MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Independence Day

Posted by M. C. on July 4, 2023

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The Real US Goal in Ukraine

Posted by M. C. on July 3, 2023

Which brings me back to the US goal in Ukraine.  It is destruction, and not the creative kind.  Ukraine completely destroyed as a free state, to be used as a dead thorn with which to poke Moscow.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/07/karen-kwiatkowski/the-real-us-goal-in-ukraine/

US state media – the NYT, WP, NPR, and the main TV news corporations – cautiously broaches topics they refused to touch a year ago.  We are learning that Nazi and racist ideologies are popular in Ukraine. We now know the US state department, with German and other EU and NATO assistance, schemed against Russia when they signed on the Minsk agreement in 2014, a noble lie in the neocon fashion.  We know, from mainstream media that the so-called Ukraine spring counteroffensive has begun, after much US and NATO urging, and is failing at every turn, at a great cost.

We are now allowed to see glimpses of the dwindling Ukrainian population, and with it, their economy.  Indirectly, we understand that there is a growing desperation in Kiev – for money, for weapons, for NATO and EU membership.  The actions of the Ukrainian army and its leadership, attacking Moscow with drones, raids into Belarus, attempts to cause nuclear contamination in Eastern Europe though attacks and sabotage of their own Ukrainian nuclear power stations and major dams are being noted.   While I believe Seymour Hersh on who did Nordstream, the convenient story of a heroic team of Uke divers doing the job had a valid purpose, to provide the Ukrainian voter with a ray of hope and heroism.

That is, if they still had voters in Ukraine. 

The casual observer of this war, 17 months in, notes physical and emotional exhaustion, and political desperation.  The orgasmic excitement expressed by US death cult in Washington the last Saturday in June was revealing.  Not of their various “goals” in Ukraine, or their fanatical Russia-hate – but that their long dry spell is beginning to make even neocons desperate for a bit of “good news.”

Neocon war is unpopular, ugly, venal.  Worst of all, it is unsuccessful – meaning instead of ending in triumph and celebration, it persists as a confusing, contradictory and costly problem multiplier.  We’ve seen this before.  Neocons are the Dylan Mulvaneys of American politics, albeit with less sincerity and self-awareness.  When it’s your influence that has destroyed the effectiveness of and any residual honor in US foreign policy for the past 70 years, as well as bankrupting the nation – the writing is on the wall.

Or it should be.  We’d probably be better off having our country led by a beer company.  Even Anheuser-Busch’s crippled instincts would not have led to the present situation in eastern Europe.

Biden is planning to send cluster bombs to Ukraine, and yes, they are indiscriminate, horrific, outlawed in 120 countries, and immoral – but – wait for it – the decision to use them is entirely Ukraine’s.  Biden and Blinken and Nuland and Sullivan, and half the Senate and half the Congress – well, they don’t have a thing to do with “Ukraine’s decisions.”

Unless Kiev or a European ally, or NATO member wants to see about ending hostilities, making peace, making Ukraine a safe place for Ukrainians to live – well that’s strictly verboten, forbidden by Washington, cannot happen, is not allowed.

We apparently have a shit ton of MK-20s in the Pentagon “warehouse.” Where else are we going to use them?  

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Pentagon Says Chinese Balloon Did Not Collect Data While Over US

Posted by M. C. on July 3, 2023

Biden recently acknowledged the balloon was blown off course and was not intentionally flown over the US

“The pentagram said”!!! The pentagram tells the truth? This must be a PSYOP. Or maybe letting the balloon fly over the entire country, after having seen it early in it’s approach, for political purposes, ws about to backfire.

antiwar.com

by Dave DeCamp

The Pentagon said Thursday that the Chinese balloon that wound up over the US in February did not collect data while it flew over US territory.

“We believe that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or flying over the United States, and certainly the efforts that we made contributed, I’m sure,” said Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder.

Ryder made the comments when asked about Wall Street Journal report that said the balloon contained US-made equipment. “I don’t have any specifics to provide as it pertains to the [People’s Republic of China] high altitude balloon and any potential US components,” he said.

For their part, Beijing has said the balloon was a civilian weather research device, while the Biden administration says it was a surveillance device. At this point, it has become clear that China did not intend to fly the balloon over the US, something President Biden recently acknowledged.

“That wasn’t supposed to be going where it was. It was blown off course up through Alaska and then down through the United States,” Biden said.

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Government Agents Routinely Entering Private Land Without Warrants

Posted by M. C. on July 3, 2023

Emboldened by dangerous Supreme Court decision, agents even planting cameras on private property

Note the casual recklessness of that reasoning. The Supreme Court essentially declared that, since some private land is viewable from beyond its boundary — from a road or maybe a plane or hot air balloon — all private land apart from the “curtilage” surrounding a home is fair game for government trespasses and searches.

https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/government-agents-routinely-entering

BRIAN MCGLINCHEY

For many people, a central attraction of owning and living on a multi-acre expanse of land is the opportunity for complete privacy — to include freedom from the prying eyes of government.

While most Americans might understandably believe the Fourth Amendment’s protection against warrantless searches covers all their property, a little-known 1924 Supreme Court decision — Hester v United States — says otherwise. The case struck a major blow against privacy rights, and government agents of all stripes have been exploiting the ruling ever since.

Those exploitations have grown increasingly brazen. Just ask Josh Highlander, whose home sits on a wooded, 30-acre spread east of Richmond, Virginia.

In April, Highlander’s wife and 6-year-old son were playing basketball in their yard. When his wife went to retrieve a long rebound, she spotted a man in full camouflage walking among the trees. Alarmed, she and her son darted inside the house.

Josh Highlander’s wife was frightened when she spotted a fully-camouflaged man through this opening in the woods (Institute for Justice)

When Highlander went outside, he couldn’t locate the man, but did discover that a game camera he’d placed in his food plot was gone. When he called police, he learned the man on his property was an agent of Virginia’s Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) — one of three who crossed another piece of private land to enter his property. Worse, the same trio had taken his camera, holding no warrant for that action either.

These incidents took place on the first day of turkey season. Before coming to Highlander’s property, DWR agents had also entered two other properties, belonging to his brother and to his father, issuing a citation to his brother for illegally hunting “over bait.” However, the alleged “bait” was seed for his brother’s own food plot, consistent with DWR’s instructions for managing such a plot.

DWR’s violation of Highlander’s liberties didn’t end that day. “For weeks, my son wouldn’t play outside in his own back yard because he was afraid of who might be in the woods,” says Highlander. “My camera was taken two months ago, and I’ve still never received a receipt, a warrant or a ticket.”

Highlander’s camera was seized by Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources agents acting without a search warrant (Institute for Justice)

This unsettling brand of government misconduct springs from the Supreme Court’s Hester decision.

In that 1924 case arising from the alcohol prohibition, revenue agents saw a man, Hester, exit his father’s house and hand another man a bottle. When the two men became aware of the agents’ presence, they both ran, each dropping a bottle on the Hester property. With no warrant, agents entered the property, examined the bottles and found they contained moonshine whisky.

Supreme Court opinions frequently span upwards of 70 pages or more. With Hester, however, the court took just two paragraphs to decimate the Fourth Amendment’s protection of landowners, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declaring “the special protection accorded by the Fourth Amendment to the people in their ‘persons, houses, papers, and effects,’ is not extended to the open fields.”

And with that, he burdened his fellow citizens with the “open fields doctrine,” which allows warrantless searches and trespassing on land beyond the “curtilage,” a vague term referring to the outdoor area immediately surrounding a home.

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TGIF: “America First” Need Not Be Antiwar

Posted by M. C. on July 3, 2023

Right-wing populists, like their left-wing counterparts, seem to oppose the establishment’s foreign policy mostly because it consumes tax money they want the government to spend on domestic projects. That’s hardly comforting to anyone who wants the government to do less and thereby consume far fewer scarce resources, which after all are produced privately.

Much more could be said against America First, for example,  that the term national interest has long been a cover for collectivism and coercion. America First is no guarantee of nonintervention. What we need is a commitment not to America First but to individual liberty first.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-america-first-not-antiwar/

by Sheldon Richman

drone

Today’s Trump-inspired “America First” faction cannot be counted on to be consistently noninterventionist and antiwar. That it may lean that way because its chief rival faction is so enthusiastic about foreign adventurism is hardly a firm assurance that it will remain antiwar in the future.

We must beware of the assumption that an interventionist foreign policy is, in contrast to America First, by nature “Any Country But America First.” Admittedly, advocates of U.S. foreign adventurism often defend their policy choices in terms of the benefits to another population. But that’s not all they do. They also typically invoke the security interests of the American people. It’s a small world, after all, they say, and what protects others also protects us. How often have you heard interventionists agitate for war solely on behalf of foreigners? Sure, national self-sacrifice might not be good politics, but that doesn’t mean that people of the interventionist mindset don’t mean what they say.

My point is not that they are right, but only that they, or most of them, are sincere (though misguided). I doubt if George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq was motivated solely by regard for the Iraqis or Israelis.  Not was Barack Obama’s bombing and regime change in Libya carried out on behalf of the Libyan people only. In both cases the key policymakers and their supporters believed that these actions were also good for the American people, who had been told for decades that Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi threatened them. The same can be said about the people who gave us the war in Vietnam. This is not to dismiss the malign influence of dishonest people who simply enjoy exercising power or who will profit from selling weapons to the government.  But I am suspicious of such single-factor explanations.

If I’m right about this, we must ask what today’s America Firsterism is defined in contrast to.

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Fifteen Useful Facts

Posted by M. C. on July 3, 2023

13. You can recognize sociopaths, psychopaths, and other narcissists in your life by paying attention to how much energy they pour into convincing you to believe stories about others, about themselves, and especially about you. Someone who often spends energy trying to get you to believe negative things about yourself is someone you should get out of your life as quickly as possible.

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/fifteen-useful-facts?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?auto_play=false&buying=false&liking=false&download=false&sharing=false&show_artwork=true&show_comments=false&show_playcount=false&show_user=true&hide_related=true&visual=false&start_track=0&url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F1554437422

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1. It’s easier to understand what’s going on in the world when you mentally “mute” people’s narratives about what’s going on and just look at the material movements of wealth, resources, weapons, and people. That’s how you separate what’s real from the manipulations and empty narrative fluff, how you see who’s doing the taking and hoarding, and how you figure out who the real aggressors are in international conflicts.

2. The three most overlooked and under-appreciated aspects of the human experience are consciousness, the extent to which conditioned thought patterns dictate our lives, and the influence of propaganda.

3. We live in a civilization that’s so pervasively steeped in lies and manipulations that the only way to have a truth-based relationship with reality is to drop all your assumptions and premises about what’s true and begin examining everything from the very beginning with fresh eyes.

4. The phenomenon known as spiritual enlightenment is a real thing which we are all capable of realizing, and the fact that this potential exists within our species has many far-reaching implications for what we are capable of attaining as a civilization.

5. Everything is beautiful. Not seeing the beauty in something is always the failure of the perceiver, not the thing being perceived.

6. Happiness is the natural default position of human consciousness. It’s only through egoic delusions that we trick ourselves into unhappiness.

7. There are strange untapped potentials within our species which our philosophies don’t touch on, our religions don’t anticipate, our academia doesn’t acknowledge, and our common worldviews don’t account for.

8. Reality is nondual. There’s no real separation between the perceiver and that which is perceived, or between any of the objects in sense perception. All is indivisible.

9. The self is an illusion held together by believed mental narratives and fear-based energetic fixations. This illusion can be seen through and transcended.

10. It’s possible for two people to keep falling more and more deeply in love with each other for their entire lives, as long as they’re both intensely curious about each other and both keep growing and discovering new parts of themselves to love.

11. The feeling of guilt is useless and can safely be dropped entirely. The only people who might benefit from feeling some guilt are the sociopaths and psychopaths among us who never experience it anyway. For those among us with healthy empathy centers, guilt is unnecessary to motivate good behavior and often becomes a tool that manipulators use to control us.

12. Antisocial personality disorder, more commonly known as sociopathy and psychopathy, is one of the greatest obstacles to human thriving. That there really are creatures among us who don’t think or feel like the rest of us do and frequently use their lack of empathy to climb the ladders of wealth and power sounds made up (and even sounds like the basis of many racist belief systems), but it is a fact. Not until our species becomes so emotionally intelligent and awake that sociopaths and psychopaths are unable to thrive in it or go unseen will this problem disappear.

13. You can recognize sociopaths, psychopaths, and other narcissists in your life by paying attention to how much energy they pour into convincing you to believe stories about others, about themselves, and especially about you. Someone who often spends energy trying to get you to believe negative things about yourself is someone you should get out of your life as quickly as possible.

14. There really is a struggle in our world between light and darkness, though it doesn’t look how the movies tell us to expect it. Those in power seek to keep their dark deeds hidden in darkness by maintaining government secrecy, propaganda and censorship. The manipulators in our own lives seek to keep their manipulations and misdeeds hidden in the same way. Even within our own personal psychology there are dysfunctional structures which seek to remain hidden in the unconscious. Humanity’s struggle is to bring that all into the light.

15. A sincere devotion to knowing the truth is the path toward happiness, health and harmony, for humans as individuals and for humanity as a collective. Knowing what’s true about ourselves uncovers our inner dysfunctionality and leads to healing and enlightenment. Knowing what’s true about our world leads to an understanding of the abusive nature of our power structures and societal systems. Continually striving toward the light of truth will bring us all home.

___________

Caitlin’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, throwing some money into my tip jar on PatreonPaypal, or Substack, buying an issue of my monthly zine, and following me on FacebookTwitterSoundcloud or YouTube. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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Israel to Get New Fleet of F-35s Financed by US Aid

Posted by M. C. on July 3, 2023

The deal is for 25 planes and is estimated to cost $3 billion

The Israeli arms industry will also benefit from the deal. The Israeli Defense Ministry said that as part of the agreement, Lockheed Martin and the engine manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney, have “committed to involving Israeli defense industries in the production of aircraft components sold.”

Feel your wallet get thinner? The only thing Israel has given US is 34 dead crewman on the Liberty.

antiwar.com

by Dave DeCamp

The Israeli Defense Ministry said Sunday that Israel will acquire a third fleet of Lockheed Martin-made F-35 fighter jets using US military aid funds.

The deal for 25 F-35 fighter jets is estimated to cost about $3 billion and will be purchased through Foreign Military Financing (FMF), a US State Department program that gives foreign governments money to buy US arms.

The Israeli arms industry will also benefit from the deal. The Israeli Defense Ministry said that as part of the agreement, Lockheed Martin and the engine manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney, have “committed to involving Israeli defense industries in the production of aircraft components sold.”

“This new agreement will ensure the continuation of cooperation between American companies and Israeli defense industries in the production of aircraft parts,” the Israeli Defense Ministry added.

See the rest here

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Righting This Cacophony Of Wrongs

Posted by M. C. on July 2, 2023

We all have power to influence; residing in the decisions we make on a daily basis and the lifestyles we choose to adopt. You don’t need to be an influencer with a 5 digit follower count in order to leave a strong, positive mark on those around you.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/righting-cacophony-wrongs

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

Authored by Mike ‘Dr.Doom’ 𝙃𝙤₿𝙖𝙧𝙩 via BombThrower.com,

I hope everyone has had the time to properly appreciate their first days of summer. If you did not, then I hope your efforts have gotten you closer to being capable of doing so soon.

Today’s writing is inspired by my many conversations over the current state of our United States of America, and how far we have fallen from the Tree of Freedom that our Honored Fallen sacrificed their lives for. How Americans have lost sight of what truly matters, and how our uneducated & unfit masses continue to make decisions that enable their complacencies over doing what needs to be done in order to save the future of our country, for ourselves and for our children…

Failure Teaches. Victory Confirms.

Taking the path of immediate gratification, and especially selling-out the futures of our children, alongside the soul of our proud nation, is inextricably not American. Providing products of shite quality is inextricably not American. Choosing to do the easy thing over that which is more difficult, and that which is right, is inextricably not American. Sacrificing our own steadfastness, our own resilience, and going back on our promises and debts is not American.

Simple vs Easy

The steps required for correcting this egregious path are simple but they are not easy. This brings us to the first true step (Step 0.1) towards course-correction, of any kind. Conflation of something so basic as simple & easy is a problem that we as Americans must identify, acknowledge, and work to correct. A task can be simple; “do [x] in order to get [y] outcome,” but that does not mean that the task will be easy; “man doing [x] required so little effort to so I could get [y].”

Ignorance of Failure

Admitting that we have gone awry is the other 90% of Step 1, that we have made a series of mistakes and poor decisions is necessary. Because it is okay. It is okay to make mistakes, to be wrong. It is not okay to make mistakes, to be wrong, and not own-up to them. Not accepting that we have made wrong/bad decisions is extremely dangerous as there is no learning or growth that is allowed to occur when we choose to ignore our failures. Failure teaches. Victory confirms.

The Average American is the one who holds the power in the coming years — as this is a situation that will take years to correct and get back on “the path.” I have a few simple suggestions for the everyday American to follow if you would like to be on the right side of history.

First

GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASS

America is not well. Between those already diagnosed with diabetes, and those that are prediabetic we are looking at 49% of the Us adult population being affected, alone. According to data from 2017 (which is 6 years old mind you) the US population was looking at an obesity rate of 42%. Keep in mind that this does not include the concoction of chronic metabolic syndromes and diseases that accompany obesity; heart disease, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, neurodegenerative conditions, cancers, and so on.

Americans need to get up off the couch and out of their desk chairs and push, pull, and breathe their way into individual fortitude. If the worst of the worst were to happen today, the amount of human life that would be lost simply due to intermittent access to power, let alone food, would be daunting and egregious. Through complacencies afforded the modern era we have become more fragile than ever in history. Yet we have access to the best technologies, methodologies, sciences, and access to more food and information than in any other prior empire in the history of our planet.

As Americans it is our duty and our privilege to become the baddest motherf*ckers that we can become. We are in the Land of the Free. Where you can be free to be a fat, lazy, complacent pile of shit all you want. I don’t know about you… but me, I want to be the most fit, well-rounded, capable, educated, understanding individual that I can be because I am free to do so. Because when shit-hits-fan, which is a virtual certainty (on any scale), I want to be capable of providing the strength and clear-headedness to be capable of providing protection and support to those I care about. Being comfortable means f^ck-all when life deals you a powdered backhand and you are not capable of being an effective force in times of adversity or fear — regardless of whether you are a man or a woman.

If you are not capable to react to the plethora of known knowns as far as potential negative outcomes, then you cannot even hope to be capable of handling those unknown unknowns. Of which are infinite. Fitness and sound health makes the individual far more capable of handling adversity, and during moments of historical shifts in the balance of power adversity is commonplace. Fill the gyms and run the trails, become the embodiment of strength that your neighbors, loved ones, and peers need.

Second

GET ack-tually EDUCATED

America today has been taught to demonize coming incorrect, and pedestalize being correct. 

To the extent of where people are attributing their being correct as a part of their identity.

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The Science Was Settled In First Grade.

Posted by M. C. on July 1, 2023

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Can Taiwan Prevent a US-China War over Taiwan?

Posted by M. C. on July 1, 2023

This would be a bitter pill for the US as well. In order to be logically consistent with this new philosophy, it would have to announce that if Texas or California, or Florida or New York, wished to secede from the US, it could do so without any physical opposition from Washington D.C. Let us say nothing about the war against secession of 1861.

The world’s eyes are now focused on Russia and Ukraine. And with good reason. These two nations are now involved in a hot war with each other, and there are fears that it might spread even further.

China makes no secret of its desired relationship with Taiwan.

Another possible war, that between the US and China over Taiwan, should also be kept on the forefront of consideration. If it occurs, it will involve the two most powerful nations on the third rock from the sun. China makes no secret of its desired relationship with Taiwan: the former considers the latter as its 16th province, even though it is presently separate from its mother country and has been since 1949.

The US is equally adamant that Taiwan is not a province of any other country, such as China. It opposes any unilateral change in its present status. In order to prevent any aggressive takeover of the former by the latter, American warships continually ply the waters of the South China Sea, which separates these two political entities.

How can a hot war over this issue be prevented? Is there any possible compromise that can preclude such an altercation, a potential danger to the entire human race?

There is.

One or more of these three political entities must officially sign on to the doctrine that all political associations must take place on a voluntary basis. No group of people should be compelled to associate, politically or in any other manner, with others against their will. Neither the US nor China is likely to be the first to take this plunge. This leaves the matter up to Taiwan. It, presumably, has the most to lose in any war to prevent a Chinese takeover, and, thus, the most incentive to do what it can to ward off such an eventuality.

What can Taiwan do?

Are there any folk now living in Taiwan who would wish to politically amalgamate with China? To become part of its 16th province? Fortunately for this compromise scheme, there are.

For example, Lin Te-wang, the leader of the Taiwan People’s Communist Party, admires Chinese President Xi Jinping, and maintains that his version of Chinese socialism would maximize economic development in Taiwan. How many Taiwanese support those or similar views? According to a survey recently held by the non-partisan Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation, this figure is about 12%.

How, then, to proceed? The Taiwanese government should hold elections of a very different sort than the usual. It should seek a relatively small area, perhaps, even a single town or a village in which a majority of the voters are to be found representative of this 12%. Unless voters who favor joining China are randomly distributed, geographically, a most unlikely occurrence (people with similar views tend to coalesce), such a territory will be found. Then, the Taiwanese government should welcome China into this one small area, which should be declared the 16th province of that mother country (provided that a peace treaty, or some such guarantee against the coerced spread of this entity, could be arranged).

See the rest here

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