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Living in the Roach Motel – Doug Casey’s International Man

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2020

Never in the history of any nation has this been truer than when that nation is in a state of decline. The more politicians extract from their electorate, the less healthy the economy becomes. The less healthy the economy becomes, the less revenue the government receives in tax. The less revenue they receive in tax, the more taxes they create.

https://internationalman.com/articles/living-in-the-roach-motel/

by Jeff Thomas

Roach motels are a marvellous invention, as far as humans are concerned. The roaches can check in, but they can never check out.

In our formative years, we were led to believe that governments exist to serve the people, but as we matured, we (hopefully) came to realise that this is not at all the case.

Governments by their very nature, are parasitic. They produce nothing and live off wealth created by the electorate. In order to advance themselves, they learn to squeeze the people as much as they can get away with, with the claim that they will then redistribute the wealth. But, as we know, their real goal is to use as much of that wealth as possible to increase their own wealth and power.

They do their best to create rhetoric that implies that one political party or another is quite guilty of this, whilst they (and their political party) are entirely innocent.

But the sad fact is that all political parties, in the end, are equally guilty of the desire to grab all they can, while they can, and why not? After all, the subjugation and sheering of the sheep is their life’s blood.

But there is that one caveat mentioned above: “as much as they can get away with.”

A strong electorate will resist the attempts of politicians to tax them. And this is a never-ending task. The electorate must never become complacent, because politicians never will. They will be unrelenting, in every administration. Their primary purpose will be to introduce new measures that will diminish the retention of wealth amongst the electorate. After all, it’s their full-time job.

Never in the history of any nation has this been truer than when that nation is in a state of decline. The more politicians extract from their electorate, the less healthy the economy becomes. The less healthy the economy becomes, the less revenue the government receives in tax. The less revenue they receive in tax, the more taxes they create.

In a major decline, such as we’re witnessing in most of the former Free World, people have begun to do what they always do when their government has overreached. They begin to leave.

At first, a government is likely to wash its hands of those who choose to seek greener pastures in other countries, but it soon becomes apparent that people tend to leave from the top down – those who contribute the most in tax are the ones most likely to seek a better country in which to live.

When that occurs, politicians – especially the more rapacious ones – seek to trap the people (and their wealth) within the country. They create capital controls and, later, migration controls to ensure that the sheep will remain in place to be sheared as often as need be.

We are now witnessing this throughout the former Free World, but most notably in the US.

  • Senator Chuck Schumer has proposed a bill to dictate that those who choose to relinquish their US citizenship must pay an exit tax equal to thirty percent of whatever property they had liquidated in the US.
  • Hillary Clinton has sought to tax corporations who relocate to other countries – a thirty-five percent exit tax.

But as the decline in the US becomes exacerbated, the ante is being raised further. In the runup to the 2020 presidential election, candidates have been competing to be seen as the leader in punishing those who seek freedom from their government.

  • Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have both proposed an exit tax of 40%. This is to be applied to all assets that an American has accumulated in his lifetime.

It should be borne in mind that each individual who is exiting has already been paying a property tax and/or income tax on his assets prior to the exit tax. Therefore, this is a double tax on the same earned wealth.

And the above individuals are not alone in their desire to bleed those citizens who are simply seeking the ability to move on to a location that offers more opportunity than the US. Other legislators are weighing in on the subject, as well.

However, the discussion has become muddied by the fact that so many legislators are proposing so many new taxes, in order to keep the sinking ship of state afloat.

Little wonder, then, that so many people are throwing up their hands. As one expatriated American recently said to me, “I’ve always thought of myself as a patriot. But the US isn’t American anymore. It’s been taken over by political robber barons.”

So, what does this say to the reader, if he happens to be a US citizen? Well, he may rightly feel that time is running out. After the 2020 election, the fur will begin to fly in the legislative houses as regards taxation. He therefore has very little time in which to decide whether he’s living in the right place.

At present, US citizens are able to seek greener pastures with a minimum of pillaging by their government. However, those days may be numbered.

Certainly, the US is heavily in debt, and except for dramatically increased taxation, there’s no way for the next government to pay for its voracious fiscal appetite. Increased taxation will therefore be the first focus after the election. Regardless of which party wins the presidency, both houses will be active in passing legislation to allow for aggressively increased taxation.

There can be little doubt that, within this package, there will be a crippling exit tax.

Therefore, for many US citizens, the time remaining prior to the election may be the last opportunity to escape with the majority of the wealth they have spent their lives building up.

To be sure, the US was once the envy of the world, as it was the foremost example of a free society, where its people had the liberty to prosper as a result of their labours.

Sadly, that greatness is no more. The proof of that is in the fact that its political class intends soon to convert it into a roach motel – one from which it is impossible to leave.

Editor’s Note: Misguided political and economic ideas have taken hold in the US and around the world. In all likelihood, the public will vote itself more and more “free stuff” until it causes an economic crisis.

It’s all coming to climax soon. That’s precisely why legendary investor Doug Casey a just released an urgent new video that explains what could come next and what you can do about it. Click here to watch it now.

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Alaskan volcano linked to mysterious period with extreme climate in ancient Rome | Watts Up With That?

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2020

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/13/alaskan-volcano-linked-to-mysterious-period-with-extreme-climate-in-ancient-rome/

The cold, famine and unrest in ancient Rome and Egypt after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE has long been shrouded in mystery. Now, an international team, including researchers from the University of Copenhagen, has found evidence suggesting

UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN

PHYSICS The cold, famine and unrest in ancient Rome and Egypt after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE has long been shrouded in mystery. Now, an international team, including researchers from the University of Copenhagen, has found evidence suggesting that the megaeruption of an Alaskan volcano may be to blame.

Dark times befell upon the Mediterranean around the time of Julius Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE. Written accounts describe the region as severely impacted by unusual cooling, failed harvests, famine and disease, all of which combined to contribute to the fall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom. While researchers long suspected that a volcanic eruption was to blame, they were unable to pinpoint exactly where and when such an eruption might have occurred.

The brightness of the sun was darkened, the disc was pale for a year and the sun did not rise with its usual brilliance and force. It gave but slight heat. For this reason, the crops brought forth were so poor and immature that they rotted in the cold air.

Greek Roman philosopher Plutarch describing the weather in the wake of Julius Caesar’s death

Now, an international team, including researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute, the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada and the University of Bern has analysed volcanic ash in Greenlandic ice core samples, which together with historical accounts, can be linked to an inexplicable cooling event in the Mediterranean region during this crux in the history of Western civilization.

The ash comes from the remote Okmok volcano in Alaska’s Aleutian Island Chain. According to the ice core tests, the volcano experienced a two-year megaeruption that began in early 43 BCE, one that filled Earth’s atmosphere with enough smoke and ash to significantly impact climate.

“The eruption is regarded as one of the largest volcanic eruptions of the past 2,500 years. Using the ice core samples, climate models and historical records, we are quite certain that the eruption is linked to the violent climatic changes noted around the Mediterranean and in Rome,” says Jørgen Peder Steffensen, professor of ice, climate and geophysics at the Niels Bohr Institute and one of the researchers behind the discovery.

Coldest years in the Northern Hemisphere

In an extensive collaboration with historians and others, researchers collected prehistoric climate data from around the planet to confirm the likelihood that this particular eruption was responsible for widespread climate change. The sources of evidence include tree ring archives from Scandinavia, Austria and California and a Chinese cave formation.

The researchers’ extensive analysis of climate during this ancient era demonstrates that the years after the Okmok eruption were some of the coldest in the northern hemisphere over the past 2,500 years. The researchers’ climate models indicate that temperatures were roughly seven degrees Celsius below normal during the summer and autumn after the eruption in 43 BCE.

“Historical accounts describe how wet and extremely cold weather led to poorer harvests, as well as how the Nile overflowed its banks–destroying crops and leading to famine–all of which correlates with our results,” says Jørgen Peder Steffensen.

While the researchers believe that a variety of factors contributed to the fall of the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Kingdom, they maintain that Okmak’s eruption played an unmistakably large role and that their discovery serves to fill in gaps which have been missing in history books dealing with the era.

The research was recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

Facts:

The Niels Bohr Institute’s Ice and Climate Group has been working on the “Caesar Volcano” since the 1980’s. The group was the first in the world to systematically use the counting of annual layers in ice cores to date volcanic eruptions.

The group also invented the ECM-method (Electric Conductivity Method) to find volcanic ash in ice cores. ECM consists of placing two electrodes along fresh ice cores and measuring resistance. Sulphuric acid from volcanoes changes the resistance in the ice, making it quite easy to identify volcanic layers.

The new research article is the latest in more than 40 years of work on the volcano.

From EurekAlert!

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Death of a Nation – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2020

Then, when social networks became the gout de jour, fear, hate, disinformation, threats, and vengeance were meted out in order to ruin the lives of those not PC enough. Lefty elites were sitting pretty, even after the chaos and bloodshed of Uncle Sam’s venture into Iraq. The neocons who were behind the Iraq disaster managed to avoid responsibility by adhering to a strict PC line.

https://www.takimag.com/article/death-of-a-nation/

Taki

Apple pie, farms, local movie theaters, pickup baseball games, swimming holes, volunteer firemen, and small libraries with very old lady librarians: an America soon to be gone with the wind. I just read a piece by Scott McConnell in The American Conservative, a magazine we cofounded eighteen years ago, that mentions unfairness in the historical sense. He writes about the victims of communism being less commemorated than the victims of fascism. The death toll of communism was 100 million. (See: The Black Book of Communism.) While the mass murders were going on, your Cambridge Joseph Needhams and his fellow apologists insisted that Maoism represented mankind’s best hope. Maoism never received the moral obloquy that Nazism did. The Holocaust Memorial Museum has had 40 million visitors in D.C. since 1993, whereas the victims of communism get only a ten-foot statue in a tiny park near Union Station, tended by private donations. Feeling a bit hard done by? Bernie Sanders can praise the Bolsheviks and come close to being president, as can the rest of the motley crew that has excused the red holocaust, starting with the intellectuals and the newspapers that knowingly covered up the truth until they no longer could, like The New York Times.

Now America itself is being challenged—as is Britain—by Orwellian methods of truth reversals. A nation is made up of social groups with a powerful sense of solidarity. It has sacred borders, a sense of shared history and the pride that goes along with it, a distinct culture, and a common language. The nation, needless to say, precedes an individual’s identity. Not so, says The New York Times. Everything Uncle Sam has achieved has been based on slavery. The Times no longer publishes crime news of the city because it involves black people and only features black entertainers.

“Is this why we fought the wars, to not to be able to say out loud what we believe?”

Never mind, America and Britain are under attack by anarchists and thugs, while media pimps and opportunistic politicians are excusing the mobs. Worse, the media is in cahoots with those who say that words are a form of violence that has to be regulated. Who would have thought it would come to this? Our First Amendment, our most precious freedom of speech, challenged by smear artists who lust for power and control. Unlike what Hollywood depicts as wartime Berlin, Germans bitched to high heaven over the bombing and lack of food, as did Russians during Stalin’s time. But just try to not kneel nowadays and watch your career fly out the window quicker than you can say “BLM.” Is this why we fought the wars, to not to be able to say out loud what we believe? To be silenced by unelected street thugs, dandruff-covered academics, and spittle-flecked media leftists? (And the Meghan Markles?)

Big foundations, tech behemoths, media giants, prestigious universities, and embedded elites are all united in transforming a nation that has always meant well, but has gone wrong whenever those mentioned above were involved. And I, of course, agree with last week’s Power putsch in The Spectator’s pages by Sohrab Ahmari that what is taking place is not a revolution but a counterrevolution against Trump. Except that it had begun before him when PC became obligatory among elites. PC was substituted as a weapon to dominate the culture by the left once the Bolshies had gone down the drain in 1990.

Then, when social networks became the gout de jour, fear, hate, disinformation, threats, and vengeance were meted out in order to ruin the lives of those not PC enough. Lefty elites were sitting pretty, even after the chaos and bloodshed of Uncle Sam’s venture into Iraq. The neocons who were behind the Iraq disaster managed to avoid responsibility by adhering to a strict PC line.

And the elites are getting away with murder all over again as I write. “No whites in the Bronx,” screams an intimidating 6-foot-6 black BLM leader by the name of Hawk Newsome. “We don’t want white people in the Bronx, otherwise we’ll burn the place down.” This on a Fox TV interview ignored by the Times, of course, which also ignores the 25% rise in murders and 205 shootings last weekend in New York alone. In response, Mayor de Blasio cuts the police budget by a billion and a half to appease the mob. Mostly white thugs scream, spit, and insult the police in downtown New York while TV networks give them the publicity they crave. Note the deferential assumptions of our days. To witness this America is wholly un-American.

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CDC Churches – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2020

The CDC it should never be forgotten, is an agency of the U.S. federal leviathan—one of the most bloated, corrupt, and evil governments in history.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/07/laurence-m-vance/cdc-churches/

By

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it should never be forgotten, is an agency of the federal government under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The CDC’s official mission is:

CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.

CDC increases the health security of our nation. As the nation’s health protection agency, CDC saves lives and protects people from health threats. To accomplish our mission, CDC conducts critical science and provides health information that protects our nation against expensive and dangerous health threats, and responds when these arise.

The CDC pledges to

  • Base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data that is derived openly and objectively
  • Place the benefits to society above the benefits to our institution
  • Treat all persons with dignity, honesty, and respect

But then there is the small matter of the coronavirus.

Here we have seen that the CDC ruins lives and businesses while pretending to protect people from a minimal health threat. The CDC ignores high-quality scientific data that does not line up with its agenda. The CDC has destroyed rather than benefited society. And the CDC only treats with dignity, honesty, and respect those who believe its dictates and obey its pronouncements.

The CDC it should never be forgotten, is an agency of the U.S. federal leviathan—one of the most bloated, corrupt, and evil governments in history.

One would think that churches in America—and especially conservative, evangelical churches—would be just a little leery of the CDC, and especially since the CDC thinks we need more sex education in schools and wastes taxpayer dollars on transgender beauty pageants, safe-sex events featuring a sex-video star, and pushing gun control.

Some churches are still closed because they have the coronavirus instead of the fear of the Lord. But many churches that are open are what I call CDC churches. Here are the characteristics of CDC churches:

CDC churches encourage or require their members to wear face masks.

CDC churches have every other pew blocked  off.

CDC churches deep clean and sanitize the inside of the church every week, not because it is dirty, but because they believe everything the news media says about the coronavirus.

CDC churches have ceased all congregational singing.

CDC churches no longer have nurseries for babies and young children.

CDC churches require people to register online to be able to attend services.

CDC churches limit the number of people in the choir to maintain social distancing.

CDC churches encourage their members to stay home if they may have come into contact with someone who may have come into contact with someone who might possibly have the coronavirus.

CDC churches have cancelled all potluck dinners.

CDC churches release their congregations by sections so the people can maintain social distancing as they leave the church.

CDC churches have cancelled all communion services.

CDC churches have cancelled all fellowship activities.

CDC churches no longer allow hand shaking.

CDC churches limit the number of members who can attend services.

CDC churches print hand-washing tips in their bulletins.

CDC churches no longer allow hugging.

CDC churches have installed hand sanitizer stations all over the church building.

CDC churches have signs posted throughout the church telling everyone to maintain social distancing.

CDC churches have turned off their water fountains.

CDC churches have quit passing offering plates.

CDC churches print CDC guidelines in their bulletins.

CDC churches no longer have Sunday School classes.

CDC churches have canceled all weekly Bible studies.

CDC churches check everyone’s temperature before they are allowed into church.

CDC churches have postponed all baptisms.

CDC churches have announcements on a screen before the church services about the need to maintain social distancing.

CDC churches are ready to close again on a moment’s notice if ordered to do so by a mayor or governor.

CDC churches believe that everything the CDC says is the gospel truth.

Not every CDC church does every one of these things, but they would probably do more of them if they could get away with it; that is, they would do even more of these things if they didn’t think that church attendance would drop off and offerings would fall.

Is your church CDC approved or God approved? Does your church have the fear of the coronavirus or the fear of the Lord?

Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from central Florida. He is the author of The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom; War, Christianity, and the State: Essays on the Follies of Christian Militarism; War, Empire, and the Military: Essays on the Follies of War and U.S. Foreign Policy; King James, His Bible, and Its Translators, and many other books. His newest books are Free Trade or Protectionism? and The Free Society.

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The Big Coronavirus Testing Con Job – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2020

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/07/no_author/the-big-coronavirus-testing-con-job/

By Bill Sardi

…The news media doesn’t inform the public the Centers for Disease Control has changed the way it determines COVID-19 severity and now includes symptomatic and asymptomatic cases in its tabulations.  It is a categorical increase, not an increase in the spread or virility of the virus.

The Center for Evidence-Based Medicine cites a broad range (5% to 80%) of people who test positive for COVID-19 but are without symptoms.  This has led public health authorities to issue misdirected advisories to stay indoors as asymptomatic individuals may be spreading the virus.  Everybody is then an imagined threat to your life.  But it takes 40,500 encounters with infected people to get infected and over 6 million encounters to produce 1 death.  Mask-wearing Americans are just mindlessly following devious instructions they hear on TV…

See the rest here.

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You Don’t Have to “Cultivate Poverty” to Pursue Truth, Contrary to Thoreau | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2020

In Walden, Thoreau proclaimed that “trade curses everything it handles” and later derided “the immorality of trade.” Thoreau never appreciated how an economy based on private ownership and voluntary exchange creates vast opportunities for anyone with goods or labor to sell to carve their own space and follow their own values. If I had waited for Bostonians to recognize and reward my intrinsic worth, I would have missed even more meals than I did. But I could find enough folks who appreciated my ability to shovel and to type and to guffaw that I survived Beantown.

https://mises.org/wire/you-dont-have-cultivate-poverty-pursue-truth-contrary-thoreau?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=7b6b3d191f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-7b6b3d191f-228343965

Henry David Thoreau has inspired generation of Americans to live fuller, freer lives. From his story of spending a night in jail as a tax protestor in “Civil Disobedience” to his chronicle of solitary living in Walden, Thoreau reached higher ground by going against the herd.

I was enthralled when I first read Thoreau when I was eighteen, and his prescriptions for simplicity and frugal living quickly became my lodestars. Thoreau wrote, “The cost of a thing is the amount of life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” The fewer things I purchased, the more time I controlled. Thoreau helped me recognize that personal independence depends more on how you live and what you value than on your income. Thoreau also seemed to incarnate the doctrine of self-reliance that his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, preached.

After I decided to become a writer, my enthusiasm for Thoreau and Emerson helped sway me to move to Boston, where I expected to find endless intellectual stimulation. As a 21-year-old college dropout from the mountains of Virginia who had just sold his first article to a political magazine, I assumed I could easily rack up more sales living in the big city. No such luck: my submissions struck out everywhere.

But I still had Thoreau’s great admonitions, right? Alas, philosophical gems were not legal tender when rent was due.

In his final essay, “Life without Principle,” Thoreau gravely warned: “The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward….A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread.”

I took a less dogmatic view on the value of innocence. When the financial wolves howled at my door, I enlisted to serve as a Santa Claus at a Filene’s Department Store. If wearing a gaudy red suit and fake whiskers harmed my character, the damage was hidden by the padded pillow I wore on my belly. Likewise for the giant rabbit costume I wore as part of a Beatrix Potter promotion. Admittedly, that outfit terrified some children but it wasn’t my fault that the rabbit’s bulging, bloodshot eyes and canine grimace made me look like the cottontail from hell. (Maybe the artist who crafted the visage was disgruntled.)

Thoreau proclaimed, “You cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.” I found it easier to “mind my own business” with a few portraits of Andrew Jackson and Alexander Hamilton in my pocket. I worked one day at the Boston freight yards unloading a railcar of Idaho potatoes. I enjoyed heaving fifty-pound boxes onto pallets but couldn’t get regular predawn transit to the rail yards.

Thoreau utterly disdained labor markets: “To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.” I never felt cheated because I made sure I always I got paid. After Boston got walloped by three feet of snow in the Great Blizzard of 1978, I heard that a nearby campus was paying $4 an hour (equivalent to $16 an hour now) for snow shovelers. I hustled through snowdrifts, got the gig, and spent almost two days around the clock excavating the white stuff. I finally caught up on rent plus I could brag about doing “pathbreaking work at the Harvard Business School.”

I failed to get the one Boston job that my soul craved: carrying a sandwich board down city sidewalks—just like in the 1930s Three Stooges reels. (OK, so I didn’t want to be a surveyor like Thoreau.) The employment agency had already filled that position, but the boss lady cajoled me into taking a typing test. My words-per-minute score assured me plenty of assignments, including a brief stint at WGBH, a public TV station that petulantly refused to credit temp typists in television production credits. But at least I could add “Kelly Girl” to my resume.

In Walden, Thoreau proclaimed that “trade curses everything it handles” and later derided “the immorality of trade.” Thoreau never appreciated how an economy based on private ownership and voluntary exchange creates vast opportunities for anyone with goods or labor to sell to carve their own space and follow their own values. If I had waited for Bostonians to recognize and reward my intrinsic worth, I would have missed even more meals than I did. But I could find enough folks who appreciated my ability to shovel and to type and to guffaw that I survived Beantown. (It probably helped that I didn’t show employers any of my seditious writings.)

Perhaps Thoreau was unable to appreciate economic freedom because he believed daily life should be a fervent, hallowed pursuit of truth. Thoreau lamented people who lacked a “high and earnest purpose” and proclaimed: “Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.” Personally, I called a truce when it was time for a beer or bantering with Bostonian women who weren’t too wacky. I had no trouble partitioning my life between what I did to earn a buck and other times spent reading, writing, and rabble-rousing. Regardless of Thoreau’s prescriptions, bowing five times a day to a philosophical mecca wasn’t enough for a happy life. And I learned early in life to prefer cash on the barrelhead over promises of uplift.

But Thoreau did provide the benchmark for getting the hell out of Massachusetts. In his final essay, Thoreau declared: “There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting a living.” I was blundering big time in Boston. I had not found a way to support my literary habit that did not consume far too much of my time. Rent alone routinely required more than a week’s work and everything else seemed to cost more than it should. I moved back south to a college town and set up a typing business that enabled me to earn enough money in a grueling sixteen-hour workday to cover a month’s rent—which was barely half as much. Ironically, the last article I submitted before exiting was accepted and published by the Boston Globe after I left town.

In the final chapter of Walden, Thoreau implores readers: “Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.” I treasured my thoughts but I knew that I’d think better if I wasn’t bare assed. Philosophy is no substitute for protein. Regardless of Thoreau’s adoration of rice, I needed red meat to feed whatever muse I might have. Rather than “cultivating poverty,” I recognized that “cashflow” can be the most important verb for a struggling writer

 

Author:

James Bovard

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.

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Thomas Sowell: ‘Systemic Racism’ Has ‘No Meaning’

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2020

“It really has no meaning that can be specified and tested in the way that one tests hypotheses,” answered Sowell, who added that the currency of the phrase reminds him of the “propaganda tactics” of Nazi Germany, where Sowell claimed that if a lie was “repeated long enough and loud enough” it would be widely believed.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/12/thomas-sowell-systemic-racism-has-no-meaning/

by Joel B. Pollak

Conservative African American economist Thomas Sowell says that the term “systemic racism,” which is central to the Black Lives Matter movement, has “no meaning.”

Sowell is set to appear on Fox News’ Life, Liberty and Levin on Sunday evening with host Mark Levin at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT).

According to Fox News:

You hear this phrase, ‘systemic racism’ [or] ‘systemic oppression’,” host Mark Levin told Sowell. “You hear it on our college campuses. You hear it from very wealthy and fabulously famous sports stars. What does that mean? And whatever it means, is it true?”

“It really has no meaning that can be specified and tested in the way that one tests hypotheses,” answered Sowell, who added that the currency of the phrase reminds him of the “propaganda tactics” of Nazi Germany, where Sowell claimed that if a lie was “repeated long enough and loud enough” it would be widely believed.

Sowell, who recently turned 90, was born poor in North Carolina, and grew up in Harlem before attending the Stuyvesant magnet school and moving on to the Ivy League and the University of Chicago.

Initially attracted to the left, Sowell eventually rejected socialism in favor of conservatism. He has written some of the most important critiques of left-wing dogma.

In his 2005 book Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study, Sowell observed: “Despite sweeping claims made for affirmative action programs, an examination of their actual consequences makes it hard to support those claims, or even to say that these programs have been beneficial on net balance — unless one is prepared to say that any amount of social redress, however small, is worth any amount of costs and dangers, however large.”

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2017, Sowell described President Donald Trump as “the first Republican who’s made any serious attempt to get the black vote by addressing problems that affect most blacks who are trying to do the right thing—such as education, which is such low-hanging fruit.”

On Life, Liberty, and Levin, Sowell added: “If the election goes to [Joe] Biden, there’s a good chance that the Democrats will control [Congress] and considering the kinds of things that they’re proposing, that could well be the point of no return for this country.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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George Soros Pouring $220 Million into ‘Racial Justice’ Movement

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2020

I suspect racial injustice isn’t the only thing that will be “dismantled”.

Will voting democrat and one world/UN government indoctrination be part of Soros’ “help”?

Hungarians won’t have anything to do with Soros. We should follow their lead.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/13/george-soros-pouring-220-million-into-racial-justice-movement/

by Joshua Caplan

Progressive billionaire George Soros’s philanthropic organization — Open Society Foundations — announced Monday that it will donate $220 million to groups focused on “racial justice.”

The organization plans on investigating $150 million alone into five-year grants for organizations aimed at achieving equal statistical outcomes between demographic groups in economics and criminal justice. The other $70 million is said to be going toward “more immediate efforts to advance racial justice.” Groups expected to receive funds include Black Voters Matter and Repairers of the Breach.

“It is inspiring and powerful to experience this transformational moment in the racial justice movement,” said Open Society Foundations president Patrick Gaspard. “We are honored to be able to carry on the vital work of fighting for rights, dignity, and equity for oppressed people the world over started by our founder and chair, George Soros.”

“This is the time for urgent and bold action to address racial injustice in America,” Alexander Soros, Soros’s son, said in a separate statement. “These investments will empower proven leaders in the Black community to reimagine policing, end mass incarceration, and eliminate the barriers to opportunity that have been the source of inequity for too long.”

The announcement comes after public records revealed Soros will double his 2016 election spending as part of a broader effort to help defeat President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.

As Breitbart News reported: “Soros has poured money “into the coffers of the Democracy PAC, a super PAC that passes money to other liberal PACs working to defeat Trump and congressional Republicans… [The] PAC has received $40 million, double the $20 million it received in 2016 throughout the presidential election.”

In April, Open Society Foundations pledged $130 million to fight the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and “[push] back against government encroachment on political freedoms.”

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George Washington Tried To Warn Americans About Foreign Policy Today – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2020

Subvert American democracy and manipulate US foreign policy, and you can loot America’s treasury, turn the US military into your personal bodyguard, and gain Washington’s support for reckless war-mongering.

https://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2020/07/12/george-washington-tried-to-warn-americans-about-foreign-policy-today/

by

Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, unkindly characterized the foreign policy establishment in Washington, D.C., as “the Blob.” Although policymakers sometimes disagree on peripheral subjects, membership requires an absolute commitment to U.S. “leadership,” which means a determination to micro-manage the world.

Reliance on persuasion is not enough. Vital is the willingness to bomb, invade, and, if necessary, occupy other nations to impose the Blob’s dictates on other peoples. If foreigners die, as they often do, remember the saying about eggs and omelets oft repeated by communism’s apologists. “Stuff happens” with the best-intentioned policies.

One might be inclined to forgive Blob members if their misguided activism actually benefited the American people. However, all too often the Blob’s policies instead aid other governments and interests. Washington is overrun by the representatives of and lobbyists for other nations, which constantly seek to take control of US policy for their own advantage. The result are foreign interventions in which Americans do the paying and, all too often, the dying for others.

The problem is primarily one of power. Other governments don’t spend a lot of time attempting to take over Montenegro’s foreign policy because, well, who cares? Exactly what would you do after taking over Fiji’s foreign ministry other than enjoy a permanent vacation? Seize control of international relations in Barbados and you might gain a great tax shelter.

Subvert American democracy and manipulate US foreign policy, and you can loot America’s treasury, turn the US military into your personal bodyguard, and gain Washington’s support for reckless war-mongering. And given the natural inclination of key American policymakers to intervene promiscuously abroad for the most frivolous reasons, it’s surprisingly easy for foreign interests to convince Uncle Sam that their causes are somehow “vital” and therefore require America’s attention. Indeed, it is usually easier to persuade Americans than foreign peoples in their home countries to back one or another international misadventure.

The culprits are not just autocratic regimes. Friendly democratic governments are equally ready to conspiratorially whisper in Uncle Sam’s ear. Even nominally classical liberal officials, who believe in limiting their own governments, argue that Americans are obligated to sacrifice wealth and life for everyone else. The mantra seems to be liberty, prosperity, and peace for all – except those living in the superpower tasked by heaven with protecting everyone else’s liberty, prosperity, and peace.

Although the problem has burgeoned in modern times, it is not new. Two centuries ago fans of Greek independence wanted Americans to challenge the Ottoman Empire, a fantastic bit of foolishness. Exactly how to effect an international Balkans rescue was not clear, since the president then commanded no aircraft carriers, air wings, or nuclear-tipped missiles. Still, the issue divided Americans and influenced John Quincy Adams’ famous 1821 Independence Day address.

Warned Adams:

“Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.”

“The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit…. [America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.”

Powerful words, yet Adams was merely following in the footsteps of another great American, George Washington. Obviously, the latter was flawed as a person, general, and president. Nevertheless, his willingness to set a critical precedent by walking away from power left an extraordinary legacy. As did his insistence that the Constitution tasked Congress with deciding when America would go to war. And his warning against turning US policy over to foreign influences.

Concern over obsequious subservience to other governments and interests pervaded his famous 1796 Farewell Address. Applied today, his message indicts most of the policy currently made in the city ironically named after him. He would be appalled by what presidents and Congresses today do, supposedly for America.

Obviously, the US was very different 224 years ago. The new country was fragile, sharing the Western hemisphere with its old colonial master, which still ruled Canada and much of the Caribbean, as well as Spain and France. When later dragged into the maritime fringes of the Napoleonic wars the US could huff and puff but do no more than inconvenience France and Britain. The vastness of the American continent, not overweening national power, again frustrated London when it sought to subjugate its former colonists.

Indeed, when George Washington spoke the disparate states were not yet firmly knit into a nation. Only after the Civil War, when the national government waged four years of brutal combat, which ravaged much of the country and killed upwards of 750,000 people in the name of “union,” did people uniformly say the United States “is” rather than “are.” However, the transformation was much more than rhetorical. The federal system that originally emerged in the name of individual liberty spawned a high tax centralized government that employed one of the world’s largest militaries to kill on a mass scale to enforce the regime’s dictates. The modern American “republic” was born. It acted overseas only inconsistently until World War II, after which imperial America was a constant, adding resonance to George Washington’s message.

Today Washington, D.C.’s elites have almost uniformly decided that Russia is an enemy, irrespective of American behavior that contributed to Moscow’s hostility. And that Ukraine, a country never important for American security, is a de facto military ally, appropriately armed by the US for combat against a nuclear-armed rival. A reelection-minded president seems determined to turn China into a new Cold War adversary, an enemy for all things perhaps for all time. America remains ever entangled in the Middle East, with successive administrations in permanent thrall of Israel and Saudi Arabia, allowing foreign leaders to set US Mideast policy. Indeed, both states have avidly pressed the administration to make their enemy, Iran, America’ enemy. The resulting fixation caused the Trump administration to launch economic war against the rest of the world to essentially prevent everyone on earth from having any commercial dealing of any kind with anyone in Tehran.

Under Democrats and Republicans alike the federal government views nations that resist its dictates as adversaries at best, appropriate targets of criticism, always, sanctions, often, and even bombs and invasions, occasionally. No wonder foreign governments lobby hard to be designated as allies, partners, and special relationships. Many of these ties have become essentially permanent, unshakeable even when supposed friends act like enemies and supposed enemies are incapable of hurting America. US foreign policy increasingly has been captured and manipulated for the benefit of other governments and interests.

George Washington recognized the problem even in his day, after revolutionary France sought to win America’s support against Great Britain. He warned: “nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Doug Casey on the Dangers of Global Regulation – Casey Research

Posted by M. C. on July 13, 2020

Doug Casey: It’s really quite simple. To repeat,
governments shouldn’t decide anything. There shouldn’t be an American
trade policy, a French trade policy, an Australian trade policy, or any
other trade policy. These things shouldn’t exist. People in whatever
country should simply produce, buy, and sell. Whether that’s from their
own country or from other countries. Forget about “national policy” with
its ridiculous distinctions and labels.

https://www.caseyresearch.com/daily-dispatch/doug-casey-on-the-dangers-of-global-regulation/

Rachel’s note: Regular readers know Doug Casey believes you can always bet on the government to do the wrong thing. Whether it’s the dangerous response to the COVID-19 pandemic, or overregulation abroad, government intervention often creates more problems than it solves.

And today, Doug discusses the dangers surrounding globalism… and explains why we actually live in a fascist system…

Daily Dispatch: Doug, we’d like to get your take on the question of “Globalist vs. Globalism.” Not so long ago, the right was in favor of embracing a global economy, in order to access cheaper labor and other benefits of outsourcing. Whereas the left was against that whole idea, as they wanted to be more protectionist in their local economy.

But now, to the average man at least, that seems to have flipped. Now the right seems to be more protectionist, and the left wants to be more global. Is that an overly simplistic take on things? What’s your view?

Doug Casey: Well, to start with, these are just labels that don’t really mean anything – other than deciding what variety of statism you want.

The truth is that individuals and companies should be able to trade with each other with absolutely no restrictions, interference, or comment of any type from governments. No quotas, no duties, no incentives… nothing.

Governments bring absolutely nothing to the party. It’s a sham, a myth, and a delusion that government acts in the interest of the country it controls. Government (and the people who control it) act in their own interests and those of their cronies. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, and runs counter to what we were taught in grade school civics, or what sanctimonious Deep Staters like to repeat. But it’s the case with late-stage U.S. “capitalism.”

“Globalists,” “Globalism,” there’s barely any difference. It’s just busybodies deciding what products the real producers may or may not create, and what entrepreneurs can or can’t do. Saying one is good and the other is bad is the wrong way to look at it. It politicizes the question.

Daily Dispatch: Okay. What about all the noise about NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], USMCA [United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement], and the trade deals the U.K. wants to do now that it has left the European Union?

Doug Casey: It’s really quite simple. To repeat, governments shouldn’t decide anything. There shouldn’t be an American trade policy, a French trade policy, an Australian trade policy, or any other trade policy. These things shouldn’t exist. People in whatever country should simply produce, buy, and sell. Whether that’s from their own country or from other countries. Forget about “national policy” with its ridiculous distinctions and labels.

Daily Dispatch: While you mention it, one of the things that has been quite amusing about Brexit are the “Remainers” (those who wanted to stay in the EU), who seem to think that if the U.K. doesn’t have a trade deal with the European Union, then suddenly all trade will stop.

They don’t seem to understand that you don’t need to have a deal between countries in order to trade. Businesses and individuals can just buy things. I can buy something from you. You can buy something from me. As long as we’re a willing buyer and seller, that’s all you need to trade.

Doug Casey: That’s absolutely correct, whether we’re talking about the European Union or NAFTA trade deals between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. It’s unnecessary and unproductive trying to regulate trade with documents the size of an old New York telephone book.

Few people are aware that there are 50,000 employees of the European Union in and around Brussels – not counting lawyers, lobbyists, and hangers-on. Not one of these people serves a useful purpose. But they get fat salaries, expense accounts, and bribes. As Tacitus said 2,000 years ago, “The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the society.”

The European Union started out as a free trade organization after World War II – its purpose was to facilitate trade. But it’s grown into a giant dysfunctional bureaucracy. If the EU simply eliminated trade barriers, duties, and regulations, you wouldn’t need any of these people. They’re basically “useless mouths.” But that’s just the opposite of what they do. The European Parliament constantly passes more laws, which reduce personal freedoms. And those laws have to be enforced, which constantly increases taxes.

I’m all for Brexit. The British hopefully will no longer be constrained by the ridiculous regulations that come out of Brussels telling them how to make beer, cheese, or whether shops are allowed to sell eggs by the dozen.

Switzerland isn’t an EU member, and it does just fine.

Daily Dispatch: Related to this issue is the idea that Western governments seem to be pursuing the idea of a global tax or global wealth taxes. You could say that the West is bullying developing nations in the area of “tax competitiveness,” in the same way they’re bullying them with trade in general.

For instance, the West doesn’t want developing countries to have, say, a coal industry. It wants the developing countries to be more considerate of environmental issues. That just doesn’t seem fair. These countries are trying to drag themselves out of poverty while the West is forcing on them rules that will keep them in poverty. Then, in order to satisfy their guilt, they say, “Well, let’s give them billions of dollars in aid instead.” Which we know just goes to the corrupt leaders anyway. Right?

Doug Casey: Yes, of course. There’s this ridiculous concept of harmonizing tax policies, which devastates poor countries. The only reason that you would want to invest in a poor backward country is because costs may be lower, and the government might leave you alone. They can only attract investment if low taxes and regulation make it worthwhile.

Meanwhile, the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development], and similar clubs the governments of advanced countries belong to, are trying to get backward countries to impose the same level of taxes and regulations that they do. Which will keep these countries as serfdoms and colonies. And it gets worse, because the foreign aid that they give to these countries just acts to cement them to the bottom of the economic ladder.

Foreign aid only further enriches the rich people in those countries, who are rich mostly because they’re politically well-connected. In fact, foreign aid is nothing but a “transfer of wealth” scam from poor people in rich countries, to rich people in poor countries.

The fact that the talking heads on television, magazine writers, and politicians all take this seriously, like it’s the way the world should work, is highly destructive. The average guy gives these authority figures completely undeserved credence. People ought to point out that the king has no clothes, and his minions are idiots.

Daily Dispatch: Kenya’s clothing industry is a good example of this. It was quite substantial up until the 1980s. There are several reasons for its decline, but one of the major factors was the Western charities that convinced Westerners to donate clothing, which was then shipped to Africa and effectively dumped into the local economy.

Ever since then, whenever you see footage of third-world countries, you notice that the kids and adults are wearing European soccer shirts or NBA basketball shirts. You know they haven’t paid the $100 or $200 that these things cost. They’ve been donated from the West. It’s an example of how these kinds of practices can destroy local industries.

Doug Casey: That’s exactly right. Locally produced items, no matter what their price or quality, can’t compete with free goods. And it’s worse than that, actually, because the same thing happens with food. Western farmers lobby their governments to buy surplus cheese, wheat, sugar, and whatever else, and then give these things to third-world countries. They say it’s charity. But it actually destroys the local farmers in these countries.

And then when the aid stops or diminishes, there are no farmers left – they’ve all had to move to the city. Now the country has a real problem on its hands. Here’s the takeaway: All foreign aid to backward countries should be abolished. It’s counterproductive, at best. It impoverishes Western taxpayers and destroys the productive capacity of the recipients.

But look, this is all a question of government intervention. It’s not capitalism, in fact, technically, it’s fascism. People don’t understand that we don’t have capitalist systems anywhere today. Capitalism is a system where there is no taxation and no regulation – it’s a total free market.

Instead, today we have fascism – a term that was coined by Mussolini, who was philosophically a socialist who realized direct state ownership didn’t work as well as corporate ownership. Fascism has little to do with jackboots and parades – those are just convenient decorations. Fascism basically promotes a “partnership” between the state and corporations.

You have to remember that the U.S. government is an entity with a life of its own – as are General Motors, Google, General Electric, or whatever. They work together for their mutual benefit. The general welfare of the citizens is secondary.

Daily Dispatch: And yet people still blame capitalism.

Doug Casey: Yes, because the population in general, the media, and the politicians are too stupid to understand the real definition of capitalism. Everybody repeats the same myths to each other – they did it in the Soviet Union until it collapsed.

You see this all the time, where some mainstream fool will say that capitalism is broken and we need to fix it. But capitalism isn’t broken at all, because the current economies aren’t capitalist. If they were truly capitalist, then the system wouldn’t be broken.

The system they criticize is actually the same system they helped to perpetuate. It’s, as I say, a fascist system whereby governments and big corporations work together at the expense of the individual. Look how degraded the U.S. has become. Nearly half the country was quite ready to vote for Bernie Sanders, because he said he’d give them free stuff.

It’s perverse. The Greater Depression is going to be nasty indeed…

Daily Dispatch: Thanks for speaking with us today, Doug.

Doug Casey: You’re welcome.

Want more stories like this one?

Casey Daily Dispatch will point you to today’s top moneymaking opportunities and prepare you for the hidden dangers in the markets.

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