Doug Casey: Milei’s election is a big deal—potentially a very, very big deal. He’s the first declared anarcho-capitalist in history to head any country. And not by stealth. He, all the while, said that the State is the enemy and should be abolished. Anarcho-capitalists believe that society can run itself without a State, which is a formalized instrument of coercion.
International Man: Javier Milei made history by becoming the world’s first anarcho-capitalist president.
What is the historical significance of his victory? Are you optimistic?
Doug Casey: Milei’s election is a big deal—potentially a very, very big deal. He’s the first declared anarcho-capitalist in history to head any country. And not by stealth. He, all the while, said that the State is the enemy and should be abolished. Anarcho-capitalists believe that society can run itself without a State, which is a formalized instrument of coercion.
It’s unprecedented for somebody to be elected to run a State that he wants to abolish. And propose that if it continues to exist, it should only have the police, military, and the courts. And even those should be privatized.
Am I optimistic?
Looking at it from a long-term point of view, for the last hundred years, individual freedom has been diminishing, and State power has grown hugely all over the world. What’s worse is that the trend is accelerating. Many countries are on the ragged edge of turning into socialist or fascist dictatorships.
That includes the US. Since Reagan left office, all of our presidents have been disasters of various types, with the current regime being the worst yet. In Argentina, the Peronists have run the country completely into the ground over the last 75 years.
Of course, maybe Milei’s election is just an uptick in a continuing downtrend because you can’t change a country’s national philosophy overnight. But destroying a State apparatus infested by Peronists, socialists, fascists, and other horrible parasites is a good start. If he can pull the apparatus of the State out by its roots, not just trim it back, the result might last for quite a while.
I’m encouraged by the fact that young people and poor people are among his biggest supporters. They recognize that they’re the ones who the State damages the most. Could Argentina be the start of a worldwide trend towards free minds and free markets?
Since I prefer to believe humans are basically decent, I can’t help being optimistic—even if cautiously. He’s going to get lots of resistance from the Deep State, unions, the media, welfare queens, and other “usual suspects.”
International Man: Perhaps there is no issue more important in Argentina than money.
Milei has promised to “burn down the central bank” and replace the peso with the US dollar. He has made statements favorable to eliminating all legal tender laws and allowing whatever commodity the free market would choose as money—though he hasn’t articulated his exact plans.
What do you think Milei should do regarding the money issue? What are the risks of adopting the US dollar and not having any monetary alternatives?
Doug Casey: First of all, he totally understands the government shouldn’t be in the money business. I know that shocks most people to hear, but trusting the government with money is like trusting a teenager with a Corvette and a bottle of Jack Daniels.
From Wall Street Silver: “Net Zero was never viable. It is impossible to completely remove CO2 from our energy needs and overall economy. Politicians are just now beginning to realize that. Just about every modern technology requires oil, natural gas and/or coal in order to function. Many of the metals required need to be mined and new deposits are often remote with no access to the electric grid.”
So, the net stores of military jet fuel immediately available from US refiners above the global contingency supplies managed by the Defense Logistics Agency at any time represents about 375 net flight hours for one carrier and one air wing.
Don’t tell Greta, but the hits keep coming for wind projects…
For perspective, $4 billion equals about 28 billion DKK. Orsted’s equity is 76 billion DKK, so that $4 billion hit is equivalent to some 37% of its market cap. How the hell did they get it that wrong? Perhaps we can just put it down to delusional expectations that pervaded in the wind industry and still pervade today.
Remember: your energy bills have skyrocketed in order to subsidise bird-killing wind turbines that don’t work. You may think it’s just silly and those pushing this agenda are simply delusional, but this is actually part of the Net Zero agenda to deliberately deindustrialise (and thereby impoverish) the West, while China and other countries unashamedly continue to capitalise on the huge economic prosperity afforded by the use of fossil fuels.
None of this has anything to do with saving the planet, and everything to do with demolishing our standard of living, demolishing our economic prosperity and transforming the former middle class into a neo-feudal peasant class.
From Wall Street Silver: “Net Zero was never viable. It is impossible to completely remove CO2 from our energy needs and overall economy. Politicians are just now beginning to realize that. Just about every modern technology requires oil, natural gas and/or coal in order to function. Many of the metals required need to be mined and new deposits are often remote with no access to the electric grid.”
Then there’s this from The Travelling Scientist: “The Paris accord interestingly promotes “non-fossil biocarbon-based” CO2 sources as being okay and counts towards net zero… so cutting trees and burning wood is no problem to the regulators, and becoming ever more popular to meet regulations companies are even patting themselves on their backs in their quarterly reports for doing so.”
And this from James Melville: “The unethical truth of net zero. Around 40,000 child slaves in Congo work in hazardous conditions in cobalt mines, with inadequate safety equipment and for very little money. The cobalt is used in many products – including electric car batteries.”
NATO’s 75th birthday is coming around soon, with celebrations planned for July of next year in Washington. Yet the organisation has a bit of a problem with the party and celebrations.
Rasmussen seems to think he has a plan with giving Ukraine a token NATO membership, overlooking the somewhat incongruous fact that it was the threat of Ukraine becoming a NATO member which kicked things off the first place.
When people reach the ripe old age of 75, there is usually a tendency to slow down and take things easier; often there’s a lack of cohesion, sentences often aren’t completed, delusion and incompetence become more noticeable if not plain idiocy on a scale not previously seen. In some cases, relatives might even talk of assisted suicide to put the old bugger out of his misery, with some even as going as far to talk about being “brain dead”.
NATO’s 75th birthday is coming around soon, with celebrations planned for July of next year in Washington. Yet the organisation has a bit of a problem with the party and celebrations. What’s there to celebrate with Ukraine more or less a war that even die-hard Republicans in America admit is a war which cannot be won? 75 years old, NATO is looking more and more like an outdated institution which, if anything, is going to fall on its sword at some point when the world wakes up and realises what a con it is.
But the old git has to be kept alive at all costs, largely to keep up appearances for new members and also to protect the reputations of western leaders who have staked theirs on the war in Ukraine being a righteous win.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen is a lucky man. The former NATO chief is fortunate enough to actually not look as stupid as he really is and is at a period in his so-called career where he can say patently idiotic things and it doesn’t matter. But his latest idea – to give Ukraine some kind of token, half-cocked NATO membership – is braindead nonsense on a whole new scale which we haven’t seen before.
NATO Neanderthals are desperate to find a solution in Ukraine so they can have their party in July and not look completely stupid while they watch the fireworks and do the idiotic arms-crossed hand shakes. You know the sort of thing.
Ukraine has to be fixed. The war has to be presented to a gullible western audience as victory, sort of, to NATO. Given that the whole thing is over and the Ukrainian army is such a shower of shite, one wonders how NATO folk are going to pull off such a stunt.
Rasmussen seems to think he has a plan with giving Ukraine a token NATO membership, overlooking the somewhat incongruous fact that it was the threat of Ukraine becoming a NATO member which kicked things off the first place. His thinking – don’t laugh – is that if Ukraine was in NATO then Russia would be too afraid to attack it. That is to say, Russia, which controls about a third of the country in the east would be reluctant to attack the western part currently under control of Ukrainian army. And this move would show Russia that Ukraine can join NATO. According to the Guardian, the “former secretary general says partial membership would warn Russia it cannot stop Ukraine joining the alliance”.
It seems an incredibly juvenile gesture, but the logic behind the thinking is fatally flawed for at least four key reasons, in my view.
The idea just writes off all of the territory that Russia has taken and expects Zelensky to swallow this, despite the Ukrainian president stating on many occasions this is not negotiable.
Russia would not be afraid to strike western Ukraine simply because the country was sort of in NATO. The bigger worry here is the escalation from NATO would put it under the spotlight to retaliate, which it wouldn’t.
NATO membership comes with a few rules, namely only democracies get to join the club. NATO does not do state building and so allowing one of the most corrupt countries in the world into its elite club might lower the bar for other countries like Bosnia or Georgia who are candidate members. It can’t take in gangsters and not expect its public image to slip even further.
Allowing Ukraine in, takes away a key – if not the only – bargaining chip the west has, which is to guarantee to Putin that Ukraine won’t join NATO. With Ukraine in NATO and representing an even bigger threat, it raises the stakes even higher and gives Russia no real reason not to invade.
Like absolutely everything that NATO and the Biden administration has done since day one of the Russian invasion, this is yet another gross miscalculation on the part of NATO elites. Are they banking on Joe Biden not even knowing which country he is in, being unable to even say one word through his rapidly developing senility by the time July comes around? Or that Zelensky himself is the real problem as he wouldn’t ever accept giving up the Donbas or Crimea and so therefore has to be replaced?
If the Indians sat down and decided to make world class porridge, then of course it would be child’s play for them. Just as it is child’s play for the Indians to make whiskey.
Although NATO has essentially delivered Russia’s whiskey market to India on a platter, the damage will not stop there as Indian producers of Amrut and Paul John, together with their Russian and Chinese partners, have been given a golden opportunity to use Russia to go after the premium whiskey market, to replace top quality brands like Jameson, Bushmills, and Glenfiddich with their own no less perfect offerings.
A recent Russia Today news story about Russia’s whiskey market NATO’s sanctions stop me linking to puts me in mind of a favourite old joke, as well as an article on Indian tourism I read very many moons ago.
The joke is that Irish monks taught the Scots how to make whiskey 1500 years ago but that the Scots are still learning. Although there is much truth in that, as regards the Russian whiskey market, the joke is now very much not only on both the Scots and the Irish but also on the Americans who previously sold hundreds of thousands of litres of their whiskies to the Russkies before this latest trade war in support of the Kiev Nazis began.
As regards India, I had been reading the travel supplement in one of the upmarket Sunday broadsheets, when I was told of some hotel or other in the Himalayan foothills that made the best porridge in India. Now, as the Irish, as well as the Scots, are as much known for their porridge as for their whiskey, that struck me as a bit presumptuous before I got down to think about it. If the Indians sat down and decided to make world class porridge, then of course it would be child’s play for them.
Just as it is child’s play for the Indians to make whiskey. Not only are the Indians the world’s third largest whiskey producers but some of their products are, by all accounts, quite good. I speak here as an Irish purist, who regards Irish whiskey, along with some Scottish single malts, as the world’s best and who regards most Scottish whiskey as little more than overpriced cough mixture, fit only for putting into Irish coffees for gullible tourists. American whiskies you can keep and the Polish, Japanese, Canadian, Mexican and South East Asian whiskies I have sampled in my time have, shall we say, left a lot to be desired. Not quite up there with a Bushmills Black in front of a blazing winter’s turf fire.
Though tastes do differ, the fact is that Irish whiskies and their Scottish and American near equivalents do enjoy a brand premium. And this stupid Russian turbulence shows just how vulnerable to Indian and Chinese attack that premium is.
It is not as if we were not down this road before. During the 1930s’ economic war between Britain and Ireland, Irish whiskey was side-lined so much that many undiscerning drinkers now refer to whiskey as Scotch, not knowing that whiskey is an Irish drink and that the quality of Scotch whiskey ranges from the smoothly sublime to rot gut that is little better than paint remover.
Although the Koreans, for example, down Scotch whiskey by the gallon, they tend to go for brand names like Johnny Walker rather than the true, top shelf stuff that is distilled in Scotland’s western islands. To understand the difference in quality, just ask a German beer drinker what he thinks of Heineken or any similar Dutch excuse for beer.
Although Irish mixed martial arts champion Conor McGregor made a tidy packet developing and then on-selling his own Proper No Twelve brand of whiskey, his was a market niche of no great consequence to the overall whiskey market. This Russian madness is in a very different league as it threatens to leave the West with nothing but niche markets as India, China and other competitors steam-roll their way to global dominance.
NATO’s sanctions have allowed China, rather than Ireland, Japan or Scotland, to now sell over 400,000 litres of whiskey a year to Russia. That is serious money NATO is flushing down the toilet.
And then there are the Indians, who are now selling a quarter of a million litres of whiskey a year to the Russians, who have seen a staggering 36 new local brands emerge to cater to their needs.
As if that was not bad enough for NATO’s Irish and Scottish lapdogs, Indian company Allied Blenders & Distillers (ABD), which produces Officer’s Choice, the world’s third-most-popular whiskey, has now got the Russian whiskey market firmly in its cross hairs, with Russian vodka manufacturer Alcohol Siberian Group (ASG) lined up to be ABD’s sole distributor.
India produces 60% of the world’s (loosely defined) whiskey, with ABD already being firmly established in more than 20 countries. Although ABD’s revenue currently stands at a relatively modest $765 million, this can be expected to grow as NATO continues to shoot its own producers in the foot with these stupid sanctions and needless trade wars.
Although NATO has essentially delivered Russia’s whiskey market to India on a platter, the damage will not stop there as Indian producers of Amrut and Paul John, together with their Russian and Chinese partners, have been given a golden opportunity to use Russia to go after the premium whiskey market, to replace top quality brands like Jameson, Bushmills, and Glenfiddich with their own no less perfect offerings.
I met Carlin during the intermission of one of his shows in San Diego. It was near the end of his career and his life. He was disappointed in the bland reaction of the audience that night. I think he might have started to realize that too many of his people were blasted out on meds and other drugs, and were generally opting for passivity as a lifestyle.
Or just a few days of protest over an Algerian immigrant stabbing Irish children outside a school?
Things could explode in massive fury, because the government is trying to push through a new Hate Speech law.
It contains the usual garble about incitement to violence, hatred directed toward special groups; the new wrinkle makes it a crime to even POSSESS such hate material.
If my experience as a kid with Irish kids is still relevant, half of Ireland could wind up in jail if this law passes. Those kids were masters of the insult. They practiced and cultivated it. For them, it was an art form.
If the law passes, I think the government is going to have to outlaw booze. Which is often the initiator of “hate speech.”
I assume the Irish government itself would be one of the special groups—hate speech directed at it would qualify as a crime. If so, you may as well not refer to Ireland as a nation anymore.
If that Irish lad George Carlin were still alive, I think he would have much to say about this new law.
“But they take it too far, they take themselves too seriously, they exaggerate. They want me to call that thing in the street a ‘person-hole cover;’ I think that’s taking it a little bit too far.
The reality, however, is that electric vehicle demand today is not keeping up with the large influx of BEVs arriving at our dealerships prompted by the current regulations. BEVs are stacking up on our lots,” the dealers said
Data from Bankrate indicates that interest rates for new auto loans with a 60-month term have reached their highest point since the Dot Com bust era. Additionally, the soaring prices of new electric vehicles pose a significant affordability challenge for the average working-class American. Beyond affordability issues, consumer interest in EVs is also waning. This sentiment is echoed by 3,900 auto dealers who have written to President Biden, urging his administration to reconsider the pace of EV mandates, citing a severe decline in demand for these vehicles.
”Currently, there are many excellent battery electric vehicles available for consumers to purchase. These vehicles are ideal for many people, and we believe their appeal will grow over time. The reality, however, is that electric vehicle demand today is not keeping up with the large influx of BEVs arriving at our dealerships prompted by the current regulations. BEVs are stacking up on our lots,” the dealers said.
They said 2022 was a year of “hope and hype about EVs” but has morphed into a bust cycle as “supply of unsold BEVs is surging, as they are not selling nearly as fast as they are arriving at our dealerships — even with deep price cuts, manufacturer incentives, and generous government incentives.”
They warned: “Already, electric vehicles are stacking up on our lots which is our best indicator of customer demand in the marketplace.”
According to Bankrate data, this may be because new auto loans with 60-month terms have soared from around 3.5% to 7.78% in a very short period – we call this an interest rate shock. Current rates are at levels not seen since the second half of 2001.
Had I never visited and lived among the oppressed as well as the oppressors, I certainly would be on the side of the Israelis. Just look at what they’ve done with their land and look at what the Palestinians have accomplished: zero. And yet, I have lived there and have seen what is going on with my own eyes and cannot ignore what I’ve seen and lived.
The question was a valid one: “How could you, a conservative and a gentleman, be for them?” The man is an acquaintance of long standing, also a gent, so I bothered to explain: “Because I’ve been there and have seen what’s going on up close.”
Needless to say, it was the Middle East we were talking about, and my sympathy for the Palestinians, as opposed to tiny Israel surrounded by hostile Arab nations. I was based in Amman back in 1969 and during “Black September” one year later, when King Hussein destroyed the PLO effort to take over his country. I had visited the Palestinian refugee camps for those evicted by Israeli settlers during the founding of Israel in 1948. I then covered the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and have visited many more such camps in Lebanon since then. All I can say is once you’ve seen the misery of life in those camps, it takes a heart of stone to ignore them.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s David Schulman, a Hebrew professor at an Israeli university, writing in The New York Review of Books: “It is a regime of state terror whose raison d’être is the theft of Palestinian land and, whenever possible, the expulsion of its Palestinian owners. I have seen this system in operation over the course of the past twenty odd years.”
“Suffice it to say that Hamas knew very well that in its counterattack Israel would lose the PR battle.”
Mind you, pro-Israelis might immediately think, “There goes yet another self-loathing Jew.” I don’t know Schulman, but I’ve met a lot of Israelis who not only agree with him, but are adamant that Israel under Netanyahu has become an occupying power bent on capturing the whole West Bank. One thing is for sure, and I will get to the Hamas outrage and the Israeli reaction later on: To Palestinians living under the occupation over the past several years, state violence against them has escalated dramatically.
The question was a valid one: “How could you, a conservative and a gentleman, be for them?” The man is an acquaintance of long standing, also a gent, so I bothered to explain: “Because I’ve been there and have seen what’s going on up close.”
Needless to say, it was the Middle East we were talking about, and my sympathy for the Palestinians, as opposed to tiny Israel surrounded by hostile Arab nations. I was based in Amman back in 1969 and during “Black September” one year later, when King Hussein destroyed the PLO effort to take over his country. I had visited the Palestinian refugee camps for those evicted by Israeli settlers during the founding of Israel in 1948. I then covered the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and have visited many more such camps in Lebanon since then. All I can say is once you’ve seen the misery of life in those camps, it takes a heart of stone to ignore them.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s David Schulman, a Hebrew professor at an Israeli university, writing in The New York Review of Books: “It is a regime of state terror whose raison d’être is the theft of Palestinian land and, whenever possible, the expulsion of its Palestinian owners. I have seen this system in operation over the course of the past twenty odd years.”
“Suffice it to say that Hamas knew very well that in its counterattack Israel would lose the PR battle.”
Mind you, pro-Israelis might immediately think, “There goes yet another self-loathing Jew.” I don’t know Schulman, but I’ve met a lot of Israelis who not only agree with him, but are adamant that Israel under Netanyahu has become an occupying power bent on capturing the whole West Bank. One thing is for sure, and I will get to the Hamas outrage and the Israeli reaction later on: To Palestinians living under the occupation over the past several years, state violence against them has escalated dramatically.
The question was a valid one: “How could you, a conservative and a gentleman, be for them?” The man is an acquaintance of long standing, also a gent, so I bothered to explain: “Because I’ve been there and have seen what’s going on up close.”
Needless to say, it was the Middle East we were talking about, and my sympathy for the Palestinians, as opposed to tiny Israel surrounded by hostile Arab nations. I was based in Amman back in 1969 and during “Black September” one year later, when King Hussein destroyed the PLO effort to take over his country. I had visited the Palestinian refugee camps for those evicted by Israeli settlers during the founding of Israel in 1948. I then covered the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and have visited many more such camps in Lebanon since then. All I can say is once you’ve seen the misery of life in those camps, it takes a heart of stone to ignore them.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s David Schulman, a Hebrew professor at an Israeli university, writing in The New York Review of Books: “It is a regime of state terror whose raison d’être is the theft of Palestinian land and, whenever possible, the expulsion of its Palestinian owners. I have seen this system in operation over the course of the past twenty odd years.”
Mind you, pro-Israelis might immediately think, “There goes yet another self-loathing Jew.” I don’t know Schulman, but I’ve met a lot of Israelis who not only agree with him, but are adamant that Israel under Netanyahu has become an occupying power bent on capturing the whole West Bank. One thing is for sure, and I will get to the Hamas outrage and the Israeli reaction later on: To Palestinians living under the occupation over the past several years, state violence against them has escalated dramatically.
It is hard for me to describe what I’ve seen with my own eyes when Jewish religious fanatics—or settlers, as they’re called—mostly young men and women imbued with a burning, racist hate for Palestinians, come face-to-face with them. The Israeli army and the police, supposedly neutral, invariably side with the settlers, and thus one more Arab village empties out with religious fanatics moving in. The plan is a simple one and openly espoused by government officials: If life becomes unbearable, the Palestinians will leave and go to Jordan or Saudi Arabia, or anywhere, and the whole West Bank will be Jewish.
Well, it is a pipe dream because there are 8 million Palestinians not exactly wanted by other Arab countries. Netanyahu’s plan was to turn the West Bank into another Gaza, but then came Oct. 7 and we know the rest. Or do we? There is a longtime pattern in that disputed land: Palestinian suicide bombers propelled Netanyahu into the Prime Minister’s office, and it has been he and his hardliners who have fueled extremist Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The horror attacks of Oct. 7 have now been followed by the Gaza massacres of innocents, with more children reported killed in Gaza in the last three weeks than in all global conflicts together in the last year. This is according to Save the Children, not any Palestinian charity.
