The Ron Paul Liberty Report
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The Role of Government Should Be To Protect Individual Liberty
Posted by M. C. on October 2, 2023
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Talking about Stoicism 248 Wealth and Sympatheia
Posted by M. C. on October 1, 2023
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Disease X And How The Ruling Class Is “Preparing” For It
Posted by M. C. on September 30, 2023
“The main problem with this tyrannical plan is the slave class not willing to comply because they figured out they don’t have to be slaves to anyone. The Washington Post admits as much, however, using language designed to try to mentally mani[ulate the human livestock:“
“Humanity is quickly approaching a junction in our evolution. We will either devolve into permanent slaves with no control over our own lives, or we will realize we are free beings, beholden to no one but ourselves, and conduct our lives accordingly. There won’t be any gray areas when the global tyrants are done. We will be permanent slaves, or we will be free.”
https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/disease-x-and-how-the-ruling-class-is-preparing-for-it
by Mac Slavo
The term “Disease X” was coined years ago and refers to a pandemic of any kind that could happen in the future, but hasn’t yet. It has been a way to panic the public and get them to accept the onslaught of vaccines the rulers keep pushing to “protect” them from an invisible threat.
The ruling class will stop at nothing to panic the slaves into continued submission, but at some point, if enough figure out the game, it is possible a real disease and contagion that could cause real-world harm and death could be released in order to mentally recapture the willing masses.
According to a report by The Washington Post, The World Health Organization added Disease X in 2017 to a short list of pathogens deemed a top priority for research, alongside known killers like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Ebola.
The current list of diseases that the WHO is “concerned” about are:
• Covid-19
• Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever
• Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease
• Lassa fever
• Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and SARS
• Nipah and henipaviral diseases
• Rift Valley fever
• Zika
• Disease X
Why is the ruling class concerned about DIsease X?
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Biggest Debate Joke: Ukraine Aid is a “Loan” That Will Be Paid Back
Posted by M. C. on September 30, 2023
“Interestingly, a footnote in the first sentence did recognize that $2 billion of the $3 billion of Marshall Plan loans made to West Germany was forgiven in 1953, while most other European nations received direct grants rather than loans from the program and therefore didn’t have to worry about repayment.“
“As the report goes on to document, any pre-existing federal commitment to debt repayment began to quickly erode during the George H.W. Bush Administration.“
https://mises.org/power-market/biggest-debate-joke-ukraine-aid-loan-will-be-paid-back
Last night’s Republican debate was a farce from beginning to end.
The first laugh line of the evening was Fox Business personality Stuart Varney having a difficult time getting through the name of his co-host Ilia Calderón.
Awkward start for Stuart Varney… #GOPDebate pic.twitter.com/MwSwVJj4Kh— ElectionMuse (@ElectionMuse) September 28, 2023
The debate’s conclusion ended in a similarly awkward moment for the moderators, with candidates rebelling against an attempt to turn the debate into a political game of Survivor.
Fox News actually tried to get the candidates to play Survivor and write down who they would “vote off the island.”
The candidates looked at Dana Perino like she was an insane person. pic.twitter.com/rL5YD4rrdM— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) September 28, 2023
In between, the politicians on stage attempted to deliver carefully planned one-liners designed to demonstrate more personality than what comes naturally to them. In particular, while there is plenty to laugh at Mike Pence about, his attempted joke was not one of them.
Mike Pence absolutely bombs with the debate crowd with this joke:
“Look, I do sagree with something Tim Scott just said. Joe Biden does not belong on a picket line. He belongs on the unemployment line.” pic.twitter.com/iXHM5HIddi— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 28, 2023
The most comedic line of the night belonged to South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. Scott, whose ten-year career in the Senate has left him with no argument for his candidacy beyond latent Republican desires for diversity on the ticket, dutifully stood up to defend the increasingly unpopular bipartisan financial aid lawmakers have provided Ukraine. In response to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stating that he would reject further US financial support for the Ukrainian effort, Scott contended that 90% of the assistance is a loan that will be paid off.
Dissension arises over the proper response to the Ukraine war
Tim Scott: 90% of the money we send over there is a loan pic.twitter.com/cWuYTcB3cd— MRCTV (@mrctv) September 28, 2023
It is difficult to know whether or not Senator Scott actually believes this; most of what is said on a political debate stage should not be taken at face value. Even if we put aside the question of his 90% figure, which is significantly inflated from the percentage of financial aid that is currently considered a loan, a sincere belief that Ukraine will be expected to actually pay back war-time loans shows a disconnect with the way the modern American empire operates.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Loan, Republican debate, Ukraine Aid | 1 Comment »
Is the Money in Your Checking Account Yours or the Bank’s?
Posted by M. C. on September 30, 2023
“With such an agreement, “fractional reserve free banking” proponents say, depositors would know that they are effectively creditors to the bank and that the bank is therefore a debtor to them. This means that the deposits are technically and legally owned by the bank and that what the depositor has is technically and legally a callable loan to the bank. Clear agreements would mean that depositors understand that there is a chance that they won’t be able to get their money (actually, the bank’s money, in this view) immediately in the event of a bank failure. Of course, central banking and government-backed deposit insurance diminish customers’ expectation of bank responsibility…”
https://mises.org/wire/money-your-checking-account-yours-or-banks
When Silicon Valley Bank and other banks failed earlier this year, the debate over the sustainability of fractional reserve banking resurfaced. Under fractional reserve banking, banks keep only a fraction of customers’ deposits in reserve. The difference is bank credit, such as government debt, mortgages, business loans, and many other kinds of loans. This practice leaves the bank open to a run, in which panicky depositors attempt to withdraw their funds from the bank en masse but the bank doesn’t have the cash on hand. The following FRED graph gives an idea of the extent of the mismatch between deposits and reserves.
But we shouldn’t worry about bank runs because the government is here to help. In the US, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insures checking accounts up to $250,000, and the banking system is regulated by a host of agencies, including the Federal Reserve, which also acts as a lender of last resort. These measures are intended to prevent and mitigate bank runs for the benefit of both the banks and their depositors. Though it should be obvious that they only conceal the fundamental problem and disperse the costs.
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Yet Another Fear-Mongering COVID Surge Turns Into Trickle As Hospital Admissions Wane
Posted by M. C. on September 30, 2023
Time for the CDC to stop reporting data. Just as it did with influenza.
by Tyler Durden
Friday, Sep 29, 2023 – 07:20 AM
Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)
After multiple weeks of increasing COVID-19 hospital admissions, federal data show that the figure is now falling.
In the week ending Sept. 16, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data show hospitalizations are down 4.3 percent. The number had been increasing since July, although the CDC’s historical trends shows that hospitalization numbers were relatively low compared with previous increases in the virus—notably compared with a prior “surge” that occurred in the summer of 2022.
Meanwhile, the latest figures show that emergency department visits are down 19.3 percent and test positivity is down 1.6 percent. Deaths are up by about 12.5 percent, the data show, but that figure is also relatively low when compared with previous years.
The EG.5 variant, which has been dubbed Eris, accounts for about 24.5 percent of all cases, according to the CDC’s variant tracker. FL.1.5.1, known as Fornax, is estimated to be responsible for about 13.7 percent of COVID-19 infections, the CDC figures show.
About a month ago, amid a steady rise in hospitalizations, some health officials suggested that it doesn’t appear to be as bad as before.
“Looking at that graph [of] hospitalizations, even though it’s on an upward trend, that’s still lower than it was last year at this time,” Dr. John Segreti, an epidemiologist and the medical director of infection control and prevention at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, told ABC News. “The fact that the numbers are going up fairly slowly, I think is a good sign.”
Responding to the figures last month, Dr. Shira Doron, chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine, said that the recent “upswing is not a surge; it’s not even a wave.”
“What we’re seeing is a very gradual and small upward trajectory of cases and hospitalizations, without deaths really going along, which is great news,” the doctor added.
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Stop Trying to “Contain” China in Southeast Asia | Mises Wire
Posted by M. C. on September 30, 2023
Ultimately, Washington is acting with the same folly as Beijing. Even as Washington adopts realpolitik to convince the third world to contain China, the third world could simply pit China and the USA against one another while extracting taxpayer money in a never-ending competition for influence with China.
https://mises.org/wire/stop-trying-contain-china-southeast-asia
It was a laughable moment when President Joe Biden said at a press conference during his visit to Hanoi that the United States wasn’t seeking to contain China. Despite efforts by the Biden administration to send its top officials to quell any suspicion that Washington, DC, was trying to contain China, Beijing has realized that the efforts were merely a cover-up. By restricting access to chips and their manufacturing components as well as spending billions on subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing and rare earth mineral refineries (similar to how Beijing treats its tech sector)—combined with numerous high-ranking members of the Beltway wanting containment, including Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, and others in Congress—it doesn’t take long to realize that the containment of China is Washington’s top goal.
However, outside of the Western bloc, many have been sitting on the fence with anxiety over an increasingly factionalized world. When the invasion of Ukraine started, more than 140 countries condemned it compared to over thirty that abstained from the vote, with only five backing the invasion. Over the past year, however, the ambivalence toward the invasion has been starker, with only the countries that are part of the Western bloc consistently maintaining their opposition to the Kremlin. With China lumped together with Russia as a challenge to the West, the Global South has to tiptoe around China and the West, hoping to maximize foreign investments while not getting caught in the bad parts of a geopolitical campaign between China and the West or incur the wrath of Western sanctions and potential political machinations.
In Southeast Asia, long-standing principles of neutrality championed by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc have become a divisive topic. For Indonesia, Laos, and Cambodia, relations with China aren’t constrained by territorial claims made over their land. Thailand, Malaysia, and Brunei have maintained a more neutral position by positioning themselves not too close to either China or the West whereas Vietnam and the Philippines appear confrontational toward Beijing. With Biden skipping this year’s ASEAN summit in favor of attending the G-20 summit in India and meeting with the Vietnamese regime to announce a strategic partnership while also building further military ties with Manila, the once-favored neutrality of the bloc has broken down into each country pursuing its own national interests.
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Stone Cold Dead Republic: When Everything is Cast as a War
Posted by M. C. on September 29, 2023
“Among other things, calling something a “war” opens up the possibility of endless emergency measures and executive powers permitting the president to circumvent the legislature altogether and enact whichever laws he prefers. At the same time, widespread propaganda campaigns are used during wartime to secure the support and the obedience of the populace under the assumption that “You’re either with us, or you’re against us.” Sound familiar? It should.”
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/stone-cold-dead-republic-when-everything-is-cast-as-a-war/
Several politicians have vaunted a muscular but myopic plan for dealing with the fentanyl crisis: to eliminate sources of the drug near the U.S.-Mexico border through the use of military force. The fentanyl crisis is being portrayed as an international conflict, not a failure of domestic policy, but a problem entirely caused by the evil members of Mexican cartels who, it is being claimed, deserve to die, along with, apparently, anyone who happens to be at their side. But even assuming, against an abundance of evidence from history, that the deployment of military force would have any effect beyond persuading traffickers to move their operations elsewhere, the proposal to whack anyone at the border who appears to be involved in the illegal drug trade threatens the most basic principles at the heart of what remains of the U.S. republic.
As in the U.S. drone program deployed so ruthlessly against thousands of tribesmen throughout the Middle East, the proposed plan to summarily execute suspected fentanyl dealers assumes that they are guilty and that the presumption of innocence is a “quaint” notion which can and should be inverted when it comes to matters of national defense. Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has observed that more than thirty times more Americans now die of overdose deaths each year than died on September 11, 2001. From this he infers, fallaciously, that the use of military force has become necessary in order to stem the tide of the crisis. Apparently unaware or unconcerned that the Global War on Terror culminated in the deaths of many thousands more innocent people than died on 9/11, Ramaswamy sophistically suggests that because the sheer magnitude of overdose victims within the United States is so high, this implies that it is time for yet another war.
For what should be obvious reasons, government leaders love to paint every new problem as necessitating a new war. Among other things, calling something a “war” opens up the possibility of endless emergency measures and executive powers permitting the president to circumvent the legislature altogether and enact whichever laws he prefers. At the same time, widespread propaganda campaigns are used during wartime to secure the support and the obedience of the populace under the assumption that “You’re either with us, or you’re against us.” Sound familiar? It should.
Such dynamics are fresh memories in the minds of many people because we only recently witnessed and survived the “War on COVID-19,” which, like every other recent U.S. war, left only a crime scene in its wake. No matter, politicians are calling for a new War on Drugs, a “War on Fentanyl,” which implies, among other things, that “collateral damage” will be unavoidable. This is taken by war supporters to follow from the platitudes that “What must be done must be done!” and, in wartime, “Stuff happens.” The tactical parallels with 9/11 and the COVID-19 crisis are telling as well. People were so traumatized by what happened on September 11, 2001, that they agreed to anything the government proposed in order to protect themselves and their loved ones from the possibility of further terrorist acts. Likewise, having been propagandized to believe that everyone was in serious danger of death by virus, much of the populace agreed to severe limitations on their liberty, and some went even so far as to call for the injection of an experimental substance into the bodies of people who declined voluntarily to roll up their sleeves.
Self-proclaimed “libertarian-leaning” Ramaswamy says, on the one hand, that, as president, he will eliminate the Deep State, deleting entire departments of an undeniably bloated federal government. Unfortunately, however, his disdain for the bureaucratic state does not extend to the minimalist form of government better known as tyranny, wherein a single leader, the only remaining office holder, replaces the legislative branch of government and asserts his own power to issue executive orders binding on the people of the land. Ramaswamy’s populist rhetoric notwithstanding, by asserting the right to kill persons designated by himself as enemies of the state who are guilty of capital crimes, he would be appointing himself the king.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Dead Republic, drone program, fentanyl crisis, Mexican cartels, Vivek Ramaswamy, war | Leave a Comment »
Media completely ignores NATO war role in Libya chaos
Posted by M. C. on September 29, 2023
The 2011 intervention was a link in the chain of events leading to last month’s floods and tragedy.
“However, with very few exceptions, the publications declined to acknowledge that, in 2011, NATO opted to bomb Libya until its government was overthrown. In this regard, the papers have failed to remind their readers that NATO’s intervention was part of the chain of events that led to this month’s calamity.”
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/libya-floods-nato/
News media manufactures consent, and one way that happens is by manufacturing amnesia — burying a government’s past misdeeds makes it easier to sell future ones.
The catastrophic floods that Storm Daniel unleashed on Libya, which have killed as many as 10,000 people, are both a natural disaster and a human-made one. In the week following Storm Daniel, a large portion of the media coverage described “war” as a reason the country was ill-equipped to handle the catastrophe.
However, media discussion of NATO’s contribution to what has become Libya’s forever war has been almost non-existent. NATO’s intimate involvement — albeit by proxy — in the current war in Ukraine makes the omission all the more remarkable.
War in contemporary Libya is traceable to February 2011, when protests against Muammar Gadhafi’s government evolved into an armed conflict. In the initial days of the fighting, the U.S. media amplified claims that the Libyan air force was bombing demonstrators despite statements by top Pentagon officials that there was “no confirmation whatsoever” that such bombing was happening.
Western media outlets and politicians accused Gadhafi of carrying out a systematic mass slaughter of civilians, and of intending to do more of the same, particularly as government forces advanced on rebel-held Benghazi. In this climate, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 in March 2011, which authorized “all necessary measures” to protect civilians.
NATO dubiously interpreted the resolution as granting it the right to overthrow the Libyan government. NATO forces — primarily Britain, France and the U.S. — subsequently conducted roughly 9,700 strike sorties and dropped over 7,700 precision-guided bombs during their seven-month campaign.
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No Senator McConnell! — The #1 Priority of America Is Not To Provide “Assistance To Ukraine”
Posted by M. C. on September 29, 2023
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