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Erie Times E-Edition Article-How some regulation can help markets function better

Posted by M. C. on September 12, 2020

When there are information asymmetries, market participants need some minimum level of assurances – provided and enforced by a credibly independent arbiter, such as the government…

Credibility=government – Catherine Rampell is either delusional or someone’s hack. I suspect the latter.

The only reason companies demand government regulation is to make competition too complex and expensive for smaller companies, or labs in this case.

There is a reason car companies don’t complain about emissions requirements and multiple crash tests from every direction for new car designs.
https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=0f7598765

Regulate us – please. That’s what big pharmaceutical companies are implicitly begging the Trump administration to do, because of a public crisis of confidence in any forthcoming COVID19 vaccine. The plea is surprising on its face. It also rebuts the GOP’s entire understanding of regulation – specifically, that regulation is necessarily bad for businesses, consumers and economic growth.

Since the spring, the administration has hyped miracle cures for COVID19, regardless of what’s known about their efficacy or risks: hydroxychloroquine, bleach, convalescent plasma, whatever that MyPillow guy is hawking lately. Recently, President Donald Trump suggested that a vaccine could, conveniently, come to market just before Election Day.

Meanwhile, his Food and Drug Administration commissioner said he was prepared to authorize a vaccine early.

Americans are understandably apprehensive.

Six in 10 Americans worry political pressure from the administration will lead the FDA to rush vaccine approval before confirming it’s safe and effective, the Kaiser Family Foundation has found. And only about four in 10 would get the vaccine, even if it were free, if the FDA approved it before the election.

Fearful that these suspicions might reduce the market for a drug tremendous resources have gone into developing, Big Pharma took an unusual step Tuesday.

The chief executives of nine drug companies publicly pledged to ‘make the safety and well-being of vaccinated individuals the top priority in development of the first COVID19 vaccines.’ Moreover, they vowed not to seek FDA approval before vaccine safety and efficacy had been established in Phase 3 trials – the industry standard – implying that they would do this even if the Trump administration allowed (or encouraged) them to cut corners.

This pledge reflects several notable developments.

One is how much damage Trump has inflicted upon the perceived credibility of public health institutions, as he has upon the National Weather Service, Census Bureau and other independent agencies.

Another is that drug companies – which historically have sought fewer restrictions and faster approval from the FDA – once complained that the bar for bringing new drugs to market was too high. Now they worry that bar appears too low.

This is not the first time the Trump administration has sought to lower the regulatory bar in the name of helping industry and boosting economic growth even when industry objected. See, for example, its rollback of rules regulating methane emissions, automotive fuel-efficiency standards and mercury pollution. These actions were opposed by companies the administration claimed to be helping.

Recent vaccine regulatory jockeying underscores the flaw in the GOP narrative that regulation and economic activity are inversely related – that is, less regulation always means more economic growth.

When there are information asymmetries, market participants need some minimum level of assurances – provided and enforced by a credibly independent arbiter, such as the government – for markets to function. If you don’t trust the party on the other side of a transaction not to cheat or otherwise harm you, you’ll be less likely to engage in the transaction. (This observation is not original to me; an economics Nobel was awarded for it two decades ago.) Regulation, in other words, can be pro-market. It can facilitate the trust necessary for more economic activity to occur. After all, it would be virtually impossible for consumers to independently assess whether the beef at their local grocery store is untainted; whether a used car is fatally defective; or whether their local bank will keep their deposits safe. Yelp stars alone are no substitute for capital requirements.

Alas, the administration’s response to the pandemic has included rolling back more rules and relaxing enforcement of rules still on the books – including those related to public health. Lax government oversight threatens to hold back not just the market for vaccines but other industries affected by the pandemic, too. For instance, airlines say they’re requiring masks aboard. But absent a governmentenforced mandate, customers who see, say, viral photos of disobedient passengers might question whether the policy is actually enforced. And they might just stay home.

There’s a libertarianfriendly alternative to this worldview, one that also happened to win a Nobel Prize: Rather than using strict regulations to ensure honorable behavior, strong property rights and the frictionless ability to sue over those rights could theoretically achieve the same end.

That is, if companies know consumers will win redress for fraud or injury, that threat should sufficiently incentivize quality and safety.

Presumably, Mitch McConnell and Trump believe such policies help the economy. But the fewer consumers who trust either government or corporations to ‘do the right thing,’ the longer it will take for public health – and the economy – to recover. Catherine Rampell is a Washington Post columnist. Email her at crampell@washpost.com.

Catherine Rampell

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Watch “Dr. Jordan Peterson | Is Neo-Marxism on the rise?” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on September 11, 2020

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America’s Alliance with NATO Needs to Change | The National Interest

Posted by M. C. on September 11, 2020

“The first step in this process should be for the United States to transition from being the frontline defense of NATO countries to a supporting role. European democracies in the 1950s were poor and destitute. No more. Germany, for example, has the world’s fourth-largest economy. It is more than financially capable of providing the bulk of its own security. U.S. troops, meanwhile, should be redeployed to home bases where they can focus on defending America’s borders and global interests.”

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/skeptics/americas-alliance-nato-needs-change-168626

by Daniel L. Davis

Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, NATO is facing a threat of a potentially existential nature. No, it’s not a would-be Russian invasion of Western Europe. It’s the possibility of a fratricidal war between its own members, Greece and Turkey. Before the unthinkable happens, the United States should reassess the future of NATO and its role in it.

Turkey and Greece have long had an antagonistic relationship. Since becoming members of NATO in 1952, they have twice been at the brink of war against one another. The first was in 1974 when a Greek military junta threatened to join all of Cyprus to the Greek mainland and Turkish military forces invaded the northern part of the Island. A tense standoff occurred and the island has been split since.

The second was in 1996 over a dispute in the Aegean Sea. The seemingly trivial dispute that began over a salvage operation of a Greek ship that ran aground off the Turkish coast almost escalated into a full-blown war between the two over conflicting claims of sovereignty.

Conflict was averted, but tensions and emotions never fully cooled. With the discovery of large deposits of natural gas throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, however, the stakes of which country is sovereign over those rocks have taken on considerably greater urgency. Turkey is taking a far harder stance, elevating its national interests above the common interests of NATO.

Turkish vice president Fuat Oktay said in an interview that if Greece attempting “to expand its territorial waters isn’t a cause of war, then what is?’’ Ankara is butting heads with more than just Greece, however.

Relations between Turkey and France continue to fray over Paris’s displeasure regarding Ankara’s deepening involvement against French interests in Libya. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned that Greece and Turkey were moving “closer and closer to the abyss,” and that if the two don’t resolve their disputes, then at some point a “spark, however small, could lead to a disaster.”

Meanwhile, as Nick Squires wrote in the Christian Science Monitor, “France and the United Arab Emirates have sent aircraft and warships to back up Greece, while Cyprus, Israel, and Egypt also have a stake in prospecting for hydrocarbons in the eastern Mediterranean.” If you’re thinking this doesn’t sound like the actions of closely aligned allies, then you are correct. What it does sound like, however, is increasing evidence of an alliance that has failed to adjust with the times.

The Cold War world that existed in 1952 when Turkey and Greece entered NATO was one in which a group of relatively free nations put aside their differences for the collective good of them all to balance the power of the Soviet Union. That world ended with the dissolution of the USSR.

Instead of acknowledging the changed global conditions and adjusting NATO accordingly, the West clung to the past and tried to ride the status quo into a static future. If we don’t take action quickly, then our unwillingness to acknowledge reality could cost us far more than merely the loss of an alliance structure.

Every president from Truman to Trump has understandably complained that European members of NATO have not been paying enough for their own security, forcing a major burden on America. But the issue is no longer about just making Europeans “pay more,” but as the potential for fratricidal war between Turkey and Greece is exposing, we need major reform and change.

The first step in this process should be for the United States to transition from being the frontline defense of NATO countries to a supporting role. European democracies in the 1950s were poor and destitute. No more. Germany, for example, has the world’s fourth-largest economy. It is more than financially capable of providing the bulk of its own security. U.S. troops, meanwhile, should be redeployed to home bases where they can focus on defending America’s borders and global interests.

Any military alliance system the United States enters into (or stays within) must include reciprocating benefits for both countries and result in a strengthening of U.S. defenses. It should not be a one-way street where America provides the majority of the benefits to other lands and shoulders the majority of the risks of a new war—especially one in which its interests would otherwise not be at risk.

U.S. policymakers have, for many decades, been unwilling to even consider adjusting the NATO structure. If the country fails to take the rational action to do so now, however, then the cost may be the self-destruction of the alliance when its members begin shooting at one another, forcing the rest to take sides. That would be the worst time to take the issue on and far worse for U.S. interests. Now is the time to act, while there is still time to avoid disaster.

Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow for Defense Priorities and a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after twenty-one years, including four combat deployments. Follow him @DanielLDavis1.

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bionic mosquito: What of Rights?

Posted by M. C. on September 11, 2020

To have properly ordered rights, there must be a shared understanding of what is good. It still remains, as Murray Rothbard offered, that the foundation of natural law offers the only means by which such questions can be answered, therefore it is only through a foundation of natural law that we can defend individual liberty.

http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2020/09/what-of-rights.html

What of Rights?

When Rights Go Wrong, Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P. (audio)

Regarding the seeming failure of liberalism, Fr. Legge begins with a reference to Patrick Deneen’s book, Why Liberalism Failed: a major cause is the Enlightenment’s focus on autonomy and the rights of the individual. “Is the Enlightenment idea of liberty the core theoretical problem for liberalism today?”

Regular readers here have walked with me while I have developed my views. Fundamentally, an underlying cultural foundation (and, in my opinion, a specific cultural foundation) is necessary in order for liberty as promised in the Enlightenment to hold. Yet the Enlightenment, while offering that promise of liberty, at the same time offered that the cultural foundation was not fundamental.

Fr. Legge offers his perspective, well-preceding the Enlightenment: we must grasp the true nature between law, justice, and individual rights and the common good. He begins with Thomas Aquinas and the reality that man is born into a social environment. We have the possibility of conflicts horizontally (between individuals), and vertically (between an individual and the common good). I know the phrase “common good” is troubling for many libertarians; just sit tight.

Beginning with Aquinas, he offers that justice is according to God’s plan; God’s will is secondary to this – He acts according to the order He conceived. Therefore, law is not an expression of God’s will, but of God’s reasoned plan. Hence, law is an expression of reason – even for God.

I know there is this question: can God act contrary to this reason? For Aquinas the answer is no, and anyway, why would He – or, more specifically, why would He have to do so? God was quite capable of creating an order that would not require Him to act in a manner that was contradictory or arbitrary when compared to this order.

Aquinas’s definition of law is offered:

An ordination of reason for the common good, made by one with authority and promulgated.

Proper human justice takes this into account, along with the right ordering in human acts – both horizontally and vertically. For this, there are three key elements: first, an ordering; second, according to reason, third, to the good. The key issue when it comes to the downfall of the liberal order since the is this question of “good.” What is the “good”? This will come later.

With this, Fr. Legge is ready to take up the question of rights: does Aquinas have a theory of individual rights? It is often thought, incorrectly, that he does not. But it is through Thomas where an issue often raised against the Enlightenment – the explosion of individual so-called rights – can be addressed.

Aquinas does speak of objective rights, ius, that an individual can assert. The Latin word can translate into rights, the just thing, fair, or what is right. The ius is the object, or measure, of justice. Have I rendered what is due to you? Conversely, I am due something from you – this ius. And here, we can find a conception of a right – a right that can be enforced against others.

Aquinas does not conceive of these rights as an abstraction from the teleological order. I take this to mean (and it is consistent with my earlier work on this), that just because natural law dictates an act, it does not mean that another person can require me, by law, to perform that act.

So, if these rights are not an abstraction from the teleological order, then where are these from? Rights are a function of justice, directed toward the common good. And it is here where things went wrong – accelerated in the Enlightenment, but not born there.

To examine this, he starts with two other Catholics: one a Franciscan and one a Jesuit, who offer very different accounts of individual rights – “because they lost sight of the truth…” (after which the room erupts in laughter at this inside-Catholic-baseball humor from this Dominican) “…that justice, law, and ius all depend on, or are facts of, a wise and reasoned order of individuals to the good.”

He points to William of Occam, the fourteenth century Franciscan nominalist, as the primary culprit on this score. Occam rooted law, not in God’s reason or intellect, but in God’s will. Law ceased to be something that ordered us to the good, but became nothing more than God’s command.

 

He then points to Francisco Suárez, a seventeenth century Jesuit. While an opponent of Occam and often praising Aquinas, he would change definitions to the extent that the concepts presented by Aquinas were lost. I will admit, this portion was a bit way too far inside-Catholic-baseball for me – the nuance of agreement vs. disagreement with Aquinas was not drawn out in a manner that I could well comprehend.

So how does this lead to the crisis of liberalism today? The shift in the law and common good, beginning in Occam and completed in Suarez, left us a theory of law fundamentally different than Aquinas’s in two ways: first, a loss of the recognition that law is an ordination of reason to the common good, instead becoming an imposition of an obligation by the will of a superior; second, a loss of the sense that rights are a feature of the over-arching teleological order to the good in which the rational creature is placed, instead dependent on the moral power of the creature without reference to that order.

In other words: law has become a function of will – and this, with the death of God, became the will of the strong man; second, the larger context in which I live can in no way be allowed to infringe on my individual rights. For example, looting is just me expressing my rights. (Four months ago, I would have written that walking into any restroom I like is just me expressing my rights. Oh, what happened to those good old days….)

The Enlightenment magnified this, but this change wasn’t born in the Enlightenment. Instead of an objective good, we now have the good as defined by the strongest earthly superior. We now claim rights without a firm foundation of what is good, allowing for a never-ending proliferation of rights-claims.

Even God is not free to make such arbitrary choices. He created the ordered world, subject to reason – His reason, therefore why would He ever contradict this? This is an ordering to the good – an objective, not arbitrary good; it is a good subject to reason, not to the possibility of an ever-changing will.

So much for the past. Now what? What should be done? There is no going back to an idealized past. Yet, we must understand what we need to recover. In my own words: we don’t go back to the past; we must return to the center. There is a center, relative to which we are sometimes closer and sometimes farther. It isn’t going back to the past, but returning to the center.

What is due to another, the ius, depends on the over-arching teleological order; this order regards persons, living in communities. There is no autonomous individual: we come into the world as a child of a mother and father, in a community, with relationships with many others along many spectrums. This is the natural condition of the individual.

Hence, rights are not arbitrarily chosen. Rights affirm what is required if persons are to be properly ordered to each other. Which brings us back to the issue of the common good. Does the common good infringe on the rights of the individual? Not in a Thomistic understanding.

The common good is the good which can be shared by many without diminishment to any individual. A simple example offered by Fr. Legge is the joy that many can take at the victory of a sports team. A broader example I offer is that of a well-functioning market. It is difficult to deny that such markets are a common good, and certain rights are required to protect and defend this common good – for example, rights in person and property. Well-functioning markets clearly do not infringe on the rights of any individual; in fact, such markets are a good for the individual. The idea of ius, what is right, will defend this common good.

Fr. Legge offers other common goods: justice, truth, and peace. Here again, the achievement of these does not diminish any individual’s liberty. These enhance individual liberty. Paraphrasing Aristotle: the city exists not merely that men might live, but that they might live well.

All of these rights, born from a teleological understanding of the good, are ignored or even crushed today. The common good rights of person, property, justice, truth and peace are all attacked daily, both by government and by many that the government enables.

Further, law that defends the just right of the citizen is quite different than pork-barrel spending. There is no common good in this, as such actions cannot be shared without diminishment toward some at the favor of others. One can think of many of the so-called rights claimed by those majoring in grievance studies in university in the same way: these claims are not for the common good, as they cannot be shared without diminishment to some individuals.

Conclusion

At its foundation, the disagreement is about what is good. It is this disagreement that results in varying rights claims, and much of this discussion centers on rights claims not for the common good but at the cost of the common good.

I know that the idea of natural law causes grief for many, ranging from those who find the idea of an objective good abhorrent, to those who claim to find no basis for it in the Bible. To the former, I suggest that there is no other path to liberty; to the latter, I offer this.

To have properly ordered rights, there must be a shared understanding of what is good. It still remains, as Murray Rothbard offered, that the foundation of natural law offers the only means by which such questions can be answered, therefore it is only through a foundation of natural law that we can defend individual liberty.

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What will be the foreign policy of the next US President?, by Thierry Meyssan

Posted by M. C. on September 11, 2020

The two programs for the Trump and Biden candidacies are not similar to those of previous candidates. It is no longer a question of adjusting the United States to the changing world, but of defining what they will be. The question is existential, so it is quite possible that things will degenerate and end in violence. For some, the country must be a nation at the service of its citizens, for others it must restore its imperial status.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article210762.html

by Thierry Meyssan

The U.S. 2020 presidential campaign pits two radically different visions of the United States: empire or nation?

On the one hand, Washington’s claim to dominate the world by “containment” – a strategy articulated by George Kennan in 1946 and followed by all presidents until 2016 – and on the other hand, the rejection of imperialism and the desire to facilitate the fortunes of Americans in general – a strategy articulated by President Andrew Jackson (1829-37) and taken up only by President Donald Trump (2017-20).

Each of these two camps wields rhetoric that masks its true practice. Democrats and Republicans pose as heralds of the “free world” in the face of “dictatorships”, as defenders of racial, gender and sexual orientation discrimination, and as champions of the fight against “global warming”. The Jacksonians, for their part, take turns denouncing the corruption, perversity and ultimately hypocrisy of their predecessors while calling to fight for their nation and not for the empire.

The two camps have in common only the same cult of force; whether it is at the service of the empire (Democrats and Republicans) or the nation (Jacksonians).

The fact that the Jacksonians unexpectedly became a majority in the country and took control of the Republican Party adds to the confusion, but should not confuse trumpism with what the Republican ideology has been since World War II.

In reality, Democrats and Republicans tend to be well-to-do people or professionals in new technologies, while Jacksonians – like the “yellow vests” in France – are rather poor and professionally tied to the land from which they cannot escape.

For the 2020 campaign, Democrats and Republicans are united behind former Vice President Jo Biden. He and his supporters are extremely voluble about their intentions:
- “The Power of America’s Example”, by Joseph R. Biden Jr., Voltaire Network, 11 July 2019.
- “Why America Must Lead Again. Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump”, by Joseph R. Biden Jr., Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020.
And especially the statement by senior Republican national security officials to Democrat Biden :
- “A Statement by Former Republican National Security Officials”, Voltaire Network, 20 August 2020.
On the contrary, Donald Trump is evasive in writing:
- “Donald Trump Second Term Agenda”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network, 24 August 2020 (foreign policy is the small paragraph at the end of the text).

In my view, the main disputes are not stated, but are constantly implied.

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As a television host, Donald Trump dreamed of giving the country back to the people as President Andrew Jackson did.

The Jacksonian agenda

As soon as he took office, Donald Trump questioned the Rumsfeld/Cebrowsky strategy of annihilating the state structures of all the countries of the “Broader Middle East” without exception and announced his wish to bring home the troops lost in the “war without end”. This goal remains at the top of his priorities in 2020 (“Stop Endless Wars and Bring Our Troops Home”).

As a result, he excluded the Director of the CIA and the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee from regular meetings of the National Security Council. In so doing, he deprived the supporters of imperialism of their main tool of conquest.

See:
- “Presidential Memorandum: Organization of the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network, 28 January 2017. And “Donald Trump winds up “the” organization of US imperialism”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Anoosha Boralessa, Voltaire Network, 31 January 2017.

There followed a battle for the presidency of this council with the indictment of General Michael T. Flynn, then his replacement by General H. R. McMaster, the exceptionalist John R. Bolton, and finally Robert C. O’Brien.

In May 2017, Donald Trump called on U.S. allies to immediately cease their support for jihadists charged with implementing the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy. This was the Riyadh speech to the Sunni heads of state and then to NATO heads of state and government. President Trump had declared NATO obsolete before changing his mind. However, he obtained not the abandonment of Russia’s policy of containment, but the halving of the credits used for this purpose and the allocation of the funds thus preserved to the fight against jihadism. In doing so, it partially stopped making NATO an instrument of imperialism and turned it into a defensive alliance. It has therefore demanded that its members contribute to its budget. Support for jihadism, however, was pursued by the supporters of imperialism with private means, notably the KKR Fund.

See:
- “Presidential Memorandum: Plan to Defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network, 28 January 2017.
- “Donald Trump’s Speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network, 21 May 2017.
- “Remarks by Donald Trump at NATO Unveiling of the Article 5 and Berlin Wall Memorials”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network, 25 May 2017.

Hence his watchwords: “Wipe Out Global Terrorists Who Threaten to Harm Americans” and “Get Allies to Pay their Fair Share.

Like the Democrats and Republicans, the Jacksonian Donald Trump is committed to restoring the capabilities of his armies (“Maintain and Expand America’s Unrivaled Military Strength”). Unlike his predecessors, he did not seek to transform the Pentagon’s delusional management by privatizing one department at a time, but rather developed a plan to recruit researchers to compete technologically once again with the Russian and Chinese armies.

See:
- “National Security Strategy of the United States of America”, December 2017. And “Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 26 December 2017.

Only Donald Trump’s desire to regain primacy in missile matters is supported by Democrats and Republicans, although they do not agree on how to achieve it (“Build a Great Cybersecurity Defense System and Missile Defense System”) : the tenant of the White House wants the USA to equip itself alone with these weapons that it can eventually deploy on the territory of its allies, while its opponents want to involve the allies in order to maintain their hold on them. From the point of view of the Democrats and Republicans, the problem is obviously not withdrawing from the Cold War disarmament treaties to build a new arsenal, but the loss of means of diplomatic pressure on Russia.

A professional politician, Joe Biden hopes to restore the imperial status of the former First World Power.

The program of Democrats and non-party Republicans

Joe Biden proposes to focus on three objectives: (1) reinvigorate democracy (2) train the middle class to cope with globalization (3) regain global leadership.

- Reinvigorate democracy: in his words, this means basing public action on the “informed consent” of Americans. In doing so, he used Walter Lipmann’s 1922 terminology, according to which democracy presupposes “manufacturing consent”. This theory was discussed at length by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in 1988. It obviously has nothing to do with the definition formulated by President Abraham Lincoln: “Democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people”.

Joe Biden believes he is achieving his goal by restoring the morality of public action through the practice of “political correctness”. For example, he condemns “the horrible practice [of President Trump] of separating families and placing the children of immigrants in private prisons,” without saying that President Trump was merely applying a democratic law to show its futility. Or he announces that he wants to reaffirm the condemnation of torture that President Trump justified, without saying that the latter, like President Obama, has already banned the practice while maintaining life imprisonment without trial in Guantánamo.

He announced his intention to convene a Summit for Democracy to fight against corruption, to defend the “Free World” against authoritarian regimes, and to advance human rights. In view of his definition of democracy, it is a question of uniting allied states by denouncing scapegoats for what is wrong (the “corrupt”) and promoting human rights in the Anglo-Saxon sense and especially not in the French sense. That is to say, to stop police violence and not to help citizens to participate in decision-making. This summit will launch an appeal to the private sector so that new technologies cannot be used by authoritarian states to monitor their citizens (but the USA and its NSA can always use them in the interest of the “Free World”).

Finally, Joe Biden concludes this chapter by highlighting his role in the Transatlantic Commission for Electoral Integrity alongside his friends, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who overthrew the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, and Michael Chertoff, former US Secretary of Homeland Security, who put all US citizens under surveillance. Not forgetting John Negroponte who organized the Contras in Nicaragua and Daesh in Iraq.

- Educating the middle class to cope with globalization. Joe Biden believes that the politics that have been pursued since the dissolution of the USSR have led to the rapid disappearance of the middle class, and that training the remaining middle class in the use of new technologies will prevent the relocation of their jobs.

- Renewing U.S. leadership. In the name of democracy, this means stopping the rise of “populists, nationalists and demagogues. This formulation helps us understand that democracy, according to Joe Biden, is not only the fabrication of consent, but also the eradication of the popular will. If demagogues pervert democratic institutions, populists serve the popular will and nationalists serve the community.

Joe Biden then specifies that he will stop wars “forever”; a formulation that seems to support the same goal as the Jacksonians, but differs in terminology. It is in fact a question of validating the current adaptation of the system to the limits imposed by President Trump: why make US soldiers die abroad when one can pursue the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy with jihadists at a lower cost? All the more so since when he was only an opposition senator, Joe Biden gave his name to the plan to partition Iraq that the Pentagon was trying to impose.

A verse follows on the enlargement of NATO to include Latin American, African and Pacific allies. Far from being obsolete, the Alliance will once again become the heart of U.S. imperialism.

Finally, Joe Biden pleads for the renewal of the 5+1 agreement with Iran and disarmament treaties with Russia. The agreement with President Hassan Rohani aims to classically divide Muslim countries into Sunni and Shia, while the disarmament treaties aim to confirm that the Biden administration would not envisage a global confrontation, but the continued containment of its competitor.

The program of the Democratic Party candidate and non-party Republicans concludes with the assurance of joining the Paris Accord and taking leadership in the fight against global warming. Joe Biden specifies that he will not give gifts to China, which is relocating its most polluting industries along the Silk Road. On the other hand, he omits to say that his friend, Barack Obama, before entering politics, was the drafter of the statutes of the Chicago Carbon Emissions Trading Exchange. The fight against global warming is not so much an ecological issue as a matter for bankers.

Conclusion

It must be said that everything is opposed to a clarification. Four years of upheavals by President Trump have only succeeded in replacing the “endless wars” with a low-intensity private war. There are certainly far fewer deaths, but it is still war.

The elites who enjoy imperialism are not ready to give up their privileges.

So it is to be feared that the U.S. will be forced to go through an internal conflict, a civil war, and break up like the Soviet Union once did.

Thierry Meyssan
Translation
Roger Lagassé
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The Welfare State Did What Slavery Couldn’t Do | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on September 11, 2020

Lawmakers do black people no favor when they advance a narrative that dismisses the importance of the family structure and offers instead dependence on government rather than independence as human beings. As Williams stated, “The undeniable truth is that neither slavery nor Jim Crow nor the harshest racism has decimated the black family the way the welfare state has….

https://mises.org/wire/welfare-state-did-what-slavery-couldnt-do?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=4da83ae339-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-4da83ae339-228343965

The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn’t do….And that is to destroy the black family. –Walter E. Williams, the Wall Street Journal

On August 14, the Commission on Social Status of Black Men and Boys Act was signed into law. It establishes a nineteen-member panel within the Commission on Civil Rights to examine social problems that disproportionately affect black males.

The act is a conscious response to the death of George Floyd, with the opening section of the bill being subtitled the “George Floyd and Walter Scott Notification Act.” Floyd died on May 25 after a white police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes. Walter Scott died on April 4, 2015, after being shot by a white police officer who had stopped him for a broken brake light. Both have become symbols of police brutality against black males. Invoking them indicates that the new commission will focus on the disparity with which law enforcement and the court system treat black males.

Any spotlight shone on the neglected problem of discrimination against males deserves applause. Higher education is often used to illustrate how far the pendulum has swung from several decades ago, when discrimination against women was rife. A February 1 article in Forbes, “The Collegiate War against Males,” commented on the recent decline in college enrollment. “Most of that fall…is concentrated among men. Between 2015 and 2019…the number of men on campuses declined by 691,643, almost double the smaller fall among women, 348,955. In percentage terms, the male decline of 8.34% was far more than double that among women, 3.18%….In 2015, there were 32% more women than men, but now the differential is nearly 40%.” From family courts to the handling of sexual violence, from protective laws for women to harsh prison sentencing for men, the government unjustly advantages one gender over the other instead of treating all individuals equally under the same law.

The Commission on Social Status of Black Men and Boys is not likely to increase justice, however; it may well damage the cause it seems to champion.

There is reason for skepticism. A DC Commission on Black Men and Boys was established in 2001 by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), who also cochairs the Congressional Caucus on Black Men and Boys. Predictably, Norton applauds the new act, because it “mandates government action to help improve the condition of African-American men and boys.” There are two takeaways from her comment: government will become more deeply involved in directing the lives of black males, and two decades of activity by the first commission has accomplished little.

The government mandate is unfortunate, for several reasons.

Improving the status and safety of anyone is laudable, but a number of problems exist with the bill’s approach. For one thing, social status refers to a person’s standing in a community. It refers to how highly others in society value a person. As long as people are nonviolent, the government has no business dictating what or whom they value. It is akin to mandating what people must think and feel, which is a matter of social control—not justice.

Moreover, the government can elevate the social status of a group only by changing their legal status and treatment. If the change makes all people equal under just law, then it is an improvement. If it elevates one class by harming the status of another class, then it is discriminatory and unjust on its face.

There are two basic ways that government can use the law to influence social status. It can remove any legal entitlements or disadvantages for categories of people and allow the status of each individual to rise or fall on its own. Or it can redistribute status—in a manner similar to redistributing wealth—by extending privileges and opportunities to one group while denying them to another; affirmative action in university admission is an example. The new commission will almost certainly take the latter path. And the disadvantaged category will almost certainly be white males. (Women are unlikely to be disadvantaged, because they are still viewed as “oppressed.”) If the new Commission follows the lead of Norton’s original one, it will make frequent comparisons between the status of black males and white ones as a way to “prove” racial inequity. If this happens, males will be divided into warring groups—black and white—with one category of males benefiting at the expense of the other, with the interests of both in conflict.

Another objection: the new commission tacitly accepts the idea that there is institutionalized racism in America. Although racist individuals and organizations certainly exist, America has overwhelmingly purged its institutions of antiblack bias. Racism is not systemic. In an article entitled “Why Social Justice Warriors Battle ‘Institutional Racism,’” the noted black economist Walter Williams, who teaches at George Mason University, speculated on the ill-defined terms institutional racism and systemic racism. He wrote, “I suspect it means that they cannot identify the actual person or entities engaged in the practice….And it is seen by many, particularly the intellectual elite, as a desirable form of determining who gets what.”

On the other hand, a clear-cut misandry or antimale bias does exist in American institutions and culture. This is especially true of white heterosexual males, who politically lack the intersectional “advantage” of being a racial or sexual minority. But the antimale bias also applies to blacks who are disadvantaged simply because of their gender. In fighting this bias, they should find common cause with white males instead of being politically juxtaposed.

Yet another objection to the commission is that its members almost certainly accept “the legacy of slavery” as the cause of any racism in America. This means it will not address the single most powerful cause of black impoverishment: the decline of the black family, for which government bears much responsibility. The black social theorist Thomas Sowell, who teaches at Stanford University, has written extensively on the decline of the black family. In his article “A Legacy of Liberalism,” Sowell rejects the argument that current black impoverishment is the residue of slavery or due to inherent racism. He refers to “the legacy of slavery” argument as a reason not to think about the subject or rely on evidence, because it replaces research with an emotional reaction. “If we wanted to be serious about evidence,” Sowell observed, “we might compare where blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state….Despite the grand myth that black economic progress began or accelerated with the passage of the civil rights laws and ‘war on poverty’ programs of the 1960s, the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. This was before any of those programs began.”

In his article “The Legacy of the Welfare State,” Williams agreed. “The No. 1 problem among blacks is the effects stemming from a very weak family structure. Children from fatherless homes are likelier to drop out of high school, die by suicide, have behavioral disorders, join gangs, commit crimes and end up in prison. They are also likelier to live in poverty-stricken households. But is the weak black family a legacy of slavery?…Here’s my question: Was the increase in single-parent black families after 1960 a legacy of slavery, or might it be a legacy of the welfare state ushered in by the War on Poverty?”

In another article Sowell answered, “A vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of racial oppression. In 1960, before this expansion of the welfare state, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent. By 1985, 67 percent of black children were raised with either one parent or no parent.” The percentage has held fairly steady since then. And, statistically, the parent figure is usually a mother or a grandmother.

Being effectively fatherless can be devastating. The paper “What Can the Federal Government Do to Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities?,” issued by the US Department of Justice, offered statistics on children from fatherless homes. The children account for:

  • Suicide: 63 percent of youth suicides
  • Runaways: 90 percent of all homeless and runaway youths
  • Behavioral disorders: 85 percent of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders
  • High school dropouts: 71 percent of all high school dropouts
  • Juvenile detention rates: 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions
  • Substance abuse: 75 percent of adolescent patients in substance abuse centers

Lawmakers do black people no favor when they advance a narrative that dismisses the importance of the family structure and offers instead dependence on government rather than independence as human beings. As Williams stated, “The undeniable truth is that neither slavery nor Jim Crow nor the harshest racism has decimated the black family the way the welfare state has….The most damage done to black Americans is inflicted by those politicians, civil rights leaders and academics who assert that every problem confronting blacks is a result of a legacy of slavery and discrimination. That’s a vision that guarantees perpetuity for the problems.”

Author:

Contact Wendy McElroy

Wendy McElroy is a Canadian individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist magazine in 1982.

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Watch “A Nobel Peace Prize For Trump?” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on September 10, 2020

Check out discussion @ 20:00.

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US Confirms Will Pull 2,200 Troops Out of Iraq – News From Antiwar.com

Posted by M. C. on September 10, 2020

Don’t believe it even if you see it.

They will likely go to some other Godforsaken place, dying doing some other government’s dirty work.

https://news.antiwar.com/2020/09/09/us-confirms-will-pull-2200-troops-out-of-iraq/

CENTCOM officials say that the process has been considered for months, and confirmed Wednesday what the administration has said recently, that there will be a US drawdown in Iraq before the election. 2,200 troops will leave Iraq by the end of this month.

At times the Pentagon has resisted major troop cuts by the administration, but seems resigned to it this time, emphasizing that the US has made a “great sacrifice” in decades of Iraqi war, and vowing that the US would continue supporting the Iraqi government.

That is not a small point for them to emphasize, either. When the Iraqi parliament asked the US to withdraw, there was talk of the US cutting ties with Iraq entirely to punish them. That no longer seems to be contemplated.

With a pro-US premier now, Iraq isn’t pushing for an immediate pullout, and the US may want to lower troop levels this month, but probably won’t be out of Iraq entirely by the election either, leaving open whether the US is on their way out of Iraq until 2021.

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Julian Assange’s Trial Has Begun: Judge Warns Him Not To Speak Again & Remain Silent – Collective Evolution

Posted by M. C. on September 10, 2020

Most of the world knows why they hunted him, and why he’s been treated the way he’s been treated and tortured in prison. The same goes for people like Edward Snowden, it’s because they expose lies, corruption, deceit, immoral and unethical actions that their own governments, as well as governments around the world have participated in.

https://www.collective-evolution.com/2020/09/08/julian-assanges-trial-has-begun-judge-warns-him-not-to-speak-again-remain-silent/

By

CE Staff Writer

In Brief

  • The Facts:Julian Assange has been warned by the judge in his extradition case that he could be removed from court with the case continuing in his absence after he interjected while a lawyer for the US sparred with a high-profile witness in favour of assange.
  • Reflect On:Why do people like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden face such a harsh backlash from Governments? If governments and elite corporations aren’t doing anything wrong, what do they have to hide? Why are the censoring so much information?

What Happened: Julian Assange’s legal battle to avoid US extradition to the United States for leaking classified information has begun. The latest news is that “English judge Vanessa Baraitser warns the most famous publisher/journalist in the world – Julian Assange, tortured by UK authorities according to the UN – not to speak again or be removed entirely from the court and be tried for his life in his absence,” according to Afshin Rattansi, a British broadcaster, journalist and author.

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Over the years Assange has faced a number of smear campaigns and character assassinations that have been debunked, when in reality there are so many ‘high profile’ people around the word that support him and see quite clearly what is going on.

According to The Guardian, “Julian Assange has been warned by the judge in his extradition case that he could be removed from court with the case continuing in his absence after he interjected while a lawyer for the US authorities sparred with a high-profile witness giving evidence in support of the WikiLeaks founder.”

I suggest you visit The Wikileaks Instagram Page for more the most recent and accurate updates.

Why This Is Important: Most of the world knows why they hunted him, and why he’s been treated the way he’s been treated and tortured in prison. The same goes for people like Edward Snowden, it’s because they expose lies, corruption, deceit, immoral and unethical actions that their own governments, as well as governments around the world have participated in. He exposed these characteristics that seem to represents the backbone of the Western military alliance and the American empire. He exposed, in the words of John F. Hylan, former Mayor of New York City, the “real menace of the Republic”, the “invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation.” He exposed the ones “who virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes.” (source)(source)

“National Security” has become an umbrella tool to protect a number of unethical and immoral actions by governments, big corporations as well as those that take place in the world of finance.

How far have we sunk if telling the truth becomes a crime? How far have we sunk if we prosecute people that expose war crimes for exposing war crimes? How far have we sunk when we no longer prosecute our own war criminals? Because we identify more with them, than we identify with the people that actually expose these crimes. What does that tell about us and about our governments? In a democracy, the power does not belong to the government, but to the people. But the people have to claim it. Secrecy disempowers the people because it prevents them from exercising democratic control, which is precisely why governments want secrecy. – Nils Melzer, Human Rights Chair of the Geneva Academy of Int Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Prof of Int Law at the University of Glasgow, UN Rapporteur on Torture and Other Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Wilikleaks has never had to retract a single story.

Politics has become a cesspool of corruption, and it’s now corporations and big banks that seem to dictate political policy. What we are presented with on our TV when it comes to geopolitical issues and war is far different from what’s happening in reality, and this is what Julian Assange made evident. Whether it’s the funding, arming and creation of  terrorist organizations like ISIS or Al-Qaeda by our governments, creating problems so they can propose the solutions, or documents showing the influence Big Pharma has on global health policy, obtaining this information and using it to inform the public is not a “threat” to the people, it’s a threat to to the people in power. These people in power are using “national “security as they always due to justify the locking Assange up for the rest of his life.

The Takeaway: Do we really live on a planet right now where those who expose truth, expose corporate corruption, and those who want what’s best for the world and want to change the world, are locked away, murdered, silenced, censored, and thrown in jail? Furthermore, what time of ‘machine’ is required to justify his jailing in the minds of the masses? What kind of propaganda tools are used and how powerful are they if they have the ability to completely control human consciousness and perception in a way that best fits their interests?

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Landmark FDA Paper On Aluminum Safety In Vaccines Found To Have A Critical Math Error – Collective Evolution

Posted by M. C. on September 10, 2020

https://www.collective-evolution.com/2020/09/09/landmark-fda-paper-on-aluminum-safety-in-vaccines-found-to-have-a-critical-math-error/

By

In Brief

  • The Facts:A group of scientists and physicians known as The Physicians For Informed Consent (PIC) have discovered a crucial math error in a FDA paper regarding the safety of aluminum in vaccines.
  • Reflect On:Why have there been no studies by regulatory agencies in conjunction with independent scientists to see where vaccine ingredients travel to in the body after the are injected? Why no appropriate safety testing for the aluminum vaccine adjuvant?

What Happened: The Physicians For Informed Consent (PIC) outline that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), which is a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have already raised concerns about the negative effects of aluminum exposure in humans.

They state the following:

–> Help Support CE: Bcome a member of CETV and get access to exclusive news and courses to help empower you to become an effective changemaker. Also, help us beat censorship! Click here to join.

 Because some vaccines contain aluminum, the FDA published a paper in 2011 (Mitkus et al.) to address concerns about aluminum exposure from vaccines in infants. The paper compared the aluminum exposure from vaccines in infants to a safety limit of oral aluminum determined by the ATSDR. However, this study incorrectly based its calculations on 0.78% of oral aluminum being absorbed into the bloodstream rather than the value of 0.1% used by the ATSDR in its computations. As a result, the FDA paper assumed that nearly 8 (0.78%/0.1%) times more aluminum can safely enter the bloodstream, and this led the authors to incorrectly conclude that aluminum exposure from vaccines was well below the safety limit.

You can read their “Erratum in “Updated aluminum pharmacokinetics following infant exposures through diet and vaccination” here.

The Physicians for Informed Consent (PIC) are a group of doctors and scientists from around the world who have come together to support informed consent when it comes to mandatory vaccine measures. Their information is based on science. Their mission is to deliver data on infectious diseases and vaccines, and to unite doctors, scientists, healthcare professionals, attorneys, and families who support voluntary vaccinations. Their vision is that doctors and the public are able to evaluate the data on infectious diseases and vaccines objectively and voluntarily engage in informed decision-making about vaccination.

According to Dr, Christopher Shaw, a member of PIC and a professor at the University of British Columbia who has performed numerous studies on the effects of injected aluminum,

“We knew that the Mitkus et al. paper modeling aluminum clearance had to be inaccurate since it was assuming that injected aluminum kinetics were the same as the kinetics of aluminum acquired through diet. Now, in addition, we see that they did their modeling based on using the incorrect level of aluminum absorption. What is particularly striking is that despite all these errors, since 2011, Mitkus et al. is used by CDC and other entities as the basis for claiming that aluminum adjuvants are safe.”

Dr. Shira Miller, president of PIC, said, “We posted the Mitkus 2011 erratum on ResearchGate in hopes of bringing it to the attention of scientists and researchers who are interested in the safety of the quantities of injected aluminum found in childhood vaccines and would be in a position to further research the safety concern.”

When you inject aluminum, it goes into a different compartment of your body. It doesn’t come into that same mechanism of excretion. So, and of course it can’t because that’s the whole idea of aluminum adjuvants, aluminum adjuvants are meant to stick around and allow that antigen to be presented over and over and over again persistently, otherwise you wouldn’t put an adjuvant in in the first place. It can’t be inert, because if it were inert it couldn’t do the things it does. It can’t be excreted because again it couldn’t provide that prolonged exposure of the antigen to your immune system.- Shaw

The PIC has released a PDF called Aluminum Vaccine Risk Statement with a lot more information. You can access it here.

Why This Is Important: The idea that it’s safe to inject children with aluminum containing vaccines is based on presumption. No appropriate safety studies exist to show this is the case, which is why A group of scientists from multiple countries recently published a paper in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology titled “The role of aluminum adjuvants in vaccines raises issues that deserve independent, rigorous and honest science”  state the following,

 “The safety of aluminium-based vaccine adjuvants, like that of any environmental factor presenting a risk of neurotoxicity and to which the young child is exposed, must be seriously evaluated without further delay, particularly at a time when the CDC is announcing a still increasing prevalence of autism spectrum disorders, of 1 child in 54 in the USA.”

The publication goes on to address concerns it has with another paper that was published a year prior, emphasizing that the authors of that specific publication, JP Goullé & L Grangeot-Keros,

Described general knowledge on aluminum (Al) exposure, kinetics and toxicity but made very little effort to delineate the scientific questions specifically related to Al adjuvants in vaccines. Instead of representing the bulk of their review, the subject of Al adjuvants covered no more than one third of the 3 page-text. Numerous important papers on the topic were omitted, i.e. 20 years of scientific publications in clinical, post-mortem, in vitro and in vivo experimental studies published by independent research teams, worldwide experts in this topic, were simply omitted.

 

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