MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Progressive Cities Return to the Dark Ages | The Daily Bell

Posted by M. C. on March 29, 2023

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/progressive-cities-return-to-the-dark-ages/

By Joe Jarvis 

In the 15th century, tensions began to rise between the Hanseatic League’s merchants and a major center of international trade at the time, the city of Bruges.

In 1477, the League decided to impose a full-scale boycott on Bruges over trade regulations and taxes, forbidding its members from trading with the city or even entering its walls.

The boycott lasted for several years and had a significant impact on Bruges’ economy, as the League was one of its largest trading partners. The city eventually capitulated to the League’s demands and agreed to a number of concessions, including the right to appoint its own officials to oversee trade and the abolition of certain taxes.

The Bruges boycott was just one example of the Hanseatic League’s willingness to use economic pressure to protect its members’ interests and ensure fair treatment in the cities where they traded.

Today: Walmart has pulled out of Portland because rampant theft has made it unprofitable to operate there

  • Walmart is a sign of civilization (only half joking) and the vast potential of capitalism, infinitely scalable processes
  • Plenty to criticize it over, but super important to economy, poor, even parking lots where people can sleep, municipalities hold their vaccine drives…

Same thing happens in inner-cities where people have long complained about grocery store dead zones and everything costing more… yes, regular shoplifting and stickups cost money. Why bother running a business there?

Same thing with CVS/ Walgreens closing stores in San Francisco. Grocery stores closing in California due to state demands to pay more during COVID. Amazon closing stores in high crime cities— NYC, San Francisco, Seattle.

This is what happens. Wealth migrates.

  • Henley and Partners, which deals in global wealth migration, says the US is on track to lose a record 125,000 millionaires this year— compared to, for example, 64,000 in 2015.
  • Net inflows of wealthy people into the US fell to 1,500 in 2022, down from a peak 10,800 pre-pandemic.

Henley’s report actually noted that:

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Imagine If All Officials Were Interrogated By Reporters Like This

Posted by M. C. on March 29, 2023

https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/imagine-if-all-officials-were-interrogated?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

Caitlin Johnstone

A fascinating exchange took place at a UN press briefing the other day between China Global Television Network’s Xu Dezhi and the UN’s Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Farhan Haq about the US military occupation of Syria. The exchange is interesting both for the wild pro-US bias shown by a UN official, and for the way it illustrates how much truth can be exposed when journalists do what they’re supposed to do in the press gallery.

Xu, who has done on-the-ground reporting in Syria in the past, asked Haq some challenging questions about an attack on a US military base in eastern Syria last week which injured multiple American troops and killed an American contractor. In his response, Haq made the extremely incorrect claim that there are no US armed forces in Syria, and refused to say whether the US military occupation of part of the country is illegal.

Here’s the UN’s transcript of the key part of this exchange (emphasis added by me):

Xu: Do you not urge everyone to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria?

Haq: Well of course, that’s a given, and obviously it’s important that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria is respected. At the same time you are aware of the complexity of the situation of foreign forces, but we call for them to exercise restraint.

Xu: But, do you think the presence of the US military in Syria is illegal or not?

Haq: That’s not an issue that we’re dealing with at this stage. There’s been a war.

Xu: But, is that… because it sounds very familiar this week. We talk a lot about the UN Charter, the international law and relative resolutions.  But, it sounds to me, a foreign ministry based presence in another country without invitation, sounds like something else to me.

Haq: I’ll leave your analysis to you.  That there’s… At this stage there’s no…

Xu: What’s the difference between the situation in Syria and the situation in Ukraine?

Haq: There’s no US armed forces inside of Syria.  And so I don’t have a… It’s not a parallel situation to some of the others.

Xu: You’re sure there’s no US military personnel in Syria?

Haq: I believe there’s military activity.  But, in terms of a ground presence in Syria, I’m not aware of that.

Xu: Okay.  Five US service members were injured in that attack.  If there were no US service members in Syria, how could they got injured?  That’s weird, right?  Should I ask you about that?  And by the way, if you’re talking about the resolution, the international law here is the resolution from Security Council 2254 (2015), I believe, it says in its PA [preambular] paragraph, “reaffirming its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations”.

Haq: Yes.  I’m aware of that.  And as you see, that is accepted by the members of the Security Council itself.

Xu: Yeah.  So, again, back to my question, is that illegal to have presence in Syria for the US base, according to the relevant resolution that I just read out?

Haq: The relevant resolution does call for that and we call on all countries to respect that.  I wouldn’t go beyond that at this stage.

To be absolutely clear, this is a UN official. Haq has been in his current position as deputy spokesperson for almost a decade, and routinely answers questions about Syria as part of his capacity in that position.

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The Restrict Act Is The Patriot Act on Steroids

Posted by M. C. on March 29, 2023

https://rumble.com/v2f78es-the-restrict-act-is-the-patriot-act-on-steroids.html

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Who Deserves Student Loan Forgiveness?

Posted by M. C. on March 29, 2023

First, what about those students who have already repaid their loans? By all means, government coffers should be reduced even further in favor of these people, too. Rights violations will thereby be reduced, when the statists have less money (However, those who repaid are not entirely innocent; they rendered money to Caesar, when with the benefit of hindsight, they may not have had to do).

Second, why did so many students have such a hard time repaying their debt to the government? Simple, all too many of them majored in grievance studies. This renders them unusually chatty baristas, but they don’t earn enough money to support their misspent college days.

https://open.substack.com/pub/walterblock/p/who-deserves-student-loan-forgiveness?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

Luis Rivera

By Walter E. Block

What is the libertarian analysis of the student loan forgiveness policy now being implemented (subject to Supreme Court approval) by the Biden Administration?

Before we can offer any such examination, let us consider the following. The government first boosted tuition into the stratosphere by requiring all sorts of silly reports of universities, which necessitated the hiring of all types and varieties of academic bureaucrats. At one time, in the history of higher education, professors greatly outnumbered administrators; not any more. Then, in its largesse, this self-same institution lent money to students so as to be able to pay for the resulting enhanced tuition. Talk about creating the very problem you think you must solve.

Now, the proposal is to forgive these resulting student debts. Libertarianism, of course, is the viewpoint that it should be illegal to threaten, or engage in, initiatory violence. With that introduction, we are ready to try to apply this perspective to this issue of the day, student loan forgiveness.

One response to this challenge is to ask who is more worthy, on libertarian grounds, of being subsidized? That is, here is a booty seeking (or rent seeking, as the Public Choice theorists mischaracterize the matter) exercise, on behalf of supporters of this viewpoint. The two groups in contention for these benefits are these students who have not repaid their loans, and the general taxpayer, from whom additional taxes will be mulcted, if the program is executed.

How shall we determine an answer to that question? It must be on the basis of which group adheres more closely to libertarian principles, of course. Someone has to pay for the forgiveness program; either the lucky students if this goes through, or the average taxpayer, who previously paid these monies, and, if these debts are repaid, will presumably benefit, other things equal, via lower taxes than would otherwise have prevailed.

So, which group is more libertarian, and thus deserving of greater wealth? In my view, it is pretty much a tie. It is as if each assembly is worse than the other. On the one hand, the general electorate (apart from ballot box stuffing) is responsible for that senile old coot now occupying the White House. I need not say any more than that. This deviates markedly from libertarianism.

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Dailywire Article-Don’t Let Biden’s All-Time Offensive Response To The Nashville Shooting Get Buried

Posted by M. C. on March 29, 2023

https://www.dailywire.com/news/dont-let-bidens-all-time-offensive-response-to-the-nashville-shooting-get-buried

By  Tim Meads

US President Joe Biden speaks during the US Small Business Administration (SBA) Women's Business Summit in the East Room of the White House on Monday, March 27, 2023. Biden at the event again called on Congress to ban assault weapons and take other steps to address gun violence following another deadly school shooting, this time in Nashville, Tennessee.
(Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The lapdog media will never give it the attention it deserves, but don’t let President Joe Biden’s all-time offensive response to the Covenant school shooting get buried amidst all the news.

During his first public appearance on Monday, news stations tuned into what they thought was going to be the commander-in-chief addressing the nation, commemorating the lives lost. Instead, for more than two minutes, the president rambled on about ice cream, his wife, “good-looking kids,” and his sister before getting to his remarks about the Nashville tragedy.

ABC News aired the remarks in full, showing the distasteful and tone-deaf comments at the beginning:

Fox News anchors seemed stunned that the president was yukking it up and quickly cut away from his remarks.

“John, we’ll jump back in here, uhm, considering the moment,” a shaken Martha MaCallum said in disbelief. “There’s a shooting that just happened, that left three children dead, three adults dead, and we were told that he would be addressing this off the top.”

“Yeah, it’s rather surprising, I thought that somber president would have come to the podium and would have addressed this school shooting,” her colleague said.

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The Patriot Act on steroids: D.C. Uniparty wants to use anti-TikTok legislation as Trojan horse for censorship and surveillance

Posted by M. C. on March 29, 2023

Beltway lawmakers are setting up a smokescreen to curtail rights.

Unfortunately, the ongoing TikTok hearings in D.C. have very little to do with protecting the rights of Americans from potential Chinese Communist Party data harvesting, and lots to do with protecting the Uniparty’s dominance over the communications and surveillance space.

https://open.substack.com/pub/dossier/p/the-patriot-act-on-steroids-dc-uniparty?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

Jordan Schachtel

TikTok is indeed a pestilence upon our society.

But there are right ways to go about minimizing this “digital opium” and its impact on our lives, and other means that will allow the American government to leverage the situation to further curtail our individual rights.

And unsurprisingly, the latter idea is making lawmakers in the beltway beyond giddy this week.

The Dossier is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

TikTok is indeed a pestilence upon our society.

But there are right ways to go about minimizing this “digital opium” and its impact on our lives, and other means that will allow the American government to leverage the situation to further curtail our individual rights.

And unsurprisingly, the latter idea is making lawmakers in the beltway beyond giddy this week.

The Dossier is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribe

The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act (S.686), which was introduced in the Senate earlier this month, would do much more than just ban TikTok.

This bill is no mere “TikTok ban,” it is a mechanism for a massive, sweeping surveillance and censorship overhaul.  

The RESTRICT Act goes far, far beyond potentially banning TikTok. It gives the government virtual unchecked authority over the U.S. communications infrastructure. The incredibly broad language includes the ability to “enforce any mitigation measure to address any risk” to “national security” today and in any “potential future transaction.”

The Senate legislation currently has 19 cosponsors, all of whom are Uniparty members in good standing. It is fully “bipartisan,” consisting of 9 democrats and 10 republicans. 

Darin Feinstein @DarinFeinstein

TikTok is bad, but the Restrict Act could be worse “To authorize the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit certain TRANSACTIONS between persons in the USA and foreign adversaries, AND for other purposes(?)” Overly Broad Language = Future Abuse congress.gov/bill/118th-con…

7:05 PM ∙ Mar 27, 2023


9Likes4Retweets

Timcast’s Ian Crossland fittingly described the legislation as The Patriot Act for technology.

Human Events @HumanEvents

On Timcast, @IanCrossland suggests the Restrict Act, which was introduced to ban TikTok, could set a dangerous precedent: “It gives you carte blanche to just start ending networks … this is like the Patriot Act for technology.”

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German health minister admits COVID jabs can cause ‘permanent disabilities,’ contradicting past statements – LifeSite

Posted by M. C. on March 29, 2023

I am holding my breath waiting for the Philade…Erie Times and Erie County Health to weigh in on this.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/german-health-minister-admits-covid-jabs-can-cause-permanent-disabilities-contradicting-past-statements/?utm_source=popular

Germany leads all Western nations in excess deaths since the rollout of the COVID shots, with a 44 percent increase recorded in January 2023.

Featured ImageGerman health minister Karl Lauterbach

(LifeSiteNews) — Germany’s health minister has admitted that the COVID-19 injections can cause permanent disabilities after previously claiming that the jabs are without side effects. 

In an interview with the German state media outlet ZDF on March 12, 2023, health minister Karl Lauterbach was confronted with cases of people who suffered injuries from the COVID shots, including a 17-year-old gymnast who was hospitalized and nearly died after receiving the BioNTech COVID injection.

“These fates are absolutely dismaying, and every single fate is one too many,” Lauterbach said. 

“These are severe disabilities, and some of them will be permanent, so it’s difficult,” he added. 

Lauterbach called for “a faster process of recognizing vaccine injuries” and claimed that “serious vaccine injuries” occur in “fewer than 1 in 10,000 vaccinations, according to data from the Paul-Ehrlich-Institute (PEI).” 

News anchor Christian Sievers confronted Lauterbach with his previous statements regarding vaccine safety. In a tweet from August 2021, Lauterbach wrote: 

True. And additionally, it’s about why a minority of society doesn’t want a side-effect-free vaccine, even though it’s free and can save their lives and the lives of many others. Therefore, I am pessimistic about voluntary sacrifices for climate protection. [emphasis added] 

“Well, that was an exaggeration that I made once in a botched tweet. But it wasn’t fundamentally my attitude,” the German health minister said. 

READ: German health minister says ‘new pandemics are certain’ after meeting with Bill Gates, WHO director 

Sievers pushed back against Lauterbach, saying that the health minister had “always given the impression that the issue of [vaccine] side effects is not really an issue at all.” 

“No, that’s not right,” Lauterbach replied. “I just told you, I’ve always known the numbers. They have also remained relatively stable. These vaccines are used worldwide. 1 in 10,000. So you can say it’s a lot or you can say it’s not so much.” 

“It is, in fact, a vaccination that protects against very severe disease and, by the way, very often lowers ‘Long COVID’ risk,” he continued. 

“The benefits outweigh the risks, but it’s right, 1 in 10,000, that’s the incidence of severe side effects.” 

Executive director of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, Steve Kirsch, disagreed with Lauterbach’s risk assessment. 

There is ample evidence that severe side effects, including death, from the COVID injections, occur much more frequently than Lauterbach claims. A recent survey carried out by a polling institute in Germany found that 23% of participants said that they experienced “severe adverse effects” after receiving COVID-19 injections. Furthermore, Germany led Western nations in excess deaths since the rollout of the COVID shots, with a 44 percent increase recorded in January 2023. 

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Who Radicalized the Nashville Shooter? Plus: New “Anti-TikTok” Law Could Censor ALL Social Media | SYSTEM UPDATE #62

Posted by M. C. on March 28, 2023

https://rumble.com/v2f2ju6–system-update-62.html

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Violent Protest Is a Death Knell to Freedom – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 28, 2023

Millions are in the streets, but when they were locked down, imprisoned in their own homes, subject to mandatory poisonous bio-weapon injections, masked, their jobs lost, and their economy destroyed, they did not protest in this manner. But they are now burning cars, buildings, rioting, throwing fire bombs and rocks, harming private businesses all over the city; all in what looks like a war zone, to attempt to gain State welfare pensions.

All this type of ‘protesting’ accomplishes, is to give ammunition to all the State’s political scum and their enforcement thugs called police and military, in order to falsely legitimize the use of extreme force against its own citizenry.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/03/gary-d-barnett/violent-protest-is-a-death-knell-to-freedom/

By Gary D. Barnett

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

~ Mahatma Gandhi, The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas

There are different types of protest, few of value, but in reality, when protesting authoritarian rule or government, the best and most legitimate response is one of negation of the State, negation of compliance; in other words, complete disobedience and ignoring all aspects of State rule and mandates at every opportunity possible. This approach in fact, is the only justifiable way to stop oppression and tyranny without becoming the same evil that is the enemy oppressor. Self-defense is another matter, as when confronted physically, or when great harm to self, family, or other innocents is active and present, equal or greater force may be required to stop the threat.

In today’s world, a world consumed by contradiction, indifference, immorality, and theatre, protest more often than not is about the show, not about actually putting down the threat of the State. Usually, the collective demonstrations in the streets are meant to gain, temporarily of course, notoriety, herd acceptance, and a day or two of a party-like event. Most would not even be there unless they were surrounded by the crowd, so as to obtain what they falsely perceive as a protective shield of bodies; bodies meant to hide their actual cowardice. As soon as the cameras leave, as soon as the crowd begins to disperse, as soon as their cover disappears, they all run away to their ‘normal (abnormal) existence. They remove their masks, they drop their signs, and are at once not seething with rage or rightful anger, nor do they any longer pursue any worthwhile cause of freedom. They are again on the sideline waiting for some savior to grant them redress from the tyranny they allow. It turns out more like a movie set at the end of the day, where all the actors go home, only awaiting the next curtain call. It is merely an acted out and worthless spectacle, usually with the obvious performing speakers seeking an audience for their own advancement or benefit, while using the crowd of sheep to enhance their popularity.

When these events get out of hand, which is often; many times at the behest of speakers or agitators, violence erupts, and actual protest is the last thing on the minds of these phony protestors. Even before violent aggression takes center stage, many innocents and their property may have been harmed due to the manner and scope of these gatherings, but their rights and freedoms are ignored, usually in the asinine name of the  so-called ‘greater good.’ This dynamic has been evidenced all over the world, including in many circumstances in this country. Consider all that happened during the fake ‘covid’ era. Consider the insane staged Trump protests, where crowds of brainless dolts were running amuck, just as they were enticed and permitted to do. Once over, the State used its plan to arrest and jail protesters, and even kill one of them, while their hero Trump egged them on, just as he is doing again. Consider the horrendous garbage calling themselves the BLM or Antifa, all let loose on society by a governing cabal meant to purposely stoke hate and violence in order to divide. All of this of course, was made easy due to the lack of quality of those individuals involved in these fake protests, which included those on all sides. It is as if the directors are following the script, and the bulk of people are but mere extras, doing everything they are told to do without question. It is a pathetic display to be sure.

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The Banality of Biden’s ‘Exceptional’ Elite Advisers – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on March 28, 2023

US foreign policy is earmarked by chronic stupid stuff because we no longer produce Renaissance men or women who see things in their proper perspective and avoid magnifying fleas into elephants. Renaissance thinkers understand, like Lord Byron, that history, with all its volumes vast, hath but one page, that there is nothing new under the sun, and, that an Aristotelian mean is the presumptive optimal approach to any problem. Narrowly trained specialists cannot see the forest for the trees and routinely stumble.

https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2023/03/26/the-banality-of-bidens-exceptional-elite-advisers/

by Ray McGovern

Danger: President Joe Biden’s sophomores running U.S. foreign policy today live in a dream world on the verge of becoming a nightmare. The nightmare – military confrontation with both Russia and China – now looms.

It is scary enough that Biden seems to be out of it. Scarier still is the reality that his advisers appear to be oblivious to the tectonic-change implications of Russia-China entente. Blinded by the illusion of US”exceptionalism,” they may have to learn the hard way. The nightmare into which they are sleep-walking may be the last nightmare for pretty much all on this planet, except maybe the cockroaches.

Okay: Antony Blinken is no longer a sophomore. But he was a sophomore 20 years ago when he helped his then-boss, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden lie about weapons of mass destruction to win congressional approval for war on Iraq. Neither of them were held accountable for that – one of the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history. Indeed, the only thing they seem to have learned from it is that they will never be held accountable, not even if they wander, oops, into cataclysmic disaster.

Blinken is his now-boss’s, loose-cannon Secretary of State. Will Blinken, now an upperclassman, and the insider-sophomores like national security adviser Jacob Sullivan get us, willy-nilly, into war with Russia? How about war with both Russia and China? Do not put it past them.

Oddly, they have the benighted notion they can “manage” China; keep it from military-alliance-type support for Russia; or – if necessary – handle a two-front war with the two other major nuclear powers. Odder still, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, who should know better, seem cowed by Blinken and Sullivan – despite the fact that they have less military experience in the military than an ROTC cadet.

No Renaissance Men (or Women)

Bruce Fein, a Renaissance-man-type lawyer, pins the blame squarely on these benighted policy makers for trying to encircle and handcuff both China and Russia. Fein is not impressed by the fact that these specialists come from “the best schools.” Here’s Fein in a recent substack post:

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