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Update: New Speaker Announcement – the ‘Most Cancelled Woman in America!’

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2021

https://mailchi.mp/ronpaulinstitute/gold?e=4e0de347c8

Dear Friends:

Dr. Simone Gold, founder of America’s Frontline Doctors, is perhaps the most “cancelled” woman in America. A year ago this month, in the heat of Fauci’s covid-mania, she had the audacity to do what all real scientists do: challenge the science. Her organization – all of them medical doctors – held a press conference on the steps of the US Supreme Court building challenging the “Party Line” that there were no treatments for Covid until a vaccine emerged.

Only Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI) were allowed: Regardless of your age or state of health, you had better put on two or ten face masks, stay inside your home with stale air, don’t get out and exercise to stay healthy, stay away from family and loved ones. Slowly go insane hoping that the Angel of Death would pass over you.

Anyone suggesting that hydroxychloroquine or any other pharmaceutical interventions might help was banned from every and all social media platforms.

Why? Because it was Trump who had mentioned it and…well it had to be bad and evil because Trump was bad and evil and had to be overthrown.

We at RPI are non-political and thus not Trump supporters. But this is not how science works! 

This anti-science insanity is not America! This is the world of Ceausescu, the “genius of the Carpathians,” and his wife Elena, that “great chemist.” This is the world where scientific discovery is subject to political approval from “The Party.” That is what the US became in 2020: Nikki Ceausescu’s Romania.

So last July Dr. Gold and her colleagues dared suggest that hydroxychloroquine could be used to treat Covid patients based on their actual experience in the field using the medication.

Immediately after the press conference, Dr. Gold found that she had been terminated from her job – as an emergency room doctor – her organization’s website was yanked from the Internet, and the viral video of their conference was similarly disappeared from all social media outlets.

For merely suggesting that something else might work, her organization was sent to the digital gulag.

This is the stuff of Nikki’s Romania, not “freedom-loving” USA.

Solzhenitsyn is credited with the quote: “We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.”

There is no other way to explain the below juxtaposed CNN headlines with the same author:

 
We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Gold – the “Most Cancelled Woman in America” – will join the Ron Paul Institute’s Washington Conference to discuss how the government has politicized medicine to the detriment of our health and freedom.

We can think of no one better to deliver this message and we are grateful that Dr. Gold agreed to join us.

You won’t want to miss cutting-edge presentations from Dr. Ron Paul, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Gerald Celente, Jeff Deist, Gary Heavin, and more TBA at this VERY IMPORTANT conference. Our freedom and liberty is at stake!
“The War on Us!” is the fifth Ron Paul Institute Washington Conference and tickets are flying out the door. It is our fastest-selling conference ever. In fact after just over a week we have sold 2/3 of all available seats. All four previous Washington Conferences have sold out. Why not just get a bigger room? Because 350 is the right size for what we want: a good-sized group but not so big that it doesn’t feel like an afternoon among friends.

As Dr. Paul has always advised: learn something, do something, but have fun. That is what we intend.

So get your tickets NOW before they are all gone. When they are all gone there is nothing we can do about it. There are a limited number of rooms available at a special rate for Ron Paul Institute conference attendees so book yours right away. Click here or call: Washington Dulles Airport Marriott phone number: (703) 471-9500 Marriott reservations phone number: (800) 228-9290 Mention “Ron Paul Institute event” to receive a special rate for the event!
  Join us at the VIP Events! Join the Host Committee! Sponsor a Student!
A limited number of Gold and Silver Level Host Committee Memberships Available for $1,000 and $500 respectively.

1) Gold Level Host Committee Membership. This is the most popular way to co-sponsor the conference and really connect with our high-level guests in a more substantial way. For sponsorship at the $1,000 level, Gold sponsors will receive two tickets to attend the conference, will be publicly thanked at the event and in the program, and will be seated at special, priority tables with other VIPs and conference speakers. They are invited to an exclusive, get-acquainted cocktail reception the night before the event, on Friday, September 3rd. They and their guest are also invited to join us for a post-conference wine and cheese reception. it’s a great opportunity to visit with our great line-up of speakers, RPI Board Members, other VIPs and special invited guests. Contact me if you are interested in Gold Level Membership.

2) Silver Level Host Committee Membership. For a modest sponsorship of $500, Silver Level Committee Members will receive two tickets to the conference in a special, reserved seating area and will be publicly thanked in our program. Member and guest are invited to join RPI Staff, Dr. Ron Paul, RPI Board Members, and conference speakers at a post-conference wine and cheese reception immediately following the Saturday conference. What a great way to wind down after the event! Contact me if you are interested in Silver Level Membership.

3) Ron Paul Scholars’ Seminar: Coming off the success of our debut 2019 Ron Paul Scholars’ Seminar we are again helping form the next generation of peace and prosperity activists: an intensive all-day student seminar with some of the Ron Paul Institute’s most accomplished and important collaborators. It will be a small group and the interaction will be enormously beneficial. You can help us with this important project by sponsoring a student to attend! For just $500 you will help one student participate in this event – and you will be invited to attend the entire private seminar! Your student will have the opportunity to thank you personally for your generosity. Pick up tickets to the RPI conference the next day and you will have an action-packed two days of learning and interaction. Contact me if you are interested in sponsoring a student for our RP Scholars’ Seminar

4) . Major Sponsorship: If you are able to support the Ron Paul Institute and its conferences in a more substantial way, we are offering high-profile sponsorship — with your name or business listed as the sponsor in all conference materials. You will be our guest at all VIP receptions with reserved seating for you and guest(s) at the event. We also offer marquee-level sponsorship of the entire event, where with a tax-deductible donation your name or business name will appear at the top of the marquee as the main sponsor. Contact me if you are interested in more information about major sponsorship.
Sincerely yours,

Daniel McAdams
Executive Director
Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

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Fauci Is Back: ‘Vaccine Mandates NOW!’

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2021

“You won’t forced, but there should be mandates”. Makes perfect sense in Washington.

The best immunity, natural immunity, doesn’t count.

In a CNN interview over the weekend, Fauci told the host that he’s very much in favor of vaccine mandates and that any vaccine hesitancy is “horrifying” considering how safe and effective the shots are. The White House has warned that those questioning the shots are “dangerous” and “extremist,” motivated by (conservative) politics. But who is actually the most resistant? CDC numbers might surprise you. Finally, the Capitol Hill Police are launching military surveillance drones in Washington, DC…what could go wrong?

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The Real Merchants of Death – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2021

According to Bloomberg Government: “In fiscal 2020, defense contract spending hit a record high of $447 billion – representing nearly two thirds of overall federal contract spending. It’s an impressive growth trajectory that we’ve been tracking for years. Pentagon spending surged by $140.6 billion between fiscal 2016 and 2020, with a $42 billion increase in the last year alone.”

Here are the top ten merchants of death:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/07/laurence-m-vance/the-real-merchants-of-death/

By Laurence M. Vance

Who are the real merchants of death?

On June 23, President Biden announced “a comprehensive strategy to combat gun violence and other violent crime.” Because “we are experiencing an epidemic of gun violence in this country,” the new strategy “will also address the direct link between gun violence and the rise in violent crime by taking immediate steps to keep guns out of the wrong hands, including by strengthening ATF’s efforts to stem the flow of firearms used in crimes, and by launching multijurisdictional firearms trafficking strike forces to stop illegal gun trafficking across state lines.”

Biden’s main target is gun dealers, whom he holds responsible for the increased gun violence. He wants to “stem the flow of firearms used to commit violence” by

  • Establishing zero tolerance for rogue gun dealers that willfully violate the law.
  • Maximizing the efficacy of ATF resources to crack down on rogue gun dealers violating our laws.
  • Launching multijurisdictional firearms trafficking strike forces.
  • Providing the public with additional data to promote transparency and accountability in enforcement of federally licensed firearms dealer policies.
  • Stemming the proliferation of “ghost guns” and modified firearms.
  • Convening state legislators and Attorneys General regarding policy strategies to hold gun dealers and manufacturers accountable for their contributions to the flow of crime guns.

The President “strongly urges the Senate to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and pass the three House-passed, bipartisan pieces of legislation which would strengthen our gun background check system.”

In his remarks delivered at the White House after those of Attorney General Merrick Garland, President Biden brought up the Second Amendment: “And I might add: The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own. You couldn’t buy a cannon.”

The president’s “no cannon” assertion resulted in ridicule from fact checkers all over the political spectrum. But I did not see much pushback to his statement before that about the Second Amendment limiting the type of people who could own a gun and what type they could own. The Second American has never done either. It is politicians, judges, and bureaucrats who have always limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon they could own, not the Second Amendment.

The president then directly attacked gun dealers:

And the — these merchants of death are breaking the law for profit. They’re selling guns that are killing innocent people. It’s wrong. It’s unacceptable. And as the Attorney General said, we’re going to crack down on those gun dealers and the violent criminals they knowingly arm.

If you willfully sell a gun to someone who is prohibited from possessing it, if you willfully fail to run a background check, if you willfully falsify a record, if you willfully fail to cooperate with the tracing requests or inspections, my message to you is this: We’ll find you, and we will seek your license to sell guns. We’ll make sure you can’t sell death and mayhem on our streets. It’s an outrage. It has to end, and we’ll end it. Period.

Before getting to the “merchants of death” line, I want to raise two points that it seems like no one is talking about: gun dealer licensing and background checks for gun purchases.

Where in the Constitution does the federal government have the authority to require gun dealers to be licensed? Where in the Constitution does the federal government have the authority to require background checks for gun purchases? Probably in the same place where the Constitution authorizes the federal government to have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps.

And when was the last time the NRA or a conservative talk-show host or politician questioned federal gun dealer licensing and background checks?

It is ludicrous that Biden would refer to gun dealers as “merchants of death.” The phrase was originally applied to the armament industry during World War I.

Gun dealers are not merchants of death. Far from it. The real merchants of death are the defense contractors who suck at the federal teat and have most members of Congress in their pocket.

According to Bloomberg Government: “In fiscal 2020, defense contract spending hit a record high of $447 billion – representing nearly two thirds of overall federal contract spending. It’s an impressive growth trajectory that we’ve been tracking for years. Pentagon spending surged by $140.6 billion between fiscal 2016 and 2020, with a $42 billion increase in the last year alone.”

Here are the top ten merchants of death:

  1. Lockheed Martin Corp.
  2. Raytheon Co.
  3. General Dynamics Corp.
  4. Boeing Co.
  5. Northrop Grumman Corp.
  6. Analytic Services Inc.
  7. Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc.
  8. Humana Inc.
  9. BAE Systems Plc
  10. Harris Corp.

These merchants of death all have contracts worth billions of dollars with the biggest merchant of death on the planet: the U.S. government.

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A Bodyguard of Lies | Kunstler

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2021

Here’s an even more concise edited string of Mr. Cooper’s most pungent points:

The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1…. Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could…. It’s hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov’t as a conspiracy… Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army…. They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them [conservatives]. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov’t official, because they feel most betrayed by them…. Many of them don’t know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it’s probably true.”

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/a-bodyguard-of-lies/

James Howard Kunstler

A bunch of readers sent me a video on the Odysee platform that seems to have lit up the Internet over the weekend, a conversation between the international lawyer Reiner Fuellmich and a character named David Martin, PhD, CEO of M-Cam, a company that researches and advises on intellectual property and patents, especially in medicine. Dr. Martin is “a fellow” at the University of Virginia School of Business Administration and formerly an assistant professor at UVa’s School of Medicine. Mr. Fuellmich is a German national who claims to be bringing a case to the world court to prosecute various parties for hoaxing the world over the coronavirus we call Covid-19.

Mr. Fuellmich’s claim is based on the allegation that the world has been played by “a PCR test pandemic,” not by a novel coronavirus, saying that the PCR test is entirely unreliable, but was used to generate millions of “cases.” Dr. Martin claims that scores of patents were filed as far back as 2008 on features found in Covid 19 — the spike protein, the polybasic cleavage site, and the ace-2 receptor binding domain — by people doing “bioweapons” research at the University of North Carolina (e.g., Dr. Ralph Baric) as well as the US Military’s DARPA, the Wuhan, China, virology lab, and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), much of it intermediated by Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, and allegedly involving a criminal conspiracy with several pharmaceutical companies to make a lot of money off an engineered global health emergency. He claims further that the mRNA vaccines are “medical devices” designed to induce illness.

This complex story has its charms (Fuellmich & Martin are very good talkers) and has undergone serial debunkings by some of the usual debunkers, themselves not necessarily reliable organs of debunkery, such as The Washington Post. Dr. Martin appears to be associated with the “Plandemic” crowd and with some marginal crypto-religious groups inveighing against Jewish conspiracies and freemasonry — two big red flags for me.

But we live in a time when reality is exceptionally slippery, but there are parts of the story that are now accepted as real in the emergent consensual reality of what actually happened. For instance: that Dr. Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research using Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance as a conduit. And the numerous patent records do exist within the stated time-line. The scientific and legal facts around all this are abstruse, and most college-educated (and beyond) Americans might have trouble processing the story.

[Added for clarity, Monday 3:00 p.m.: Commenters (below blog ads) seem to misconstrue my reservations about Fuellmich and Martin. I am not dismissing what they appear to state: that the entire Covid-19 episode has been some kind of a dark enterprise, perhaps even a criminal one. Note, they don’t even discuss early treatments of the illness such as Ivermectin, the official suppression of which by mass media and government has added a whole other layer of indecency to the tale. On balance, they seem to have a pretty good story, and I’ll stand by to see if anything develops out of it.]

But this leads to another story that lit up the Internet over the weekend: the 35-piece Twitter thread put out by blogger / podcaster Daryl Cooper under the username “MartyrMade” analyzing why half the country is so angry about being bamboozled by the authorities over the past five years, and why they now doubt the results of the 2020 election. It lit up the Internet because it was concise and clear, showing the immense bad faith that Americans have been subjected to and the resulting institutional perfidy. As I have said here many times, much of this trouble with reality goes back to RussiaGate, the mendacity of which can hardly be over-stated. Here’s an even more concise edited string of Mr. Cooper’s most pungent points:

The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1…. Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could…. It’s hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov’t as a conspiracy… Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army…. They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them [conservatives]. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov’t official, because they feel most betrayed by them…. Many of them don’t know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it’s probably true.”

That’s a pretty deft summation of what has gone on in this country for a matter of years: complete institutional betrayal. Most of the political establishment is implicated in this, but mainly the Democratic Party as a whole, certain members of the Republican congressional leadership (Senators McConnell, Burr, Rubio and others), officers of the permanent DC bureaucracy, and most damningly, the press. I would also throw in the judiciary, especially the DC federal courts.

So, don’t expect that half of the country to comply with directives or mandates about anything until some of that is corrected, especially the RussiaGate piece. The person assigned to correct that, of course, is named John Durham, now special prosecutor. Many Americans have given up on him for the excellent reason that they have seen one seemingly criminal event after another unspool before them (the Eric Ciaramella/CIA impeachment op; the malicious treatment of General Flynn by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, the Hunter Biden laptop affair, the Fauci gain-of-function funding) with no attempt at formal adjudication, and a bodyguard of lies provided by the news media — and through it all, John Durham is missing-in-action.

It’s been a very long wait and, remarkably, absolutely nothing has leaked out of his office in all these months. Is it really possible that Mr. Durham will just slip away down history’s memory hole without ever registering what he spent the last two years doing? Personally, I don’t think that’s possible. It is possible, though, that Attorney General Merrick Garland is interfering with Mr. Durham’s investigation in ways we don’t know about. If so, that would be an invitation to some pretty grave civil unrest.

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Violent Extremists Took Over The US Capitol Long Before January 6 – by Caitlin Johnstone – Caitlin’s Newsletter

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2021

And yet when Facebook started sending Americans warnings that they may have viewed “extremist content” scrolling through their feeds, posts supporting this most dangerous group of extremists were not the content they were being warned about, but any kind of content which opposes the status quo those extremists have created. They’re killing the ecosystem and murdering people every single day while imperiling us all with the risk of nuclear war, my social media feeds are full of Americans literally trying to crowdfund their own survival while the world’s worst add trillions to their wealth, but it’s the people who want to change this abusive system who are the dangerous extremists.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/violent-extremists-took-over-the

No longer content with absurd claims that the January 6 Capitol riot was as bad as the 9/11 attacks, Democratic Party-aligned pundits are now insisting that it was in fact worse. 

On a recent appearance with MSNBC’s ReidOut with Joy Reid, former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd said he felt the Capitol riot was “much worse” than 9/11 and that this is the “most perilous point in time” since the beginning of the American Civil War.

“To me, though there was less loss of life on January 6, January 6 was worse than 9/11, because it’s continued to rip our country apart and get permission for people to pursue autocratic means, and so I think we’re in a much worse place than we’ve been,” Dowd said. “I think we’re in the most perilous point in time since 1861 in the advent of the Civil War.”

“I do too,” Reid said.Curtis Houck @CurtisHouckThis is absolutely BONKERS and offensive to the thousands murdered on 9/11. Appearing alongside MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Matt Dowd says “January 6th was worse than 9/11 because it’s continued to rip our country apart and give permission for people to pursue autocratic means” July 6th 202138 Retweets165 Likes

Not to be outdone, Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Smith cited Dowd’s hysterical claim but adding that not only was January 6 worse than 9/11, but it was actually going to kill more Americans somehow, even counting all those killed in the US wars which ensued from the 9/11 attacks.

“He couldn’t be more right,” Schmidt said at a town hall for the Lincoln Project. “The 1/6 attack for the future of the country was a profoundly more dangerous event than the 9/11 attacks. And in the end, the 1/6 attacks are likely to kill a lot more Americans than were killed in the 9/11 attacks, which will include the casualties of the wars that lasted 20 years following.”

A total of 2,996 Americans were killed in the 9/11 attacks, and a further seven thousand US troops have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Exactly one person was killed in the January 6 riot, and it was a rioter shot by police inside the Capitol Building. Early reports that rioters had beaten a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher turned out to have been false.https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/THjGfH8OYl8?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

These bizarre alternate-reality takes are awful for a whole host of reasons, including the fact that this so-called “insurrection” everyone is still shrieking about never at any point in its planning or enactment had a higher than zero percent chance of overthrowing the most powerful government in the world, and the fact that they are manufacturing consent for new authoritarian measures just like 9/11 did. 

But perhaps the most annoying thing about all the melodramatic garment-rending over how close the US Capitol came to being taken over by violent extremists is that the US Capitol has been under the control of violent extremists for a very long time already.

For all the fretting everyone has been doing about fascists and white supremacist groups, those are not the violent extremists posing the greatest threat and amassing the highest body count today. Neither are the communists. Neither are the anarchists. Neither are the radicalized Muslims, nor the fundamentalist Christians, nor the environmentalists, nor the incels. No, the most dangerous and deadly group of violent extremists in our day are adherents of the mainstream status quo politics of the US-centralized power alliance.

And it’s not even close. Certainly many of the groups listed above are dangerous and undesirable, but they’re not the ones raining explosives upon families around the world for power and profit. They’re not the ones brandishing nuclear weapons with steadily increasing recklessness as they ramp up a new cold war against Russia and China. They’re not the ones poisoning the air and the water and rapidly destroying the environment we all depend on for survival. They’re not the ones enslaving humanity to a brutal, oppressive and exploitative global capitalist system which leaves far too many toiling for far too little when there’s plenty for everyone. 

That would be the so-called “moderates” of the western empire, who in reality are anything but.Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ @caitozBREAKING: Sources report violent right-wing extremists have seized the US Capitol, established a globe-spanning empire, and murdered millions of people.July 10th 2021300 Retweets1,756 Likes

It is violent to wage nonstop campaigns of military mass murder and impose civilian-killing economic sanctions on nations which disobey your dictates. It is extremist to brutalize, brainwash and enslave humanity while continuously shoving the world in the direction of extinction and armageddon in the name of profit and unipolar hegemony. Because US officials sit almost entirely on the right side of the global political spectrum, we can accurately say that everyone is fretting about violent right-wing extremists storming a Capitol building that had already long been occupied by violent right-wing extremists.

And yet when Facebook started sending Americans warnings that they may have viewed “extremist content” scrolling through their feeds, posts supporting this most dangerous group of extremists were not the content they were being warned about, but any kind of content which opposes the status quo those extremists have created. They’re killing the ecosystem and murdering people every single day while imperiling us all with the risk of nuclear war, my social media feeds are full of Americans literally trying to crowdfund their own survival while the world’s worst add trillions to their wealth, but it’s the people who want to change this abusive system who are the dangerous extremists.

Some analysts focus primarily on criticizing the really obvious monsters who spout racist and bigoted rhetoric to advance their toxic agendas. Others focus more on criticizing the monsters that are harder to see through the fog of feigned politeness and propaganda distortion, the ones you see in government buildings and on Fortune Magazine covers and on TV news shows telling you what to think about the world. Those who spend their time criticizing the latter more than the former are often attacked and ridiculed as fascist sympathizers and Kremlin assets, but only by those who don’t actually see the monsters that they are pointing to.

Hollywood trained us to fear psychopathic killers prowling around in the dark so we won’t notice the psychopathic killers who rule our world in broad daylight. We’ve been trained to fear the serial killer covered in blood and wielding a chainsaw so we won’t notice the serial killer wearing a suit and wielding a pen.

Our collective maturity cannot begin until we learn to see the violent extremist monsters where they actually exist, and not just where we’ve been trained to look for them.

_____________________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. 

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Always Walk Proudly Unmasked & Always Push Back When Asked for a Doctor’s Note – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2021

A lot of people don’t realize the ill of communism in their own life until it is too late to stop it. Most people don’t ever realize the ill of communism in their life. I say “most” intentionally, because it is entirely possible that the majority of people may not be able to ever see why communism is so bad. They just don’t have the capacity. That’s true in many times and places. That’s an important reason not to waste time on most people. Time is too short. Spend time on what matters as much as possible. There are people in the millions and likely in the billions who cannot string together a logical sentence on why communism is bad for them. Please avoid the urge to obsess over them. Your well-educated and generally rational doctor may be one of them.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/07/allan-stevo/always-walk-proudly-unmasked-always-push-back-when-asked-for-a-doctors-note/

By Allan Stevo

Good morning Allan,

I have been reading your posts on LewRockwell.com and have been trying to navigate the mask policy at work with your advice. I believe that I am in a unique situation regarding workplace masking.

I work for a government contractor but receive my paychecks from a much smaller subcontractor. In short, my employer, who is based out of state, sets different guidelines than the company that controls the facility at which I am located. 

My employer has required that all employees receive the COVID-19 “vaccine” and prove that they have done so, but I have requested an exemption. The facility I work at has allowed those who have been vaccinated (with no proof) to unmask themselves. This has left me in a situation where I am one of only a handful of people who are still “required” to wear a face mask. I obliged for a couple of weeks, but just this past week I decided to start taking my mask off. At this point in time, no one has said a word to me about not wearing a mask.

To wrap this up, I guess my question is, do you think it is wise to continue flying under the radar? Or should I still request a face mask exemption from my employer? There does not seem to be an official facemask policy – at least from a legal document standpoint. I could be wrong, but I do not want to stir any pots that do not need stirring. 

My hesitation is that my vaccine exemption has been sent to leadership, has been acknowledged, but has neither been approved nor denied. I’m assuming at this point that it is just going to be ignored, which is a good thing in my book, but on the off chance it does not get approved, I am concerned I may be pushing the envelope by sending any additional accomodations.

I am sure you are likely inundated with these types of emails, so if you can find the time to reply to this one it would be greatly appreciated!

Very respectfully,

An Unmasked Man 

—

Dear Unmasked Man,

I would say that you are not only “trying” to navigate the mask policy at work, but you are succeeding at navigating the policy. Thank you for that. Trying matters little, ultimately succeeding matters a great deal. Short term, many battles can be lost, long term success can still be assured. The difference between the two is having the will to make sure success happens. Thank you for assuring that success. I am without a doubt certain that your success in such endeavors ripples out in ways neither of us can never imagine.

If You Can Let The Bureaucrat Check The Boxes, Rather Than Making Them Stick Their Necks Out, You’ll Have A Greater Chance Of Success 

See the rest here

Allan Stevo [send him mail] writes about international politics and culture from a free market perspective at 52 Weeks in Slovakia (www.52inSk.com). He is the author of How to Win America, The Bitcoin Manifesto, and numerous other books.

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : True Civil Libertarians Must Oppose the IRS

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2021

Another frightening proposal is for the government to impose a “mileage tax” to fund highway construction. A mileage tax would require government to keep track of how many miles every American drives. Some claim that a mileage tax can be implemented without creating a massive new system of government surveillance. Even If this were true, anyone who expects the government not to use this new power for nefarious purposes needs to Google Edward Snowden.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/july/12/true-civil-libertarians-must-oppose-the-irs/

Written by Ron Paul Monday July 12, 2021
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Progressives who work to end individual rights violations committed by the NSA, FBI, DEA, CIA, and other federal agencies usually overlook, or even support, the routine violations of Americans’ rights by the IRS.

For example, progressives rarely, if ever, speak out against the IRS’s targeting of the opponents of those in power. When liberal Democrats control the White House, the IRS targets advocates of free markets. When hawkish Republicans are in power, the IRS targets antiwar activists.

The Democrats’ election reform legislation would require political organizations to divulge their top donors. Such donor disclosure requirements can be, and have been, used to intimidate donors from supporting “controversial” causes. Yet the requirements are supported by many progressives in the name of getting big money out of politics.

In order to “pay for” their massive spending schemes, President Biden and his congressional allies are planning a huge increase in the IRS budget. The declared purpose is to enable the tax agency to bring in to the government much more money by ramping up efforts to identify and punish those not paying the “proper” amount of taxes.

The tax code’s complexity guarantees many innocent Americans will be caught in the IRS’s expanded net. Yet progressives will support this because they favor the new social programs the new revenue will finance, and because they believe the IRS will only target billionaires and big corporations.

The truth is that most of the new revenue will be collected from middle-and-working-class Americans. These Americans will be targeted because, unlike billionaires and big corporations, middle-and-working-class Americans cannot afford legions of tax lawyers and accountants to level the playing field between them and the tax agency. They are more likely to simply give in to the IRS’s demands.

Waiters and waitresses may even be subjected to audits to ensure they are paying taxes on their tips.

Another frightening proposal is for the government to impose a “mileage tax” to fund highway construction. A mileage tax would require government to keep track of how many miles every American drives. Some claim that a mileage tax can be implemented without creating a massive new system of government surveillance. Even If this were true, anyone who expects the government not to use this new power for nefarious purposes needs to Google Edward Snowden.

Progressives’ blind spot toward IRS abuses of liberty is rooted in their belief that one can separate “economic” liberties from “civil” liberties. This allows them to support an abusive tax system to fund a welfare state (and, for an increasing number of progressives, a warfare state) while opposing other infringements on liberty. These progressives are the mirror image of conservatives who defend economic liberty while supporting government infringements on personal lifestyle choices. One of the most urgent tasks of those who wish to restore a free society in all areas is to end the artificial distinction between economic and civil liberties. By defending all liberty — no matter if it is classified as economic liberty or civil liberty — we can best protect against violations of any liberties.

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Erie Times E-Edition Article-‘They didn’t want to cause a panic’

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2021

I’ll bet. Between the ‘rona, and war with China and Russia and white supremacy we have enough man made (up) crisis. We don’t need alien crisis.

This has always been treated as a joke by the MSM and government.

Why the fuss and why now? It makes you wonder from what are they are trying to distract US?

https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=094f67339_1345e3d

Brian Broom Mississippi Clarion Ledger USA TODAY NETWORK An anticipated preliminary report from the federal government was recently released on UFOs encountered by military personnel dating back to 2004, and its contents, or lack thereof, has some Mississippians upset.

While the report doesn’t deny some may be extraterrestrial lifeforms traveling to Earth, it doesn’t offer that as a possible explanation, either.

‘I don’t believe they’re being straight up,’ Calvin Parker said. ‘The Department of Defense could come a little cleaner about what they’ve got. I just really believe there’s more out there than what they’re saying.’

Parker was a part of one of history’s most famous UFO cases. He, along with now-deceased Charles Hickson, claimed they were abducted by aliens the night of Oct.11, 1973, while fishing from a bank of the Pascagoula River. The two said they were levitated by aliens into a football-shaped craft, examined and then released.

The two contacted the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office and reported the incident. According to Parker, the two passed sobriety tests as well as polygraph tests. Parker said he also passed a voice stress test.

Parker remained largely quiet about the event until he wrote a book in 2018 giving his account of what happened and later a second book.

The report was released to the public on June 25 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and refers to UFOs as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. In Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force gives an overview of 144 observations by U.S. government sources.

One object was determined to be a partially deflated balloon and 80 of the observations involved multiple sensors. In a handful of cases, advanced technology appeared to have been demonstrated.

‘In 18 incidents, described in 21 reports, observers reported unusual UAP movement patterns or flight characteristics,’ the report stated. ‘Some UAP appeared to remain stationary in winds aloft, move against the wind, maneuver abruptly, or move at considerable speed, without discernible means of propulsion. In a small number of cases, military aircraft systems processed radio frequency (RF) energy associated with UAP sightings.’

The report indicated the observations could likely be explained by five possible things: airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, U.S. government or industry developmental programs, foreign adversary systems, and a catchall ‘other’ bin – but no mention of extraterrestrial crafts.

Parker said the investigations and report are too little, too late.

‘They’re just trying to satisfy everybody by telling them just a little bit,’ Parker said. ‘They should have done this a long time ago.

‘I think they probably did, but didn’t want to tell it. They didn’t want to cause a panic.’

Rosey Nail is also unhappy with the report.

Nail was hundreds of miles away from Pascagoula the night Hickson and Parker said they were abducted but said she witnessed something that was not from this world.

Nail said she saw a light moving across the sky that night and it separated into two lights. One orb moved closer to her and became as large as the sun and began changing colors. It then rejoined the other object and shot out of sight. It was an event she said isn’t explained by any possibilities in the report.

‘It was other-worldly, whatever that encompasses,’ Nail said. ‘It was purposeful.

‘It maneuvered. It went up and down and it went sideways and it shot up in the sky. I don’t think it’s military of any country. I think with technology advances, they would know if it was from other countries. Whatever the truth is, I think we should know about it.’

Maria Blair and her late husband, Jerry Blair, of Alabama, were on the opposite side of the Pascagoula River from Hickson and Parker on Oct.11, 1973.

In an earlier interview, the two said they watched a blue light move across the sky and hover before it landed about 150 to 200 yards away.

Jerry was waiting for a boat to pick him up to take him to his job offshore and paid little attention to the light as his thoughts were on work.

When the boat arrived, Maria said she heard a splash in the water as she walked down the pier. She looked down and saw what looked like a person in a wet suit in the water. After she heard Parker’s description of the aliens he said he was abducted by, she said it matched what she saw.

After watching television newscasts and learning the report did not offer alien lifeforms as a possible explanation, Blair, like Parker, said government officials are withholding information.

‘Ever since that night in 1973, the world knows we’re not alone,’ Blair said. ‘The government knows we’re not alone.

‘These humanoids are not from other countries. They’re so more advanced than us. I’ve never gotten over what I saw that night. These humanoids are not from this earth.’

The report is preliminary, which suggests a second is expected, but when and if it will be released to the public was not included in the document. Parker, who’s 67 and battling health issues, said he hopes more information is released that will shed light on what he and Hickson said happened them, but he’s not sure if it will.

‘I wish they’d tell us so I can go to my grave knowing what they know,’ Parker said. ‘I’d just like to have some kind of answer before I die and that’s not a long ways away, but I don’t think we’re going to get it from Congress or the Department of Defense.’

Photographed on the Pascagoula River where he and now-deceased Charles Hickson said they were abducted by aliens in 1973, Calvin Parker said he doesn’t believe a new government report on unidentified aerial phenomena reflects everything the government knows about UFOs. Provided

Photographed on the Pascagoula River where he and now-deceased Charles Hickson said they were abducted by aliens in 1973, Calvin Parker said he doesn’t believe a new government report on unidentified aerial phenomena reflects everything the government knows about UFOs.

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If the US Wants to Beat China, Why Is It Copying China’s Socialism? | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2021

In conclusion, if the US wants to strengthen its economic and geostrategic position versus China, it needs to apply the same free market principles that made it prosperous and powerful in the first place. Launching a second Marshall Plan, which mirrors China’s wasteful BRI, will only consolidate big government, crony capitalism, and corruption, eroding the US economy’s capital stock and competitiveness.

https://mises.org/wire/if-us-wants-beat-china-why-it-copying-chinas-socialism

Mihai Macovei

Under the Biden administration the US continued escalating the economic and geopolitical frictions with China. At the recent G7 Summit in Carbis Bay, President Biden sought to rally a “united front” against China with traditional G7 allies and new ones such as Australia, India, South Korea, and South Africa and rebuked China on economic policies, human rights, and tensions in the East and South China Seas. The US also persuaded its G7 allies to back a massive infrastructure support package for developing countries. The so-called Build Back Better World Partnership (B3W) is a de facto rival to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But it is far from obvious what the West stands to gain by emulating China’s exorbitant and highly controversial modern “Silk Road” venture.

The US’s Ambitious Global Infrastructure Plan

The B3W wants to mobilize “hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investment,” in order to narrow an estimated infrastructure need of $40 trillion plus in the developing world. The B3W financing is expected to come from US budgetary instruments, such as the Development Finance Corporation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); from multilateral development banks (MDBs), such as the World Bank; and from the private sector and G7 partners. As the B3W is meant to challenge China’s project, we expect it to at least match the Chinese financial envelope, most commonly estimated at more than $1 trillion in investment and lending commitments so far.1 This is more than eight times higher than the nearly $113 billion in official development assistance and $22 billion in private sector investment provided by G7 countries for foreign infrastructure projects during 2015–19 (graph 1).

Graph 1: G7 Infrastructure Development Assistance

G7 infrastructure development assistance
Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

In order to surpass China, the B3W aims at having a broader geographical coverage, a wider focus, and better project governance and standards. The BRI comprises a “Silk Road Economic Belt” trying to link China with Asia, Russia, and Europe by land, and a “Maritime Silk Road,” connecting China’s coastal regions with Asia, the South Pacific, Africa, and Europe, but its Western challenger aims at being global in scope. While the Chinese initiative is focused on traditional infrastructure projects—highways, railroads, ports, and power plants, the B3W wants to invest also in climate, health and digital technology. And because Chinese projects have been heavily criticized for lack of transparency, corruption, unsustainable debt and adverse environmental and social impacts, the B3W advertises itself as “a values-driven, high-standard, and transparent infrastructure partnership led by major democracies.”

Holes in China’s “Silk Road”

From its announcement in 2013, China’s megainfrastructure project has been met with suspicion in the West. Most important, it was feared that China had geostrategic ambitions to bring smaller BRI partners under its sphere of influence. It was also claimed that China was pursuing a “debt-trap diplomacy” in order to take over key strategic assets such as electric grids and ports, while the latter could be also used for military purposes.

With time, many analysts realized that much of this criticism was exaggerated. First, almost 140 countries have signed on to the BRI as of this writing, of which eighteen are from the EU, showing that many governments find the Chinese deal beneficial. And although China has not financed in full the promised $1 trillion in projects so far, it did make $190 billion worth of investments and $390 billion in construction work (financed by Chinese loans in general) during 2014–18. This is more than the $467 billion of development loans provided by the World Bank during 2008–19. Second, while the number of requests for debt renegotiation and relief has increased, overseas asset seizures have rarely occurred. Third, many pundits concur that the BRI ports are commercially designed and almost impossible to employ militarily.

Undeniably, China has been trying to enhance its political influence through the BRI, and is now perceived as the most influential economic actor in Southeast Asia and Africa. But resentments over some onerous projects, corruption scandals, and increasing debt burdens mean that such gains could be easily reversed, and China has started to improve its lending and investment standards. The BRI focus has been widened from traditional infrastructure to telecommunications, digital technology, and fintech. And China also expanded the BRI’s overarching goal to helping build a free trade and investment area which would accelerate economic growth for all partner countries.2

But BRI’s economic benefits are skewed in favor of Chinese construction companies at the expense of taxpayers. The BRI provided much business for China’s overstretched construction sector after the end of the domestic stimulus binge following the Great Recession. Almost 90 percent of the construction works funded under the BRI went to Chinese contractors, fueling criticism that the BRI creates unfair advantages for Chinese companies, which have become global leaders. Seven of the ten largest construction companies in the world by revenue were Chinese in 2017. At the same time, if China wanted to set a debt trap with the BRI, it seems that it is the country which has fallen into it. The pandemic has accelerated the already growing debt defaults and renegotiations and an estimated $94 billion, or a quarter of China’s overseas lending, has come under renegotiation so far (graph 2). It shows that the BRI’s most important lenders, i.e. China’s two main policy banks—the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China—have done a poor job of financing viable projects, for which the Chinese taxpayer is likely to foot the bill eventually.3 And given the sizeable amount of investments put on hold, scaled back, or cancelled, and the very low participation of private lenders, it is obvious that the BRI participating governments have made several bad investment decisions too.

Graph 2: China’s Debt Renegotiation Cases

debt rengotiation
Source: Rhodium Group Research.

Over 2013–17, the BRI looked pretty successful and was growing fast in terms of contracts signed and loans. After high-profile contracts were cancelled and debt renegotiations surged, the project ran out of steam. China’s big banks started rethinking and reducing their overseas lending and the number of construction contracts went down too (graph 3). This was also driven by the deleveraging of Chinese banks after the large credit expansion following the global financial crisis. China’s large domestic growth stimuli weakened its external competitiveness and reduced current account surpluses and outward FDI (foreign direct investment). The balance of payments crisis of 2015–16, which was accompanied by a drop in international reserves of more than $1 trillion and imposition of capital controls, reduced China’s ability to fund the massive overseas demand for infrastructure projects and investment. In addition, domestic voices started to question why Chinese people, also relatively poor, should subsidize unprofitable capital investment overseas.

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Contact Mihai Macovei

Dr. Mihai Macovei (macmih_mf@yahoo.com) is an associated researcher at the Ludwig von Mises Institute Romania and works for an international organization in Brussels, Belgium.

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FBI To Americans: ‘Report On Your Families!’

Posted by M. C. on July 12, 2021

Over the weekend the FBI Tweeted that Americans should observe their own family members for possible “extremism” and report them to the FBI if they find any. Haven’t we seen this movie before in East Germany? Also – Washington is spending millions to create a new database of the “insurrectionists” from January 6th. Is this justice, or political persecution? These stories and more in today’s Liberty Report…

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