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Psych Evals, $800 a Year “Insurance,” a PUBLIC Gun Registry

Posted by M. C. on February 19, 2021

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/new-gun-control-bills/

by Robert Wheeler

Congress and the White House (currently, perhaps the most anti-Second Amendment collection of politicians ever to grasp the reins of power) are now pushing several bills to dismantle the right to keep and bear arms.

United States Bill of Rights: Second-Amendment

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

One new piece of legislation submitted by Sheila Jackson Lee HR 127 is being called “insanity on steroids” by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

“Over the years,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “we’ve seen some astonishingly bad legislation originate on Capitol Hill, but this one takes the term ‘abomination’ to an entirely new level. One look at this bill and you wonder whether Congresswoman Jackson Lee ever heard of the Bill of Rights, which includes the Second Amendment.”

Things were bad enough with the bills Congress attempted to push through when President Trump was in office but this takes things to an entirely different level.

HR 127 combines many approaches to destroy Americans’ gun rights

If passed, HR 127 would ban some common types of ammunition and “original equipment magazines” for most firearms. Also, it imposes a punishing licensing and registration scheme.

Essentially HR 127 would: 

  • Ban common types of ammunition, which would include every shotgun shell that is larger than a .410. The bill actually states, “It shall be unlawful for any person to possess ammunition that is 0.50 caliber or greater.” The punishment? A fine of at least $50,000 and imprisonment of at least ten years. So say goodbye to your 12 gauge and many other forms of shotguns.
  • Force Americans to give up hundreds of millions of firearm magazines. Of course, they won’t even be compensating you for doing so. The bill states, “It shall be unlawful for any person to possess a large capacity ammunition feeding device.” It then defines “large capacity ammunition feeding devices” in a way that includes those “that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than ten rounds of ammunition,” except for .22 rimfire magazines. According to industry figures, there are more than hundreds of millions of 11+ round magazines. Like the ban on shotgun shells, the bill would ban these magazines retroactively, with no compensation for items that MUST be turned in.
  • Require the federal government to register around 400 million guns in America in about three months. The bill says that the registration information would have to be provided to the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) “in the case of a firearm acquired before the effective date of the section, within three months after the effective date of this section.”
  • Require the firearm registry database to be available to “all members of the public” and “all branches of the United States Armed Forces,” among many others. According to the NRA, that would facilitate private discrimination against gun owners, including in such things as employment and access to essential services such as banking, insurance, or housing. It is also interesting to note that the US military (which is prohibited by law from engaging in domestic law enforcement) is listed as an agency that would take an interest in knowing who owns these firearms and where they are.
  • Retroactively criminalize firearm ownership by young adults. As it currently stands, there are no federal laws prohibiting firearm ownership by adults over 18. This bill would require a license to possess any firearm, and those licenses could only be obtained by those who are 21 or older.
  • Discourage voluntary mental health treatment. The bill permanently bans license issuance to anyone who “has been hospitalized . . . with a mental illness, disturbance, or diagnosis (including addiction to a controlled substance . . . or alcohol).” Anyone who has a “brain disease” would also be banned from receiving a license. “Brain disease” includes brain cancer, epilepsy, and Parkinson’s Disease.
  • Require the firearm licensee to pay a tax, aka “government insurance,” for around $800 a year.
  • Require license applicants and other household members to undergo a psychological evaluation, which would be paid for by the applicant.

And that’s not all.

In addition to HR 127, there is a host of other gun control or gun control-related bills being submitted by the new House of Representatives.

For instance:

  • HR 121 – introduced by Sheila Jackson Lee: Provides for the hiring of 200 additional BATFE agents and investigators to enforce and investigate gun laws.
  • HR 125 – introduced by Sheila Jackson Lee: Creates a seven-day waiting period before semi-automatic firearms, silencers, armor piercing ammunition, or large-capacity ammunition magazines may be transferred.
  • HR 135 – submitted by Sheila Jackson Lee: Requires the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to report to the Congress semiannually on the number of firearms transfers resulting from the failure to complete a background check within three business days, and the procedures followed after it is discovered that a firearm transfer has been made to a transferee who is ineligible to receive a firearm.
  • HR 167 – submitted by Al Green: Prohibits a firearm transfer at a gun show by a person who is not a federally licensed firearms dealer.

Of course, all of these bills will be advertised as “common-sense gun reform.” Every shooting victim in the country will be paraded in front of the American people to ensure maximum sympathy while simultaneously destroying their rights.

What are your thoughts?

Do you find any of these measures reasonable? Do you plan to contact your representatives? Share your opinions in the comments.

About Robert

Robert Wheeler has been quietly researching world events for two decades. After witnessing the global network of NGOs and several ‘Revolutions’ they engineered in a number of different countries, Wheeler began analyzing current events through these lenses.

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Down With the Presidency – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 19, 2021

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/02/lew-rockwell/down-with-the-presidency-4/

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Mises.org

The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It’s not an inspiration; it’s a threat.

The presidency—by which I mean the executive State—is the sum total of American tyranny. The other branches of government, including the presidentially appointed Supreme Court, are mere adjuncts.

See the rest here

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

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If America Splits Up, What Happens to the Nukes? | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on February 19, 2021

The Israeli state is an important and illustrative case. This is a country with a GDP smaller than Colorado’s and a population smaller than that of the US state of Georgia, yet Israel is thought to maintain a nuclear triad of sea, air, and land-based warheads. In other words, this is a small state which has taken full advantage of the relatively economical nature of a small nuclear arsenal (estimated to include approximately eighty assembled warheads).

https://mises.org/wire/if-america-splits-what-happens-nukes

Ryan McMaken

Opposition to American secession movements often hinges on the idea that foreign policy concerns trump any notions that the United States ought to be broken up into smaller pieces.

It almost goes without saying that those who subscribe to neoconservative ideology or other highly interventionist foreign policy views treat the idea of political division with alarm or contempt. Or both.

They have a point. It’s likely that were the US to be broken up into smaller pieces, it would be weakened in its ability to act as a global hegemon, invading foreign nations at will, imposing “regime change,” and threatening war with any regime that opposes the whims of the American regime.

For some of us, however, this would be a feature of secession rather than a bug.

Moreover, the ability of the American regime to carry out offensive military operations such as regime change is separate and distinct from the regime’s ability to maintain an effective and credible defensive military force.

Last month, we looked at how even a dismembered United States would be more than capable of fielding a large and effective defensive military force. A politically divided America nonetheless remains a very wealthy America, and wealth remains a key component in effective military defense. In other words, bigness is not as important as the extent to which a regime can call upon high levels of wealth and capital accumulation.

[Read More: “When It Comes to National Defense, Bigger Isn’t Always Better” by Ryan McMaken]

That analysis, however, concentrated on conventional forces, and this leaves us with the question of how the successor states to a postsecession United States would fare in terms of nuclear deterrence.

In this case, there is even less need for bigness than in the case of conventional military forces. As the state of Israel has demonstrated, a small state can obtain the benefits of nuclear deterrence without a large population or a large economy.

In other words, an effective military defense through nuclear deterrence is even more economical than conventional military forces.

After Secession, Who Gets the Nukes?

But how would secession actually play out when nuclear weapons are involved?

One example we might consider is Ukraine’s secession from the Soviet Union the early 1990s.

In 1991, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly to secede and set up an independent republic. At the time, the new state of Ukraine contained around one-third of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. This means there were literally thousands of nuclear warheads within Ukraine’s borders, making Ukraine’s arsenal the third largest in the world. In 1994, Ukraine began a program of denuclearization and today is no longer a nuclear power.

The relations between Ukraine and the new Russian Federation were acrimonious in the early nineties—as now—so this means that the lessons of the Ukraine situation are limited if applied to American secessionist movements. American pundits may like to play up the red-blue division in America as an intractable conflict of civilizations, but these differences are small potatoes compared to the sort of ethnic and nationalist conflicts that have long existed in Eurasia. 

Nevertheless, we can glean some insights from that separation.

For example, the Ukrainian secession demonstrates that it is possible for nuclear weapons to pass into the control of a seceding state without a general conflict breaking out. Indeed, Ukraine was not alone in this. Kazakhstan and Belarus “inherited” nuclear arms from the Soviet Union as well. If Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus can all peacefully negotiate a resolution on how to deal with a suddenly decentralized nuclear arsenal, the Americans can pull it off, too.

Nonetheless, the Ukraine situation highlights some of the technical and logistical problems involved in working out who exactly controls nuclear weapons in a postsecession situation.

For example, it was never a simple matter for the Ukrainian regime to assert technical control over land-based nuclear missiles. It is unlikely that Ukraine ever obtained all the tools necessary to actually launch the nuclear missiles within its territory.1

It is likely, however, that Ukraine could have eventually gained this power, as it was already developing its own control system for the arsenal in 1993. Not surprisingly, the Soviet Russian regime was unenthusiastic about helping the Ukrainians in this respect.

When it came to using nuclear-capable bombers, on the other hand, it appears Ukraine’s regime had total control.2

It is likely the successor states of the US would face similar issues. The use of land-based missiles would be heavily reliant on authorization from whichever faction most recently controlled access and launching authority, even if those missiles are physically located within the borders of a separatist state. It must be noted, however, that the state within which land-based nuclear missiles exist has the ability to prevent usage in most cases. This is because even if the missiles themselves cannot be directly controlled, the personnel that maintains and controls the sites can far more easily be traded out for personnel loyal to the new regime.3

When it comes to submarines and bombers, a secessionist US region might find itself better able to assert control in the short term. Where those bombers and subs end up would have a lot to do with the likely chaotic situation in the wake of the independence movement and shifting borders.

Separatist Regions May Be Unwilling to Give Up Nukes

Ukraine had denuclearized in part due to bribes and pressure from both the United States and Russia. Russia wanted Ukraine’s arsenal for obvious reasons. The United States was obsessed with deproliferation, although it naturally insisted on keeping its own massive stockpile. 

Neither the US nor Russia had the ability to force Ukraine to denuclearize—short of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, of course. However, Ukraine capitulated to pressure when the Russian Federation, the US, and the UK (and to a lesser extent China and France) pledged in the Budapest Memorandum to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. 

In 2014, many interpreted this move as a grand folly when Russia annexed the Crimea from Ukraine and none of the other parties to the memorandum intervened. Ukraine had given up its best guarantee against Russian intervention—its nuclear arsenal—in exchange for weak “assurances” from foreign states.

Some foreign policy scholars—most notably John Mearsheimer—had predicted this and advised against denuclearization in Ukraine. Indeed, in 1993, Mearsheimer doubted that Ukraine would cave to denuclearization pressure precisely because reliable assurances from outsiders were unlikely. Even after the Budapest Memorandum became a reality a year later, it was nonetheless a rather weak reed on which to hang denuclearization. As Mearsheimer pointed out, should the Americans fail to provide an effective defense for Ukraine—as ended up being the case with the Crimea crisis—the Americans “would not have to live with the consequences of a Russian attack.”4 Nonetheless, some Ukrainians insist the Crimea crisis is not evidence of a need for a nuclear deterrent. 

Many, Americans, however, may be much less sanguine—even to the point of unwarranted paranoia—about the prospects of foreign intervention on American soil. This is why it is best to proceed assuming that at least some successor states to the current US would insist on retaining a nuclear arsenal. After all, while the Ukraine might have been betting on the US as the enforcer of the international order, such guarantees would be even more unlikely in the wake of an American secession crisis. Postsecession American states, in other words, would need to rely on a self-help system of deterrence.

On the other hand, we should not assume that all successor states to the United States would seek permanent nuclear arsenals. Some would likely give up nuclear programs, just as Sweden and South Africa have abandoned nuclear programs that were well advanced toward assembling arms (Sweden) or had already completed the construction of functioning warheads (South Africa). While the Ukrainian example of voluntary denuclearization may appear to be a blunder to many now, the situation in North America is different. North America is not eastern Europe with its long history of interstate conflict. In North America, Canada and the United States have been at peace for more than two centuries, and Canada has never made much effort to move toward assembling a nuclear arsenal. Rather, Canada’s proximity to the United States shields it from nuclear threats from outside North America. Any conventional or nuclear arrack on Canada from, say, China or Russia is likely to be interpreted as an attack on the United States, with disastrous consequences for the initial aggressor.

In other words, Canada benefits from what Baldur Thorhallsson calls “shelter” in the international arena. Canada requires no nuclear arsenal of its own, because it can use its close alliance with the United States as a substitute.

So long as some successor states of the United States maintain a functioning arsenal, other nonnuclear states in North America will be able to function similarly. It stands to reason that just as the United States in its current form has been at peace with all other former British colonies, it is likely that new North American republics will share a similar fate.

Big States Are Not Necessary: A Deterrent Nuclear Force Is Entirely Feasible for Small States

A new American republic need not be especially large to maintain a working arsenal.

While a sizable economy and population are extremely helpful in terms of building a large conventional military, these factors are not nearly as important when it comes to a nuclear force capable of deterring foreign powers.

As Kenneth Waltz has explained, “Nuclear parity is reached when countries have second-strike forces. It does not require quantitative or qualitative equality of forces.”5 That is, if a regime can plausibly hide or move around enough nuclear warheads to so as to survive a nuclear first strike, it is able to deter nuclear aggression from other states altogether. Moreover, the number of warheads necessary to achieve this number “not in the hundreds, but in the tens.”6

This is why Waltz has concluded that “deterrence is easier to contrive than most strategists have believed”7 and that “some countries may find nuclear weapons a cheaper and safer alternative to running economically ruinous and militarily dangerous conventional arms races. Nuclear weapons may promise increased security and independence at an affordable price.”8 In other words, deterrence “can be implemented cheaply.”9

[Read More: “Why No State Needs Thousands of Nuclear Warheads” by Ryan McMaken]

The Israeli state is an important and illustrative case. This is a country with a GDP smaller than Colorado’s and a population smaller than that of the US state of Georgia, yet Israel is thought to maintain a nuclear triad of sea, air, and land-based warheads. In other words, this is a small state which has taken full advantage of the relatively economical nature of a small nuclear arsenal (estimated to include approximately eighty assembled warheads).

Clearly, claims that even medium-sized American states—such as Ohio with 11 million people and a GDP nearly as large as that of Switzerland—are too small to possibly contemplate functioning as independent states are quite detached from reality. Moreover, there is no reason to assume any postsecession American state would seek to act alone in the realm of international relations. Kirkpatrick Sale has pointed out what should be regarded as obvious: “Historically, the response of small states to the threat of … aggression has been temporary confederation and mutual defense, and indeed the simple threat of such unity, in the form of defense treaties and leagues and alliances, has sometimes been a sufficient deterrent” (emphasis added).10

On the other hand, a continuation of the current trend toward political centralization in Washington—and the growing political domination of every corner of the nation by central authorities—is likely to only harm future prospects for amicable separation and peaceful cooperation on the international stage. 

  • 1. John J. Mearsheimer, “The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 50–66, esp. 52.
  • 2. Ibid., p. 52.
  • 3. Graham Allison notes the importance of personnel in the post-Soviet Ukraine situation in the National Interest: “Officially, the chain-of-command continued to run from the new President of Russia through communications and control systems to missile officers in Ukraine. Physically, however, the missiles, warheads, officers, and mechanisms for launching weapons resided on the territory of Ukraine. Moreover, the individuals who operated these systems now lived in houses owned by the government of Ukraine, received paychecks from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, and were subject to promotion or firing not by Moscow, but by Kiev.” See “Good News From Ukraine: It Doesn’t Have Nukes,” National Interest, Mar. 21, 2014.
  • 4. Mearsheimer, “The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent,” p. 58.
  • 5. Kenneth Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War.” International Security 25, no. 1 (Summer 2000): 5–41, esp. 32n75.
  • 6. Kenneth Waltz, “Nuclear Myths and Political Realities,” American Political Science Review 84, no. 3 (September 1990): 731–45.
  • 7. Ibid.
  • 8. Kenneth Waltz, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better,” Adelphi Papers 21, no. 171 (1981).
  • 9. Waltz, “Nuclear Myths and Political Realities.”
  • 10. Kirkpatrick Sale, Human Scale Revisited (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2017), p. 312.

Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and The Austrian, 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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Subzero Rates Are Coming to the US and the UK | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on February 19, 2021

Negative rates are a huge transfer of wealth from savers and real wages to the government and the indebted. A tax on caution. The destruction of the perception of risk that always benefits the most reckless. It is a bailout of the inefficient.

https://mises.org/wire/subzero-rates-are-coming-us-and-uk

Daniel Lacalle

Negative rates are the destruction of money, an economic aberration based on the mistakes of many central banks and some of their economists, who all start from a wrong diagnosis: the idea that economic agents do not take more credit or invest more because they choose to save too much and therefore saving must be penalized to stimulate the economy. Excuse the bluntness, but it is a ludicrous idea.

Inflation and growth are not low due to excess savings, but because of excess debt, which perpetuates overcapacity with low rates and high liquidity and zombifies the economy by subsidizing the low-productivity and highly indebted sectors and penalizing high productivity with rising and confiscatory taxation.

Historical evidence of negative rates shows that they do not help reduce debt, they incentivize it. They do not strengthen the credit capacity of families: the prices of nonreplicable assets (real estate, etc.) skyrocket because of monetary excess and because the lower cost of debt does not compensate for the greater risk.

Investment and credit growth are not subdued because economic agents are ignorant or saving too much, but because they don’t have amnesia. Families and businesses are more cautious in their investment and spending decisions, because they perceive, correctly, that the reality of the economy they see each day does not correspond to the cost and the quantity of money.

It is completely incorrect to think that families and businesses are not investing or spending. They are only spending less than what central planners would want. However, that is not a mistake from the private sector side, but a typical case of central planners’ misguided estimates, which come from using 2001–07 as “base case” of investment and credit demand instead of what those years really were: a bubble.

The argument of the central planners is based on an inconsistency: that rates are negative because markets demand them, not because they are imposed by the central bank. If that is the case and the result would be the same, why don’t they let rates float freely? Because it is false.

Think for a moment what type of investment, company, or financial decision is profitable with rates at –0.5 percent but unviable with rates at 1 percent. A time bomb. It is no surprise that investment in bubble-prone sectors is rising with negative rates and that nonreplicable and financial assets are skyrocketing.

Instead of strengthening economies, negative rates make governments more dependent on cheap debt. Public debt trades at artificially low yields, and politicians abandon any reformist impulse, preferring to accumulate more debt.

The financial repression of central banks begins with a misdiagnosis assuming that low growth and below-target inflation is a problem of demand, not of the previous excess, and ends up perpetuating the bubbles that it sought to solve.

The policy of negative types can only be defended by people who have never invested or created a job, because no one who has worked in the real economy can believe that financial repression will lead economic agents to take much more credit and strengthen the economy.

Negative rates are a huge transfer of wealth from savers and real wages to the government and the indebted. A tax on caution. The destruction of the perception of risk that always benefits the most reckless. It is a bailout of the inefficient.

Central banks ignore the effects of demography, technology, and competition on inflation and growth of consumption, credit, and investment, and with the wrong policies generate new bubbles that become more dangerous than the previous ones. The next bubble will again increase countries’ fiscal imbalances. Even worse, when central banks present themselves as the agents that will reverse the effect of technology and demographics, they create a greater risk and bubble.

When this happens, it becomes necessary for to protect one’s savings with gold, silver, inflation-linked instruments, and stocks in sectors that do not suffer from negative rates. Author:

Daniel Lacalle

Daniel Lacalle, PhD, economist and fund manager, is the author of the bestselling books Freedom or Equality (2020),Escape from the Central Bank Trap (2017), The Energy World Is Flat (2015), and Life in the Financial Markets (2014).

He is a professor of global economy at IE Business School in Madrid.

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Watch “9 More Cheap but Awesome Things (Great Value Buys for Men)” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on February 18, 2021

https://youtu.be/HQSxP9JlONI

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Watch “Israel’s ‘Green Badge’ – Covid Exit Plan…Or New Tyranny?” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on February 18, 2021

https://youtu.be/BeiIx1UjoO8

RonPaulLibertyReport 278K subscribers

The Israeli government is serious about rolling out its “Green Badge” Covid passport as a part of its plan to end months-old Covid lockdowns. If you cannot prove you’ve had a Covid jab or that you have already recovered from the virus, you essentially cannot participate in any form of public life. Good idea? Is this the future for the rest of the world? Also today: Canada’s worsening Covid Crackdown, Bill Gates attacks skeptics, Cuomo’s feeling the hot water.

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Bill Gates calls for THIRD vaccine dose to combat mutations in coming years after calling anti-vaxxers ‘crazy’ and ‘evil’ — RT World News

Posted by M. C. on February 18, 2021

https://www.rt.com/news/515902-bill-gates-three-vaccine-doses/

Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates this week proposed the likelihood of a third dose of coronavirus vaccine being required to combat the growing number of coronavirus mutations in the years to come.

“The discussion now is, do we just need to get a super high coverage of the current vaccine, or do we need a third dose that’s just the same, or do we need a modified vaccine?” Gates said.

Gates’ remarks come amid mounting concerns that the current generation of vaccines are ill-equipped to handle the multiple, highly virulent mutated strains of the virus from the likes of the UK, South Africa, and Brazil.

The Microsoft co-founder, who has invested millions into coronavirus vaccine research, said that all five companies currently deploying their vaccines in the US are already considering boosters to mitigate the threat posed by the new variants. 

Gates himself is funding multiple studies in South Africa to test the efficacy of vaccines from the likes of AstraZeneca, which he says “in particular has a challenge,” with the new variants, as well as the jabs from Johnson & Johnson and Novavax, which he describes as “slightly less effective, but still effective” against the mutations.

He also proposed that a potential highly “tuned vaccine” or additional boosters may be required to adequately curb the threat posed by the coronavirus, in all its forms, over the coming years. 

“Probably not yearly, but as long as it’s out there, we want as many Americans as possible not to be spreading it to each other.”

The former Microsoft CEO recently described vaccine conspiracy theorists as “crazy” and “evil,” but stopped short of making any recommendations on how to deal with said “evil.” 

“There are some things that are so extreme in terms of anti-vaccine or holocaust denial that you can draw a line, but how you draw that line and who is put in charge of that…” he said.

“I’m not proposing solutions to that … I still haven’t seen a good solution.”

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Dear US media, we don’t need Russia to attack our power grid, we’re perfectly capable of tanking it ourselves…just look at Texas — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on February 18, 2021

Although the Post article is still freely available online without so much as a firewall, it comes with an editor’s note that reads, “An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid.”

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/515846-us-media-russia-texas/

Robert Bridge

Robert Bridge

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream. @Robert_Bridge

One of the wilder charges the US mainstream media has leveled against Russia is that it could “kill the power” in the US during a brutal cold snap. Can Russia expect an apology now the US energy grid failed the Lone Star State?

‘Never let a good snowstorm go to waste’ appears to be the mantra of the moment as Texas suffers through a state of emergency. Amid freak weather conditions that sent temperatures plummeting across the country, leaving some three million Texans without power, Democrats are lecturing the Republican-run state for not adequately protecting their “outdated” fossil-fuel-powered resources. The Republicans are responding by blaming the crisis on “frozen windmills,” one of the left’s sacred cows representing a pollution-free world of endless free energy. Notice anything out of place?

America installed Antarctic wind turbines in 2010, but Texas is freezing because their privatized public energy utilities were too cheap to winterize their windmills. https://t.co/Bclt78DrCZ— Grant Stern (@grantstern) February 17, 2021

Strangely missing from this latest descent into American madness is the global arch-villain, Russia. That is a rather surprising omission considering that the American people have been conditioned to believe that if they find themselves without heat in the dead of winter the most likely culprit is not an aging and dilapidated energy grid, or even an unpaid heating bill, but rather a ruthless gang of Russian hackers, most likely in the employ of Vladimir Putin.

By way of example, back in 2016, at the very same time that Barack Obama had just expelled 35 Russian diplomats for “undermining our election processes and institutions,” the Washington Post ran a sensational story entitled, ‘Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say’.

No less of a governmental authority than Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin (D) was quoted in the article as saying: “Vermonters and all Americans should be both alarmed and outraged that one of the world’s leading thugs, Vladimir Putin, has been attempting to hack our electric grid, which we rely upon to support our quality-of-life, economy, health, and safety…”

There was just one problem with that explosive accusation against faraway Russia: it was entirely predicated upon fake news and disinformation. Although the Post article is still freely available online without so much as a firewall, it comes with an editor’s note that reads, “An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid.”

One must wonder what would happen in the event that the US media, after publishing some similarly unsubstantiated piece of derangement, finds itself responsible for dragging the world to the precipice of World War III because some people lost their heat in Spokane. Would anyone bother to read the buried editor’s note that finally sets the record straight before the missiles start flying? But I digress.

Fast forward to 2019, and the US media was in full-blown anti-Russia manic mode. After all, US presidential elections were fast approaching. In February, amid a different cold spell that swept across the nation, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow didn’t miss an opportunity to ratchet up Russophobia by asking her millions of listeners: “What would happen if Russia killed the power in Fargo [North Dakota] today? What would you do if you lost heat indefinitely as the act of a foreign power on the same day the temperature in your backyard matched the temperature in Antarctica?”

Oh, I don’t know, Rachel, what should I do, aside from freeze? Sit down and write a letter to my congressman?

U.S. largest audience TV host, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (Democratic party aligned) this evening: Russia will freeze you and your family to death. pic.twitter.com/2KL4STsQpg— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 31, 2019

Had Rachel Maddow been your average media hack, working for some obscure backwater publication, then perhaps such a bone-chilling rhetorical question could be excused as gross unprofessionalism and journalistic immaturity; the work of an amateur fresh out of journalism school. After all, Moscow has never – not even during the height of the Cold War – made the cold-blooded decision to turn off Europe or America’s energy supplies, not in the summer nor in the dead of winter. Yes, there have been arguments over energy payments, specifically with Ukraine, but that is not the same thing as deliberately freezing people to death in their homes. If Rachel Maddow was unfamiliar with that information, that makes her a lousy journalist; if she was familiar with it, yet didn’t feel the need to mention it, that makes her an irresponsible hack with a heavy political ax to grind.

As host of the eponymous The Rachel Maddow Show, the liberal television commentator is one of the most prominent media figures in the United States, with millions of people tuning in nightly to her program. Since Maddow must be aware of her profound influence, which has no small effect on the state of relations between the world’s two preeminent nuclear powers, one would expect to find a hint of objectivity, a modicum of journalistic integrity before she serves up her latest cold dish of Russophobia. Unfortunately, and potentially tragically, there is none of that much-needed balance. When it comes to reporting on Russia, all Western journalists operate with the understanding that they can take tremendous liberties as they please. 

Somehow in the world of US journalism and global geopolitics this loathsome treatment of an entire nation has become the accepted norm, to the point where a veritable hate campaign – shall we call it ‘racism’ – has been conjured up out of the blue against Russia. In fact, it’s almost worth pondering if even the Jews have historically suffered a more negative press than the Russians, especially in these modern times. I’m guessing at this point it’s about a toss-up.

In any case, since there is already a heated debate underway in the US over who or what is to blame for the rolling blackouts, perhaps it might also be a good time to reflect upon the unfair treatment that has been leveled against the Russian people. After all, Russians have some experience with intemperate weather conditions and they certainly appreciate the importance of staying warm in the winter. Dreaming up some fantastic scenario where Russia magically switches off America’s power grid is not based on precedent or historical experience or even plausibility; rather, it is based on propaganda and cheap lies which only serve to drive up the level of distrust between America and Russia by journalists who really should know better. Before global warming in geopolitics gets any worse, best to treat Russians with the same journalistic scrutiny and integrity that all people deserve.   

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As Germans freeze, leading newspaper calls green energy strategy ‘a dangerous miscalculation’ – American Thinker

Posted by M. C. on February 18, 2021

Call it a security crisis then NATO (US taxpayers) can bail them out.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
—Physicist Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/as_germans_freeze_leading_newspaper_calls_green_energy_strategy_a_dangerous_miscalculation.html

By Dennis Sevakis

The very green Germans have major concerns regarding their dependence on renewables:

‘Die Welt’ Commentary: “Europe Can’t Bail Out The German Power Supply”…Calls Strategy “A Dangerous Miscalculation”
Germany has seriously overestimated how much its neighboring countries are able to help out in the event wind and solar energy fail to deliver, thus putting its power supply at risk.
By P. Gosselin on 11 September 2018


Snow-covered solar panels don’t work (file photo).

Little attention is paid to the question of just how much “climate change” is a result of human activity — i.e., CO2 emissions into the atmosphere resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.  Does anyone have a handle on this?

A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions

ABSTRACT:We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67runs from 22 ‘Climate of the 20th Century’ model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data. 

Copyright 2007 Royal Meteorological Society 
Received 31 May 2007; Accepted 11 October 2007

I’ve sent that around before, and here’s one of the replies I received in response to the question:

So, you think the following (‘A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions’) is b.s.? You don’t understand it? Or something else? Just asking.

Answer: “So tilts the narrative that conclusions are not credible. (can collect enough isolated facts to prove almost anything — in this case, I just don’t agree with premise.)”

…which indicates absolutely zero understanding of the issue.  The degree of warming in the tropical troposphere resulting from an increase of CO2 is the central premise behind the climate change hoopla.  The fact that such warming is not occurring to the degree predicted by the climate models is not an “isolated fact”; it is a strong indication that there is a real disconnect between theory and reality.  The linchpin is weak or missing.

Whatever observed changes are taking place, they are probably not primarily the result of CO2 “pollution.”

What’s also missing is any great awareness of this by the general population.  Try asking friends or acquaintances what their understanding is of the connection between human activity and “climate change.”  A blank stare is often the result.

As far as our climate crisis leadership elites are concerned, I have little idea how many are merely ignorant or lying or both.  Whatever the case may be, it’s misdirection on steroids — 90% politics, 10% science.

For more on the issue of what’s “science” and what’s “denial,” spend some time browsing the “Science and Environmental Policy Project” website.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” 
—Physicist Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate

I occasionally remind myself of that.

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Is Math Racist? That Does Not Compute | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on February 17, 2021

Instead of focusing on a right answer, the training urges teachers to “come up with at least two answers that might solve this problem.” It also suggests “unpacking the assumptions that are made in the problem,” and “identify[ing] and challeng[ing] the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.”

https://mises.org/wire/math-racist-does-not-compute

Gary Galles

Racism has, tragically, raised its ugly head throughout history. And American has certainly seen its share. But after all the other things that have been called racist, with everything connected to them bearing guilt by association, it is nonetheless stunning that some are now calling mathematics racist, often inheriting ascribed guilt from the fact that some seem to be better at it than others. And the condemnation is far broader than most people imagine. For instance, I just did a Google search of “racist mathematics,” and it generated more than 70,000 hits.

Currently, the most famous example is from the Oregon Department of Education. It advertised a February 21 “Pathway to Math Equity Micro-Course” that espouses “ethnomathematics” in order to begin “dismantling racism in mathematics,” because mathematics reflects “white supremacy culture.” In contrast, ethnomathematics would help overcome the “unequivocally false” belief in “mathematics being purely objective” and counter “the idea that there are always right and wrong answers,” which “perpetuate[s] objectivity.” Alleged evidence includes that “the focus is on getting the ‘right’ answer” and that students are “required to ‘show their work.’”

Instead of focusing on a right answer, the training urges teachers to “come up with at least two answers that might solve this problem.” It also suggests “unpacking the assumptions that are made in the problem,” and “identify[ing] and challeng[ing] the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.”

I can find a great deal to criticize about the claims being made, such as that there is always a right answer in math (the advocates involved have obviously never faced higher order differential equations), or the presumption that no one ever teaches students to question whether the assumptions that generate the numbers used are reliable. But before we can even get to such issues, the ignorance of the history of mathematics by those claiming it represents “white supremacy” is truly remarkable.

For simplicity, I will only use examples from the Wikipedia page on “History of Mathematics” to make that point:

  • “From 3000 BC the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, together with Ancient Egypt and Ebla[,] began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry.”
  • “Chinese mathematics made early contributions, including a place value system and the first use of negative numbers.”
  • “The Hindu-Arabic numeral system and the rules for the use of its operations, in use throughout the world today, evolved over the course of the first millennium AD in India and were transmitted to the Western world via Islamic mathematics…. Islamic mathematics, in turn, developed and expanded the mathematics known to these civilizations. Contemporaneous with but independent of these traditions were the mathematics developed by the Maya civilization of Mexico and Central America, where the concept of zero was given a standard symbol in Maya numerals.”
  • “[O]ur knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from more than 400 clay tablets…. Written in Cuneiform script, tablets were inscribed whilst the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun. Some of these appear to be graded homework.”
  • “Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems.”
  • “The most extensive Egyptian mathematical text is the Rhind papyrus, dated to c. 1650 BC but likely a copy of an older document…. It is an instruction manual for students in arithmetic and geometry. In addition to giving area formulas and methods for multiplication, division and working with unit fractions, it also contains evidence of other mathematical knowledge.”
  • “Greek mathematics was much more sophisticated than the mathematics that had been developed by earlier cultures…. Greek mathematicians, by contrast, used deductive reasoning. The Greeks used logic to derive conclusions from definitions and axioms, and used mathematical rigor to prove them.”
  • “In the 9th century, the Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī wrote an important book on the Hindu–Arabic numerals and one on methods for solving equations … instrumental in spreading Indian mathematics and Indian numerals to the West. The word algorithm is derived from the Latinization of his name, Algoritmi, and the word algebra from the title of one of his works.”

Rather than representing “white supremacy,” the evolution of mathematics has been a globe-, race-, and culture-spanning collaboration of advancements, an ongoing development of more effective tools for anyone to use. And that history shows that all of those involved wanted to get the answers right, where having to show your work has been a millennia-old strategy for mathematics education.

To turn mathematics into an effort to “identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views” offers poor compensation for undermining the development of skills and knowledge that benefit all of us, even when we as individuals don’t have those skills. And those who will be most harmed are those who already struggle most with the basics of getting the mathematics right, which precedes more advanced understanding. Without learning the precision that higher order mathematics requires, putting “ethno” in front of mathematics will ensure that doors to careers in aerospace, physics and other sciences, engineering, economics, finance, and more will be closed to entire generations of learners, for they will never meet the demands those fields require. In other words, advocates of ethnomathematics are proposing to harm the group they claim they are supposedly trying to help. Author:

Gary Galles

Gary M. Galles is a Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University and an adjunct scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. His research focuses on public finance, public choice, economic education, organization of firms, antitrust, urban economics, liberty, and the problems that undermine effective public policy. In addition to his most recent book, Pathways to Policy Failures (2020), his books include Lines of Liberty (2016), Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014), and Apostle of Peace (2013).

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