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Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Biden is Calling Up Military Reserves…Are Your Kids Next?

Posted by M. C. on July 17, 2023

So what is the mission and why does it seem to be creeping toward sending more Americans close to the battle zone? No one in the Administration seems interested in explaining it and no one in the US media or Congress seems interested in asking.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/july/17/biden-is-calling-up-military-reserves-are-your-kids-next/

written by ron paul

As a rule, US war reporting since Vietnam has been mostly mainstream media cheerleading the mission rather than digging beyond government war propaganda. After all, it was images of American boys coming home in body bags shown on the six o’clock news across America that finally galvanized mainstream opposition to that war.

The Pentagon learned its lesson by the first Gulf War, and it severely restricted up-close media coverage. Only “trusted” journalists were able to report from the front lines. Most of the press corps wrote up stories based on US military press releases from luxury hotels in Baghdad.

By the time of Gulf War II the Pentagon came up with the concept of “embedding” select journalists with the troops. This allowed the story to be framed by the Pentagon with the false impression that actual journalism was taking place. It felt authentic, because the journalist was with the troops and close to the action, but the story presented what the Pentagon wanted to be presented.

This is perhaps a long way of pointing out that US mainstream media coverage of the war in Ukraine leaves a lot to be desired. Yes, sometimes the truth does slip out in publications like the New York Times, which reported last week that in just the first weeks of Ukraine’s “counter-offensive” at least 20 percent of the weaponry and equipment donated by the US and NATO has been destroyed.

However, usually what the mainstream media serves up are Pentagon and neocon talking points. Russia is losing, they report. Russia has already lost, as Biden said recently. Most Americans don’t go out of their way to listen to actual experts like Col. Doug Macgregor, who from the beginning has been telling a very different story. Thus Americans continue to be fed propaganda.

There is a funny thing about propaganda, though. Sometimes it comes face-to-face with contradictory reality and is shown to be nothing but a pack of lies.

Take for example last week’s shocking report that President Biden has signed an order to mobilize 3,000 US military reservists for deployment to Europe in support of the 2014 “Operation Atlantic Resolve.” What is Atlantic Resolve? It was launched in the aftermath of the US-backed coup in Ukraine and the ensuing unrest under the US-installed puppet government.

So, if Russia is losing – or has already lost, as Biden said last week – why has it suddenly become necessary to call up US reserve forces? Well, in the midst of one of the most serious US military recruiting crises ever, it seems Washington does not have sufficient troops for its anti-Russia mission in Ukraine. So what is the mission and why does it seem to be creeping toward sending more Americans close to the battle zone? No one in the Administration seems interested in explaining it and no one in the US media or Congress seems interested in asking.

We are on a very slippery slope, with Biden’s neocons continuing to escalate in the face of massive Ukrainian losses and an apparent shortage of US troops. Make no mistake, if the US/NATO proxy war with Russia is not halted the next step will be to look at the US Selective Service. That means they are coming for your kids. How long before America wakes up and says “NO”?

Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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The Brutal Reality of NATO’s Vilnius Summit

Posted by M. C. on July 17, 2023

Americans might want to know how their government can spend a trillion dollars per year on “defense” and in addition add another hundred billion or so for Ukraine and end up with…no ammo. Where did it go?

As astute military analyst William Schryver aptly observed, with Biden’s admission…

…the great myth of overwhelming US armaments supremacy has been exposed as little more than a modestly scaled boutique enterprise utterly ill-suited and ill-prepared to prosecute industrial warfare against a peer adversary.

The Brutal Reality of NATO’s Vilnius Summit

By Daniel McAdams

Ron Paul Institute

The 2023 NATO Summit at Vilnius, Lithuania, is now but a memory. If I could characterize the summit in just two words, I would say, “reality bites.” And it bites both ways.

On the one hand the US and its NATO allies came face to face with the reality that endless promises of “unlimited” military aid to Ukraine to defeat Russia would not achieve that goal. Five weeks of the much-anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive have produced zero results. They have only snuffed out another estimated 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers, this time mostly drawn from the shrinking pool of forced – and barely trained – conscripts.

Promises are one thing, but as they say, “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Or, adapted for our times, the US may be able to print money, but it cannot print weapons.

Thus when President Biden was asked right after agreeing to send Ukraine a tranche of ghastly cluster bombs why he did so, he replied, “we’ve run out of ammunition.” It was an incredible admission, particularly considering the massive increase in already astronomical US military spending.

As astute military analyst William Schryver aptly observed, with Biden’s admission…

…the great myth of overwhelming US armaments supremacy has been exposed as little more than a modestly scaled boutique enterprise utterly ill-suited and ill-prepared to prosecute industrial warfare against a peer adversary.

Americans might want to know how their government can spend a trillion dollars per year on “defense” and in addition add another hundred billion or so for Ukraine and end up with…no ammo. Where did it go?

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Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring. Are Americans Paying Attention?

Posted by M. C. on July 15, 2023

Capital flight is exactly what happened, and it has left the Norwegian government with less revenue. 

Norway’s Wealth Tax Is Backfiring. Are Americans Paying Attention?

Jon Miltimore

In 2022 Norway’s third richest man, Kjell Inge Røkke, announced in an open letter to shareholders he was moving to Lugano, Switzerland.

“My capital will continue working in Norway,” wrote the fishing magnate turned industrialist who launched his empire four decades ago with a 69-foot trawler he bought while saving money working on ships off the coast of Alaska.

Røkke, who Forbes estimates has a fortune of $5.1 billion, will cost the Norwegian government an estimated 175,000,000 kroner annually (roughly $16 million) with his departure. That might not sound like a lot of money, but Røkke is not the only wealthy entrepreneur leaving Norway, The Guardian notes. 

“More than 30 Norwegian billionaires and multimillionaires left Norway in 2022, according to research by the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv,” reports wealth correspondent Rupert Neate. “This was more than the total number of super-rich people who left the country during the previous 13 years, [the paper] added.”

Did you catch that? More “super rich” Norwegians left Norway in 2022 than during the previous 13 years combined. The reason wealthy Norwegians are fleeing the country is not a secret. 

Following its 2021 electoral victory, the Nordic nation’s Labor Party made good on its promise to soak the rich. Norway is one of just a handful of OECD countries that still taxes net wealth, and the Labor Party increased the country’s wealth tax to 1.1 percent despite warnings that such a move would “trigger capital flight and threaten job creation.”

Capital flight is exactly what happened, and it has left the Norwegian government with less revenue. 

Norwegian Business School professor emeritus Ole Gjems-Onstad estimated that the wealthy Norwegians took with them a total fortune of $54 billion when they left. This means that the wealth tax, which was projected to increase revenue by nearly $150 million annually, will result in about 40 percent less revenue than it currently generates. Luca Dellanna, a management advisor and author, points out that Norway collected about $1.46 billion on its wealth tax in 2019. But the exodus of the wealthy will result in an estimated $594 million in lost revenue.

Those trying to understand how Norway’s policy could backfire so badly should look to the work of the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Lucas. Lucas, a longtime professor at the University of Chicago, received the top prize in economics for research that became known as the Lucas Critique, which exposed various problems with macroeconomic modeling.

Lucas believed that to predict policy outcomes it was essential to first grasp that all action is individual behavior, and humans are rational creatures who will respond to policies in rational ways — even to policies designed to fool them.

“Microeconomics assumed people were rational,” economist David R. Henderson pointed out in a recent Wall Street Journal article following Lucas’s death. “Why shouldn’t macroeconomics make the same assumption?” 

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Even now, capitalism is the greatest hope for Britain and the world

Posted by M. C. on July 15, 2023

The arguments for free markets are easy to make, but too often Conservative politicians shy away from them

In Britain, too, capitalism remains our best hope. The free market has doubled household income in my lifetime, even after inflation, even after current woes. The young have seen post-crash incomes stagnate and Bank of England money-printing distort the economy by pushing house prices out of reach – but this was not the free market. Nor was the hundreds of billions printed to finance lockdowns.

Why is inflation so high? Because banks printed so much money to bankroll lockdowns: a result of distorting capitalism.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/22/capitalism-is-the-greatest-hope-for-britain-and-the-world/


FRASER NELSON

Fraser Nelson
Commuters stand still at a crowded railway station to pay homage during a two-minute long remembrance for bomb blast victims in Mumbai
In the year 2000, 30 per cent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Now it’s down to 8.5 per cent

The most important intellectual discovery of my life came 20 years ago in the pages of Slitz, a sadly defunct lad’s magazine which wasn’t quite as risqué as it sounds. I was trying to learn Swedish and the few words that it printed were about my level. So I’d sit in a cafe with a dictionary and notebook, seeking to learn. Under such circumstances I came across an interview with Johan Norberg, an economist then in his twenties, entitled “Kapitalist? Javisst!” – (“Capitalist? Yes, sure!”). I tracked down his book, and my world changed.

I’ve since been told by far more erudite friends that Norberg’s work is nothing new, just a restatement of arguments made by Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Karl Popper. But they were writing about theory: Norberg had it all backed up with contemporary evidence. The collapse of communism had started a new experiment: what happens when the free market really does go global? The results were coming in by 2001 and Norberg collated them. Every day in every way, things were getting much better. We were – and still are – living in a golden age.

Since then, this thesis has been proved a thousand times over, but something strange has happened. As capitalism’s achievements piled higher, the more unpopular it seemed to become. Its wins have been taken for granted, its defects magnified as never before. The big charities, which witnessed free trade cutting poverty faster than any scheme of handouts, seemed to hate it the most. A generation has since grown up marinated in capitalism’s success, yet convinced of its failure. What’s going on?

I accept that, at present, it does look like a strange kind of success. Inflation is surging, the Bank of England has just increased rates yet again, mortgages are being pushed to agonising levels. Taxes are higher than any time in living memory, living standards are falling faster. Some 29 per cent of UK children are said to be living in poverty, as are 650 million globally – while, as Oxfam often points out, the top 80 billionaires have more wealth than the poorest half of the world.

There are endless rebuttals to this, as well as counter-examples – but no one tends to make them because no one defends capitalism. I can see why. It’s a daft word, usually used to make the basic notion of freedom sound like an evil ideology. Capitalism isn’t about capital, but about transferring power to the many, from the few. It’s about allowing people to make decisions on what will best improve their lives and communities.

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Is the United States Pursuing a Permanent Cold War with Russia?

Posted by M. C. on July 15, 2023

NATO’s attempt to enlist the rest of the world to isolate Russia and aid Ukraine has faltered badly. Seeking global unity for such a hostile approach once the Ukraine war ends would be greeted with derision throughout the “Global South.”

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/is-the-united-states-pursuing-a-permanent-cold-war-with-russia/

by Ted Galen Carpenter

usa and russian flags are cut with scissors. confrontation and t

USA and Russian flags are cut with scissors. Confrontation and the Cold War. Stock vector illustration.

There is growing speculation about how the Russia-Ukraine war might eventually end. Three competing scenarios are strong possibilities. The most likely outcome is a definitive Russian victory after a grinding, bloody struggle lasting several more years. As time drags on, Russia’s larger population and military will confer greater and greater advantages in the fighting, despite the lumbering, inefficient nature of the Kremlin’s forces.

The second most likely outcome is a frozen conflict roughly along the current battle lines. Fighting would end with an armistice rather than a formal peace treaty and reflect exhaustion on the part of both Ukraine and Russia. Such frozen conflicts already exist in places such as Kashmir, Cyprus, and most notably, Korea.

The least likely outcome would be a definitive victory by Ukraine, given Russia’s long-term logistical advantages. Unfortunately, both Washington and NATO have embraced that unrealistic objective, pledging continued Western military support and encouraging Kiev to stay the course, regardless of the mounting costs in blood and treasure to the Ukrainian people.

No matter how the war finally ends, the Biden administration and its NATO partners appear to have given surprisingly little consideration to what the West’s postwar relationship with Moscow will—or should—look like.

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Nikki Haley Reveals What She’ll Do To Federal Agencies If Elected

Posted by M. C. on July 15, 2023

So why didn’t Tucker press her on foreign relations? She is no peacenik.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/nikki-haley-reveals-what-shell-do-to-federal-agencies-if-elected

By  Ryan Saavedra

DES MOINES, IOWA - JULY 14: Republican presidential candidate, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley fields questions from former Fox News Television personality Tucker Carlson at the Family Leadership Summit on July 14, 2023 in Des Moines, Iowa. Several Republican presidential candidates were scheduled to speak at the event, billed as “The Midwest’s largest gathering of Christians seeking cultural transformation in the family, Church, government, and more.”
Scott Olson / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said she would gut federal law enforcement agencies and remove problematic officials who politicize and weaponize those agencies if elected to the White House.

Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made the remarks on Friday during The Family Leadership Summit in Iowa with Tucker Carlson.

Carlson grilled the candidates that went before her, including Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, and former Vice President Mike Pence.

With Haley, Carlson did not press her on foreign policy issues such as the war in Ukraine, but did ask Haley her thoughts on federal agencies that were involved in various ways in “shaping public opinion about the last election.”

“You know, when I was governor, I went and replaced the heads of every agency,” Haley said. “It’s the first thing I did when I came to office, it’s the first thing a president should do. You control what you can control. You start with your agencies.”

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The Goldilocks Zone | Mises Institute

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2023

But if such a rate exists, it would have been both communicated and achieved by now. All of their other data, whether unemployment statistics or hourly earnings, is just noise in an already crowded arena of barely useful economic data, serving little purpose other than maintaining the illusion of control.

https://mises.org/power-market/goldilocks-zone

Robert Aro

The latest meeting minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) offers valuable insights into the make-believe nature of monetary policy. While the true motives of the Fed’s inner circle may forever remain a mystery, it is evident their narrative revolves around the quest for an ideal economic state or finding a “Goldilocks Zone” of economic data. Only when the data aligns perfectly will the Fed’s mission be complete and the battle against inflation be won.

Let’s examine their perspective on the unemployment rate. In their own words:

The unemployment rate edged up, on net, but was still at a low level of 3.7 percent in May. On balance, the unemployment rate for African Americans moved up to 5.6 percent, while the jobless rate for Hispanics moved down to 4.0 percent.

Perhaps some find unemployment statistics intriguing. But the practical application of this data can hardly be explained and its conclusions are offensive. If African Americans are at 5.6 percent and Hispanics at 4.0 percent, it suggests that somewhere in America exists a team of technocrats tasked with answering the question: How many minorities should be in the workforce?

Average hourly earnings are given similar treatment:

Over the 12 months ending in May, average hourly earnings for all employees increased 4.3 percent, below its peak of 5.9 percent early last year.

Even if we overlook the issues of arriving at a national average for hourly earnings, the problem persists in what the preferred hourly pay should be.

Mainstream economic news outlets like CBS perpetuate the Goldilocks idea:

Some economists expect the Fed to raise rates at every other meeting as it seeks to pull off a difficult maneuver: Raising borrowing costs high enough to cool the economy and tame inflation yet not so high as to cause a deep recession.

Should anyone believe these economists, they’d have to believe the Fed can do the impossible; in this version, finding the interest rate that ensures the economy runs neither too hot, nor too cold so that prices continually rise by just the right amount, guaranteeing prosperity…

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Climate Change Crime – Depopulation In the Name of Human Rights

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2023

The media tells them: Claim it on “climate change” and help reduce your carbon foot print, do not eat meat, do not drive cars, do not fly, stay home, adapt to a modern lockdown. The new 15-minute cities are ideal for you, the commons.

Such an arrogant statement – humans making the weather with their sheer lifestyles – should already ring a strong bell in a clear-thinking mind of normal humans, but it doesn’t

https://www.globalresearch.ca/climate-change-crime-name-human-rights/5825577

By Peter Koenig

Global Research

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***

About a week ago, the UN Human Rights Czar in Geneva issued a stern warning – “Up to 80 million people will be plunged into hunger if climate targets are not met”.

These are the words of Volker Turk, the head of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. He spoke at a Human Rights event, and highlighted as principal cause for this coming calamity – what else – “climate change”. He said,

“extreme weather events were having a significant negative impact on crops, herds and ecosystems, prompting further concerns about global food availability.”

This is immediately proven by never-before-in-history extreme floods in Vermont, USA, by extreme droughts in Europe and Central – Western USA and by enormous, never-before experienced – forest fires in Canada. More is already announced – extreme Monsoon rains in India, and possibly Bangladesh. What a coincidence. Except, there are no coincidences. Droughts and gigantic flashfloods, in calculated interchange. No coincidences.

Most people of this globe just simply cannot believe how evil some non-people are. The Covid crime and the vaccination genocide was not enough to open their eyes, that their governments cannot be trusted, that they are sold, either by money or by threats, to an extreme evil power, a Depopulation, a Eugenics Cult which is behind it all.

Mr. Turk went on claiming,

“More than 828 million people faced hunger in 2021, and climate change is projected to place up to 80 million more people at risk of hunger by the middle of this century.”

Further contributing to the drama, he added, “Our environment is burning. It’s melting. It’s depleting. It’s drying. It’s dying”; and that these factors will combine to lead humanity towards a “dystopian future” unless urgent and immediate action is taken by environmental policymakers.

And then came the MUST reference to the 2015 (COP) Paris Agreement often referred to as the Paris Climate Accords, which were adopted by 196 parties at the time. COP means “Conference of the Parties”. Adding to the confusion of UN jargons, it refers to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose signatories agreed to cap global warming below 2 degrees celsius above the 1850-1900 levels – or to 1.5 degrees celsius if possible. Does anyone understand the language to carry out this easy task?

Such an arrogant statement – humans making the weather with their sheer lifestyles – should already ring a strong bell in a clear-thinking mind of normal humans, but it doesn’t, because our pineal gland for logical thinking and perception of emotions has been gradually dumbed, reduced, even killed in some people with chemicals we eat regularly und imperceptibly in our daily food, chemicals sprayed from the air via chemtrails, “disinfectant” chemicals in the water, the uncountable PCR tests, with absolutely scientifically proven unnecessary sticks up the nose, to the thin separation between nose and brain – and pineal gland — and more.

To dull our sentiments and perception is a long-term goal that “our Masters” have been working on for the last at least hundred years – or longer.

Dulled minds are easier to manipulate. Add to this DARPA’s MK-Ultra and Monarch mind-manipulation program and we know why we are where we are.

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“A Complete Failure”: Secret Service Suddenly Closes White House Cocaine Investigation Without Naming Suspect

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2023

Better no one than putting a sacrificial lamb through hell. Think anthrax and Olympic bombing.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/secret-service-brief-congress-thursday-biden-white-house-accused-cocaine-cover

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

“There was no surveillance video footage found that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited the found substance in this area,” the agency said in a statement. “Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered. At this time, the Secret Service’s investigation is closed due to a lack of physical evidence.”

According to the statement, the Secret Service said the bag of cocaine was “subjected to advanced fingerprint and DNA analysis.”

Lack of physical evidence? Nothing on the bag, and there’s an area of the White House that isn’t surveilled? Do we need to call the paw patrol to figure this one out?

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Supreme Court Justice’s Net Worth Skyrockets Since Joining The Court: Report

Posted by M. C. on July 14, 2023

It’s OK because she is a Hispanic, liberal democrat. Liberal democrat John Kerry and his private jet are OK too.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/supreme-court-justices-net-worth-skyrockets-since-joining-the-court-report

By  Ryan Saavedra

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 07: United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor poses for an official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court has begun a new term after Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was officially added to the bench in September.
Alex Wong / Getty Images

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s net worth has skyrocketed ever since she became a member of the nation’s highest court — which has led to criticism from experts.

Fox News reported that, according to financial disclosures, Sotomayor’s wealth increased from being in the $15,001-$65,000 range in 2008 to being in the $1,600,000-$6,600,000 range in 2021.

Sotomayor was nominated by then-President Barack Obama to the Supreme Court in 2009. A recent data analysis of her actions on the court found that she is the most partisan justice on the court.

The 69-year-old reportedly makes more than $25,000 per year teaching law schools in addition to her $285,400 salary from the court.

The Associated Press reported that the main reason that her wealth has surged is because of the books that she has written.

Sotomayor used her taxpayer-funded to court staff to enrich herself by using them to perform tasks “for the justice’s book ventures.

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