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Caveat Emptor, Boeing – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on May 27, 2020

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/walter-e-block/caveat-emptor-boeing/

By

Caveat emptor is one the basic building blocks of just law. “Buyer beware” is the lynchpin of commerce. If the seller is responsible for flaws in the product (caveat vendidor), there will be precious few goods or services ever supplied. For who would want to grant any disgruntled consumer open sesame to engage in a lawsuit?

This includes products that have “danger” written all over them, at least potentially, such as knives, guns, scissors, hedge clippers, razor blades, automobiles, planes, etc. Also covered are items not ordinarily thought of as fraught. But staples can bite into fingers and cause infection; rubber bands can take out an eye. This is to say nothing of even the most humble drugs: take 100 aspirins at one sitting, and you will no longer be among the living. Meat can spoil. Even garden vegetables come replete with dirt, which can contain who knows what.

But these are mere utilitarian considerations, unworthy of consideration, almost, to those concerned with justice. There is also that little matter of deontology. It is plainly unjust to hold the seller responsible for what the buyer can do with a purchase, even if it falls apart from proper use. If we want to hold pistol and rifle manufacturers responsible for actions perpetrated by terrorists, that will end their production. If we want to be logically consistent we shall have to do the same with cars; no one would want to do that.

The charge levelled at Boeing is that it “cut corners” in the production of its 737 Max airplane, which resulted in the crash of  Lion Air flight 610, which killed 189 poor souls, and Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, in which 157 people perished.

That is to say, this Seattle based firm would always have spent more, subjected their aircraft to additional tests, etc. But this could be said of all producers, without exception. Every last one of them continually “cuts corners” in the sense that they did not spend an infinite amount of money trying to perfect what they offered for sale. Unless there was out and out fraud, which has not been charged let alone proven, it would be improper in the extreme to even think of levelling criminal charges against the executives of this company, as is sometimes bruited about (Source: Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2019, p. B1).

Boeing never guaranteed the complete safety of its products. They are all sold on an “as is” basis. It would be unfair in the extreme to hold them to a standard they did not voluntarily undertake.

No, if criminal charges are to be brought against anyone in this sad situation, not that they should be, the more justified target would be the Federal Aviation Administration. Their mandate, in contrast, was precisely to ensure safety. There were not merely a certification agency, attesting to propriety. Rather, they are a licensing bureau. It would have been illegal for the 737 Max to leave the ground with passengers aboard without their explicit imprimatur. The very existence of Boeing is now in question. The same, alas, cannot be said for the FAA. At the very least, this government agency ought to be disbanded, and replaced by a private competitive certification agency.

Milton Friedman eloquently made the case for this institutional arrangement in his book, Capitalism and Freedom. He did so for physicians. But the same arguments apply in the present case.

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What Freedoms? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on May 27, 2020

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/laurence-m-vance/what-freedoms/

By

Another Memorial Day has come and gone, although it is still Military Appreciation Month. Evidently, having three military appreciation days already (Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Veterans Day) was not enough so “Congress designated May as National Military Appreciation Month in 1999 to ensure the nation was given the chance to publicly show their appreciation for troops past and present.”

Memorial Day, which did not become an official federal holiday until 1971, is supposed to be a day to honor American military personnel who died while in service to the country.

Honor them for what?

Fighting unjust wars?
Serving Uncle Sam?
Going where they had no business going?
Making widows and orphans?  Dying for a lie?
Being the world’s self-appointed policeman?
Fighting senseless wars?
Engaging in offense instead of defense?
Neglecting and sacrificing their families?
Invading other countries?
Dying for a mistake?
Creating terrorists, insurgents, and militants because of U.S. military interventions?
Killing and maiming millions?
Fighting undeclared wars?
Drone strikes that regularly miss their targets?
Helping to carry out a reckless, belligerent, and meddling U.S. foreign policy?
Fighting unnecessary wars?
Taking sides in civil wars?
Dying for the military/industrial complex?
Killing civilians and excusing it as collateral damage?
Following immoral orders?
Occupying other countries?
Unleashing sectarian violence?
Destroying foreign industry, culture, and infrastructure?
Being pawns of the U.S. government?
Bombing wedding parties?
Committing torture and atrocities?
Keeping overseas brothels in business?
Being duped?
Dying in vain?
Being a global force for evil?
But they died defending our freedoms!

Okay, let’s say that they did. Let’s say that in spite of all of the above, they still managed to die while defending our freedoms.

But what about current members of the U.S. military? On Memorial Day, Armed Forces Day, the Fourth of July, and Veterans Day, during Military Appreciation Month, and every other month and day of the year we are expected to honor military personnel for defending our freedoms and thank them for their service.

What freedoms?

The freedom to attend a sporting event?
The freedom to take one’s children to a playground?
The freedom to go to an amusement park?
The freedom to sunbathe on the beach?
The freedom to go to a concert?
The freedom to have a yard sale?
The freedom to attend church?
The freedom to assemble in a group of more than ten people?
The freedom to get a haircut?
The freedom to eat inside a restaurant?
The freedom to sit on a park bench?
The freedom to be closer than six feet to another person?
The freedom to go to a bar?
The freedom to open a “nonessential” business?
The freedom to have a wedding or funeral?
The freedom to go outside without having to wear a mask?
The freedom to make “unessential” travel?
The freedom to visit a sick relative in the hospital?
The freedom to go to a zoo?
The freedom to go to a movie?
The freedom to work out at a gym?
The freedom to take a drink from a water fountain?  The freedom to try on clothes in store dressing room?
The freedom to take a cruise?
The freedom to ride a skateboard at a skate park?
The freedom to have a normal life?

Where is the U.S. military? I thought military personnel were defending our freedoms?

Why aren’t U.S. military personnel opening up stores, malls, parks, playgrounds, water fountains, zoos, gyms, bars, restaurants, park benches, barber shops, amusement parks, concert halls, arenas, stadiums, race tracks, beaches, churches, skate parks, cruise terminals, dressing rooms, and movie theatres? I thought they were defending our freedoms?

Why aren’t U.S. military personnel invading and occupying state legislatures and governor’s mansions and restoring our freedoms? I thought they were defending our freedoms?

U.S. military personnel are doing what they always do: whatever Uncle Sam tells them to do. They don’t defend our freedoms. They don’t support and defend the Constitution. They don’t secure our borders. They don’t guard American shores. They don’t patrol American coasts. They don’t watch over American skies. They don’t defend the country. They don’t protect Americans from credible threats. They don’t serve the country. They don’t fight “over there” so we don’t have to fight “over here.” They are too busy traveling the world, meeting interesting people, and then bombing, maiming, and killing them if the government tells them to.

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Covid: Genocide of the Old and Sick? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on May 27, 2020

Harsh

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/daniel-mcadams/covid-killing-fields-of-the-old-and-sick/

By

Ron Paul Institute

Percent of Covid deaths who were in nursing homes

Dear Friends of the Ron Paul Institute:

The numbers are sickening and impossible to ignore. Throughout the United States the Coronavirus “pandemic” looks more and more like a war on the elderly and sick than a mysterious new virus that was so dangerous and unknown that the entire country (with notable exceptions – South Dakota for example) had to be completely locked down tighter than Guantanamo Bay.

Nationwide, 42 percent of the Covid-19 death toll was comprised of Americans who were confined to live-in care facilities. While at first it was easy to simply gasp at a disease so cruel that it seemed to target older people, now that the smoke has cleared it is becoming painfully – and criminally – obvious that the virus had some very powerful human enablers.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has shamelessly used the coronavirus crisis to puff up his national political profile, ordered the elderly hospitalized with Covid back to their nursing homes where they could spread the virus like so many Typhoid Marys. Amid calls for a Federal probe into Cuomo’s callous and deadly decision to rip elderly patients from their hospital beds and send them back to cramped senior facilities, Cuomo demurs, blaming…you guessed it: Trump!

In Pennsylvania a particularly cruel (and unelected) creature, Rachel Levine, in charge of the state’s Covid policy oversaw a virus outbreak that claimed the elderly in care facilities as 70 percent of the entire state’s death toll. Astonishing! A real genocide of the old. Of course before she ordered those elderly hospitalized with Covid back to their care facilities to infect and kill others she moved her own mother out of the facilities and into a hotel.

Under the Mussolini of Michigan, the Covid-ravaged elderly were also returned to their care facilities where they could infect and kill their housemates. Governor Gretchen Whitmer seemed to actually gain pleasure from destroying untold lives with her strict lockdown orders, stooping so low as to strip a 77 year old barber of his license for daring to open his shop against her will as he faced starvation. She loved pushing around working people, who were nearly immune to the virus. But when it came to actually protecting the vulnerable layers of society, she was AWOL.

These shameful policies were followed in many states and while at first when little was known about the outbreak, there might be some room for acceptable error. But as it became clear the demographics of who were most vulnerable, it has become indefensible to focus all resources on shutting down restaurants, bars, churches, mom and pop shops, schools while ignoring that the virus preyed almost exclusively on the old and sick. Yes, shut down elementary schools where virtually no one fell victim, but throw open the doors to the old folks home where the virus raged like a tsunami. Brilliant move.

Coincidence? We should not discount the possibility that sheer government incompetence is responsible for this massive failure and resulting senior killing fields. Maybe there is more to it. The sanctity of life in the United States has been degraded for years, including via a foreign policy that considers half a million dead Iraqi children “worth it” to undermine Saddam Hussein’s rule. A foreign policy that doesn’t blink when an estimated 40,000 Venezuelan civilians die from US sanctions. A foreign policy that has spend the past nine years arming literal Islamist terrorists to overthrow the secular rule of Syria’s Assad with hundreds of thousands dead in the process and nary a notice in the US mainstream media.

When one embraces the idea that it’s OK to kill millions overseas to maintain a US global empire that only enriches the Beltway military-industrial-Congressional-media-think tank complex, it is not a far leap to embrace the idea that seniors are expendable. When some lives are not considered worth saving – from pre-cradle to grave – it is a slippery slope to view others also not worth saving.

Be seeing you

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Why Those COVID-19 Models Aren’t Real Science | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on May 26, 2020

New York has also counted as COVID deaths cases involving flulike
symptoms, even when postmortem COVID tests have been negative. CDC
guidance explicitly advises that “suspected” cases, even in the absence
of test evidence, can be reported as COVID deaths. That is why the New York Times
could report that on April 21 the city death toll was augmented by
“3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the
coronavirus but had never tested positive.”

https://mises.org/wire/why-those-covid-19-models-arent-real-science?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=20599ec091-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-20599ec091-228343965

Since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, Americans have been told countless times that public policy was based on Science (with a capital S) and that the public should just obey the scientists.

But the accuracy of their predictions and the consequent appropriateness of policies seems to have been little better than Ask Dr. Science and the 0 percent accuracy rate of its answers.

In fact, the massive errors in measurement that have been part and parcel of the scientific COVID Kops show should bring us back to what Lord Kelvin said about science and measurement: “If you cannot measure it, then it is not science” and “your theory is apt to be based more upon imagination than upon knowledge.”

To get an idea of how serious the COVID measurement problems are, one need only look to the two medical experts most commonly appearing on our TV screens. Dr. Anthony Fauci recently testified his belief that its death toll is “almost certainly higher” than reported, because “there may have been people who died at home who did have COVID, who were not counted as COVID because they never really got to the hospital.” In contrast, the Washington Post recently reported that Deborah Birx believes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) accounting system is double counting some cases, boosting case and mortality measurements “by as much as 25 percent.” And what could be a clearer statement of the measurement problems than Birx’s assertion that “there is nothing from the CDC that I can trust”?

The mangled measurements have been with us from the beginning of the COVID crisis.

Mild cases were (and still are) frequently undetected. That means that we have undercounted how many people have (or have had) the disease. It also means that we have overestimated the risk of contagion, which is perhaps the most crucial determinant of COVID’s risk to others.

Early on, there were a very limited number of tests and many of the first ones were faulty. So, as increasing numbers are being tested, especially systematically, rather than just targeting those who are already suspected of having COVID, we must disentangle the portion of the uptick of reported cases, and the implied downward adjustment of the odds of death and the risk of spread, caused by testing more of the population to determine whether there is an increasing incidence of the disease. When tests for COVID antibodies started to be done, it also suggested that more had already been exposed, changing the critical numbers again. And then there are questions about herd immunity, including whether sheltering at home actually undermines its development. Similarly, the constantly updated numbers of COVID cases in particular areas overstated the risk to others, since those who have gotten better and are not a potential source of contagion are still included in those counts.

This continuing evolution of what Science tells us reveals that what we are being told at any given time is highly likely to be revised, if not reversed, soon, and perhaps repeatedly. That should make us leery of all claims, including forecasts, premised on the truth of current Science. And if that weren’t bad enough, even the accuracy of the basic data has been compromised.

In some places, reported COVID deaths have included everyone who has it when they die, overstating (to a degree that we can’t know without more detailed information than we now have, and may ever have, for many cases) COVID risks. The director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, illustrated the problem when she said, “if you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live, and then you also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death….[E]ven if you died of clear alternative cause, but you had COVID at the same time, it’s still listed as a COVID death.” Further, the miscounting is often not due to judgments about shades of gray. For instance, Colorado counted a man who died of acute alcohol poisoning (his blood alcohol content (BAC) was 0.55, when 0.30 is considered lethal) as a COVID death. And when the state recounted to include only deaths caused by COVID, its total fell from 1,150 to only 878.

New York has also counted as COVID deaths cases involving flulike symptoms, even when postmortem COVID tests have been negative. CDC guidance explicitly advises that “suspected” cases, even in the absence of test evidence, can be reported as COVID deaths. That is why the New York Times could report that on April 21 the city death toll was augmented by “3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive.”

Then there is also lots of evidence that bears on appropriate COVID policy. For instance, Charles Murray has demonstrated that “The relationship of population density to the spread of the coronavirus creates sets of policy options that are radically different in high-density and low-density areas,” so that “too many people in high places, in government and the media, have been acting as if there is a right and moral policy toward the pandemic that applies throughout America. That’s wrong.”

Randal O’Toole has also cited studies finding that “mass transportation systems offer an effective way of accelerating the spread of infectious diseases,” that “people who use mass transit were nearly six times more likely to have acute respiratory infections than those who don’t,” that New York City subways were “a major disseminator—if not the principal transmission vehicle—of coronavirus infection,” and that there is “a strong state‐​by‐​state correlation between transit and coronavirus,” to ask why mass transit systems were not shuttered to stop the harm. Elsewhere, he noted that “The head of New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority was infected by the virus and the head of New Jersey Transit actually died from it.”

All this evidence reveals that the COVID Science and conclusions Americans were supposed to follow unquestioningly have been incredibly incomplete or wrong, with the stability of quicksand. Such Science is too frail a reed to depend on in making policies with multitrillion dollar price tags. What it does support is much more humility, reflecting Kelvin’s recognition that:

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.

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Proposed Health Code App Sparks Anger in China

Posted by M. C. on May 26, 2020

Dr. Gupta, Fauci, Gates and China

Who is leading whom?

https://www.breitbart.com/news/proposed-health-code-app-sparks-anger-in-china/

by Breitbart News

Beijing (AFP) – A Chinese local government’s proposal for a post-coronavirus health app that ranks citizens based on their smoking, drinking, exercise and sleep habits has sparked fury online over privacy concerns.

China has already developed apps that indicate an individual’s likelihood of contracting coronavirus based on their travel history and whether they had come into contact with an infected case.

Hangzhou, a high-tech hub and home to e-commerce giant Alibaba, was among the first Chinese cities to adopt such an app, which gives people a green, yellow or red code that determines if they can buy travel tickets or enter public places.

But the health commission in the eastern city of 10 million people is now considering rolling out an app that looks much deeper into the health of citizens.

The software monitors users in real-time and ranks them on a 100-point “health gradient” scale, according to a post on the commission’s website.

According to shots of the app shared in the post, it ranks citizens out of the entire population of Hangzhou based on their health score, which changes according to the user’s daily actions.

For example, drinking a glass of white wine could set your score back by 1.5 points, while sleeping for seven hours could improve it by one point.

The app can also give companies and residential communities an overall health score based on the scores of individuals, such as employees’ average sleep rate, steps taken and how many of them suffer from chronic disease, according to a screenshot.

Currently in development, the app could be completed as early as June, but further details — such as how data is collected — remain unclear.

“The municipal health commission should grasp the opportunity to deepen the use of health codes… to ensure the full completion of various municipal health systems,” health commission member Sun Yongrong was quoted as saying.

‘New normal?’

Big data-powered health apps developed by local governments in collaboration with internet firms Alibaba and Tencent have become part of the fabric of life in post-coronavirus China.

The apps, which differ by region and are often hosted on the ubiquitous mobile payment platforms AliPay and WeChat Pay, typically collect user location data, transport routes and ID information.

Chinese tech commentator and privacy advocate Lawrence Li said that the new app should ideally be an opt-in system to protect citizens’ rights.

“In the case of COVID (data collection) I think people willingly participated, but it’s another story if the government wants to make it the ‘new normal’,” he told AFP.

The proposal, which was posted online last week, stoked major discussions on the Twitter-like social network Weibo and question-and-answer forum Zhihu over the weekend.

“What the hell do my smoking, drinking and sleeping habits have to do with you?” read one comment on Weibo.

“We have no privacy left whatsoever,” lamented another user.

Mass government collection of data for epidemic-fighting purposes has sparked widespread concerns over data privacy and security.

Last month, police in Shanxi province announced that the personal information of over 6,000 people who entered a local hospital had been leaked on WeChat.

Baidu chief executive Robin Li last week proposed legislation that would allow people to withdraw personal information collected during the epidemic and establish guidelines for data storage during ‘special periods’.

 

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Memorial Day: Remembering the Political Lies that Spurred Mass Killing | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on May 26, 2020

It would be appropriate to celebrate Memorial Day by burning in
effigy the politicians whose lies led to the deaths of so many Americans
(and innocent foreigners). Those whose images deserve to be torched run
the gamut from Lyndon Johnson to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to
Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton (Kosovo) to George W. Bush (Iraq, et
cetera), to Barack Obama (Afghanistan, Libya, et cetera). Donald Trump’s
warring has primarily resulted in the killing of foreigners, but they
are also worthy of remembrance and lamentation. The burnings could be
accompanied by recitations of the major offenses against the truth and
liberty that each politician committed.

Before the war, almost all the broadcast news stories on Iraq originated with the federal government. PBS’ Bill Moyers noted that “of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC, and CBS nightly news, from September 2002 until February 2003, almost all the stories could be traced back to sources from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.”

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/memorial-day-remembering-the-political-lies-that-spurred-mass-killing/

by

On Memorial Day, the media do their usual sacralizing of war. Instead, it should be a day for the ritualized scourging of politicians. During the last 70 years, their lies have resulted in the unnecessary deaths of almost 100,000 American soldiers and millions of foreigners. And yet, people still get teary-eyed when politicians take the stage to talk about their devotion to the troops.

On Memorial Day 2011, for instance, the Washington Post included numerous touching photographs of graves, recent widows or fatherless kids by the headstones, and stories of the troops’ sacrifices. The Post buried a short article in the middle of the A-Section (squeezed onto a nearly full-page ad for Mattress Discounters) about the U.S. military killing dozens of Afghan civilians and police in a wayward bombing in some irrelevant Afghan province. The story’s length and placement reflected the usual tacit assumption that any foreigner killed by the U.S. military doesn’t deserve to be treated as fully human.

The Washington Post celebrations of Memorial Day never include any reference to that paper’s culpability in helping the Bush administration deceive America into going to war against Iraq. When Post reporters dug up the facts that exposed the Bush administration’s false claims on the Iraqi peril, editors sometimes ignored or buried their revelations. Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks complained that in the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, “There was an attitude among editors: ‘Look, we’re going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?’”

The Post continued aiding the war party by minimizing its sordidness. When the Bush administration’s claims on Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program had collapsed, the Washington Post article on the brazen deceits was headlined, “Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence.” According to Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, the press are obliged to portray politicians as if they are honest. He commented in 2007, “From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front-page pieces in the Washington Post making the administration’s case for war. It was, ‘The President said yesterday.’ ‘The Vice President said yesterday.’ ‘The Pentagon said yesterday.’ Well, that’s part of our job. Those people want to speak. We have to provide them a platform. I don’t have [sic] anything wrong with that.”

The Post was not alone in its groveling to war. Major television networks behaved like government-owned subsidiaries for much of the period before and during the Iraq War. CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan explained a month after the United States attacked Iraq, “I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance, at CNN, ‘Here are the generals we’re thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war,’ and we got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was important.” Jessica Yellin, a CNN correspondent who formerly worked for MSNBC, commented in 2008, “When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.” NBC news anchor Katie Couric stated that there was pressure from “the corporations who own where we work and from the government itself to really squash any kind of dissent or any kind of questioning of it.”

Before the war, almost all the broadcast news stories on Iraq originated with the federal government. PBS’ Bill Moyers noted that “of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC, and CBS nightly news, from September 2002 until February 2003, almost all the stories could be traced back to sources from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.”

But this record of servility and deceit has not slackened the media’s enthusiasm to drench Memorial Day with sanctimony.

In reality, Memorial Day should be a time to remember the government’s crimes against the people. Politicians have perennially sent young Americans to die for false causes or on wild-goose chases.

Over the past century, war memorials have become increasingly popular. However, most of the memorials do little or nothing to inform people of the chicaneries or deceits that paved the way to or perpetuated the war. It would be a vast improvement if each war memorial also had an adjacent monument of major lies—such as an engraved plaque listing the major deceits by which the American public were swayed to support sending American boys off to die for some grand cause.

The Vietnam War memorial in Washington, for instance, lists the names of each American killed in that conflict. If that memorial could be complemented by excerpts from the Pentagon Papers—or from some of the major admissions of deceit by some of that war’s policymakers—the effect on the public would be far more uplifting.

General Patton said that an ounce of sweat can save a pint of blood. Similarly, a few hours studying the lessons of history can prevent heaps of grave-digging in the coming years. President Trump has saber-rattled against Iran, North Korea, Syria, and other nations. His bellicose rhetoric should spur Americans to review the follies and frauds of past wars before it is too late to stop the next pointless bloodbath.

Memorial Day can benefit from the creativity of free spirits across the board. Tom Blanton, the mastermind of the website Project for a New American Revolution, proposed in an exchange on my website changing Memorial Day to make it far more realistic:

It used to be that Memorial Day was to honor dead soldiers. In recent years, we are asked to also honor veterans (who already have a day) and active duty members of the armed services. This may be an indication that the politicians feel there aren’t enough dead soldiers…

I think Memorial Day should simply be renamed Tombstone Day and people should decorate their yards with styrofoam tombstones like they do for Halloween. True-believers might even consider a few flag-draped coffins made of cardboard and maybe hanging dismembered arms and legs made of rubber from their trees.

Blanton’s proposal would provide a shot in the arm for party stores during the slow period between Valentine’s Day and Halloween. And it would be a spark for conversations that were far more substantive than the usual flag waving.

I would favor celebrating Memorial Day the way the British used to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. Fawkes was the leader of a conspiracy in 1604 to blow up the Parliament building in London. Until recently, the British celebrated the anniversary of that day by burning Guy Fawkes in effigy. (Government officials have recently banned such burnings on the grounds that something bad might happen because of the fires. The movie V for Vendetta probably made some bureaucrats nervous.)

It would be appropriate to celebrate Memorial Day by burning in effigy the politicians whose lies led to the deaths of so many Americans (and innocent foreigners). Those whose images deserve to be torched run the gamut from Lyndon Johnson to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton (Kosovo) to George W. Bush (Iraq, et cetera), to Barack Obama (Afghanistan, Libya, et cetera). Donald Trump’s warring has primarily resulted in the killing of foreigners, but they are also worthy of remembrance and lamentation. The burnings could be accompanied by recitations of the major offenses against the truth and liberty that each politician committed.

The best way to honor American war dead is to cancel politicians’ prerogative to send troops abroad to fight on any and every pretext. And one of the best steps towards that goal is to remember the lies for which soldiers died.

Bes seeing you

 

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USA Plan: Militarized Control of Population. The “National Covid-19 Testing Action Plan” – Global ResearchGlobal Research

Posted by M. C. on May 26, 2020

Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.

David Rockefeller

https://www.globalresearch.ca/usa-plan-militarized-control-population/5713839

By Manlio Dinucci

The Rockefeller Foundation has presented the “National Covid-19 Testing Action Plan”, indicating the “pragmatic steps to reopen our workplaces and our communities”. However, it is not simply a matter of health measures as it appears from the title.

The Plan – that some of the most prestigious universities have contributed to (Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins and others) – prefigures a real hierarchical and militarized social model.

At the top, the “Pandemic Testing Board (PTB), akin to the War Production Board that the United States created in World War II“. The Pandemic Testing Board would “consist of leaders from business, government and academia” (government representatives would not in the first row, but finance and economic representatives being listed in order of importance).

This Supreme Council would have the power to decide productions and services with an authority similar to that conferred to the President of the United States in wartime by the Defense Production Act.

The plan calls for 3 million US citizens to be Covid-19 tested weekly, and the number should be raised to 30 million per week within six months. The goal is to achieve the ability to Covid-19 test 30 million people a day, which is to be realized within a year.

For each test, “a fair market reimbursement (e.g. $100) for all Covid-19 assays” is expected. Thus, billions of dollars a month of public money will be needed.

The Rockefeller Foundation and its financial partners will help create a network for the provision of credit guarantees and the signing of contracts with suppliers, that is large companies that manufacture drugs and medical equipment.

According to the Plan, the “Pandemic Control Council” is also authorized to create a “Pandemic Response Corps”: a special force (not surprisingly called “Corps” like the Marine Corps) with a staff of 100 to 300 thousand components.

They would be recruited among Peace Corps and Americorps volunteers (officially created by the US government to “help developing countries”) and among National Guard military personnel. The members of the “Pandemic Response Corps” would receive an average gross wage of $40,000 per year, a State expenditure of  $4-12 billion a year is expected for it.

The “pandemic response body” would above all have the task of controlling the population with military-like techniques, through digital tracking and identification systems, in work and study places, in residential areas, in public places and when travelling. Systems of this type – the Rockefeller Foundation recalls – are made by Apple, Google and Facebook.

According to the Plan, information on individuals relating to their state of health and their activities would remain confidential “whenever possible”. However, they would all be centralized in a digital platform co-managed by the Federal State and private companies. According to data provided by the “Pandemic Control Council”, it would be decided from time to time which area should be subject to lockdown and for how long.

This, in summary, is the plan the Rockefeller Foundation wants to implement in the United States and beyond. If it were even partially implemented, there would be further concentration of economic and political power in the hands of an even narrower elite sector to the detriment of a growing majority that would be deprived of fundamental democratic rights.

The operation is carried out in the name of “Covid-19 control”, whose mortality rate has so far been less than 0.03% of the US population according to official data. In the Rockefeller Foundation Plan the virus is used as a real weapon, more dangerous than Covid-19 itself.

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German Foreign Policy Is a CIA Front – Global ResearchGlobal Research

Posted by M. C. on May 26, 2020

And the purpose of EUCOM? “The mission of EUCOM is to protect and defend the US..” It’s purpose is not to defend the interests of Germany but the interests of the USA.

Shocking! Not that the CIA is doing this but that the Germans are happy being US lackeys.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/german-foreign-policy-cia-front/5712571

By Aidan O’Brien

On March 30 Germany declared the important Lebanese political group, Hezbollah, to be a “terrorist” organization and banned it from German soil. By doing so it gratuitously increased the tension in the eastern Mediterranean and exposed Berlin’s lack of credibility on the world stage.

Is it really in Germany’s interest to destabilize a region that has already been crippled by multiple wars? On the surface Germany doesn’t appear to have a stake in the politics of Lebanon. Indeed, from whatever angle the situation is viewed from, Germany qua Germany doesn’t have a meaningful stake in Lebanon. Yet Berlin is assaulting the sovereignty of this small Mediterranean nation that means no harm.

Hezbollah is an organization that forms 10% of the current Lebanese parliament and is a significant part of Lebanon’s governing coalition. Because of its commitment to international justice, Hezbollah is, in fact, Lebanon’s most recognizable political group. And that’s the point. Hezbollah’s successful efforts to defend the sovereignty of Lebanon in the past decades, and the sovereignty of Syria in recent years, is a problem for that power which aims to destroy the sovereignty of both Lebanon and Syria. However, that power isn’t Germany, so what then explains Berlin’s hostility towards Beirut?

Germany is doing someone’s bidding. Germany’s problem is that it’s foreign policy is stuck in the late 20th century. At present, Germany’s political structure is stuck in post World War Two Europe. Ever since the Nazis were defeated in 1945, Germany has been a cutout. To begin with, it was either a Soviet or an American cutout. But when the Soviets had the decency to exit Germany in “1989”, the Americans remained. As a consequence, in the 21st century German independence is still an aspiration rather than a reality.

According to Deutsche Welle (DW), in 2019 there were “roughly 38,600” American soldiers based in Germany. “This is…more military personnel than the US keeps in any other country except Japan.” In other words, whether it likes it or not, Germany is a key part of American geopolitics. As DW explains:

“Germany’s strategic importance for the US is reflected by the location of US European Command (EUCOM) headquarters in the southwestern city of Stuttgart, from which it serves as the coordinating structure for all American military forces across 51 primarily European countries.”

And the purpose of EUCOM? “The mission of EUCOM is to protect and defend the US..” It’s purpose is not to defend the interests of Germany but the interests of the USA.

EUCOM though is only the overt dimension of US power in Germany. As intimidating and oppressive as EUCOM is, it is less sinister than the covert dimension of US power in Berlin and beyond. To bend German politicians and opinion towards warmongering in west Asia requires a level of deceitfulness that is too subtle for the straightforward American war machine. This need for sly covert action is the raison d’être of America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). And Germany is as much under the control of the CIA as it is under the control of EUCOM. The evidence is the illogical German decision to make Hezbollah illegal.

The evidence is the fact that Germany’s “foreign” secret service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (the BND), which reportedly has 300 bases inside and outside Germany, was a CIA creation. This means that infamous spymasters, like Allen Dulles (CIA/Nazi sympathizer) and Reinhard Gehlen (Nazi/CIA), developed a covert system within Germany in the late 1940s and 1950s – a system that continues to function surreptitiously today.

Recent evidence of this insidious CIA activity in Germany includes the US bugging of Germany’s prime minister, Angela Merkel (revealed in 2013); the US/German creation of a Swiss front company (Crypto AG) to spy on world governments (revealed in 2020); and the manipulation of German media, as revealed in the book Presstitutes Embedded in the Pay of the CIA (2019), by Udo Ulfkoette. All of which confirms the claims made by CIA whistleblower Philip Agee in the 1970s. For example, in a 1976 interview with the German magazine Informations Dienst he stated:

“Since World War II, the aim of US foreign policy has been to guarantee the coherence of the western world under the leadership of the USA. CIA activities are directed toward achieving this goal….Left opposition movements had to be discredited and destroyed….After World War II, West Germany was a crucial area. In order to secure US interests there, the CIA supported not only the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) but also the SPD (Social Democratic Union) and the trade unions. The CIA wanted the influence of the two major political parties to be strong enough to shut out and hold down any left opposition…..Most CIA stations pay journalists to publish the CIA’s propaganda as if it were the journalist’s own work….”

And how does Hezbollah fit into this CIA / German matrix? Its an official US enemy. And so, ipso facto, its an official German “enemy”. As a key part of the “axis of resistance” (Lebanon, Syria and Iran) that’s fighting US imperialism in west Asia, Hezbollah has been in the crosshairs of Washington DC for sometime. Hence the March 2019 Aljazeera headline: “[US] Tells Lebanon to Choose Hezbollah or Independence”. A headline which can also be read: “US Tells Germany to Criminalize Hezbollah”.

The big geopolitical picture is, of course, the grand chessboard that stretches across the Eurasian landmass. On the western edge of this “world island” the US is anchored in Germany. And on the eastern side the US is anchored in Japan. The aim of US imperialism is to control or contain everything in between – primarily Russia and China. And in this US “game” of control and containment, the oil fields and pipelines in west Asia (the eastern Mediterranean) are fundamental.

Germany’s decision to criminalize Hezbollah is a part this great US “game”. As a key American base on the Eurasian landmass, the “mighty“ Germany is nothing but a pawn in the hands the US. This “German decision”, therefore, is in reality an American decision – a decision managed by America’s covert warriors: the CIA. The problem for the USA and Germany, however, is that the “game” is now so obvious that whatever decision is made lacks power and meaning.

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The public must lead us out of the lockdown – spiked

Posted by M. C. on May 26, 2020

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/25/the-public-must-lead-us-out-of-the-lockdown/

The political elites have lost the plot over Covid-19. The people must take over.

Brendan O’Neill
Editor

There was a fascinating clip on the news last week. ITV was reporting from a crowded beach in Brighton. People were sunning themselves, chatting with friends, necking beers. All to the fury of lockdown fanatics, of course, who view these pleasure-seekers as selfish, unwitting murderers. ‘You’re killing people!’, as the demented cry goes.

During ITV’s report, a man holding a bottle of beer and mingling with his family said something really revealing: ‘I know we’re down here drinking beer… but if we carry on the way we’re going, I think we’re going to have a major lockdown in two weeks… and we’re going to see a massive rise in deaths again.’

So he was breaking the lockdown, or at least infuriating lockdown fanatics, while simultaneously genuflecting to one of the core commandments of the lockdown ideology – that individual bad behaviour can cause social mayhem and even death.

It was a telling snapshot of where I think many people are at right now. Instinctively, growing numbers of people are bristling at the lockdown, recognising that it is deeply harmful to work life, social life, and liberty itself. But they know you aren’t meant to hold this view, far less act on it. So they make a performance of fealty to the lockdown strictures.

So overbearing is the lockdown ideology, so widespread is lockdown conformism among the opinion-forming set, that people recognise that opposing it is a socially risky business. You’ll be demonised, Twitter-shamed, branded a killer. You will be reduced to a ‘Covidiot’. To be a lockdown apostate, to question the rituals of social distancing, is not a pleasant experience.

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The Remnant Newspaper – A Progressive Insanity

Posted by M. C. on May 26, 2020

Disrupting commerce with business closures and stay-at-home orders, thereby suppressing demand and creating negative multiplier effects which will extend into the foreseeable future. Greatly increasing the risk of private investment and then crowding it out with yet more government borrowing, leading to decreased supply. Diminishing the savings needed for investment through an immediate loss of income and a potential loss of value upon further monetization of debt. All this is obviously insane. 

https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/articles/item/4906-a-progressive-insanity

Written by  John Andra

Cloth masks, narrow plastic shields, and six feet of separation to stop an airborne virus. Limiting exposure to the largely nonlethal virus when immunity is necessary to function and no vaccine exists. An apparent belief that avoiding the virus will remove it from the environment. All this is obviously insane.

Delaying medical screenings for deadly conditions like cancer and heart disease. Depleting the resources of medical centers needed to treat such conditions. Substantially increasing pressure on individuals prone to mental illness. All this is obviously insane.

Disrupting commerce with business closures and stay-at-home orders, thereby suppressing demand and creating negative multiplier effects which will extend into the foreseeable future. Greatly increasing the risk of private investment and then crowding it out with yet more government borrowing, leading to decreased supply. Diminishing the savings needed for investment through an immediate loss of income and a potential loss of value upon further monetization of debt. All this is obviously insane.

How did Modern Man, that hard-headed creature who occupied the earth 60 years ago, fall into insanity? Was he not a clear thinker, a doer, a pragmatist? Look! We now have clean water! Roads and sewers! Skyscrapers and bridges! None of your medieval inventions like “essences” were ever needed.

There is an etiology to these things, and it probably did not start with a coronavirus. Modern Man was hard-headed about physical things, but soft-headed about metaphysical things. His soft-headedness has simply progressed to physical things, albeit to an unseen virus.

So, where did the insanity start? With Adam and Eve, but if one were to pick a point of new decline, it would be during the Middle Ages. Just after the turn of the first millennium, when the physical conditions of Western society were stabilizing with increased security and prosperity, intellectual life began a thousand-year process of metaphysical deconstruction.black and white ad Cold War

Rationalism was first heard in the forerunners of medieval universities, and then with increasing virulence in the universities themselves. Perhaps due to a certain pride in no longer being slaughtered by Vikings, or in having usually adequate harvests, some thinkers emphasized their own mental processes in a way which diminished the rest of reality. The change began in the arts faculties, where scholars doubted whether the mind could grasp the essences of things, and progressed to Occam and his followers, who claimed essences did not exist at all.

Rationalism thus gave birth, following a very subtle gestation, to empiricism. Both mother and daughter focused on part of reality, the mother preferring mental processes and the daughter preferring sense data. Both thereby missed that intersection of mental processes and sense data, the understanding mind, which actually grasps reality. One would naturally wonder about the father of such a strange family.

In any event, these philosophical distortions had horrible implications for theology. St. Thomas therefore mounted a defense. He relied on the greatest philosopher of essence, Aristotle, to establish a philosophical/theological synthesis that built upon St. Augustine.

St. Augustine, it is true, knew much more Plato than Aristotle, but Augustine was fundamentally a Paulist, not a Platonist. The world had thus already heard St. Paul of Tarsus, St. Augustine of Hippo, and St. Thomas Aquinas—arguably the three greatest minds of Christianity, and interestingly, three of the most virile.

Even with these witnesses, the insanity continued. Dr. Luther maintained the Scriptures could speak for themselves and that he was the man to do it. King Henry claimed control over the Church on the same basis the pagan Emperors had claimed it, because his realm was an Empire.

These positions naturally led to war. James Madison and others eventually proposed to avoid war by establishing a government which would decide disputes between religiously motivated parties without addressing the religious question. The fact any such decision would inevitably touch on the underlying issue was somehow missed.

Unfortunately, many American Catholics saw the temporary ceasefire as a permanent solution. Some even attributed the growth of the Church in the United States to it. Pope Leo XIII corrected these misperceptions in his encyclical Longinqua, but the insanity was already advanced.

The courts of the supposedly neutral state began operating as a counter-magisterium, contributing to what Pope Benedict recently called society’s “antichristliches Credo,” or Antichrist-like creed. Seewald, Benedikt XVI:  Ein Leben 1075 (Droemer, 2020). With a derangement possible only upon full surrender of the reason to the will, the courts held marriage bears no relation to the sex of the partners, and that nature establishes a right to kill one’s child. These perverse creedal statements perfected metaphysical insanity by denying any meaning to physical reality. Once again, who could be the father of all this?

Having achieved complete metaphysical insanity, the next step was physical insanity regarding an invisible virus. The move was actually incremental, if considered in context. A society which could accept same-sex marriage and abortion on demand was fully capable of destroying itself on the pretext of individual well-being. With respect to the father of the most recent insanity, Msgr. Charles Pope has asserted a demonic origin.

Humans have a natural affinity for each other which makes personal and societal destruction hard to watch. Christians know the remedy, but they also know the cost. One must die in Christ. The choice seems insane to worldlings, but it has this effect, which is not the point but only a marker—it leaves the believer in possession of his or her reason. G.K. Chesterton captured the dynamic in his brilliant conclusion to Heretics:

“The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed. THE END”

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