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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Whose Lives Matter?

Posted by M. C. on September 13, 2020

First, we ask, if all lives do not matter, which are the ones that are not precious?

Second, this dilution business.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/september/12/whose-lives-matter/

Written by Walter E. Block

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To say that “Black Lives Matter” has been in the news of late would be the understatement of the year, if not the decade. Maybe, even the century. This phrase is on everyone’s lips, on front yard signs, placards, billboards and even, in very large letters, on the streets of not just a few cities. It is the rare newspaper that appears without commenting upon this phrase each and every day.

In order to make sense of this phenomenon, let us consider a few distinctions.

First, there is the plain old ordinary declarative phrase “black lives matter.” Of course they do. Only the most hateful, despicable people would deny this; would say instead that black lives do not matter. Had this phrase been prevalent before the July 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in February 2012 when it became popularized, it would have been met by all men of good will with the ho hum response of, “Of course black lives matter. All lives matter, and black lives are part of all lives.” End of story. No problem here.

But in the aftermath of that event, buttressed into the stratosphere with the death of George Floyd, a second interpretation of BLM came into being. Here, it might be defined as black lives matter especially, and particularly, since they are amongst the most vulnerable groups in the country, and, likely, in the entire world. No problem here, either. BLM is eminently sensible in this regard, too. In my view, the main reason for this sad state of affairs is not police brutality focused disproportionately on that community. The evidence suggests, rather, that the reason for their more than proportionate death at the hands of the constabularies is the greater proportionate crime rate of African Americans.

Instead, the immediate cause for their plight is black on black murders. That accounts for the lion’s share of African American deaths. If the people concerned with needless black deaths (everyone should be) really wanted to stop them, or, at least, greatly reduce their incidence, they would focus not on cops killing them, but, rather, on members of this community murdering each other. But they do not. Instead, they concern themselves, almost totally, with black people shot by law enforcement agencies. Witness the concern of members of the National Basketball Association.

What are the causal elements in black on black homicide? There are myriad of them, including family breakup due to a princely welfare system, drug prohibition featuring turf fights, and minimum wage laws which lead to unemployment, all disproportionately affecting young black males, the main perpetrators and victims of this conflagration.

Then, third, there is the undisputed fact that the official BLM is a Marxist organization (don’t believe me? go look at their webpage), which advocates the elimination of capitalism, and its replacement with the economic system that has served so well in Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, the USSR, Eastern Europe, China (before they embraced large swathes of free enterprise). Under this system we can only say that black lives, along with those of everyone else, will not fare too well.

A fourth definition of BLM is that only black lives matter. How do we know that? This is due to the fact that there are various instances, inside academia and without, in which people who have averred that All Lives Matter only to be fired, condemned, ostracized, etc. A similar treatment is meted out, perhaps even worse, to those who maintain that White Lives Matter, or Blue (police) Lives matter, or, even Babies Lives Matter (a new motto of the anti abortionists). Why? This is due to the claim that all these copycat lives matter maxims dilute from BLM in this fourth and eminently reasonable interpretation, namely that black people lives are more endangered than those of anyone else, and thus deserve special consideration.

We have two criticisms to offer against that defense.

First, we ask, if all lives do not matter, which are the ones that are not precious? Those of whites? Asians? To say this of course is to drive right off the moral track. If there is anyone who maintains that some lives do not matter (I abstract here, from mass murderers such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.), he is as wicked as those who say that black lives do not matter in the slightest. Logic teaches us that the whole is equal to the sum of the parts. Black people are “part” of the human race. Thus, if all lives matter, they are certainly included.

Second, this dilution business. Black leaders such as Frederick Douglass and suffragists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were for a long time allies (both wanted access to the vote), and even friends. But then the “dilution” charge came up. Each accused the other of undermining the case of the other. Their split weakened the prospects of both. The BLM in this good fourth sense ought to learn a lesson from history if they want to boost their chances for success. All lives matter, certainly including those of African Americans.

From a logical standpoint, saying you agree with point A and then asserting that point B is also correct (so long the two are not self contradictory) does not necessarily mean that the message about point A become less important or meaningful. Besides, since when has “message dilution” become a fireable offense?

I want a cure for cancer. Should I be upset at those who at the same time want to remedy Covid, heart disease, diabetes, poverty, alcoholism? Should I try to get them fired? Should I hurl denigration at them? Obviously, that would be more than just a little bit silly. But this is precisely what the “dilution” criticism amounts to.

Background material:

https://www.nps.gov/articles/comrades-in-conflict.htm

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/10/the-great-schism/246640/

BLM web page: https://blacklivesmatter.com/

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Watch “John Hammond June 2016 complete interview” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2020

Great interview with my favorite bluesman.

I never realized all the great musicians John knows and worked with.

 

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Mandatory Covid-19 Vaccination Is Unethical and Unscientific | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2020

If a vaccine were clearly 100 percent efficacious and 100 percent safe, there would be no need for coercion; people would voluntarily line up to take the vaccine. Real vaccines are never 100 percent efficacious or 100 percent safe.

https://mises.org/wire/mandatory-covid-19-vaccination-unethical-and-unscientific?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=79c8cbe69c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-79c8cbe69c-228343965

The post-covid-19 world is a surrealistic nightmare. Businesses have been shut down arbitrarily without any evidence that these shutdowns save any lives. Tens of millions of Americans have become unemployed due to these shutdowns. There are already demands for mandatory covid-19 vaccination even before a vaccine is available. “Make vaccines free, don’t allow religious or personal objections, and create disincentives for those who refuse vaccines shown to be safe and effective.” This is an empty statement, as any vaccine available will neither be 100 percent safe nor 100 percent effective. Based on the initial study of the Russian vaccine in a very limited number of patients, it is not even clear that the vaccine will be safer than the disease itself.

Justifications for Mandatory Vaccines

If a vaccine is 100 percent effective, there is no justification for mandatory vaccination. Anyone who wishes to be protected can voluntarily take the vaccine. It would not be possible for someone declining the vaccine to harm someone who voluntarily takes the vaccine. Any call for a mandatory vaccine is an explicit admission that the vaccine is not 100 percent effective.

If a vaccine were 0 percent effective, there would be no justification for anyone taking the vaccine. There must be some intermediate percentage of effectiveness that maximizes the utility of mandatory vaccination. As the vaccine becomes more effective, fewer people can possibly benefit from mandatory vaccination. As the vaccine becomes less effective, a lower percentage of people who could possibly benefit from mandatory vaccination will actually benefit.

Utility of mandatory vaccination requires that the vaccine be effective in some of those who would not voluntarily take it (conscripted helpers), that the vaccine be ineffective in some of those who would voluntarily take it (beneficiaries), and the stipulation that conscripted helpers interact with beneficiaries, that these interactions lead to extra infections despite other means of prevention, and that the extra infections result in serious illness or deaths. That is a lot of ifs. There is no way to know what this optimal effectiveness would be. There is no way to know how many coerced vaccinations are necessary to prevent one infection or to prevent one serious illness or death (number to treat). Given that the number to treat cannot possibly be known prior to vaccination, mandatory vaccination cannot be ethical even by utilitarian calculation.

Concerns about Efficacy

An ideal vaccine induces an immune response that neutralizes a pathogen. The immune response can be antibody or T-cell activity. Claims that a covid-19 vaccine will prevent infection are not precisely true. Immune responses are not like antimissile defenses that destroy the missile before it reaches the body. A better analogy for an ideal vaccine would be the inducement of an immune response that prevents invading pathogens from breaching a wall using siege ladders or battering rams. The immune defenses cannot act until triggered by the presence of the invading pathogen. An ideal vaccine can neutralize the pathogen before it enters tissue cells, replicates within the tissue cells, enters the blood, invades distant organs, and causes clinical disease or death. The process of neutralizing the virus is not instantaneous, so while the battle between immune defense and invading pathogen is taking place, the host is technically infected and theoretically can transmit the pathogen to others. The best that we can hope for is to prevent clinical disease, and to minimize the duration of time that the host can transmit the pathogen to others.

Studies of the Russian vaccine did not measure efficacy in terms of prevention of clinical disease. The measure of “efficacy” used was detection of antibody response to the vaccine antigen. But there is no guarantee that the presence of antibody will prevent infection, prevent clinical disease, or prevent death. There is no evidence that severe disease or death from covid-19 is due to the absence of antibody. Studies on immune response in patients with covid-19 show that patients with severe disease have higher antibody levels than patients with mild disease. There are concerns that cytokine storm, a consequence of too much immune response rather than too little immune response, may be an important cause of death in covid-19. Cytokine storm is a potential side effect of any vaccine. As usual, the devil is in the details.

Concerns about Safety

Advocates for mandatory vaccination always stipulate that the vaccine be safe. What is safe? No vaccine can possibly be 100 percent safe. The elephant in the room is always: How large is the risk? The Lancet‘s study on the Russian vaccine studied 76 subjects. There were 38 in the vaccine group and 38 in the control group. A study of this size would not be expected to detect a vaccine fatality rate of 1/50. Fever occurred in 100 percent of one subgroup (20 subjects) and 31/38 subjects receiving the Gam=COVID-Vac agent. The ages in the study ranged from 18–60. The mean age of the subgroups was 25–32 years of age. Given the low age of the participants and the high percentage of asymptomatic covid-19 cases in young patients, it is not clear that the vaccine was even safer than infection with the virus.

Several decades ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to eliminate tuberculosis from the United States. The plan was to test everyone with PPD and treat all the positive PPD patients with a drug called INH. This plan had to be stopped after fifty patients died from liver failure due to INH toxicity. The liver toxicity was missed by small-scale clinical trials but was discovered by the much-larger-scale public health program. Neither the CDC nor the Food and Drug Administration can know that a treatment or vaccine is safe. The more people are vaccinated, the more side effects will be discovered. This is a huge ethical problem for mandatory vaccination. If everyone is required to be vaccinated, there will be no control group for comparison of safety and efficacy.

Advocates of mandatory covid-19 vaccination assure the public that the vaccine will be safe. Why was it necessary for government to indemnify the vaccine manufacturers against any liability for their vaccine prior to production? This is a clear case where one should ignore what government says and watch what government does. Government clearly knows something that is not being disclosed to the public. This is the opposite of transparency, yet anyone who opposes vaccination is labeled as stupid, uniformed, or inadequately concerned about their elderly neighbors.

Catastrophic Tail Risks

Some risks are not known ahead of time. Some risks will not be manifest until years later. Consider a hypothetical situation where a vaccine causes sterility ten years later. There would be no way to detect this risk ahead of time. Imagine that all of humanity is vaccinated with this vaccine. Humanity would be wiped out when the last person dies. No matter how small the risk for an existential threat, why would humanity take this chance over something as ordinary as a bad flu? Rather than treating antivaxxers as a threat to civilization, we should be grateful that some people will always volunteer to be controls in our medical experiments by declining treatment.

Markets Offer the Best Solutions to Complex Problems

How efficacious will the vaccine be? How safe will the vaccine be? We don’t even have an American vaccine to assess, yet authorities are calling for mandatory American vaccination. Even when vaccine options are available, we will have limited information about efficacy and safety. There are no objective answers available about efficacy and safety, so how can objectively correct decisions be made balancing risks and benefits? Markets offer the best solutions to these subjective questions. Just as markets determine value by the process of price discovery, the balance between risk and benefit of a vaccine can only be determined by how many people are voluntarily willing to take the vaccine.

Conclusions

Vaccines are a wonderful hedge against the risks of contagious disease. We are fortunate to have vaccines as options. However, mandatory vaccination can never be justified. If a vaccine were clearly 100 percent efficacious and 100 percent safe, there would be no need for coercion; people would voluntarily line up to take the vaccine. Real vaccines are never 100 percent efficacious or 100 percent safe. Judgments about risk versus benefit can only be made by individuals facing the risk. People who decline vaccines are not stupid, nor are they misinformed, nor do they have callous disregard for their neighbors. Advocates of vaccines who are disappointed by the number of people willing to accept the vaccine should stop blaming those who decline and reevaluate their poor abilities of persuasion. Vaccine skeptics are necessary as controls in ongoing assessment of efficacy and safety. Vaccine skeptics are necessary as a hedge against catastrophic errors by experts.

Author:

Gilbert Berdine, MD

Gilbert Berdine is an associate professor of medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and an affiliate of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University.

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A Farewell Letter From An Independent Restaurant Owner | Zero Hedge

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2020

https://www.zerohedge.com/bailout/farewell-letter-independent-restaurant-owner

by Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/11/2020 – 20:20

Authored by Heather Lalley via RestaurantBusinessOnline.com,

Danny Abrams opened a restaurant six blocks from the World Trade Center site six weeks after 9/11.

Even during that difficult time, the restaurant was welcomed by the city with more than 100 covers a night for the first year.

“But this is very different,” Abrams said. “It’s hard to compare.”

This, of course, is the pandemic.

Abrams and his partner, Cindy Smith, run seven restaurants in New York. They recently made the difficult decision to close The Mermaid Inn in the East Village after more than 17 years.

“I think there’s a restaurant-closing tsunami on the way,” Abrams said. “It’s going to happen after September. They’re not seeing a wave of closings yet because people are still trying to hang on and people are still playing with some of the PPP they might’ve gotten.”

The Mermaid Inn, which was known by locals for its happy hour deals, had about 80 seats inside, 20 in the garden, and 16 on the sidewalk. Abrams said it typically did strong business in the spring and summer, before quieting in the winter.

“We really needed May, June, July, August, September,” he said. “If we miss that window and then get to do 50% in October, 50% in November? Forget about it.”

Abrams and Smith wrote a detailed letter, explaining the closure and detailing the current pressures on independent restaurant operators, and shared it on their Facebook page.

The two are currently doing everything they can to reduce expenses at their existing concepts, to try to stay afloat until this crisis passes.

“It’s all about survival right now,” he said. “I want to be the last man standing.”

This letter, written by Mermaid Inn co-owners Danny Abrams and Cindy Smith and shared on social media, has been edited slightly from its original and shared here with their permission.

The Mermaid Inn at 96 Second Ave. Farewell Letter

To All Our Valued Guests and Friends

It is with great sadness that we announce the closing of The Mermaid Inn at 96 Second Ave. Our lease expired on August 31st and we were not able to come to an agreement with the landlord on how to move forward both during and after the pandemic. We want to thank all of our wonderful guests and employees for supporting us over these past years. What began as a little 29 seat restaurant on a sleepy stretch of Second Ave. grew into a place that had welcomed hundreds of thousands of guests and employed thousands of people over the years. We are extremely humbled that so many embraced our restaurant and that we were able to succeed as long as we had. For a restaurant to survive and thrive in New York City for 17.5 years is an accomplishment of which we can all be proud. And we could not have done it without all of you.

We all mourn the loss of our favorite restaurants for they provide us with so much more than food. They provide nourishment for our soul and when they are gone, much of the soul of the neighborhoods in which they resided will be gone as well: missing out on seeing our favorite bartender who remembers what we drink, saying “hi” to our favorite server and sitting at the table that makes us most comfortable, talking to the owner about life in general, seeing the hardworking support staff take extra care to provide us with a dropped napkin or a missing fork. All of these small gestures that make us feel at home in our neighborhood will be missing. And that will make our neighborhoods feel lacking as well–less interesting, less familiar, less inviting. These are one of the things that defines BEING AT HOME in our community. They are a gathering place to share accounts of our days, to celebrate big events in our lives or just share a table with our friends.

Mermaid By the Numbers

We are sharing this information to illustrate what ONE SINGLE RESTAURANT adds to its community and to the city. Many restaurants have closed since COVID and many more will close as the pandemic continues. The ripple effect will be incalculable.

Over the years, The Mermaid Inn on Second Ave has:

  • Welcomed over 850,000 guests
  • Paid over $15 million in wages to our more than 2,000 employees who have spent time with us
  • Contributed more than $2.1 million in taxes to the city, the state, Medicare, SS, UI, etc
  • Sent in excess of $4 million in sales tax to New York state
  • Paid over $ 15 million to our hundreds of hard-working vendors
  • Given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the city and state for permits, licenses, etc

We are providing these numbers to show the effect that the closing of a SINGLE restaurant has. Now multiply that by THOUSANDS of NYC restaurants closing. The loss of opportunity for employees, the loss of income for city, state and local governments, the loss of sales to our fish companies, our vegetable company, the linen company, even the company that comes to take our used oyster shells or our discarded grease. If we don’t pay them, they do not pay their employees and so on and so on. The chain is never ending.

The restaurant and hospitality industry has been woefully neglected during this pandemic. Actually, all small businesses have. The Payroll Protection Program has given us eight weeks of funds for what will be a 52-week problem. And look at who that money was allowed to pay: we were only allowed to pay for payroll (which is good) but also to the landlords, the insurance companies and the utility companies. Think about that for a second. Real estate owners, insurance conglomerates and large utility providers. Not one cent could go to the hundreds of small businesses that had provided us with goods and services. NOT ONE PENNY. Having lived in NYC since 1984, it seems that during every crisis, the big companies get bailed out and taken care of—the banks, the airlines, the insurance companies, etc. During the Great Recession, the banks and insurance providers played fast and loose with their money and brought the world economy to the brink of failure. They got bailed out with OUR TAX DOLLARS. Where is the reciprocity? Why do the small businesses always give and never get? It seems immeasurably unfair.

Our restaurants were MANDATED by the government to close down on March 16. Some of us had closed in advance of that date for fear that our employees and guests could get sick. We did so willingly so we could do our part in helping to contain the virus. But here we are, five and half months later, still closed, with no clear indication of what our future holds. There is no clear communication from the City or State that we can point to.

As for business in the meantime, we have few options. Delivery, while keeping a few people employed, does not provide any profit for the restaurant. The outdoor seating has helped some restaurants but it is weather-dependent, which leads to much uncertainty. And re-opening at 50% for many restaurants is a non-starter. How can a 75-seat restaurant, that only makes money in the best of times given the cost of doing business in NYC, reopen with 40 seats and no bar? Seriously? We would not even be able to make enough money to pay the employees, let alone our purveyors or rent.

Read the rest of this entry »

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LA County’s Public Health Director Accidentally Admits What Many Suspected About Lockdowns | Zero Hedge

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2020

So we don’t realistically anticipate we will be moving to tier 2 or to reopening K-12 schools at least until after the election

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/la-countys-public-health-director-accidentally-admits-what-many-suspected-about-lockdowns

by Tyler Durden
Fri, 09/11/2020 – 22:20

Authored by Andrea Widburg via AmericanThinker.com,

A Democrat bureaucrat finally said what we all have known to be the truth: The Wuhan virus limitations that Democrat politicians and bureaucrats have imposed on Americans will go away after the election because that was the plan all along.

As 2019 ended, the Democrats knew that Trump was cruising to reelection. He’d kept his base because he kept his promises about the wall, trade deals, the military, abortion, and our Second Amendment rights. Best of all, he’d supercharged the economy with tax and regulation cuts. The surging economy enticed other Americans who had not voted for Trump in 2016 to contemplating voting for him in 2020.

The Democrats’ troubles continued in 2020. In January, their impeachment imploded. Worst of all, the Democrat primary candidates did not excite the base. The only passion was for a spittle-flecked, wild-haired old communist, and the Democrats knew that, even in 2020, nominating a communist was a bridge too far. The Wuhan virus was an extraordinary and unlooked-for blessing for the Democrats because they used it to destroy Trump’s economy.

Right now, some might say, “That’s harsh. The Democrats have been trying to save lives. It’s worked out well for them that their efforts wrecked the economy, but that doesn’t mean that they deliberately manipulated the economy, destroying thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands, even millions, of lives, only to win the election.”

Sorry, but it’s true.

Rather than recite the history of America’s politics before the Wuhan virus struck, we’ll have Saturday Night Live do it. Some of you may recall that, in early 2017, SNL did a funny sketch about a team of scientists, led by Scarlett Johansson, who hooked up a dog to a contraption that translated its thoughts. To everyone’s horror, the dog was a Trump supporter:

The sketch was popular amongst conservatives. What passed almost unnoticed, though, perhaps because of all the impeachment craziness, was that SNL did a follow-up sketch in December 2019. Once again, Max, the Trump-supporting dog, had his say. The second sketch wasn’t as well written as the first one and, as someone commented to me, the actors seemed deflated. However, the sketch’s value lies in the fact that the points Max made reflect what Democrats feared most heading into 2020:

Although Democrats initially played down the Wuhan virus, denouncing Trump as a xenophobe for closing down most traffic to the U.S. from China and Europe, they soon realized that the virus had the potential to damage the economy. The 15-day lockdown to bend the curve was probably legitimate, but it didn’t take long to realize that extending the lockdown was where the real power lay. The lockdown also showed Democrats how remarkably compliant people are when fear is used to take away their liberty.

As the lockdown continued, and Democrats always gave passes to Black Lives Matter and Antifa, people began to suspect that politics drove the Democrats’ insistence that Americans must live abnormally constrained lives until the virus ends or there is a vaccination. Trump, therefore, terrified the Democrats by promising a vaccination before the election. Kamala Harris responded by saying preemptively that the vaccination would be dangerous.

Much of the above was and is supposition. But now we have something different and concrete.

Los Angeles County is America’s most populous county, the largest government entity in America that is not a state or the federal government, and the third-largest metropolitan economy in the world. It’s also entirely Democrat-run, as evidenced by poverty, drugs, and homelessness, as well as its vast wealth inequality.

Los Angeles students still cannot go to school but must, instead, do online learning. We already know that part of the problem is that the teachers’ union had some pretty stringent demands, few related to the students’ physical and mental well-being.

However, it turns out the continued school closures are also because of politics. We know this because LA County’s Public Health Director, Barbara Ferrer, admitted as much when speaking to a gathering of school nurses and other school administrators:

So we don’t realistically anticipate we will be moving to tier 2 or to reopening K-12 schools at least until after the election, after, you know, in early November. When we just look at the timing of everything it seems to us the more realistic approach to this would be to think that we’re going to be where we are now until we get, until after we are done with the election.

There is no scientific connection between the election and the Wuhan virus. There is, however, a cynical connection between the lockdown and the election. The Democrats know that, and Ferrer finally said it out loud. If you’ve suffered from the lockdown, be sure to remember that the Democrats did it on purpose.

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Never Forget: Smoking Gun Intel Memo From 1990s Warned Of ‘Frankenstein The CIA Created’ | Zero Hedge

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2020

But it was all the way back in 1993 that a then classified intelligence memo warned that the very fighters the CIA previously trained would soon turn their weapons on the US and its allies. The ‘secret’ document was declassified in 2009, but has remained largely obscure in mainstream media reporting, despite being the first to contain a bombshell admission.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/never-forget-1993-smoking-gun-intel-memo-warned-frankenstein-cia-created

by Tyler Durden

As Americans pause to remember the tragic events of September 11, 2001 which saw almost 3,000 innocents killed in the worst terror attack in United States history, it might also be worth contemplating the horrific wars and foreign quagmires unleashed during the subsequent ‘war on terror’.

Bush’s so-called Global War on Terror targeted ‘rogue states’ like Saddam’s Iraq, but also consistently had a focus on uprooting and destroying al-Qaeda and other armed Islamist terror organizations (this led to the falsehood that Baathist Saddam and AQ were in cahoots). But the idea that Washington from the start saw al-Qaeda and its affiliates as some kind of eternal enemy is largely a myth. 

Recall that the US covertly supported the Afghan mujahideen and other international jihadists throughout the 1980’s Afghan-Soviet War, the very campaign in which hardened al-Qaeda terrorists got their start. In 1999 The Guardian in a rare moment of honest mainstream journalism warned of the Frankenstein the CIA created — among their ranks a terror mastermind named Osama bin Laden.

1998 CNN still of Osama bin Laden, right, along with Egyptian jihadist Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan, CNN/Getty Images

But it was all the way back in 1993 that a then classified intelligence memo warned that the very fighters the CIA previously trained would soon turn their weapons on the US and its allies. The ‘secret’ document was declassified in 2009, but has remained largely obscure in mainstream media reporting, despite being the first to contain a bombshell admission.

A terrorism analyst at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research named Gina Bennett wrote in the 1993 memo “The Wandering Mujahidin: Armed and Dangerous,” that—

“support network that funneled money, supplies, and manpower to supplement the Afghan mujahidin” in the war against the Soviets, “is now contributing experienced fighters to militant Islamic groups worldwide.”

The concluding section contains the most revelatory statements, again remembering these words were written nearly a decade before the 9/11 attacks:

US support of the mujahidin during the Afghan war will not necessarily protect US interests from attack.

…Americans will become the targets of radical Muslims’ wrath. Afghan war veterans, scattered throughout the world, could surprise the US with violence in unexpected locales.

There it is in black and white print: the United States government knew and bluntly acknowledged that the very militants it armed and trained to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars would eventually turn that very training and those very weapons back on the American people.

And this was not at all a “small” or insignificant group, instead as The Guardian wrote a mere two years before 9/11:

American officials estimate that, from 1985 to 1992, 12,500 foreigners were trained in bomb-making, sabotage and urban guerrilla warfare in Afghan camps the CIA helped to set up.

But don’t think for a moment that there was ever a “lesson learned” by Washington.

Instead the CIA and other US agencies repeated the 1980s policy of arming jihadists to overthrow US enemy regimes in places like Libya and Syria even long after the “lesson” of 9/11. As War on The Rocks recounted:

Despite the passage of time, the issues Ms. Bennett raised in her 1993 work continue to be relevant today.  This fact is a sign of the persistence of the problem of Sunni jihadism and the “wandering mujahidin.” Today, of course, the problem isn’t Afghanistan but Syria. While the war there is far from over, there is already widespread nervousness, particularly in Europe, about what will happen when the foreign fighters return from that conflict.

On 9/11 we should never forget the innocent lives lost, but we should also never forget the Frankenstein of jihad the CIA created.

* * *

The U.S. State Dept.’s own numbers at the height of the war in Syria: access the full report at STATE.GOV

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EconomicPolicyJournal.com: There is No Price Inflation (As Long as You Don’t Eat)

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2020

https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2020/09/there-is-no-price-inflation-as-long-as.html

As can be seen in the chart above, the 12-month annualized price inflation rate dived after the COVID-19 lockdowns started and only started to climb after the May bottom.

Now, the annualized Consumer Price Index through the end of August stand at “only” 1.3%.

But breaking things down a bit, things look much different.

Food prices are soaring. Meats are up 7.1%, dairy and related products are up 5.7%, non-alcoholic beverages are up 5.1%, limited service meals and snacks are up 4.8%, tobacco and smoking products are 5.0% and medical care is up 5.3%.

What is driving the general index down is declines in goods we are not using anymore, or are using a lot less. Airline fares are down 23.2% and energy is down 9.0%

But the goods people are actually buying are way up.

It should be remembered that President Nixon in 1971 imposed wage and price controls when the CPI was only 4.0%. Most food prices are climbing at a faster rate than this now.

I fully expect the general CPI number to continue to climb as the prices that are declining start to bottom out and the climbing prices will have more of an impact on the overall CPI number.

Sometime next year, I expect price controls to become a very real possibility regardless of whether Trump or Biden is president.

–RW

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The West Coast burns, and leftists blame climate change, but they’re wrong – American Thinker

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2020

Others wiser than Obama have pointed out that climate change is not the problem.  Instead, the problem is environmentalism.

These unusual weather phenomena will have nothing to do with the left’s favorite explanation of Gaia in crisis due to evil people.  Instead, they will reflect normal weather patterns around the globe, including in California.  The only unusual thing will have been the California greenies’ failure to take steps that could protect their state from predictable weather events.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/the_west_coast_burns_and_leftists_blame_climate_change_but_theyre_wrong.html

By Andrea Widburg

The West Coast is aglow but not in a good way.  Instead, fires are raging throughout California, Oregon, and Washington.  The property damage is appalling, and ten people have already died.  Leftists, predictably, have announced that their goddess, Mother Gaia, is again crying out from the horrors of anthropogenic climate change.

The reality is that there’s something bigger and more real going on, which is the actual climate. La Nina is afoot in the northern hemisphere, and she’s having some extra fun in the West because the environmentalists have prevented California from protecting against fires.

The data from the fires is appalling.  In California, at least 2.5 million acres have burned.  In Oregon, 900,000 acres have burned, with one of the worst fires being attributed to arson.  In a nod to the cliché that everything that happens hits women and minorities the hardest, the Washington Post reports that “[i]n a small Oregon town, a wildfire devastates a Latino community.”  In Washington State, 480,000 acres have burned.

Leftists know what’s to blame — it’s Anthropogenic Climate Change, which is the nearest thing they have to a religion.  Religions are unfalsifiable because faith ties all events to a deity.  In that vein, climate change is the answer to all weather and climate events.  Whether it’s too hot or cold, too still or windy, too wet or dry, it doesn’t matter.  The blame always falls on humans and their love affair with fossil fuel.

Therefore, it’s unsurprising that one of the high priests of leftism, Barack Obama, would weigh in on the admittedly disturbing orange sky in California.  In his usual pompous way, he announced that humankind is at fault:

 

Others wiser than Obama have pointed out that climate change is not the problem.  Instead, the problem is environmentalism.

Environmentalism is why California stopped grooming forests or doing controlled burns to get rid of deadwood (AKA tinder).  It was because of environmentalism that PG&E poured all of its money into building renewable energy facilities, such as the solar facilities that failed during California’s recent heat wave, and stopped repairing old power lines (some going back 90 years) or trimming back tinder around those power lines.  All this misbegotten environmentalism has controlled California even as more people have moved into fire zones over the past several decades.

Even those awful environmental policies do not tell the entire story.  There are two bigger things at play.  First, there’s California’s actual climate.  For all the hysteria about the epic heat wave this year, back in 1913, the hottest temperature ever recorded on earth was 134 degrees in California’s Death Valley.

That doesn’t even mean it was the hottest temperature ever.  It was just the hottest temperature ever recorded.  People have been recording temperatures in a consistent way only since the Victorian era.  That means that, long before the last 150 years, the earth has almost certainly been setting all sorts of records about which we know nothing.

Second, the leftists are ignoring the most significant thing of all about California’s furnace-like conditions.  This is a La Niña year, and it’s going to wreak havoc all over America:

La Nina — a phenomenon that occurs when the surface of the Pacific Ocean cools — has officially formed, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center said Thursday. It triggers an atmospheric chain reaction that stands to roil weather around the globe, often turning the western U.S. into a tinder box, fueling more powerful hurricanes in the Atlantic and flooding parts of Australia and South America.

“We’re already in a bad position, and La Nina puts us in a situation where fire-weather conditions persist into November and possibly even December,” said Ryan Truchelut, president of Weather Tiger LLC. “It is exacerbating existing heat and drought issues.”

The effects are already evident. Rising temperatures and an extreme mega-drought across the U.S. West are fueling fires from Washington to Arizona. California is having its worst fire season on record, torching an unprecedented 2.5 million acres. And in the Atlantic, a record number tropical storms have formed by September, including Hurricane Laura, which killed more than a dozen people across the Caribbean and the U.S. last month.

No matter where you are, you’d better batten down the hatches, because anything that can go wild and dangerous with the weather will.  These unusual weather phenomena will have nothing to do with the left’s favorite explanation of Gaia in crisis due to evil people.  Instead, they will reflect normal weather patterns around the globe, including in California.  The only unusual thing will have been the California greenies’ failure to take steps that could protect their state from predictable weather events.

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Calling Chomsky Out: The Riots Are a Full-Fledged Attack by the Hard Left To Topple American Society – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2020

The charge of systemic institutionalized racism against black people is completely false (see here, here and here). The only form of institutional racism that exists in the United States is discrimination against whites and Asians in education and employment.

Please make no mistake. The specious charge of anti-black racism is a mere cover for unleashing violence dressed up as a “social justice movement” whose real purpose is to destabilize our society and bring about the Hard Left’s extra-electoral coup d’état.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/09/vasko-kohlmayer/calling-chomsky-out-the-riots-are-a-full-fledged-attack-by-the-hard-left-to-topple-american-society/

By

Professor Noam Chomsky, formerly of MIT, has the distinction of being the most frequently quoted academic and is arguably the best known public intellectual in the world. He recently gave an interview in which he spoke, among other things, about the BLM sponsored riots that are taking place across the United States. This is what he had to say on this subject:

“The Black Lives Matter protests which is a huge, incredible development: the biggest social movement in American history. A huge number of people involved spontaneously, solidarity black and white together, constructive goals, develop good programs, really great things happening… At the fringes they are people who are breaking windows, intimidating somebody at the restaurant… Things like this shouldn’t be happening, but that’s not what’s going on. What’s going on is a massive, non-violent, constructive social movement.”

As the tennis great John McEnroe used to say to wayward referees, “You cannot be serious. You just cannot be serious, sir.”

Professor Chomsky has made a career of calling out lying and hypocrisy. Today we must call out his own.

Below are some news pieces Professor Chomsky may want to read at his leisure.

From a Fox News report of June 29:

“Nationwide, Floyd related protests and riots lasted 3 weeks in 140 U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C., New York; Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. By June 4 at least 40 cities in 23 states had imposed curfews. High-end boutiques in Beverly Hills and New York like Gucci and Chanel were looted, luxury stores in Santa Monica and big box retailers like Target and Macy’s across the US have suffered tens of millions in losses.”

And this:

The costliest civil disorder in U.S. history: That’s what insurance experts and city officials say the riots and demonstrations following the death of George Floyd are shaping up to be. From police overtime to losses from fire – as well as theft and other destruction – costs of the unrest are adding up. And for the first time since statistics were collected in 1950, the insurance industry has labeled this a “riot and civil disorder” catastrophe in multiple states. In Minneapolis, where some 400 businesses were damaged, owners and insurance experts estimate costs of the damage to exceed $500 million, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

A quote from another news item: “From police injuries to financial losses from looters, the aftermath from weeks of cross-country protests is bringing some cities to their knees.”

And here is an assessment of those peaceful and constructive protests by an insurance industry journal:

“The civil disturbance that started in Minneapolis after the killing by police of George Floyd spread to 20 other states — an unprecedented property insurance catastrophe that will likely impact policy renewals and could even persuade some insurers to exclude coverage for damage caused by riots, executives for Verisk’s Property Claim Services said. In the U.S., there has been no precedent for a riot catastrophe like this,” Tom Johansmeyer, head of PCS.”

And should we not mention Portland which has been burning for over one hundred days running and New York City which has been essentially hollowed out?

Some people on the “fringes breaking windows?” Is that really what’s happening, Professor?

The above reports are from weeks ago. The damage has only grown much worse since. There can be little doubt that when all is said and done the cumulative costs and losses will run into hundreds of billions of dollars. And that’s if we are lucky enough not to disintegrate in the process.

This catastrophic destruction is not the work of some far-off fringe. After all, how could a small minority on the periphery wreak such immense havoc? No, this kind of violence is the thrust and focus of this criminal enterprise which is being disingenuously portrayed by the Left as a “social justice” movement.

Do you want to know who is on the fringes of this campaign? They are those gullible enough to show up at the protests believing that there will be peaceful marching. These people are what Lenin used to call “useful idiots.”

The real heart of this “peaceful movement” are the violent vandals who have done an excellent job indeed. They have wrecked half the country.

“Constructive” and “non-violent?” Did you really say that Professor Chomsky?

What exactly is “non-violent” about all this terrible violence?

And what is “constructive” about a crusade launched under false pretenses? A sham claim is made – that the US is a racist country – and violence is let loose. This movement is not constructive – it is destructive. The whole travesty is based on a bogus allegation and conducted under a fake guise.

Since he is someone who has always portrayed himself as a scholar of complete intellectual honesty and integrity, we call upon Professor Chomsky to retract his statements about the situation on the ground which run in complete contravention of reality.

It is difficult to believe that anyone in his right mind would describe these devastating riots “non-violent” and “constructive.” But this is what leftists do, for they are masters of reality inversion. To listen to the leftist-speak is to enter a Twilight Zone. To them white is black and black is white. To them a violent insurrection is a gentle demonstration. To leftists a man is a woman and a woman is a man, and if you do not agree to their insanities you get cancelled and fired. And then you get threatened and you have to run for your life. This is the Left’s modus operandi, which is not surprising since psychologically and ideologically they hail from the same root as tyrants and totalitarians. We have shown this in the graphic called the Ideological Pedigree Table of Values and Views. Please do take a look if you have time.

Here is what is happening before our eyes: With America mired in a multi-prong crisis – which, sadly, is largely of our own making – the Hard Left has sensed that our society has been weakened to the point where it can be toppled. Taking advantage of the present weakness, the radicals are now trying to achieve their goal. From the very beginning, they have done all they could to encourage the vandals on the streets who have risen to the task by unleashing brutality that has caused heavy damage on many fronts and levels and shook America to its core. The army of wreckers have beaten and injured countless people, destroyed thousands of businesses and brought ruin to a number of cities. Rowing gangs of looters have terrorized and demoralized large swathes of the American population. The violence and chicanery have shaken this country deeply, pushing it to the brink. These domestic terrorists have been all along cheered on and protected by their enablers and shills in the media, in academia, in the courts and in the Democrat Party. What we are witnessing right now is nothing other than a full-fledged, coordinated assault against America by the elements of the Hard Left. The objective of this attack is the overthrow of our society.

These are no civil rights protests to bring justice and equality to an oppressed minority. The charge of systemic institutionalized racism against black people is completely false (see here, here and here). The only form of institutional racism that exists in the United States is discrimination against whites and Asians in education and employment. Just recently the US Justice Department found a leading IVY League university guilty of gross discrimination against white and Asian applicants whereby such applicants had a ninety percent lower chance of being admitted than black candidates with comparable scores. From a US Department of Justice press release:

“The Department of Justice today notified Yale University of its findings that Yale illegally discriminates against Asian American and white applicants in its undergraduate admissions process in violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The findings are the result of a two-year investigation in response to a complaint by Asian American groups concerning Yale’s conduct.”

If this is not racism what is, asks Patrick Buchanan in his column The Progressive Racism Of The Ivy League. This kind of anti-white, anti-Asian racism is the common practice in academia as well as in other spheres of our societal life such as government employment and contracts. The truth is that black Americans are the beneficiaries of reverse discrimination and numerous other forms of preferential treatment.

Please make no mistake. The specious charge of anti-black racism is a mere cover for unleashing violence dressed up as a “social justice movement” whose real purpose is to destabilize our society and bring about the Hard Left’s extra-electoral coup d’état.

The Best of Vasko Kohlmayer

 

Vasko Kohlmayer [send him mail] is a naturalized citizen.
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Hospitals May Be Slow To Add Vitamin D To Covid-19 Treatment Regimens Because of Loss of Income – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2020

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/09/no_author/hospitals-may-be-slow-to-add-vitamin-d-to-covid-19-treatment-regimens-because-of-loss-of-income/

By Bill Sardi

A growing body of published studies indicate vitamin D supplementation may allay the symptoms and severity of COVID-19 infections, enough to keep hospitalized patients out of the intensive care unit.  The most recent of these studies, published in The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (Aug 29,2020) is more than convincing.

But this remarkable study is not likely to change the practices of modern medicine, even though it completely abolished COVID-19-related deaths in the intensive care unit (ICU) and reduced admission from a standard COVID-19 care ward to the ICU from 50% to 2%…

The rest here

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