find ways to throw oil and gas executives in prison. The New York State attorney general’s office is currently “investigating” oil companies and Massachusetts also has launched a “probe” into the question of whether oil executives “misled the public” about the horrors of climate change. One can expect other blue state attorney generals to do the same as the divide continues to grow between progressives and the people that are harmed by progressive governance.

The rush to destroy the oil and gas industries is coming from the political, academic, religious, corporate, and entertainment elites in this country, and they don’t care about the ramifications of their actions, and why should they? As elites, they are in the upper-income echelons of society, live in gated communities, and can afford the inconveniences of electric vehicles, which are a symbol to others of their “commitment” to “fighting climate change.”

Nonelites, however, do not have the same privileges, and they are the ones that would face the empty shelves in stores, the shortages, freezing in their homes in the winter, and dealing with summer heat without air conditioning. People in rural areas would find themselves back in the throes of poverty that they left decades ago, thanks to those fossil fuels that the progressives regularly demonize.

Not that the elites would care. Despite their claims that destroying the oil and gas industries would “improve the lives of working-class Americans,” there is no way to keep up even a semblance of our present standard of living without adequate electricity and fuels. Windmills, solar panels, and other renewables cannot replace what already exists no matter how much rhetoric comes from Joe Biden’s office.

Without getting into arguments about fossil fuels and climate change, one of the so-called smoking guns has been the series of massive wildfires on the West Coast. While progressives blame climate change, perhaps they should look in the mirror. Having been successful for the past few decades in setting off vast tracts of forests in the name of “protecting” the lands and forbidding logging, they forget that when there is no land management, trees grow closer together, they die, and they are easier victims of blight and insect damage. The result is that the forests become extremely combustible, and when they inevitably burn, the fires become conflagrations. But it always is easier to blame Exxon. Author:

Contact William L. Anderson

William L. Anderson is a professor of economics at Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Maryland.

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Erie Times E-Edition Article-Boosters were not tweaked for variants

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2021

Could it be because anything other than what was approved under the EUA may not be immune from lawsuit prevention?

https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=078fe2a40_1345f70

Lauran Neergaard

ASSOCIATED PRESS

More COVID-19 booster shots may be on the way – but when it’s your turn, you’ll get an extra dose of the original vaccine, not one updated to better match the extra-contagious delta variant.

And that has some experts wondering if the booster campaign is a bit of a missed opportunity to target delta and its likely descendants.

“Don’t we want to match the new strains that are most likely to circulate as closely as possible?” Dr. Cody Meissner of Tufts Medical Center, an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration, challenged Pfizer scientists recently.

“I don’t quite understand why this is not delta because that’s what we’re facing right now,” fellow adviser Dr. Patrick Moore of the University of Pittsburgh said last week as government experts debated whether it’s time for Moderna boosters. He wondered if such a switch would be particularly useful to block mild infection.

The simple answer: The FDA last month OK’d extra doses of Pfizer’s original recipe after studies showed it still works well enough against delta – and those doses could be rolled out right away. Now the FDA is weighing evidence for boosters of the original Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

See COVID, Page 2A

In September, the FDA approved extra doses of Pfizer’s original COVID-19 vaccine after studies showed it still works well against the delta variant. CHARLES KRUPA/AP

Continued from Page 1A

“It’s less churn and burn on the manufacturing” to only switch formulas when it’s really necessary, said FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks.

But Pfizer and Moderna are hedging their bets. They’re already testing experimental doses customized to delta and another variant, learning how to rapidly tweak the formula in case a change eventually is needed – for today’s mutants or a brand new one. The tougher question for regulators is how they’d decide if and when to ever order such a switch.

What we know:

Current vaccines are working even against delta

Vaccines used in the U.S. remain strongly effective against hospitalization and death from COVID-19, even after the delta variant took over, but authorities hope to shore up waning protection against less severe infection and for high-risk populations. Studies show an extra dose of the original formulas revs up virus-fighting antibodies that fend off infection, including antibodies that target delta.

Vaccines target the spike protein that coats the coronavirus. Mutations in that protein made delta more contagious but to the immune system, it doesn’t look all that different, said virus expert Richard Webby of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

That means there’s no guarantee a delta-specific booster would protect any better, said University of Pennsylvania immunologist John Wherry. Waiting for studies to settle that question – and if necessary, brewing updated doses – would have delayed rolling out boosters to people deemed to need them now.

Still, because delta is now the dominant version of the virus worldwide it almost certainly will be a common ancestor for whatever evolves next in a mostly unvaccinated world, said Trevor Bedford, a biologist and genetics expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

A delta-updated vaccine would “help to provide a buffer against those additional mutations,” he said. Bedford is paid by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports The Associated Press Health and Science Department.

Tweaking the recipe

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are made with a piece of genetic code called messenger RNA that tells the body to make harmless copies of the spike protein so it’s trained to recognize the virus. Updating the formula merely requires swapping out the original genetic code with mRNA for a mutated spike protein.

Both companies first experimented with tweaked doses against a mutant that emerged in South Africa, the beta variant, that has been the most vaccineresistant to date, more so than the delta variant. Lab tests showed the updated shots produced potent antibodies. But the beta variant didn’t spread widely.

Now the companies have studies underway of fully vaccinated people who agreed to test a booster dose tweaked to match delta. Moderna’s studies also include some shots that combine protection against more than one version of the coronavirus – much like today’s flu vaccines work against multiple influenza strains.

The mRNA vaccines are considered the easiest kind to tweak but some other vaccine makers also are exploring how to change their recipes if necessary.

Why study updated shots if they’re not yet needed?

Moderna’s Dr. Jacqueline Miller told an FDA advisory panel last week the company is studying variant-specific boosters now to learn if they offer advantages, and to be ready if they’re needed.

And Penn’s Wherry said it is critical to carefully analyze how the body reacts to updated shots because the immune system tends to “imprint” a stronger memory of the first virus strain it encounters. That raises questions about whether a subtly different booster would prompt a temporary jump in antibodies the body’s made before – or the bigger goal, a broader and more durable response that might even be better positioned for the next mutations to come along.

No rules yet for making a switch

“What is the tripping point?” asked Webby, who is part of a World Health Organization network that tracks influenza evolution. “A lot of what is going to need to go into that decision making is just going to be learned by experience, unfortunately.”

Bedford said now is the time to decide what drop in vaccine effectiveness would trigger a formula change, just as is done with flu vaccines every year.

That’s important not just if a dramatically worse variant suddenly develops. Like many scientists, Bedford expects the coronavirus to eventually evolve from a global crisis into a regular threat every winter – which might mean more regular boosters, maybe even yearly in combination with the flu shot.

Timing between shots matters, too, Wherry noted.

“Your boostability may actually improve with longer intervals between stimulation,” he said. While scientists have learned a lot about the coronavirus, “the story’s not finished yet and we don’t know what the last chapters say.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

“A lot of what is going to need to go into that decision making is just going to be learned by experience, unfortunately.”

Richard Webby

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital virus expert speaking about the decision to tweak boosters to match variants

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Erie Times E-Edition Article-FDA unveils simpler hearing-aid rules for Americans

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2021

Wow! You can get a hearing aid without government permission.

The article admits the FDA rules makes things expensive and hard to obtain. isn’t this the opposite of what is supposed to happen? The FDA can’t get hearing aids right. How do you think they would handle pandemic remedies?

The FDA will no doubt get more money so they can do what they have been doing better. I.E. failing.

The remedy for the FDA and all other three letter government agencies is to amputate them from our lives.

https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=1aabd43d1_1345f70

Health regulators on Tuesday unveiled their proposal to allow Americans to buy hearing aids without a prescription…

U.S. officials said Tuesday that the FDA change, when finalized, should spur competition and bring down prices.

“Today we open the door to an easier process and a more affordable process,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters…

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The Great Struggle of Our Time: The Battle for Reality – American Thinker

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2021

Gaslighting is now an integral part of the left’s every move, and it is sowing confusion and wreaking havoc everywhere. The gaslighters have already managed to disorient many people and weaken their hold on reality. They correctly sense that if they can press sufficiently hard, they will be able to take advantage of the disarray and implement their godless, nihilistic, inhuman, love-deprived and freedom-negating agenda.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/10/the_great_struggle_of_our_time_the_battle_for_reality.html

By Vasko Kohlmayer

With societal turbulence all around us, many people feel that we are locked in some great and portentous struggle. But because it is so pervasive and multifaced, the nature of this struggle is not readily obvious. There are many fronts on which this struggle is being fought: racial relations, education, healthcare, popular culture, financial system, and freedom of speech, among others. It is not easy to make sense of it all, especially since the battles are highly pitched and emotions are running very high.

What characterizes these battles, besides their intensity, is deep polarization. The possibility of the warring camps coming together and meeting on some common ground seems to be growing more distant by the day. There is even talk that the two sides will either come to blows, or they will each go their own way in some form of secession.

Many have observed that the contenders seem to be separated by an unbridgeable gap, and yet no one has been able to explain the nature of this gap, or what exactly it is that separates the mindsets of the opposing sides.

In our view the great struggle in the grip of which we find ourselves cuts much deeper than the immediate issues we argue over. The real fight extends beyond any particular point of public friction.

The great battle of our time is a battle about the very nature of reality. More precisely, what the two sides war over on the most fundamental level is what constitutes truth and how it should be determined.

To shed light on this dynamic, let us take one of the heated controversies of the present time. For this we choose transgenderism. This is an especially suitable example for two reasons: this issue is highly divisive and polarizing, and it delineates the opposing camps sharply and clearly.

As you may know, transgender advocates claim that biological males can become women and vice versa.

Understandably, many people find this claim rather far-fetched. For one thing, it does not feel true, given that the evidence of our senses seems to refute it. When, for example, people look at transgender “women” – i.e., biological men who say that they are women – most people immediately recognize that these are not real females. What most people see is men who pretend to be girls. This is how the human mind – in the vast majority of instances – interprets sensory input that it receives upon encountering such persons.

Rachel Levine, President Biden’s Assistant Secretary for Health. Few people would perceive Dr. Levine is a genuine woman. (YouTube screengrab)

And yet transgender advocates vehemently maintain that this is not the correct interpretation of visual data. They insist that what is in front of our eyes are not men who pose as girls but real girls.

See the rest here

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Why Marx Loved Central Banks | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2021

The fiat money system, the creation of money through circulation credit expansion, has brought about a new kind of debt slavery on a grand scale. Consumers, corporations and, of course, governments, too, have become highly dependent on central banks continuously churning out ever greater amounts of credit and money, provided at ever lower interest rates. In numerous countries, central banks have de facto become the real centers of power: Their monetary policy decisions effectively determine the weal and woe of economies and whole societies.

https://mises.org/wire/why-marx-loved-central-banks

Thorsten Polleit

In his “Manifesto of the Communist Party” (1848), published together with Frederick Engels, Karl Marx calls for “measures” — by which he means “despotic inroads on the rights of property” –, which would be “unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production,” that is, bringing about socialism-communism. Marx’s measure number five reads: “Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.” This is a rather perspicacious postulation, especially as at the time when Marx formulated it, precious metals — gold and silver in particular — served as money.

As is well known, the quantity of gold and silver cannot be increased at will. As a result, the quantity of credit (in terms of lending and borrowing money balances) cannot easily be expanded according to political expediency. However, Marx might have fantasized already, what would be possible once the state is put in a position where it can create money through credit expansion; where it has usurped and monopolized the production of money. Long before Marx, the English churchman and historian Thomas Fuller had elaborately expressed the power of money: “Money is the sinew of love as well as war.”

The Origins of Modern Central Banking

The idea of central banking has a long history. For instance, the Swedish central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, was founded in 1668, and the English central bank, the Bank of England, was formed in 1694. The fraudulent operations of such institutions came to light soon, at the latest with the writing of the British economist David Ricardo. In his 1809 essay “The High Price of Bullion” he pointed out that it was the increase in the quantity of money — in the form of banknotes not backed by gold — that caused a general rise in prices, an effect we know as (price) inflation.

Unfortunately, however, the political-economic insight that central banks holding the money production monopoly would misuse their power time and again, engage in cronyism, and cause an anti-social debasement of the currency has not — to this very day — sufficed to discredit the monstrous idea of central banking. It seems that as far as monetary affairs are concerned, Marx’s concept of Dialectical Materialism has made quite an impression: What is appears to form peoples’ consciousness (not vice versa). This has certainly helped in creating central bank Marxism on a world-wide scale.

Cutting the Last Ties with Commodity Money

On 15 August 1971 Marx’s vision became true: The US administration single-handedly terminated the redeemability of the US dollar into physical gold – and so gold, the currency of the civilized world, was officially demonetized. Through this coup de main, in the United States of America, as well as all other countries in this world, an unbacked paper money — or fiat money system was established. Since then, all currencies around the globe represent fiat currencies: representing money creation by circulation credit expansion, not backed by real savings or deposits, monopolized by central banks.

The fiat money system, the creation of money through circulation credit expansion, has brought about a new kind of debt slavery on a grand scale. Consumers, corporations and, of course, governments, too, have become highly dependent on central banks continuously churning out ever greater amounts of credit and money, provided at ever lower interest rates. In numerous countries, central banks have de facto become the real centers of power: Their monetary policy decisions effectively determine the weal and woe of economies and whole societies.

By issuing fiat currencies, created out of thin air, a rather small clique of central bankers, together with their staffers, causes — to borrow from Friedrich Nietzsche — a “revaluation of values.” Chronic monetary inflation, for instance, discourages savings; running into ever greater amounts of debt gets cultivated; by central banks’ downward manipulation of the interest rate, the future needs get debased compared to present needs; the favoring of a sort of monetary “Deep State” comes at the expense of demolishing civil and entrepreneurial liberties.

A Supranational Central Bank

In Europe, central bank Marxism has accomplished a rather astounding feat: 19 nation states with a total of around 337 million people have given up their right to self-determination in monetary affairs, submitting to the monetary policy dictate of a supra-national central bank entirely beyond effective Parliamentary control that issues a single fiat currency, the euro. While central bank Marxism has been reasonably successful in Europe, however, its true spearhead has always been the US central bank: The Federal Reserve (Fed).

Today’s world depends on the fiat US dollar issued by the Fed more than ever. Effectively all other major currencies are built upon the Greenback, and it is the Fed that determines the credit and liquidity conditions in international financial markets. It effectively presides over a world central bank cartel which, if it is allowed to continue unimpededly, will eventually steer and control the world economy through its unassailable money production monopoly, effectively removing one of the most critical roadblocks against unrestricted state tyranny.

Ideas Have Consequences

So those favoring a free society can only hope that something will get in the way of central bank Marxism. This is by no means impossible. Socialism-communism is not the inevitable destiny of social life and historical evolution, as Marxists would like to make us believe. What truly matters are ideas or theories, if you will, as ideas — whatever their specific content, wherever they come from, whether they are right or wrong — underlie and drive human action.1Ludwig von Mises was acutely aware of this indisputable insight:

Human society is an issue of the mind. Social co-operation must first be conceived, then willed, then realized in action. It is ideas that make history, not the “material productive forces”, those nebulous and mystical schemata of the materialist conception of history. If we could overcome the idea of Socialism, if humanity could be brought to recognize the social necessity of private ownership of the means of production, then Socialism would have to leave the stage. That is the only thing that counts.2

Against the backdrop of Mises’s words one may add: Once people understand that Marxism (and all its particular forms of socialism) does not guarantee a higher living standard and that it does make a better or more just and reasonable world, it would usher in the end of central banking and fiat money. In other words: whether or not central bank Marxism and fiat money will prevail or be thrown out of the window (or flushed down the drain) will be determined by the outcome of the “battle of ideas.” So there remains reason for hope!

  • 1. For a detailed explanation see Mises, L. v. (1957), Theory and History, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, US Alabama, Part Two, esp. Chapter 7, pp. 102 – 158.
  • 2. Mises, L. v. (1981), Socialism. An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, p. 461.

Author:

Thorsten Polleit

Dr. Thorsten Polleit is Chief Economist of Degussa and Honorary Professor at the University of Bayreuth. He also acts as an investment advisor.

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‘Needlessly Provocative’: Austin Rebuked for Again Opening NATO Door to Ukraine and Georgia – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2021

“The Biden administration now faces a stark choice: commit to fight for Ukraine, creating a serious risk of war with Russia, or admit that NATO expansion has come to an overdue end.”

https://original.antiwar.com/?p=2012344249

by Brett Wilkins

Anti-war advocates on Monday warned that U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin would be making a dangerous strategic blunder if he suggests that Ukraine and Georgia have a welcome mat toward full integration into the NATO military alliance – a move critics say would dramatically increase the risk of war between Washington, D.C. and Moscow.

According to The Washington Times, Austin will signal that NATO is holding an “open door” for Georgia and Ukraine as he visits the two nations and Romania this week.

“We are reassuring and reinforcing the sovereignty of countries that are on the front lines of Russian aggression,” a senior US defense official told reporters ahead of Austin’s trip.

Critics like Matt Duss, foreign policy to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), renewed long-standing warnings against potential NATO membership for the two former Soviet republics.

Duss, writing on his personal Twitter account, categorized the move as “needlessly provocative,” one that “will almost certainly receive wall to wall applause in DC.”

According to Antiwar.com contributing editor Daniel Larison:

Encouraging Ukraine and Georgia to believe that NATO membership is still in the cards for them is a serious mistake. It is not surprising that the Biden administration is maintaining the status quo on this issue, but it is a missed opportunity to reverse some of the damage that was done back in 2008 when this dangerous promise was first made to these aspirant states.

Keeping the “door” open to NATO expansion antagonizes Russia, and it strings Ukraine and Georgia along for no good reason. Many European allies will not support bringing these states into the alliance, and there is no compelling reason to add them.

Both countries would be extremely difficult if not impossible to defend in the event of a conflict, and they already have Russian or Russian-backed forces on their territory. Even if they were model democracies, which they most certainly are not, they would be poor candidates for the alliance.

Under Article 5 of the NATO charter – also known as the “collective defense” clause – the United States and other alliance members would be treaty-bound to fight Russia should war break out with Georgia or Ukraine. Russian troops invaded and occupied Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Ukraine is also widely considered the ancient cradle of Russian civilization.

Critics have long argued that NATO, formed in 1949 as a mutual defense pact against the Soviet Union, is a provocative anachronism in the absence of any threat from a long-defunct Warsaw Pact, and should be dissolved.

Peace advocates have greeted each actual or proposed enlargement of NATO – which currently counts 10 former Soviet or Warsaw Pact republics as members, and which has crept steadily eastward since its inception – by warning that such expansion threatens world peace.

My view remains: “After decades of overreach, the Biden administration now faces a stark choice: commit to fight for Ukraine [and Georgia], creating a serious risk of war with Russia, or admit that NATO expansion has come to an overdue end.” https://t.co/zovAz4K82u — Stephen Wertheim (@stephenwertheim) October 18, 2021

“After decades of overreach, the Biden administration now faces a stark choice,” writes Stephen Wertheim of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, “commit to fight for Ukraine, creating a serious risk of war with Russia, or admit that NATO expansion has come to an overdue end.”

Austin’s trip comes as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced Monday that his country’s government was suspending its diplomatic mission to NATO and closing the alliance’s Moscow office. The move follows last week’s expulsion of eight Russian staff members from Russia’s mission in Brussels amid espionage allegations.

Brett Wilkins is is staff writer for Common Dreams. Based in San Francisco, his work covers issues of social justice, human rights and war and peace. This originally appeared at CommonDreams

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To Avoid Armageddon, Don’t Modernize Missiles – Eliminate Them – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2021

https://original.antiwar.com/?p=2012344241

by Daniel Ellsberg and Norman Solomon

Reprinted from The Nation

The single best option for reducing the risk of nuclear war is hidden in plain sight. News outlets don’t mention it. Pundits ignore it. Even progressive and peace-oriented members of Congress tiptoe around it. And yet, for many years, experts have been calling for this act of sanity that could save humanity: Shutting down all of the nation’s intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Four hundred ICBMs dot the rural landscapes of Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Loaded in silos, these missiles are uniquely – and dangerously – on hair-trigger alert. Unlike the nuclear weapons on submarines or bombers, the land-based missiles are vulnerable to attack and could present the commander in chief with a sudden use-them-or-lose-them choice. “If our sensors indicate that enemy missiles are en route to the United States, the president would have to consider launching ICBMs before the enemy missiles could destroy them. Once they are launched, they cannot be recalled,” former Defense Secretary William Perry warns. “The president would have less than 30 minutes to make that terrible decision.”

The danger that a false alarm on either side – of the sort that has occurred repeatedly on both sides – would lead to a preemptive attack derives almost entirely from the existence on both sides of land-based missile forces, each vulnerable to attack by the other; each, therefore, is kept on a high state of alert, ready to launch within minutes of warning. The easiest and fastest way for the US to reduce that risk – and, indeed, the overall danger of nuclear war – is to dismantle entirely its Minuteman III missile force. Gen. James E. Cartwright, a former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had been commander of the Strategic Command, teamed up with former Minuteman launch officer Bruce G. Blair to write in a 2016 op-ed piece: “By scrapping the vulnerable land-based missile force, any need for launching on warning disappears.”

But rather than confront the reality that ICBMs – all ICBMs – are such a grave threat to human survival, the most concerned members of Congress have opted to focus on stopping new ones from taking the place of existing ones. A year ago, the Air Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $13.3 billion “engineering and manufacturing development” contract for replacing the current Minuteman III missiles with a new generation of ICBMs named the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent. Current projections peg the overall cost over the next five decades at $364 billion. Northrop Grumman calls the GBSD “the modernization of the ground-based leg of the nuclear triad.” But if reducing the dangers of nuclear war is a goal, the top priority should be to remove the triad’s ground-based leg – not modernize it.

Many arms-control advocates, while understanding the inherent dangers of ground-based nuclear missiles, have largely stuck to opposing the GBSD. Instead of challenging ICBMs outright, a coalition of organizations has concentrated on aiming a fiscal argument at Capitol Hill, calling the GBSD program a “money pit” that would squander vast amounts of taxpayer dollars. But the powerful chair of the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, executed a deft end run around that strategy in early summer when he declared that “Minuteman extension, as it is currently being explained to us, is actually more expensive than building the GBSD.”

The same Congressman Smith said less than a year earlier, “I frankly think that our [ICBM] fleet right now is driven as much by politics as it is by a policy necessity. You know, there are certain states in the union that apparently are fond of being a nuclear target. And you know, it’s part of their economy. It’s what they do.”

Senators from several of the states with major ICBM bases or development activities – Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah – continue to maintain an “ICBM Coalition” dedicated to thwarting any serious scrutiny of the land-based weaponry. Members of the coalition have systematically blocked efforts to reduce the number of ICBMs or study alternatives to building new ones. They’re just a few of the lawmakers captivated by ICBM mega-profiteers. In a report issued this year by the Center for International Policy, nuclear weapons expert William Hartung gives readers a detailed look “Inside the ICBM Lobby,” showing how ICBM contractors get their way while throwing millions of dollars at politicians and deploying battalions of lobbyists on Capitol Hill. As the recipient of the sole-source contract to build the proposed new ICBMs, Northrop Grumman has joined with other top contractors to block efforts to reduce spending on these dangerous and unnecessary systems – or even simply to pause their development.

When opponents of the GBSD decline to challenge the currently deployed Minuteman III missiles, the effects are counterproductive if their ultimate goal is to get rid of ICBMs. Tacit acceptance of the Minuteman missile force while attempting to block the GBSD sends a message that the ICBM status quo isn’t so bad. Such a tactical path might seem eminently pragmatic and realistic. But sooner or later, the extraordinary dangers of keeping any ICBMs in place must be faced, exposed, explained to the public – and directly challenged.

Getting trapped in an argument about the cheapest way to keep ICBMs operational in their silos is ultimately no-win. The history of nuclear weapons in this country tells us that people will spare no expense if they believe that spending the money will really make them and their loved ones safer – we must show them that ICBMs actually do the opposite. Unless arms-control and disarmament groups, along with allied members of Congress, change course and get serious about addressing the fundamentals of why ICBMs should be eliminated, they’ll end up implicitly reinforcing the land-based part of the triad.

“First and foremost,” former Defense Secretary Perry wrote five years ago, “the United States can safely phase out its land-based [ICBM] force, a key facet of Cold War nuclear policy. Retiring the ICBMs would save considerable costs, but it isn’t only budgets that would benefit. These missiles are some of the most dangerous weapons in the world. They could even trigger an accidental nuclear war.”

Contrary to uninformed assumptions, discarding all ICBMs could be accomplished unilaterally by the United States with no downside. Even if Russia chose not to follow suit, dismantling the potentially cataclysmic land-based missiles would make the world safer for everyone on the planet. Frank von Hippel, a former chair of the Federation of American Scientists and a cofounder of Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security, wrote this year: “Eliminating launch on warning would significantly reduce the probability of blundering into a civilization-ending nuclear war by mistake. To err is human. To start a nuclear war would be unforgivable.”

Better sooner than later, members of Congress will need to face up to the horrendous realities about intercontinental ballistic missiles. They won’t do that unless peace, arms-control, and disarmament groups go far beyond the current limits of congressional discourse – and start emphasizing, on Capitol Hill and at the grassroots, the crucial truth about ICBMs and the imperative of eliminating them all.

Daniel Ellsberg is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, the US military’s account of activities during the Vietnam War, to The New York Times. The release awakened the American people to how much they had been deceived by their own government about the war. Ellsberg has continued as a political activist, giving lecture tours and speaking out about current events.

Norman Solomon is is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, the author of War Made Easy, and a cofounder of RootsAction.org.

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Recordings vs playback equipment

Posted by M. C. on October 19, 2021

The original recording makes all the difference.

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : A Desperate Biden Administration Turns to Terrorism

Posted by M. C. on October 19, 2021

The problem is you. You unwashed vermin who refuse to have a cocktail of experimental goop jabbed into your arm. 

Threat: You will eat nothing and you will be happy.
Political objective: Get the shot!

http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/october/16/a-desperate-biden-administration-turns-to-terrorism/

Written by Daniel McAdams

For Americans watching the shocking re-Nazification of Germany – where once again the ability to even buy food depends on a person’s physiological/medical status – it may be tempting to downplay the re-emergence of a nasty German political virus and scoff that, “it can’t happen here!” But it is happening here. 

The Biden Administration is sinking under the weight of its feeble figurehead, who is clearly living in a world of his own creation rather than living on planet reality. As Biden’s approval ratings plummet to near-historic depths, the people who run his administration – some say it’s really led by demon Susan Rice – are not backing off their hyper-authoritarian approach to…well, everything.

In fact they’re doubling down. 

Nurse shortage? Tough – get your shot. Billions of containers waiting to be unloaded and trucked to fill empty shelves? Tough – get your shot. Murder alley Chicago facing 50 percent less cops because those who don’t want the vax are being fired? Tough – get your shot. No one to fly the plane? Tough – get your shot. No teachers? Tough – get your shot!

Into this explosion of malevolent incompetence staggers US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Department Wally Adeyemo – second-highest ranker in the entire Department. The Nigerian-born Adeyemo, who previously served as director of African American outreach for the inspiring John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign and as a senior advisor to corrupt “woke” multi-gazillionaire Larry Fink, should be given credit for at least being honest about the intentions of his bosses in the Biden Administration.

Sometimes they tell the truth by accident.

Interviewed on ABC News on Thursday, Adeyemo was asked about the thousands of container ships anchored offshore in California and elsewhere as US store shelves begin to look like Bulgaria circa 1975 – and even Santa Claus is sweating “supply chain” strangulation as Christmas quickly approaches. 

It’s not because Newsom’s California is a Marxist hellhole, where the religious fundamentalism of the Green New Deal fanatics has taken massive numbers of truckers off the road. Nope.

It’s not Biden’s vax mandate which has unleashed a massive outflux of workers from their jobs – quitting or fired – at a time of severe labor shortages. Nope.

The problem is you. You unwashed vermin who refuse to have a cocktail of experimental goop jabbed into your arm. 

In the ABC interview Adeyemo admitted what we all know: inflation is beating the hell out of middle America (though Biden’s multi-millionaire chief-of-staff laughed it off as “high class problems“). 

“We are seeing high prices for some of the things that people have to buy,” Adeyemo told ABC’s Stephanie Ramos. But it’s not the Administration’s fault. Shelves bare? Treasury’s Number Two tells America it’s all the fault of those who have not yet succumbed to his boss’s demand that you take the jab:

The reality is that the only way we’re going to get to a place where we work through this transition is if everyone in America and everyone around the world gets vaccinated.

There is a word for this and it’s not actually blackmail. It’s terrorism. Until that part of America which has to this point decided that it does not want to take an unproven medical treatment is browbeaten – or worse – into submission to Fauci’s needle, the rest of the country will continue to suffer through empty shelves and a crappy Christmas.

Too strong a word? Here’s how the dictionary defines terrorism:

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Threat: You will eat nothing and you will be happy.
Political objective: Get the shot!

It’s terrorism plain and simple and the Biden Administration’s “War on Us” is taking a dangerous turn. The millions who have taken the shot are being baited to attack those who have for whatever reason – including the medically sound acquisition of natural immunity through contracting and defeating the virus – declined to take the medical procedure. In reality both groups should unite against the past two Administrations which have lied and intimidated Americans over the virus from nearly day one. But that would threaten the elites, who rule by divide-and-conquer tactics.

It’s not hyperbole to – after having closely watched the dark cloud of propaganda-induced hysteria descend on what many of us retrospectively incorrectly believed was a more-or-less a freedom-loving American spirit – start worrying about them mobilizing the boxcars and heating up the ovens…


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