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G7: Desperately seeking relevancy – Asia Times

Posted by M. C. on June 11, 2021

History tells uss it won’t work. Just two examples: the British and French empires could not stop the rise of the US in the 19th century; and even better, the Anglo-American axis only stopped the simultaneous rise of Germany and Japan by paying the price of two world wars, with the British empire destroyed and Germany back again as the leading power in Europe.

That should give the meeting of “America is Back” and “Global Britain” in Cornwall the status of a mere, quirky historical footnote.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/06/g7-desperately-seeking-relevancy/

The upcoming G7 in Cornwall at first might be seen as the quirky encounter of “America is Back” with “Global Britain”.

The Big Picture though is way more sensitive. Three Summits in a Row – G7, NATO and US-EU – will be paving the way for a much expected cliffhanger: the Putin-Biden summit in Geneva – which certainly won’t be a reset.

The controlling interests behind the hologram that goes by the name of “Joe Biden” have a clear overarching agenda: to regiment industrialized democracies – especially those in Europe – and keep them in lockstep to combat those “authoritarian” threats to US national security, “malignant” Russia and China.

It’s like a throwback to those oh so stable 1970s Cold War days, complete with James Bond fighting foreign devils and Deep Purple subverting communism. Well, the times they are-a-changin’. China is very much aware that now the Global South “accounts for almost two-thirds of the global economy compared to one-third by the West: in the 1970s, it was exactly the opposite.”

For the Global South – that is, the overwhelming majority of the planet – the G7 is largely irrelevant. What matters is the G20.

China, the rising economic superpower, hails from the Global South, and is a leader in the G20. For all their internal troubles, EU players in the G7 – Germany, France and Italy – cannot afford to antagonize Beijing in economic, trade and investment terms.

A G7 rebooted as a Sinophobic crusade will have no takers. Including Japan and special guests at Cornwall: tech powerhouse South Korea, and India and South Africa (both BRICS members), offered the dangling carrot of a possible extended membership.

Washington’s wishful thinking cum P.R. offensive boils down to selling itself as the primus inter pares of the West as a revitalized global leader. Why the Global South is not buying it can be observed, graphically, by what happened for the past eight years. The G7 – and especially the Americans – simply could not respond to China’s wide-ranging, pan-Eurasian trade/development strategy, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The American “strategy” so far – 24/7 demonization of BRI as a “debt trap” and “forced labor” machine – did not cut it. Now, too little too late, comes a G7 scheme, involving “partners” such as India, to “support”, at least in theory, vague “high-quality projects” across the Global South: that’s the Clean Green Initiative , focused on sustainable development and green transition, to be discussed both at the G7 and the US-EU summits.

Compared to BRI, Clean Green Initiative hardly qualifies as a coherent geopolitical and geoeconomic strategy. BRI has been endorsed and partnered by over 150 nation-states and international bodies – and that includes more than half of the EU’s 27 members.

Facts on the ground tell the story. China and ASEAN are about to strike a “comprehensive strategic partnership” deal. Trade between China and the Central and Eastern European Countries (CCEC), also known as the 17+1 group, including 12 EU nations, continues to increase. The Digital Silk Road, the Health Silk Road and the Polar Silk Road keep advancing.

So what’s left is loud Western rumbling about vague investments in digital technology – perhaps financed by the European Investment Bank, based in Luxembourg – to cut off China’s “authoritarian reach” across the Global South.

The EU-US summit may be launching a “Trade and Technology Council” to coordinate policies on 5G, semiconductors, supply chains, export controls and technology rules and standards. A gentle reminder: the EU-US simply do not control this complex environment. They badly need South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

Wait a minute, Mr. Taxman

To be fair, the G7 may have rendered a public service to the whole world when their Finance Ministers struck an alleged “historic” deal last Saturday in London on a global, minimal 15% tax on multinational companies (MNCs).

Triumphalism was in order – with endless praise lavished on “justice” and “fiscal solidarity” coupled with really bad news for assorted fiscal paradises.

Well, that’s slightly more complicated.

This tax has been discussed at the highest levels of the OECD in Paris for over a decade now – especially because nation-states are losing at least $427 billion a year in tax-dodging by MNCs and assorted multi-billionaires. In terms of the European scenario that does not even account for the loss of V.A.T. by fraud – something gleefully practiced by Amazon, among others.

So it’s no wonder G7 Finance Ministers had $1.6 trillion-worth Amazon pretty much on their sights. Amazon’s cloud computing division should be treated as a separate entity. In this case the mega-tech group will have to pay more corporate tax in some of its largest European markets – Germany, France, Italy, UK – if the global 15% tax is ratified.

So yes, this is mostly about Big Tech – master experts on fiscal fraud and profiting from tax paradises located even inside Europe, such as Ireland and Luxembourg. The way the EU was built, it allowed fiscal competition between nation-states to fester. To discuss this openly in Brussels remains a virtual taboo. In the official EU list of fiscal paradises, one won’t find Luxembourg, the Netherlands or Malta.

So could this all be just a P.R. coup? It’s possible. The major problem is that at the European Council – where governments of EU member-states discuss their issues – they have been dragging their feet for a long time, and sort of delegated the whole thing to the OECD.

As it stands, details on the 15% tax are still vague – even as the US government stands to become the largest winner, because its MNCs have shifted massive profits all across the planet to avoid US corporate taxes.

Not to mention that nobody knows if, when and how the deal will be globally accepted and implemented: that will be a Sisyphean task. At least it will be discussed, again, at the G20 in Venice in July.

What Germany wants

Without Germany there would not have been real advance on the EU-China Investment Agreement late last year. With a new US administration, the deal is stalled again. Outgoing chancellor Merkel is against China-EU economic decoupling – and so are German industrialists. It will be quite a treat to watch this subplot at the G7.

In a nutshell: Germany wants to keep expanding as a global trading power by using its large industrial base, while the Anglo-Saxons have completely ditched their industrial base to embrace non-productive financialization. And China for its part wants to trade with the whole planet. Guess who’s the odd player out.

Considering the G7 as a de facto gathering of the Hegemon with its hyenas, jackals and chihuahuas, it will also be quite a treat to watch the semantics. What degree of “existential threat” will be ascribed to Beijing – especially because for the interests behind the hologram “Biden” the real priority is the Indo-Pacific?

These interests could not give a damn about a EU yearning for more strategic autonomy. Washington always announces its diktats without even bothering to previously consult Brussels.

So this is what this Triple X of summits – G7, NATO and EU-US – will be all about: the Hegemon pulling all stops to contain/harass the emergence of a rising power by enlisting its satrapies to “fight” and thus preserve the “rules-based international order” it designed over seven decades ago.

History tells uss it won’t work. Just two examples: the British and French empires could not stop the rise of the US in the 19th century; and even better, the Anglo-American axis only stopped the simultaneous rise of Germany and Japan by paying the price of two world wars, with the British empire destroyed and Germany back again as the leading power in Europe.

That should give the meeting of “America is Back” and “Global Britain” in Cornwall the status of a mere, quirky historical footnote.

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Teach a Man To Acquiesce – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on June 11, 2021

But my friends and neighbors sometimes appear to be in a literal race to embrace the entire spectrum, from vapid to vicious, of whatever soul-crushing and freedom-smashing offal spews over us from the mouths of the pundits and “news” anchors haunting the corners of our living rooms, offices, and ear buds.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/06/no_author/teach-a-man-to-acquiesce/

By Jeff Krinock

I watched a recent brilliant interview of Dr. Peter Breggin, a discussion during which interviewer John-Henry Westen and Breggin joined a growing number of COVID realists in expressing amazement that so many of our colleagues and fellow citizens remain, well into 2021, paralyzed or panicked with viral fear. This, even as more and more evidence makes clear that our recent “pandemic” is in every sense of the phrase a plannedemic, and one that even brazenly inflated casualty numbers cannot render any more deadly than is a typical bad flu season.

Don’t get me wrong: Six members of my immediate family tested positive for COVID. (And each recov ered fully, thank God). So I am not a bit cavalier about the real suffering of the last 18 months.

But my friends and neighbors sometimes appear to be in a literal race to embrace the entire spectrum, from vapid to vicious, of whatever soul-crushing and freedom-smashing offal spews over us from the mouths of the pundits and “news” anchors haunting the corners of our living rooms, offices, and ear buds. To wit: last fall there was a local fish monger who shouted me down for the grave crime of not fully covering my nose. Her loud, unrelenting insults showered over me like foul residuum from a sickly sneeze. Or this spring my wife observed a shopper who literally screamed accusations of murder at a fellow shopper, a mild-mannered woman also guilty of the naked-nose atrocity. And how quickly we changed our entire society: just two years ago someone irrationally shouting accusations of murder in the marketplace would have faced potential litigation for slander , or worse, been dragged away for (much-deserved) observation.

Far too many of our erstwhile friends are morally goosestepping their way through supermarkets and dollar stores, ensuring all around them have their scarlet A’s tucked firmly about nose and mouth. The infamous propagandist, Edward Bernays (1891-1995) and his undue influence explain the Nazi-rally-like behaviors of so many of my neighbors and friends. They likely would not have reacted as they did without the groundbreaking, er, make that soul-breaking, work of Sigmund Freud’s most famous nephew

I came to Bernays and the pernicious influence of his writings via the same question Westen and other realists are asking increasingly: How in the name of all that’s holy have we come to the place that we offer up with nary a whimper our right to assemble, the health of our businesses and economy, our religious freedoms, medical privacy, and even the simple dignity of being deemed innocent until proven COVID- guilty?

Having given these questions some thought, here’s my short response:

If Christ held out to us “the Way, the Truth and the Life” as the goal of our existence, anyone, any system, or any philosophy that pulls us further from encountering His ontological foundation is, by definition, of the devil. What follows are a few specifics as they relate to Bernays’ enabling of the simpering surrender we see all around us.

What is truth?

Yesteryear we had the concept of “the noble lie”. Whatever else one could say about that concept, it was understood that “good leaders” would use the noble lie to withhold information from the public (read, “the people”) by exception, never by rule.

People like Bernays helped change all of that in a flash. Before Bernays, we of course already had the word (and the concept of), “propaganda”. That phrase had known baggage and came with widely acknowledged negative connotations. If any would -be dictator – whether said person walked the halls of congress or enjoyed the padded seats of a corporate boardroom – became too comfortable with the use of propaganda, reputations of both the leader and the related institution would suffer rather directly.

But Bernays reflexively used his own verbal gymnastics and manipulations to cover his purveyance of propaganda in a thin, shiny veneer of respectability: by renaming propaganda as “public relations”, in one fell swoop he both swept the concept of the noble lie into the dustbin of history and normalized the manipulations, machinations and ubiquity of propaganda. No longer was selectively hiding and showing elements of the truth considered to be a lie. In fact, if one reads Bernays’ various justifications, it’s apparent that he was quite happy to repackage intentional prevarication as much-needed public discourse.

He systematized use of the lie, of the half-truth, in order to dampen the once-n ecessary thuds and blows of the most important of public-affecting decisions. Did he quell fears and fevers? Certainly. But those fevers once served the purpose of alerting us to the threats of disease to the body politic. Bernays and his inevitable followers, having made it broadly acceptable to enable only a select few to have the “big picture” of the impacts of various events and policies, did the devil’s work of reducing the masses to sheep for the slaughter.

Among the many, many fallouts from this change to our understanding of our relationship to the truth are the following:

  1. Slow but steady erosion of the ability to discuss any topic in depth, regardless of how profoundly said topic impacts our souls, our existence, or our salvation
  2. Movement of horrifying spy-world concepts and actions to the mainstream
  3. Tweeting (aka, bumper stickers for millennials)
  4. Shallowness (in every corner and byway)
  5. Disposal of the town hall
  6. Court jester as a broad and deep career field
  7. Willingness to accept online chatter as a substitute for face-to-face relationships
  8. Political intelligence as a cheap and ready replacement for genuine statesmanship

Government secrecy and deception are no longer necessary (and rare) evils, but are now “cool” and have, in the most literal sense, become societal norms. And if there be any doubts about the evil nature of this normalizing of deception, just reflect on what now-common phrases like “limited hangout”, “gaslighting” or “cancelling” really mean. If even that consideration is too much effort, simply think of your own reactions to the name, 007.

The heinous character of Bernays’ impact can hardly be overstated. And to paraphrase an old saying, “there’s no new evil under the sun.” When Bernays normalized propaganda in the svelte new clothing of public relations, he tapped into the ancient Christian heresy of gnosticism. That heresy is many things to many people, but its central tenet — that only those with special knowledge are chosen — found fertile soil with Bernays and his ideological heirs.

When any of today’s legions of Bernays wannabes uses manipulation in lieu of reason-based discussion and persuasion, he is, exactly at the point of that manipulation, helping to subvert at least one more facet of an erstwhile human being into a sheep (at best) or a machine/automaton at worst. The ligament or limb that yesterday could be persuaded to action through the growth of the human spirit is now instead spasm ed into movement via an edgy jolt of external manipulation. And the newly-manipulated-one is now twice deprived: his action of the moment is tainted (as is any action whose lofty ends nevertheless fail to elevate the agent above the depravity of unmoderated means) and some aspect of his ability to rise above the level of an automaton is dulled, and dulled permanently.

Bernays’ push for propaganda represents the inverse of “teach a man to fish….” Specifically, under Bernays’ deft touch the old chestnut transforms to, “teach a man to acquiesce and you’ll teach him permanent dependency”. Follow Bernays’ advice — deem the masses incapable of rational conduct, give them only enough stimulation to act according to your will, and steadfastly resist any urge to educate and uplift — and you will simultaneously feel in control and solidify your future ability to maintain that feeling.

Perhaps saddest of all is that for Bernays, the dependencies his technique s generated were not a liability to the type of society he proffered. In his world view, some among us can see “the big picture”, and among those an even more “select” group can recognize and wield the means to move others in the direction of that big picture. And all of that matches perfectly with what we see today: the government-media-corporate complex can invent one boogeyman after another, and the public reacts (or worse, acquiesces) with truly alarming predictability and regularity.

Yes, the genuinely insane reactions all around us, the window smashing, the banner waving, rallies held for the express purpose of persuading the few remaining lovers-of-freedom to fall in line — all of this is heartbreaking in the most literal sense. It was put in place, however, quite deliberately. And that is perhaps the saddest aspect of the hell burgeoning all around us.

Jeff Krinock [send him mail], a former USAF pilot, works as a Managing Consultant for the Global Business Services division of IBM. He lives, works and writes in the hills around Johnstown, PA, where he lives with his wife and three vicious Labs. His published writing ranges from poetry to technical papers to essays. His second book about Orthodox theology and its relationship to digital tech is underway.

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USS Liberty Survivor Interviewed About Attack and Cover Up

Posted by M. C. on June 11, 2021

Go to the link for the video.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/06/ginny-garner/uss-liberty-survivor-interviewed-about-attack-and-cover-up/

Ginny Garner

Infowars’ American Journal host Harrison Smith conducted a powerful interview with survivor Phil Tourney about the deliberate and unprovoked attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967 and subsequent coverup by President Lyndon Johnson. Tourney was onboard the intelligence ship, witnessed the attack by the Israeli military, watched the murder of 34 and maiming of 174 of his fellow Navy men, and was threatened to keep quiet or else he and his fellow shipmates would be imprisoned or even killed. His account 54 years later of the brutal assault and cover up is still shocking to hear. Tourney said the attack was a false flag, a plan by the US and Israel to sink the ship, kill all aboard, and blame it on Egypt as the pretext to take over the Middle East. Anyone trying to get the truth out about this shameful tragedy has typically been smeared as an anti-Semite. To this day the cover up continues with apologists like Charlie Kirk claiming it’s a conspiracy theory to have Tourney’s view. The interview was preceded by a report Alex Jones produced many years ago on the appalling episode. Tourney highly recommended the four-part series Sacrificing Liberty he and other survivors appear in that is posted on Tru News; he describes it as a Christian outlet.

The interview with Smith:

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/CxqvZkm0Qx9g/

The series:

TruNews

Ginny Garner is a writer, editor, researcher, and music lover. She took the red pill many years ago and has been an avid reader of Lew’s website for the last 22-23 years. Write her at ginnygarner@protonmail.com .

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There You Go Again! Another Study In Germany Finds Lockdowns Worthless

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2021

A new study on Covid lockdowns in Germany shows that destroying the freedom and livelihood of civilians to fight a virus by locking the country down was pointless. Any “credit” claimed for the lockdowns was actually due to the cases already falling before implemented. Will justice be served? Also today, TX Gov. Abbott partly redeems himself by signing new vaccine passport prohibition.

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Half-Black Man Ordered To Pay Himself Reparations

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2021

https://babylonbee.com/news/half-black-man-ordered-to-pay-himself-reparations

SAN JOSE, CA—Local half-white, half-black man Michael Preston has been ordered to pay himself reparations since half his ancestors were oppressed and half were oppressors.

“Wait — what?” he said after he received a letter from Governor Gavin Newsom’s office informing him he owed himself over $25,000. “Uh… OK? I guess?” He then went down to the bank and ordered a transfer to himself. He was a little short of the total amount so he made it in installments, sending himself several payments totaling the $25,000 amount he owes himself for his ancestors oppressing his other ancestors.

“We’d like to thank Mr. Preston for atoning for the guilt of his ancestors,” said Governor Newsom. “Because of them, he has a unique place of privilege in life and has had a leg up on his fellow citizens, who are oppressed because of things that happened hundreds of years ago. Today, he has made that right. Well, until we ask for more reparations later. Frankly, it’s never going to stop.”

“We’d also like to congratulate Mr. Preston for receiving the reparations long overdue to his ancestors today,” said Governor Newsom. “Because of what happened to them, he is in a unique place of oppression in life and has never been able to get ahead of his fellow citizens, who are far more privileged than him because of things that happened hundreds of years ago. Today, that wrong has been righted. Well, until we send him more reparations later. Frankly, it’s never going to stop.”

Preston has said he’ll pay whatever to himself going forward as long as the state just leaves him alone and lets him live his life.

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The Rutherford Institute :: The War Over Genetic Privacy Is Just Beginning | By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead |

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2021

Without even realizing it, by submitting your DNA to an ancestry database, you’re giving the police access to the genetic makeup, relationships and health profiles of every relative—past, present and future—in your family, whether or not they ever agreed to be part of such a database.

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/guilt_by_association_dna_databases_forensic_genealogy_and_genetic_privacy

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“When you upload your DNA, you’re potentially becoming a genetic informant on the rest of your family.”— Law professor Elizabeth Joh

“Guilt by association” has taken on new connotations in the technological age.

All of those fascinating, genealogical searches that allow you to trace your family tree by way of a DNA sample can now be used against you and those you love.

As of 2019, more than 26 million people had added their DNA to ancestry databases. It’s estimated those databases could top 100 million profiles within the year, thanks to the aggressive marketing of companies such as Ancestry and 23andMe.

It’s a tempting proposition: provide some mega-corporation with a spit sample or a cheek swab, and in return, you get to learn everything about who you are, where you came from, and who is part of your extended your family.

The possibilities are endless.

You could be the fourth cousin once removed of Queen Elizabeth II of England. Or the illegitimate grandchild of an oil tycoon. Or the sibling of a serial killer.

Without even realizing it, by submitting your DNA to an ancestry database, you’re giving the police access to the genetic makeup, relationships and health profiles of every relative—past, present and future—in your family, whether or not they ever agreed to be part of such a database.

After all, a DNA print reveals everything about “who we are, where we come from, and who we will be.”

It’s what police like to refer to a “modern fingerprint.”

Whereas fingerprint technology created a watershed moment for police in their ability to “crack” a case, DNA technology is now being hailed by law enforcement agencies as the magic bullet in crime solving.

Indeed, police have begun using ancestry databases to solve cold cases that have remained unsolved for decades.

For instance, in 2018, former police officer Joseph DeAngelo was flagged as the notorious “Golden State Killer” through the use of genetic genealogy, which allows police to match up an unknown suspect’s crime scene DNA with that of any family members in a genealogy database. Police were able to identify DeAngelo using the DNA of a distant cousin found in a public DNA database. Once police narrowed the suspect list to DeAngelo, they tracked him—snatched up a tissue he had tossed in a trash can—and used his DNA on the tissue to connect him to a rash of rapes and murders from the 1970s and ‘80s.

See the rest here

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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The Real Tax Scandal | Mises Institute

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2021

Yet the real scandal here is not the IRS leak, which was no doubt internal and designed to gin up public support for Biden’s proposed tax increases while advancing a progressive inequality narrative.

No, the real scandal is this: federal income taxes are almost entirely about control and not revenue. The byzantine rules and selective enforcement are perfectly designed to keep ordinary people with limited means in mortal fear of the IRS. A tax audit, like cancer, can come out of nowhere and ruin your life.

https://mises.org/power-market/real-tax-scandal

Jeff Deist

The self-styled investigative journalism outlet ProPublica recently published private IRS tax information—presumably embarrassing private tax information—for a host of ultrawealthy and famous Americans. I say “self-styled” because the organization claims a pretty lofty and self-important mission to use the “moral force” of journalism on behalf of the public interest against abuses of power. But does this apply to state power, such as when a federal agency employee illegally leaks sensitive material to media? And why is it presumed to be in the public’s interest to have rich billionaires pay more in taxes? Maybe we’d rather have them investing in their companies, or at least buying megayachts and Gulfstream jets, rather than sending more resources to the black hole of DC? Why is the public interest always defined as “things progressives like”?

ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.

And as an aside, it’s worthwhile to recall the tremendous whopper of a lie President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told back in 1935—namely that no one other than the program’s administrators would ever know your private Social Security number. Today, of course, Social Security numbers are the absolute linchpin of one’s entire financial identity, and known by everyone from the IRS to your local credit union.

Yet the real scandal here is not the IRS leak, which was no doubt internal and designed to gin up public support for Biden’s proposed tax increases while advancing a progressive inequality narrative. Political capture of federal agencies is nothing new or shocking; that’s what presidents do (or have done to them). Nor is it particularly scandalous that the wealthiest people sometime pay little in federal income tax, at least relative to their income. After all, elites by definition tend to wield power rather than fear it, especially when it comes to state power. And they have lobbyists and accountants to make sure taxes remain something the little people pay.

No, the real scandal is this: federal income taxes are almost entirely about control and not revenue. The byzantine rules and selective enforcement are perfectly designed to keep ordinary people with limited means in mortal fear of the IRS. A tax audit, like cancer, can come out of nowhere and ruin your life. In some cases it can land you in jail. Tax enforcement is the ultimate check on the public’s behavior; after all, who takes up the cause of a tax cheat? For middle-class Americans the IRS is an existential threat, but for Jeff Bezos it is another business expense to be minimized.

And as for revenue, consider that Uncle Sam borrowed nearly half of the dollars spent by Congress in fiscal 2020. With covid shutdowns, federal income taxes amounted to about $3.42 trillion, while spending was $6.55 trillion. If the federal government can finance 50 percent of its annual spending through deficits, why not 80 percent or 100 percent? Why do we need the IRS terror regime at all?

Again, this is about control. Progressives will never give up the income tax for this very reason. Proponents of modern monetary theory, for example, are almost uniformly left progressive in political outlook. These are the people cheering Biden’s >$1 trillion infrastructure spending bill because of their fervent belief that deficits don’t matter.

MMT rests on two central assertions.1 First, sovereign governments with their own currencies can print as much money as needed to fund operations without fear of insolvency or bankruptcy—unless a purely political decision is made to go broke. Government deficits per se do not matter, because the only real constraint in any economy is the amount of real resources available rather than the amount of money. In fact, MMT views government debt as private financial wealth—money inserted into the economy by the central state but not taxed back. 

Second, sovereign governments with their own currencies can require tax payments to be made in that currency. Therefore any overheating in the economy in the form of inflation resulting from too much money can be fixed by pulling some money back to the Treasury via tax increases. This is the ostensible reason MMTers are not quite ready to give up on taxes altogether.

Yet I’ve never heard an MMTer express support for even a one-year moratorium on taxes to stimulate a bad economy (after a shock such as a worldwide covid pandemic). Why is this? If inflation really is so low, with the economy struggling in postcovid recovery mode, why pull any money back into federal coffers? Just damn the torpedoes! The bigger the deficit, the more “private wealth” we all have! Perhaps there is a political element to all the MMT jargon after all, one which relies on taxes both for control over people and to advance an advantageous but hollow trope about taxing the rich.

Federal income taxes have always been a tool for compliance. The IRS has always been a tool for presidents to go after rivals—or for rivals to go after presidents. Why would we expect otherwise?

  • 1. See Dr. Robert P. Murphy’s definitive critique of MMT and Professor Stephanie Kelton’s book here.

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Torture Enters the Courtroom – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2021

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/06/andrew-p-napolitano/torture-enters-the-courtroom/

By Andrew P. Napolitano

For the first time in American history, a federal judge last week authorized the government to admit as evidence in a criminal case in a public courtroom words uttered by the defendant that were obtained under torture.

The fruits of torture — which is any cruel or degrading or intentionally painful or disorienting behavior visited upon a person in captivity to induce compliance or to gratify the torturer — are not permitted in any court in the United States, and their inducement is criminal.

Here is the backstory.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a low-level former member of the Taliban, is accused with others of plotting the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000 that killed 17 American sailors. He has been in U.S. custody since 2002 and at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2004. When he was first captured, he was turned over to the CIA for interrogation, not the Department of Justice for prosecution.

The practice of the federal government immediately following 9/11, when it captured anyone overseas from whom it believed it could extract national security information, was to hand the person over to the CIA for torture — the feds call it “enhanced interrogation” — at a “dark site” in a foreign country with which the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty.

The reason for the location of the torture was the erroneous belief by DOJ and CIA officials that torture conducted or condoned by American personnel is not prosecutable if it occurs outside the U.S.

That has never been the law in the U.S., but it has been the practice of the DOJ and the CIA to shield their personnel with secrecy when they are caught engaging in torture in a foreign country.

However, because either the tortured person or someone connected to whatever the tortured person revealed was to be tried in a federal court, and because no federal court can admit evidence against a defendant that was obtained under torture, the feds devised a scheme around this.

That scheme called for FBI “clean teams” to interrogate the tortured person after the torture was completed, using conventional and lawful interrogation techniques. These techniques often proved more successful than CIA torture. Because these techniques were lawful, and the person being interrogated was advised of his rights and treated humanely by the FBI, the information thus obtained from him was usable in federal court.

At trial, a defendant can always demonstrate that he had been tortured, not to obtain the jury’s sympathy but to enable his lawyers to argue to the jurors that they should disregard as unconstitutional, immoral, unlawful and un-American whatever evidence the torture produced.

Al-Nashiri’s lawyers told the court and the prosecutors at Guantanamo Bay that they intend to argue at trial to the jury that the government has the wrong man and that the true plotters have already been killed by U.S. forces. The feds, in order to counter that argument, told the court that they have statements that al-Nashiri made during his torture that can arguably be used to question his defense.

If the trial judge in the court in Guantanamo Bay had followed the law — the Constitution, the statutes and the rules of procedure, all of which profoundly reject the fruits of cruel and unusual punishment and shocking behavior — as well as American history, he would have excluded from the trial whatever al-Nashiri told his torturers while they had a broomstick well into his rectum.

If the trial judge had followed the law and our values, he would have dismissed the case against al-Nashiri because the government’s behavior shocks the conscience. If the trial judge had followed the law, he would have ordered the torturers into his court room and had them arrested on the spot.

But the trial judge in this case did not follow American law and rejected American values and all sense of human decency when he authorized the government to introduce at trial a partial transcript of the statements al-Nashiri allegedly made under torture. He also broke with 230 years of precedent. He also gave judicial credibility to governmental barbarism and nihilism in the extreme, which holds that individual human beings are subject to the state and, since their rights come from the state, they and their rights exist at the pleasure of the state.

The government lies, cheats, steals and kills; and it has written laws that permit it to do so and make legal recourse against it nearly impossible.

But nothing it does is more damnable than torture.

Torture is the ultimate triumph of the state over a person and the ultimate degradation of personhood. It is a complete rejection of the values of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And it doesn’t work.

The history of torture is the history of victims divorced from reality by overwhelming fear and unbearable pain and willing to say whatever the torturers demand in return for a cessation of the pain. Stated differently, the fruits of torture are divorced from the truth. As a truth-producing mechanism, torture is a failure.

Many appeals remain for al-Nashiri before his jury trial comes to pass; and torture — with all its sufferings by victim and perpetrators — is part of the history of his case. I trust that saner judicial heads in the appellate process will prevail and this precedent-shattering and monstrous decision will soon be overturned. But its damage is done.

The government of the United States engages in torture and will continue to do so until the torturers are punished. And the prosecutors for whom the torturers work will someday try again to get the fruits of their barbaric behavior legitimized in an American courtroom.

When will the government stop the use of torture? Whom will it torture next? Why does it swear to uphold the Constitution and then trash it?

Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written nine books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit creators.com.

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How Defamation Suits Are Used to Stifle Free Speech | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2021

After all, government agents and agencies already exercise far more power over their fellow citizens than is the case for average people. The last thing we need is for these agents of the regime to be able to threaten their critics with lawsuits for the act of merely saying things.

Police officers and other government employees who don’t like being subject to public criticism can always resign their positions and become ordinary private taxpaying citizens. 

https://mises.org/wire/how-defamation-suits-are-used-stifle-free-speech

Ryan McMaken

The average American can be forgiven for assuming that he or she can freely criticize the government and government personnel without fear of being sued by the government for libel or slander. This is indeed true most of the time. But it doesn’t mean that government agents with hurt feelings won’t sometimes try suing private citizens who have the temerity to criticize how government bureaucrats do their jobs. Such was the case earlier this spring when Louisville Metro Police officer Cory Evans filed a lawsuit against the “DUI Guy”—an attorney named Larry Forman who has a YouTube channel—for defamation after Forman accused Evans of planting evidence.

As Louisville’s WDRB reports:

Forman posted body camera footage to his YouTube channel from a 2018 incident where LMPD Officer Cory Evans searched a man’s vehicle following a suspected DUI. The video depicts officer Evans and another unidentified officer searching the vehicle for alcohol. Evans looks in the center console without finding anything, but the video jumps forward to the view of the other officer, who opens the console and finds a bottle of liquor minutes later.

While I don’t agree with Forman when he concludes, “The video speaks for itself,” Forman’s conclusion is nonetheless quite plausible. In other words, the body cam video footage makes it easy to see how Forman could sincerely believe that Evans did indeed plant the evidence. That is, Forman may have simply been stating what he believed to be the truth.

Now, Evans’s attorney claims the accusation “has hurt the reputation of the LMPD officer” and the suit is seeking damages.

Let’s hope Evans loses, and loses big.

Defamation as a Means to Silence Critics

The problem of a police officer suing a community member for an accusation of abuse helps illustrate one of the central problems with defamation lawsuits: they can be used by powerful people to silence critics.

In the United States, we are fortunate that it is quite difficult to win a defamation lawsuit. Generally speaking, in American courts, plaintiffs claiming damages from defamation must prove actual harm as well as intent to harm. The plaintiff must also prove the defamatory comments are false. 

The difficulty of winning a defamation suit under such circumstances helps discourage countless defamation lawsuits. Thank goodness. 

Alas, in other parts of the world, this is not the case, and we find many cases of government agents suing or prosecuting citizens for defamation. We even find wealthy and powerful private citizens suing critics, even when those critics are apparently stating what they believe to be facts.

The potential for abusing defamation law helps illustrate, yet again, the wisdom of deferring to “freedom of speech” as a dominating legal principle, and as a philosophy behind the US government’s First Amendment. The presumption should be overwhelmingly in favor of the freedom to speak freely, as efforts to limit speech in the name of protecting reputations presents many opportunities for the abuse of government power.

In all times and places, of course, agents of the regime prefer to silence their critics if they think they can get away with it. Historically, regimes have employed many strategies, such as blasphemy laws, or have simply outlawed criticism. But, as The Economist has reported,

All these approaches attract international criticism. So some governments turn instead to defamation laws. Defamation is recognised almost everywhere as grounds for a civil claim, in which subjects of wanton and damaging falsehoods can demand financial compensation. But when defamation is a criminal offence, governments can go beyond fining critics who have caused demonstrable harm, and imprison them simply for speaking. Though several countries have recently decriminalised defamation, many more still prosecute it zealously. And even where it can no longer lead to jail, charges can stifle criticism if courts award vast damages.

Fortunately, in the United States, where defamation are suits are generally difficult, it is especially difficult for government personnel or government agencies to sue for defamation.

See the rest here

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Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power&Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado and was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

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Massie: ‘Fire The CDC!’ – Us: ‘Then End It!’

Posted by M. C. on June 9, 2021

Rep. Thomas Massie has called for the entire CDC top leadership to be fired over its “constant stream of lies” during the past year of coronavirus. That’s a great idea. But after that, we need to take a hard look at why we have a CDC at all. Do we need a highly-politicized, centralized entity making pronouncements they pretend are laws binding us to do as they say? Also today: good news on how to stop vaccine passports; free weed in Washington – but there’s a catch; and the plexiglass profiteering scam.

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