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Beijing Sends Biden a Warning – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on November 19, 2020

Biden repudiates an “America First” foreign policy that puts U.S. security, sovereignty, liberty and vital interests above the interests of any other nation.

But what is it, then, that Biden puts first?

Globalism. A New World Order. A Crusade for Global Democracy.

Been there, done that.

Sixty years ago when Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy faced off, the foreign policy debate was over whether the U.S. should fight Mao’s China to defend the tiny offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu.

Kennedy thought not. Kennedy won.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/11/patrick-j-buchanan/beijing-sends-biden-a-warning/

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Because of Donald Trump, Vice President Joe Biden thundered during the campaign, the U.S. “is more isolated in the world than we’ve ever been … America First has made America alone.”

Biden promised to repair relations with America’s allies. And he appears to have gone some distance to do so in the congratulatory phone call he received from Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan.

According to Suga, during the brief call, Biden said Article V of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty of 1960 covers the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, islands Japan controls but China claims as its own.

“President-elect Biden gave me a commitment that Article 5 of the US-Japan security treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands,” said a delighted Suga. And what does Article V commit us to?

“Each Party recognizes that an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger…”

Message: The U.S. will treat a Chinese attempt to take the Senkakus, tiny rocky outcroppings in the East China Sea, as an attack on the USA, and America will fight China to secure Japan’s right to keep the islands.

Biden has removed any ambiguity that may have existed and given Tokyo a U.S. war guarantee that covers the Senkakus.

The response of China’s foreign ministry was to angrily lay claim to the islands they call the Diaoyus as “inherently Chinese” and to dismiss the U.S.-Japan security treaty as a “product of the Cold War.”

This diplomatic clash comes as Henry Kissinger was warning the Bloomberg Economic Forum: “America and China are now drifting increasingly toward confrontation, and they’re conducting their diplomacy in a confrontational way. … The danger is that some crisis will occur that will go beyond rhetoric into actual military conflict.”

Kissinger continued: “Unless there is some basis for some cooperative action, the world will slide into a catastrophe comparable to World War I.”

World War I was the worst calamity in Western civilization — until the next war to which it led inexorably: World War II.

Last week, we also learned that during Chinese military exercises in August, the People’s Liberation Army fired two missiles thousands of kilometers from the mainland that struck a targeted merchant ship sailing in the South China Sea. The missiles were the DF-21D and DF-26B.

Both missiles are known as “aircraft carrier killers.”

The U.S. routinely moves its carriers through these waters to underscore our contention that neither the South China Sea nor the Paracel and Spratly Islands within belong to China as Beijing claims.

Consistent with China’s toughening policies toward its neighbors, four members of the opposition in the Hong Kong legislature were ousted last week, which led to wholesale resignations that have left Hong Kong’s governing council under the total control of pro-Beijing hardliners.

The era of “one country, two systems” for Hong Kong, dating to the transfer of sovereignty by Great Britain, appears to be over. The dissidents and demonstrators who filled the streets just months ago appear to have been routed, and the city’s future looks less like the Hong Kong of yesterday than the Beijing of tomorrow.

These actions are consistent with the hard lines Beijing has taken on its “reeducation camps” for Uighurs in Xinjiang and its border dispute with India in the Himalayas.

While Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has lately sought to round up like-minded nations to stand up to China — Japan, Australia, India — there appears to be a reluctance, rooted in uncertainty as to whether Communist China or democratic America represents the future of Asia.

Trump’s “America First” policy asked the most basic of questions:

Are all these half-century old alliances, these commitments to go to war for Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, as in Joe Biden’s estimation, assets to be nurtured and even expanded to cover more territories like the Senkakus? Or are they liabilities that could drag us into wars the American people do not want to fight?

While we reject China’s claim to all the reefs, rocks and islets in the South China Sea and her claim to the Senkakus in the East China Sea, should we be obligated to go to war over these tiny parcels of land, especially when their legitimate owners are unwilling to fight for them?

Biden repudiates an “America First” foreign policy that puts U.S. security, sovereignty, liberty and vital interests above the interests of any other nation.

But what is it, then, that Biden puts first?

Globalism. A New World Order. A Crusade for Global Democracy.

Been there, done that.

Sixty years ago when Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy faced off, the foreign policy debate was over whether the U.S. should fight Mao’s China to defend the tiny offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu.

Kennedy thought not. Kennedy won.

The Best of Patrick J. Buchanan Patrick J. Buchanan is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever See his website.

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Hypocrisy Alert: Obama Won First Election By Challenging Voter Fraud – American Thinker

Posted by M. C. on November 19, 2020

Contrary to the advice he is now giving Trump, Obama did not let it go. He filed a challenge with the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. Not only did the challenge take out Palmer, but it also eliminated “several other Democrats with bad petitions.”

After months of hearing there is no evidence of voter fraud anywhere, young readers have to be shocked to learn just how casually Democratic politicians resorted to fraud (and still do) in cities like Chicago.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/hypocrisy_alert_obama_won_first_election_by_challenging_voter_fraud.html

By Jack Cashill

The first question the fawning Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes asked former president Barack Obama during their interview this past Sunday was this: “What is your advice in this moment for President Trump?”

Pelley was referring specifically to Trump’s continued challenge to the posted results of the November 3rd election. “When your time is up, then it is your job to put the country first and think beyond your own ego and your own interests and your own disappointments,” Obama pontificated. “My advice to President Trump is if you want, at this late stage in the game to be remembered as somebody who put country first, it’s time for you to do the same thing.”

More specifically, Obama insisted that Trump should have conceded no more than two days after the election. “When you look at the numbers, objectively, Joe Biden will have won handily,” Obama continued. “There is no scenario in which any of those states would turn the other way and certainly not enough to reverse the outcome of the election.”

Although Pelley was interviewing Obama about his new memoir, A Promised Land, neither of the two obviously thought it prudent to share with viewers how Obama won his first political campaign, a story that Obama tells in his new memoir.

Obama’s political rise began with the fall of one Mel Reynolds, a Democratic congressman from Chicago who made the rookie mistake of getting caught having a sexual relationship with a chatty 16-year-old campaign worker. This led to his indictment by a Cook County grand jury on criminal charges ranging from child pornography to obstruction of justice.

In Chicago, given that it takes an indictment to dislodge a sitting member of Congress, there was a Yukon-worthy rush to fill this open seat.  A likely candidate was Alice Palmer, the state senator from Obama’s district and something of a mentor to Obama. As Obama tells the story, he filed for her Senate seat with her blessing once she declared for Congress. The fact that Palmer was a fellow traveler, if not an outright communist, is a story for another day.

Unfortunately for Palmer, Michelle Obama’s family friend, Jesse Jackson Jr., also decided to file for the seat and bested Palmer in the primary. Like Reynolds, Jackson’s congressional career led straight to the hoosegow. In 2013, as the New York Times reported, “the popular young Democratic congressman” was sentenced to 30 months in the slammer and his wife 12 months for living “lavishly” off campaign donations and failing to report more than a half million on their tax returns. This apple did not fall far from the Jackson family tree.

Having lost in the primary, Palmer filed anew for her old Senate seat, and here is where things got sticky for Obama. “A few of her longtime supporters asked for a meeting, and when I showed up they advised me to get out of the race,” writes Obama. “The community couldn’t afford to give up Alice’s seniority, they said. I should be patient; my turn would come.”

Obama chose not to think beyond his own ego and his own interests and his own disappointments. While trying to rationalize why he should stay in the race, two of his supporters showed up “looking like they’d won the lottery.” Given the prevalence of voter fraud in Chicago, these veteran pols did need much in the way of luck. They just had to know where to look.

The one supporter said of the signatures on Palmer’s petition: “They’re terrible. Worst I’ve ever seen. All those Negroes who were trying to bully you out of the race, they didn’t bother actually doing the work. This could get her knocked off the ballot.” 

Writes Obama: “It was true; the petitions Alice had submitted appeared to be filled with invalid signatures: people whose addresses were outside the district, multiple signatures with different names but the same handwriting.”

After months of hearing there is no evidence of voter fraud anywhere, young readers have to be shocked to learn just how casually Democratic politicians resorted to fraud (and still do) in cities like Chicago.

When Obama wavered about challenging Palmer’s signatures, a fellow supporter upbraided him. “If you let this go, you might as well go back to being a professor and whatnot, ’cause politics is not for you,” she told him. “You will get chewed up and won’t be doing anybody a damn bit of good.”

Contrary to the advice he is now giving Trump, Obama did not let it go. He filed a challenge with the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.  Not only did the challenge take out Palmer, but it also eliminated “several other Democrats with bad petitions.” Obama ran unopposed in the Democratic primary and faced only token Republican opposition in the general election. A career was born.

“Whatever vision I had for a more noble kind of politics,” writes Obama in his memoir, “it would have to wait.” That day has never come. Democratic politics in particular remain as mired in corruption as they were when Obama first ran for office 25 years ago, and he knows this.

Trump has chosen to tackle this swamp monster head on. If Obama were not such a flaming hypocrite, he would applaud the effort. “If you let this go,” an honest Obama would tell Trump, “you won’t be doing anybody a damn bit of good.”

Jack Cashill’s new book, Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency, https://amzn.to/2DWhzhXI is now widely available. See www.cashill.com for more information.

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Here We Go Again – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on November 19, 2020

By doing so, they have reignited the age-old debate of individual liberty versus public safety. In this case, the safety they claim to be enhancing is safety from disease. Yet, by their executive orders, they have purported to use state law to interfere with freedoms without due process that are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. By doing that, they have set themselves up for criminal prosecutions when normalcy returns.

Let us hope so.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/11/andrew-p-napolitano/here-we-go-again-2/

By Andrew P. Napolitano

“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because the law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

As if nanny state governors had been sleepwalking through the tyrannical shutdowns and their disastrous consequences last spring and summer, as if they were ignorant of the economic destruction of those they barred from going to work or operating their businesses, as if they thought it is lawful to assault natural rights and constitutional guarantees, these same governors are now beginning another wave of interferences with personal liberty.

Slowly, over the past 10 days, while the eyes of the public and the media have been on the counting of votes in the presidential election and the ensuing allegations and litigations, governors in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut and New York have threatened to impose or have begun to impose their unconstitutional, illegal, immoral and illogical efforts to shut down society in order — they claim — to rid the land of the COVID-19 virus.

By doing so, they have reignited the age-old debate of individual liberty versus public safety. In this case, the safety they claim to be enhancing is safety from disease. Yet, by their executive orders, they have purported to use state law to interfere with freedoms without due process that are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. By doing that, they have set themselves up for criminal prosecutions when normalcy returns.

Here is the backstory.

For the past four years, I have been working on a 650-page treatise that explores the origins of human freedom from a natural law perspective. The book traces the recognition by scholars, jurists, theologians and, in the case of America at its founding, radical revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who truly believed and passionately argued that human freedom — our individual power to make unobstructed choices — comes from within us, and not from the government. Most of the historical defenders of this truism also believed in God and argued that He made us free by giving us free will.

This understanding of natural rights was wedded to the United States at its birth in 1776 when Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and again in 1791 when Madison wrote in the Ninth Amendment that because human liberty is so expansive the government must protect even unstated, unenumerated rights.

To protect our rights from whom?

The framers could easily answer that question, yet the folks who run the government today do not want it asked because the answer implicates them. In the revolutionary era, colonists could protect themselves from evildoers attempting to steal their property or take their lives. But the foe they most feared was the government. They fought a bloody war against the government of King George III because it assaulted their economic rights and their right to self-government.

History is repeating itself, without the courageous revolutionaries. It is not my neighbor, or even a thief in the night, who impairs my personal liberty — it is the government. It does so, just as King George did, under the guise of safety. Yet, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written precisely to prevent governments in America — state or federal — from interfering with our liberty, absent a jury trial at which they must prove fault.

This jury trial requirement is called due process. It is guaranteed by the Fifth and 14th Amendments, which mandate that the government comply with due process whenever it seeks to impair the life, liberty or property of any person. Of course, a constitutional guarantee is only as reliable as is the fidelity to the Constitution of those in whose hands we repose it for safekeeping.

Now, back to these nanny state governors. They have assumed to themselves the powers to write laws and enforce them. That assumption violates the U.S. Constitution and the constitutions of the states in which they were elected, because the power to write laws and the power to enforce laws is required to be separated in America. We call that the separation of powers. It is, according to my late friend Justice Antonin Scalia, the most unique and freedom-protecting aspect of the Constitution, and it applies to states as well as the federal government.

Add to this the so-called lockdowns — a demeaning word originating in the shutdown of prisons during riots — that directly impair personal liberties that are not only natural to us but are expressly guaranteed by the Constitution as the Supreme Court has interpreted it. These lockdowns interfere with the freedom to speak, travel, worship, assemble, engage in commercial intercourse and use property to its highest and best use.

Under federal law, when a government employee employs government tools to impair these enumerated rights — and does so without due process — that person commits a felony.

Thus, when governors use police powers to interfere with personal liberty — liberty that is expressly guaranteed by the Constitution — and do so without a trial at which the government proves fault, they have violated both state and federal law, no matter their reasoning. Thus, all these executive orders regulating private personal behavior are profoundly unconstitutional and even criminal.

There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution. It is liberty that flows in our veins, not false promises of government safety.

The Best of Andrew P. Napolitano 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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Erie Times E-Edition Article-Dahlkemper wants crowds limited to reduce COVID

Posted by M. C. on November 19, 2020

Erie County PA County Executive Kathy Dahlkemper

“I get concerned if I hear of any business or group that wants to have a holiday party,” Dahlkemper said Wednesday at her news conference. “That should not be happening this year. I would love to see some (additional) restrictions on gatherings.”

“And stop gathering with people you don’t live with…

“Love” What is your definition of “Love”?

Why am I suddenly getting visions of Lavrentiy Beria and Ariel Castro?

https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=04109c5c4

Executive also announced library branches to close

David Bruce

Erie Times-News USA TODAY NETWORK

Erie County Executive Kathy Dahlkemper was pleased to see Pennsylvania announce stricter travel and face maskwearing requirements on Tuesday, but said additional measures are needed to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

Specifically, Dahlkemper would like to see lower limits on the number of people permitted to gather.

In early October, Gov. Tom Wolf expanded Pennsylvania’s maximum limits on gatherings from 25 people indoors and 250 people outdoors to a percentage of a facility’s maximum capacity. Dahlkemper wants to see those numbers reduced.

“I get concerned if I hear of any business or group that wants to have a holiday party,” Dahlkemper said Wednesday at her news conference. “That should not be happening this year. I would love to see some (additional) restrictions on gatherings.”

Limiting crowd sizes, especially indoors, is important because the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in Erie County, and across the nation, is due primarily to the virus’ spread among people getting together without wearing masks, Dahlkemper said.

The county executive implored county residents to follow a few basic rules to reduce the surge and prevent local hospitals from filling with COVID-19 patients.

“Keep 6 feet away from anyone who does not live in your home,” Dahlkemper said.

Erie County Executive Kathy Dahlkemper said she would like to see reduced limits on the size of gatherings as a way to halt the rapid spread of COVID-19. [GREG WOHLFORD/ERIE TIMESNEWS]

“And wear your mask. And wash your hands frequently. And stay home if you are sick.

“And stop gathering with people you don’t live with, particularly in large groups,” Dahlkemper added.

Dahlkemper reported 134 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday in Erie County. It is the seventh straight day that at least 100 daily cases have been reported.

Erie County has 3,764 total cases of COVID19 since the pandemic started. Of those cases, 2,493 people have recovered and 65 have died, including two new deaths reported Wednesday.

There were 1,206 active cases in the county on Wednesday, the highest number reported since the pandemic started.

A total of 55 county residents with COVID19 were hospitalized Wednesday morning, including 10 in intensive care units and five who needed ventilators, the Pennsylvania Department of Health reported.

Saint Vincent Hospital reported 32 patients with COVID-19 on Wednesday, while UPMC Hamot reported 24, and LECOM Health’s Millcreek Community and Corry Memorial hospitals reported seven patients and one patient, respectively.

The hospital-reported numbers often differ from the state health department’s total because they include out-of-county patients, and don’t include county residents who are being treated outside the county.

Dahlkemper also announced that all branches of the Erie County Public Library will close their doors to the public starting Saturday. People can still borrow books and other materials virtually or use the libraries’ curbside service.

“We don’t believe we have any cases spread through our libraries but, again, we are trying to do our part,” Dahlkemper said. “The library is not essential at this point.”

A total of 38,861 negative COVID-19 tests have been reported in the county.

Statewide, 6,339 new cases were reported Thursday, once again the state’s highest singleday total.

The new cases increased Pennsylvania’s total number of cases to 281,852.

There were 110 new deaths across the state, the highest number reported since May.

Contact David Bruce at dbruce@timesnews. com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNBruce.

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Britain: Two-Stepping Toward Totalitarianism | Zero Hedge

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2020

It has become an almost daily occurrence to find news stories of parents being ‘called out’ by their newly politicised children for expressing on social media ‘wrong’, ‘unwoke’ views, or of people being fired for something they may or may not have said years ago. Anyone who openly dares to emphasise the ‘Great’ in ‘Great Britain’ is simply asking to be labelled a ‘racist’.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/britain-two-stepping-toward-totalitarianism

Profile picture for user Tyler Durden

by Tyler Durden Wed, 11/18/2020 – 03:30 TwitterFacebookRedditEmailPrint

Authored by Andrew Ash via The Gatestone Institute,

There was a time when the British were known for their stoicism, their ability to battle through hardship, no matter the odds. The so called ‘blitz spirit’ of eighty years ago, that saw the nation ‘pull together and carry on’, regardless of the Nazi bombardment of our cities, characterised a generation that had suffered two world wars yet could not be bowed.

During the Covid pandemic, however, this ‘blitz spirit’ has been noticeably absent. There has been certainly very little in the way of a nation pulling together; in its place, there has been just a lot of bickering, mud-slinging and name calling-among politicians, activists, and the increasingly fragmented populace.

Predictably, Covid-19 was quickly turned into a divisive political issue by many in the oppositional media. The assertion now — that anyone against face coverings, vaccines, or testing is assumed to be on the extreme right, while those obeying the safety rules, are on the left — is as simplistic as it is loopy. One might have imagined that a deadly pandemic would act as a great uniter, finally bringing an end to the squabbling that has characterised UK (and US) politics for the last few years. Instead, we have been baked in identity politicking, making an already turbulent time more turbulent than ever.

Some malcontents have taken their vitriol to new levels of malice, publicly hoping, for instance, that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson would not recover from the coronavirus. No pulling together there. No blitz spirit. No compassion. Just bitterness, feuding and ever-deepening separation.

The fertile, if airy, ‘soil’ of cyberspace has become the perfect breeding ground for radicals of every stripe to spread their doctrines of division amongst the young, politically ripe millennials during lockdown. Pitching everyone against everyone — left against right, young against old, black against white, women against men, trans (seemingly) against everyone — appears to be the aim. All of that successfully seems to be driving a wedge of seething resentment between communities.

It has become an almost daily occurrence to find news stories of parents being ‘called out’ by their newly politicised children for expressing on social media ‘wrong’, ‘unwoke’ views, or of people being fired for something they may or may not have said years ago. Anyone who openly dares to emphasise the ‘Great’ in ‘Great Britain’ is simply asking to be labelled a ‘racist’. For those naïve enough to believe in basic biology — that the anatomy of women and men are different – the gulag awaits you. If you dare to utter the unthinkable, that ‘all lives matter’, prepare to leave town.

Many agitators — unconcerned by either civility or tolerance — continue perpetuating the notion, developed by precocious two-year-olds, that if you shout for long enough, your wishes might be served up. This sense of entitlement has come to characterise a group whose younger demographic seem to have no comprehension of the horrors of a war — or indeed, of many authentic hardships — in their own relatively comfortable lives.

This lack of respect for, or understanding of, history, along with an apparent need to invent, import, or re-animate grievances from the past, then lead them to advocate inflicting what they decide is the appropriate revenge for a grievance on people who have had no part in causing it. Tolerance is to be expected only from others. For many ‘progressives’, there is no such thing as a two-way street. Agitators now seem to put their energy and focus into prioritising pet causes to which they feel everyone else ought to acquiesce. These might include men who have changed gender competing in female sports; defunding the police so that the most disadvantaged communities will be even further unable to protect themselves; expanding censorship in academia and Big Tech, or paying billions in taxpayer funds to other countries for promises to stop using fossil fuels at some far-off date and with no means of enforcement. Oh, and by the way, there is no debating anything. Just do what you are told.

While the Remainer-disruptors dragged out their opposition to Brexit as long as they could, seeing off two different prime ministers in the process, they may have relished their power. It was only after the Tories’ landslide victory in December 2019, that they finally let go of their dream of overturning Brexit – but not before having branded all those in favour of leaving the EU as bigoted xenophobes.

That slur is a particular slap in the face to the people of this patient nation. For decades, they have done their best to move in step with the creeping, ‘progressive’ times in which we live. The acceptance of a variety of often controversial societal changes, such as the ever encroaching desires of various sexual lobbies, ushered in under the banner of ‘human rights’, seems lost on the liberals, so intent are they on pushing their identity politics agenda. If this is how appreciation is shown for the British public’s quiet, respectful acceptance of often controversial, ‘tipping point’ changes within society, then no wonder much of the public may have decided that they have had enough of this new orthodoxy.

Although the coronavirus outbreak, with its restrictions of movement, briefly muted woke activism for a short time, it was not long before the extreme, activist milieu became restless. Until the death of George Floyd, a black American seemingly killed by a white policeman, these individuals had been busy berating figures on the right for not taking Covid-19 seriously enough. Suddenly, none of that mattered anymore. A frenzy of orchestrated Black Lives Matter protests erupted across Britain, despite the incident bearing absolutely no similarity to anything happening on Britain’s streets, and despite the relative anonymity of the BLM movement in Britain until that point.

Many in the media, nevertheless, made sure that the message was loud and clear: protesting against perceived racism — even if on another continent — was more important than any pandemic.

Thus, after months of being told we would be prosecuted for breaching the Covid rules, we then had to observe on television thousands of protestors, not just flouting the safety rules, but tearing down historical monuments — all off the back of a grievance that felt largely imported.

Even as the protests turned violent, no one was arrested. Up until this point, the government had made clear that any breach of lockdown rules would be met by the full force of the law — no caveats, no exceptions. Probably no one was happy about it, but still we complied — for the greater good.

Then, all of a sudden, chaos was erupting in towns and cities across the UK. There on the news, amidst the violence of civil unrest, not only were the lockdown rules being flouted, but, under the banner of Black Lives Matter, a raft of widespread anti-social behaviour was being tolerated. When the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square was vandalised, the police, evidently held hostage to political correctness, stood by and watched as their role was publicly undermined by open disregard for the law.

The protestors’ dismissal of British heritage, a bid to ‘cancel’ history, appears a threat to the nation. We supposedly have nothing to be proud of. Our achievements have presumably been little more than the spoils of an evil, bigoted patriarchal system. These malcontents, by pledging allegiance to the Marxist architects of that narrative, not only insult the memory of those who have fought and died for the freedoms we now take for granted; they are also two-stepping towards totalitarianism.

While the rights of sexual and ethnic minorities appear to be immovably written in stone, the freedom to visit our families, the pub, or the library can be withdrawn by the state at a moment’s notice. Thousands of protestors marching through cities on the same day: no problem. Crowds flocking to the seaside on a summer day: the risk of arrest. One man’s freedom, it seems, has become another man’s cause for resentment.

So what will we be left with, as we try to reclaim our post-Covid lives in a not yet post-woke world? An increasing atmosphere of distrust and walking on eggshells. People are increasingly afraid to speak their minds. Even law enforcement is in a state of politically correct paralysis (here, here, here and here) .

While the UK was busy promoting multiculturalism and demoting choices such as Christianity, the nuclear family and a cultural heritage caringly assembled by people frequently written off as white and dead, we seem have failed to notice the societal divisions it has caused. According to reports, for example, about 19,000 of our children have been groomed and gang raped. The coronavirus pandemic, rather than bringing us together, has served to highlight divisions that are transforming the United Kingdom into something regressive, unevolved, and unrecognisable. Sadly, the United Kingdom is anything but united at this time.

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Lord Malloch Brown Revealed: The British Hand Behind the Coup Shows Its Scales Again — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2020

Describing Talbott, Malloch Brown recently wrote: “Strobe Talbott, is a very old friend of mine and in some ways a similar sort of practitioner and theoretician of globalisation… As such he really understood the hidden back-story of modern politics, which always gets shoved out of view by the more familiar story of nation-states.”

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/11/17/lord-malloch-brown-revealed-the-british-hand-behind-coup-shows-its-scales-again/

Matthew Ehret

Throughout the four-year drama of Russiagate, the hand of British intelligence has revealed itself continuously.

From the obvious role of Sir Richard Dearlove and his former MI6 underlying Christopher Steele who together played a driving role in shaping the dodgy dossier, to their involvement with Oxford Rhodes Scholar Strobe Talbott in composing, promoting and marketing the fraudulent dossier to targeted members of Congress and media, to British Ambassador Sir Darroch caught “flooding the zone” with British intelligence assets to shape Trump’s perception of the world, to the array of British entrapment operations that targeted Michael Flynn as early as 2014 in London… wherever one looks, the hand of British intelligence seems to be everywhere.

While vast effort is made to downplay the British roots of the deep state by the media which tends to portray this problem from a partisan narrative of “democratic party corruption”, this sleight of hand misses the causal nexus and demands we believe that the tail truly wags the dog.

The uncomfortable truth which many are either too afraid, lazy or corrupt to admit is that since the moment John F Kennedy died on November 22, 1963, both the Democratic and Republican Parties have undergone an slow take-over by this foreign parasite. The thing that has come to be known as the “deep state” was never based on one party or another, and never emanated from anything native to the Constitutional traditions of the US government itself as I outlined in my previous article “Understanding the Trifold Nature of the Deep State”.

While the Republican party of George Bush was in power, this deep state had used its controls of computerized vote counting to rig elections in 2000 and 2004 in its favor as showcased brilliantly in the 2006 documentary Hacking Democracy. Later, when it was time for a controlled opposition to take power in 2008, it did the same thing under a different cast of characters.

While one side of the unipolar world government agenda was driven by a view that the USA should forever be the primary global police force governing a zero sum system of perpetual war, with an unelected elite managing the system from above, the other side believed that the USA should surrender its claims to sovereignty to an international global body with unelected technocrats and financiers at the top managing the zero sum system of perpetual war from above.

Notice the common denominator?

Election Theft as Russiagate 5.0

Now that it has become increasingly clear that mass election fraud has swept across the USA in an effort to accomplish what four years of Russiagate failed to achieve, yet another light has fallen upon the British hand behind Biden which aims to dissolve any nationalist spirit remaining in the embattled republic.

As I outlined in my last report, the largest private computer voting system in the USA which services 30 states and 70 million voters was shown to be at the heart of the current election theft. In that article, it was made clear that Dominion Voting Systems is a Canadian company which dominates the USA’s private computerized voting systems and is closely tied to another larger company called Smartmatic.

For those still out of the loop, Smartmatic furnishes voting machines and its software (backdoor codes and all) to governments all around the world and is highly enmeshed with the Clinton Foundation, Soros’ Open Society and Nancy Pelosi’s very own Chief of Staff.

Not only that, but the key figure controlling Smartmatic is none other than Lord Mark Malloch Brown, a former vice chairman of George Soros’ Investment Funds (2007), as well as Soros’ Open Society Institute and World Economic Forum, former Vice President at the World Bank (1995-1999), UN Administrator for Development (1999-2005), UN Deputy Secretary General and UK Minister of State for Africa, Asia and the UN (2007-2009). These are just a few hats he has worn in recent years which we will explore in greater detail.

Lord Malloch Brown: Not Your Typical British Agent

Through his lifelong affiliation with Soros, Lord Malloch Brown (Knight of the Order of St George and St Michael) played the role of color revolutionary godfather and key controller of such “technocrat friendly puppet leaders” as Corazon Aquino as well as her son Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines, Georgia’s George Saakashvili and even the hapless talking ego Barack Obama.

After working through an extended “apprenticeship” under the cover of UN aid worker, and marauding journalist for the London Economist, Malloch Brown found himself working for a Washington consulting firm named Sawyer Miller in 1985. It was at this time Malloch Brown was deployed to become the advisor and speech writer to Philippine opposition leader Corazon (Cory) Aquino under the supervision of then Secretary of State George Shultz. Corazon was a darling of the western establishment but had the nearly impossible task of challenging the popular nationalist President Ferdinand Marcos who had steered his country into economic sovereignty in opposition to international financiers for since his inauguration in 1965.

Applying all of the arts of perception management and marketing, Malloch Brown took control of Aquino’s campaign transforming it into the “People Power Revolution” that was in many ways the first successful color revolution of our modern times. Knowing that votes would likely favor the incumbent Markos, Malloch Brown wrote that he drafted Aquino’s victory speech before the elections and had her deliver it before votes were even finalized- and which accomplices in the media were all too happy to project publicly fueling the mythology that Corazon had won.

Describing these events years later, Malloch Brown said: “An outstanding accomplishment during the Cory campaign was to produce an exit poll that indicated that she had won. It landed on the front page of the Inquirer and had a profound impact as it planted the idea that Aquino had won over Marcos… Marcos did not really recover after that. It was a very exciting experience to watch.”

Malloch Brown failed to mention that the “polling station results” which produced the false perception that Corazon had won were manipulated by George Shultz’s local agents survey firms Social Weather Station, and Pulse Asia which have never been held accountable for their role in the anti-Marcos coup.

Shock Therapy

Soon after this “accomplishment”, Malloch Brown began working closely with George Soros on a number of projects that radically altered the world during the intense period of transition from a bi-polar to unipolar age.

In 1993, Soros had only recently carried out a speculative attack on the British pound sterling which resulted in $1 billion profit to the Hungarian speculator while providing the UK with a convenient excuse to avoid walking into the Euro trap which it had set for other European targets entering into the “post-nation state epoch”. In 1994, Soros announced a $50 million grant for “democracy building” operations in Macedonia and Bosnia which Malloch Brown was hired to administer as part of the Shatalin Shock therapy agenda.

From 1993-1994, Malloch Brown was part of the Soros Advisory Committee on Bosnia where advanced the Balkanization projects of the 1990s. In 1998, Malloch Brown also co-founded Soros’s International Criminal Court (ICC) after the duo had created the International Crisis Group (ICG) in 1994. These institutions served to 1) shape “international perception” of the causes and solutions to “crises”, real or fabricated and 2) advocate solutions that removed sovereignty in military and judicial affairs from sovereign nation states where they had been enshrined in the UN Charter, Nuremburg laws and UN Declaration of Human Rights, to supranational unelected organizations under the control of “experts”.

As Vice President of the World Bank from 1995-1999 he took credit for transforming its image to a more democratic organization, and from 1999-2005 led in the creation of the Millennium Development Goals which increasingly tied UN funding to George Soros’ Open Society operations internationally (during his time in New York, Malloch Brown lived on an estate owned by Soros).

R2P and More Color Revolution

During this period, Malloch Brown was among the earliest advocates of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and did more than anyone else to incorporate the doctrine into United Nations “post-Westphalian” governance outlook in 2005 as UN Deputy Secretary General (2005-2006).

Demonstrating his imperial outlook on March 2011, the self-proclaimed “pacifist” grew impatient of nations who were reticent to blow up Libya and wrote in the Financial Times: “declare victory and get on with ousting Gadhafi”.

As co-chair of the International Crisis Group (which was born of seed money from Soros and on whose board of trustees sit Larry Summers, Joe Biden’s advisor Jake Sullivan and both George and Alexander Soros) Malloch Brown supported the narco-terrorist linked Kosovo Liberation Army which was also propped up by both the CIA and NATO during the Bosnia crisis coordinating closely with his Rhodes Scholar colleague Strobe Talbott who referred to Soros in 1995 as “a national resource—indeed, a national treasure.”

Describing Talbott, Malloch Brown recently wrote: “Strobe Talbott, is a very old friend of mine and in some ways a similar sort of practitioner and theoretician of globalisation… As such he really understood the hidden back-story of modern politics, which always gets shoved out of view by the more familiar story of nation-states.”

After bankrolling Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003 that put Soros’ Saakashvili in power, the Georgian state was rendered ungovernable due to a mix of vast incompetence and corruption. Here, Soros and Malloch Brown again came to the rescue by organizing a January 2004 event in New York that garnered $1.5 million for Georgian government reform programs (75% from Soros’ Open Society and 25% from the UN Development Program headed by Brown). The UNDP report justified the expense that was to pay Saakashvili’s salary as well as top government officials, and security forces when it said: “Georgia lacked the skilled professionals needed to design and execute sweeping reforms”.

The fact that these actions led to the murder of 1,600 in South Ossetia (mostly Russians) in 2008 and nearly triggered WWIII should not be forgotten, nor should Saakashvili’s nefarious role as Governor of Odessa (2015-16) where the convicted felon protected neo Nazis of the Azov Battalion. Similarly, the strange rise in popularity of Saakashvili underway in Georgia should make anyone with half a brain more than a little concerned.

Handler of Team Obama

On February 24, 2008, Samantha Power, husband to Harvard behaviorist Cass Sunstein and soon-to-be Ambassador to the UN under Obama gave an interview to the London Times describing the Malloch Brown-Obama connection in glaring detail. In this interview, Power said: “The principal conduit between Britain and the Candidate [Obama] has been Lord Malloch Brown, the Junior Foreign Minister, whom Obama came to admire when he [Malloch Brown] was Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Obama was really taken with him. It’s a relationship that has persisted and they have talked a number of times since.”

Indeed, Obama’s political career, like Saakashvili’s and Aquino’s, was always a creation of higher powers with Soros even providing the first $60,000 for Obama’s 2004 Senate run and then organizing the earliest fundraising parties for Obama’s Presidential run in 2007.

Samantha Power herself attributed her career to Soros and Lord Brown saying in 2004: “My book and my research was utterly unsustainable on the free market. If I hadn’t been able to get a grant from George Soros and the Open Society Institute, there is no way I could have done the kind of investigative reporting I needed to do”.

The Case of Cass Sunstein

While Power spent her time in the UN fighting viciously to push a pre-emptive P2P humanitarian regime change on Libya and later Syria, her husband Cass Sunstein worked as an advisor to Obama from 2009-2012 and authored a paper addressing the dangerous rise of “conspiracy theories” which threaten his idea of good government. Sunstein wrote “the existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks” and recommended “a series of possible responses” which include cognitive infiltration of conspiracy groups by government agents.

Additionally five options are developed by Sunstein:

“(1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counter speech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counter speech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help”

On August 24, 2020 Sunstein was tapped to chair the World Health Organization’s Technical Advisory Group mandated with modifying global behaviour in compliance with the new norms of the pandemic world order. The WHO chief stated “In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are using a range of tools to influence behavior: Information campaigns are one tool, but so are laws, regulations, guidelines and even fines…That’s why behavioral science is so important.”

Lord Brown in the Obama Era

In 2007, Malloch Brown left the UN to head up Soros’ Quantum Hedge Fund- a lucrative post which he soon left to join the British Foreign Office as Minister of State for Africa, Asia and the UN from 2007-2009.

After leaving his position in the UK government in 2009, Lord Malloch Brown went on to consult oil companies and steer his International Crisis Group. By this time, the ICG had a near monopoly on drafting anonymously published reports of international crisis hotspots priding itself on maintaining armies of “on the ground” specialists who could profile all disputing parties and release their assessments on the international market. These reports have been used by governments, NGOs, corporations, and international bodies like the UN and have played a major role in shaping global policy and perceptions of the causes and remedies to conflict…

See the rest here

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Forget Huawei, US spying on Denmark shows the real threat for European countries comes from Washington — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2020

The purpose was to gather information on Denmark’s fighter jet acquisition program, with Washington aiming to secure Copenhagen’s procurement of Lockheed Martin F-35s at the expense of European defense firms.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/506964-huawei-us-spy-denmark/

Tom Fowdy is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia.

Revelations that America engaged in surveillance on Denmark should come as no surprise. It has consistently spied on its allies, and its efforts to vilify Huawei are simply an attempt to create a smokescreen.

Denmark’s public broadcaster DK has revealed, citing anonymous sources, that the US National Security Agency (NSA) cooperated with the country’s intelligence services in spying on the Danish ministries of finance and foreign affairs.

The purpose was to gather information on Denmark’s fighter jet acquisition program, with Washington aiming to secure Copenhagen’s procurement of Lockheed Martin F-35s at the expense of European defense firms. 

The story, while covered in Denmark and the Netherlands, was largely ignored in the English-speaking international media. The espionage scandal comes at a time when Washington is aggressively pushing the idea of a “clean network”, demanding that European countries exclude the Chinese firm Huawei from their telecommunications networks amid allegations that it is an “espionage risk.” 

However, that isn’t what is happening here. The “clean network” isn’t really clean at all, and the threat to European countries lies far closer to home than Beijing. The US has a long, well-established history of utilizing its intelligence agreements to spy on European countries for commercial reasons, not least when it comes to the bidding of the ‘military-industrial complex.’ Yet, instead of being concerned about this, the public and media have lost themselves in hysteria about a single company, Huawei, whose alleged complicity in espionage has never been proven.

What is the military-industrial complex? The term refers to an oligarchy of American multinational aerospace and defense contractors which constitute the backbone of the US military, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon, to name a few. These companies exert a disproportionate influence over American politics in order to uphold their enormous profit margins. 

They employ a number of strategies to do so, which include the funding of think tanks that actively promote aggressive and military-led foreign policies, such as the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). But more alarmingly their representatives and lobbyists are immersed within the Washington DC system itself. Take for example Nikki Haley, who was until recently a member of Boeing’s executive board. What does she know about aerospace engineering? Nothing. What does she know about promoting war and neo-conservative policies? Plenty. 

Yet this isn’t all. What this revelation in Denmark reminds us is that the military-industrial complex also coordinates with US intelligence to promote their interests, even undermining competitors within allied countries.

For example, in 1994 it is publicly documented that the US Echelon program undermined a deal between the European firm Airbus and Saudi Arabia in order to secure a $6 billion contract for Boeing. Likewise, it was revealed several years ago that the NSA had spied on Germany’s Chancellery for decades. What has happened in Denmark is not new, it’s part of a trend. 

Despite the US spying on European countries with a view to promoting military-industrial complex interests, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s backing for the “clean network” comes with claims that the scheme promotes privacy and data security by excluding “untrusted vendors.” But it’s obvious that such a network does not exist because the US is able to infiltrate it at will; it is a disingenuous façade. 

The real reason the US seeks to exclude Huawei is not on legitimate security grounds, but to uphold its strategic monopoly over the global internet and network surveillance. Whether Huawei spies or not – and nothing has ever proved it does –  it is nonetheless a company which is not under the political control of the US and its intelligence partners, which makes its networks harder to infiltrate and subvert. 

The US hasn’t aggressively promoted its anti-Huawei campaign because it cares and acts in good faith. It has done so because there is an obvious set of interests which the rise of the Chinese company challenges, and Huawei’s growing influence also brushes against the military-industrial complex as well as America’s various internet surveillance efforts, such as Prism. 

Thus, the message should be this: forget China, the US is the biggest, most advanced and most unrivaled advocate of global surveillance in the world, much of it publicly documented and verified. Not only does America frequently spy on countries it claims to be its allies, but it also seeks to undermine their commercial interests to ensure the global monopoly and profit margins of the military-industrial complex are sustained. 

Therefore, what is described as “the clean network” is little more than hypocrisy from Pompeo, a packaged lie designed to sustain a status quo which favors Washington, and which a Chinese telecommunications firm poses a threat to.

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The Art of Defenselessness – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2020

No one company, which is accountable to its shareholders but not to the general public, should have the power to instantly put another company out of business or block access to any website in the world.

One Facebook blocking tactic is a rectangular box with a padlock image on the left and this caption on the right:

This content isn’t available right now

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/11/tim-hartnett/the-art-of-defenselessness/

By Tim Hartnett

Don’t believe the poets. A pen has never been a match for a conventional weapon, metaphorically or otherwise. Joe Pesci’s Casino victim was unarmed. In a pinch, who’d pick a manual writing utensil against a pocketknife or the nearest blunt object? The only pens mightier than swords were made for James Bond by agent Q. Any doubters can ask Elijah Lovejoy, Theo Van Gogh, Samuel Paty, Libero Grassi, Chauncey Bailey or Don Bolles in the unlikely event they find themselves  anywhere near those six in the by and by.

Don’t get me wrong—rhetoric has been honed to do harm down through the ages. But it tends to be those in possession of superior firepower who scour literary output for words they find “weaponized.” There is absolutely nothing paranoid in being wary of all the clamor about “improving” on the 1st amendment. The assault is already well underway from Silicon Valley, on op-ed pages, in think tanks and somber elder statesmen orations. The full ends they have in mind can only be met by the means of jack-booted thugs. What they are afraid of is unlimited truth and never lies. When’s the last time any of the establishment stood up for Edward Snowden?

In the ongoing game of cyber whack-a-mole, who are the metaphorical rodents? It is way past any human capacity to keep up with the moving finish lines, flexible “community standards,” fictional fact checks, politically convenient site glitches, multiple standard cancelations and crude ideological strong-arming that prevails.

One Facebook blocking tactic is a rectangular box with a padlock image on the left and this caption on the right:

This content isn’t available right now

When this happens, it’s usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it’s been deleted.

But “When this happens” that’s never what happened. The locked box is nearly always used to censor jokes that are too clearly kosher to pretend otherwise. Who goes around changing “who can see it”? Management is stopping anyone seeing because it is funny, true and they don’t like it. Apparatchiks at headquarters may believe users fall for this as an unintentional tech error. Facebook routinely resorts to fakery in their fight against fake news that isn’t fake. Should we change that “c” in their name to a “k’?

The last time my page was victimized by this cloddish ruse on November 2nd. One half of the post showed a group of people warmly embracing each other with the words: “What communism says it is.” The other half was an actual photo of a Soviet firing squad at work accompanied by: “What it really is.” Just about everything I’ve seen censored using this clumsy lie has been humor at socialism’s expense that was dead accurate. How do you avoid the conclusion that some of the world’s richest men have ruled socialism too sacred a thing to laugh at? Especially when the punchline is, without exaggeration, in 100% compliance with both “community standards” and the facts? And that’s not to say those so-called standards are drawn on any clear lines.

Is Mark Zuckerberg a commie? Who knows? There are numerous reports that he demands private accommodations in restaurants for parties as small as one. Communist Party members in the old USSR shared the wealth with the beloved people just as generously. Major league news providers don’t find this heavy-handed abuse of communication resources newsworthy. What could possibly account for such an insidious policy in the first place?

Facebook has also blocked not only posts—but access to their site temporarily—for putting up stock news photos of cannibalism during Soviet times. They ironically included comrades marketing human body parts like butchers do with pork and beef in capitalist society. The excuse offered in such cases is nudity violating supposed “community standards.”  No genitalia is even close to visible in these photos. What could motivate the suits of Silicon Valley to see such grisly lessons of the human race reduced to this condition unlearned? Hiding their priorities behind a pretense of Victorian sensitivity is mighty rich.

Communication advances and spyware vault to higher technological altitudes almost daily. What hasn’t been invented yet—or at least remains out of the reach of the common comrade if it has—is an app for keeping pace with all the deceptive, manipulative and suppressive means  employed by conclaves molding the messages masses can convey.

Fortunately for the moment, if you don’t mind leading a voiceless life, powerful silencers have developed ways of making you not talk, or be heard anyway, without any bloodshed. The theory justifying the suppression goes that powerful sources are trustworthy while their questioners aren’t. Don’t ask is an official message from Silicon Valley with consequences for those who do. The court of “public” opinion is now no more public than grand jury proceedings. The indictments media management hands down have the effect of convictions—as far as institutional treatment of the findings go.

The above paragraph overstates the case—but for how long? US News and World Report had this to say on the subject of Google and censorship in June 2016:

No one company, which is accountable to its shareholders but not to the general public, should have the power to instantly put another company out of business or block accessto any website in the world.

Where is any page to be found tracking these developments? How many sites with brilliant insights into reality have been lost? How many people have switched careers or lost substantial sums of income through the despotic powers of tech giants? And, more importantly, what were the actual transgressions that invoked Silicon’s wrath? Currently, is there any way of determining if a site has been kneecapped for stepping on the toes of fatcats with friends in high places, crossing China, publicizing verboten but accurate facts and statistics, riling the CIA, FBI or other alphabet soup entities, drawing attention to the clandestine agendas of powerful economic forces, exposing lobbying accomplishments the public might not be keen on or anything some small coterie with pull might not like brought to light? Looking hard, we can already see numerous instances of such things. Tech giants and major media rarely strive to improve the resolution of the majority that is barely looking at all. While they never stop warning of dangers that perpetually remain on the horizon.

Tech prowess makes some voices loud enough to rouse dozers in back rows of the congregation.  Those electronic windbags made no bones spreading outright deception about the ideological sources of violence this summer. They have a proven track record of air brushing Soviet and People’s Republic atrocities while warning hyperbolically of mythic villains drooling under the bed. After developments like Covid and recent civil unrest communication capability is dearer than ever. Who can tell us when or if it becomes a matter of life or death…or if it hasn’t already?

The Best of Tim Hartnett Tim Hartnett [send him mail] was born in Alexandria, Va. He works as a contractor and sometime bartender in Northern Va. Past columns include “What is the Conservative Movement” and “The Clothes Make the G-Man.”

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Erie Times E-Edition Article-There is no time to wait, pass COVID relief now

Posted by M. C. on November 18, 2020

Ooops ET-N forgot to mention the CARES act gives away thousands of dollars hospitals get for every hospitalized COVID “case”.

Or that anything that moves is tested for COVID, symptomatic or not.

Or that in California for example if you go in for a re-test you are counted again if still positive.

Death rates are down but “cases” are up. “Cases” were invented to keep the fear and control factor up. See this government sponsored source (NPR) for death rates dated a MONTH ago. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/20/925441975/studies-point-to-big-drop-in-covid-19-death-rates

It is getting harder to flog fear.

https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=03ca57827

A version of this editorial first appeared in USA Today.

Like it or not, states are going to impose more shutdowns and social distancing orders as COVID-19 numbers rise and as people move indoors.

Also, like it or not, on Dec. 31 a number of benefits provided in the March CARES Act expire. Among the lapsing provisions are protections against homeowner and renter evictions, increases in the dollar amount and duration of unemployment benefits, and provisions that make these benefits more available to freelancers, small businesses, gig workers and others.

These events could take a huge toll on the economy. Which is why Congress needs to pass an additional relief package now and not wait for the arrival of the Biden administration and a new Congress.

This is not a radical idea espoused only by the deficits-don’t-matter crowd. Nor is it something that benefits one party. It’s a mainstream, pragmatic position espoused by large sectors of the business community as well as the more liberally minded.

Just last month, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell — an appointee of President Donald Trump — urged more stimulus, even at the expense of greater deficits. Without prompt action, Powell said, “household insolvencies and business bankruptcies would rise, harming the productive capacity of the economy, and holding back wage growth.”

These things could play out in many ways. Restaurants and other small businesses could close, leaving empty storefronts in once vibrant commercial zones. Widespread defaults on commercial real estate loans could lead to a tightening of credit for everyone.

The next few months are the most critical period America has yet faced with the pandemic. New cases of COVID-19 are twice what they were during the summer peak, and the infection rate shows no signs of slowing even as the nation awaits the arrival of safe and effective vaccines.

On Capitol Hill, the two sides dug in as they started the lame-duck session. The Democrat-controlled House passed a $3 trillion measure in the spring, then cut it down to a $2.2 trillion plan before the election. The latest version includes a new round of $1,200 checks to individuals and aid to schools, among other things.

The Republican-controlled Senate has considered, but not passed, a $1 trillion measure in the summer, and a plan about half that size just before the election.

Neither side seems inclined to budge. And Trump is a wild card.

Something in the range of $1.5 trillion seems like the most practical idea. The two sides can negotiate what goes into it. They appear to agree on the need for additional stimulus checks, but little else. They must prioritize funding for programs that will directly impact the spread of COVID-19, including money to expedite the distribution of vaccines.

It is time for Congress to put the lives and livelihoods of Americans first and pass an economic relief measure now.

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While Household Income Falls, Central Bankers Are Pushing for Higher Prices | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on November 17, 2020

https://mises.org/wire/while-household-income-falls-central-bankers-are-pushing-higher-prices?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=e5248bddcd-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-e5248bddcd-228343965

Daniel Lacalle

Central banks continue to be obsessed with inflation. Current monetary policy is like the behavior of a reckless driver running at two hundred miles per hour, looking at the rearview mirror and thinking, “We have not crashed yet, let’s accelerate.”

Central banks believe that there is no risk in current monetary policy based on two wrong ideas: 1) that there is no inflation, according to them, and 2) that benefits outstrip risks.

The idea that there is no inflation is untrue. There is plenty inflation in the goods and services that consumers really demand and use. Official CPI (consumer price index) is artificially kept low by oil, tourism, and technology, disguising rises in healthcare, rent and housing, education, insurance, and fresh food that are significantly higher than nominal wages and the official CPI indicate. Furthermore, in countries with aggressive taxation of energy, the negative impact on CPI of oil and gas prices is not seen at all in consumers’ real electricity and gas bills.

A recent study by Alberto Cavallo shows how official inflation is not reflecting the changes in consumption patterns and concludes that real inflation is more than double the official level in the covid-19-era average basket and also, according to an article by James Mackintosh in the Wall Street Journal, prices are rising to up to three times the rate of official CPI for things people need in the pandemic, even if the overall inflation number remains subdued. Official statistics assume a basket that comes down due to replicable goods and services that we purchase from time to time. As such, technology, hospitality, and leisure prices fall, but things we acquire on a daily basis and that we cannot simply stop buying are rising much faster than nominal and real wages.

Central banks will often say that these price increases are not due to monetary policy but market forces. However, it is precisely monetary policy that strains market forces by pushing rates lower and money supply higher. Monetary policy makes it harder for the least privileged to live day by day and increasingly difficult for the middle class to save and purchase assets that rise due to expansionary monetary policies, such as houses and bonds.

Inflation may not show up on news headlines, but consumers feel it. The general public has seen a constant increase in the price of education, healthcare, insurance, and utility services in a period where central banks felt obliged to “combat deflation”…a deflationary risk that no consumer has seen, least of all the lower and middle classes.

It is not a coincidence that the European Central Bank constantly worries about low inflation while protests on the rising cost of living spread all around the eurozone. Official inflation measures are simply not reflecting the difficulties and loss of purchasing power of salaries and savings of the middle class.

Therefore inflationary policies do create a double risk. First, a dramatic increase in inequality as the poor are left behind by the asset price increases and wealth effect but feel the rise in core goods and services more than anyone. Second, because it is untrue that salaries will increase alongside inflation. We have seen real wages stagnate due to poor productivity growth and overcapacity while unemployment rates were low, keeping wages significantly below the rise of essential services.

Central banks should also be concerned about the rising dependence of bond and equity markets on the next liquidity injection and rate cut. If I were the chairperson of a central bank I would be truly concerned if markets reacted aggressively on my announcements. It would be a worrying signal of codependence and risk of bubbles. When sovereign states with massive deficits and weakening finances have the lowest bond yields in history it is not a success of the central bank, it is a failure.

Inflation is not a social policy. It disproportionately benefits the first recipient of newly created money, government and asset-heavy sectors, and harms the purchasing power of salaries and savings of the low and middle class. “Expansionary” monetary policy is a massive transfer of wealth from savers to borrowers. Furthermore, these evident negative side effects are not solved by the so-called quantitative easing for the people. A bad monetary policy is not solved by a worse one. Injecting liquidity directly to finance government entitlement programs and spending is the recipe for stagnation and poverty. It is not a coincidence that those that have implemented the recommendations of modern monetary policy wholeheartedly, Argentina, Turkey, Iran, Venezuela, and others, have seen increases in poverty, weaker growth, worse real wages and destruction of the currency.

Believing that prices must rise at any cost because, if not, consumers may postpone their purchasing decisions is generally ridiculous in the vast majority of purchasing decisions. It is blatantly false in a pandemic crisis. The fact that prices are rising in a pandemic crisis is not a success, it is a miserable failure and hurts every consumer who has seen revenues collapse by 10 or 20 percent.

Central banks need to start thinking about the negative consequences of the massive bond bubble they have created and the rising cost of living for the low and middle classes before it is too late. Many will say that it will never happen, but acting on that belief is exactly the same as the example I gave at the beginning of the article: “We haven´t crashed yet, let´s accelerate.” Reckless and dangerous.

Inflation is not a social policy. It is daylight robbery. 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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