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Merry Christmas!
Posted by M. C. on December 24, 2024
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HiFi Specs Lie: Why You Should Trust Your Ears!
Posted by M. C. on December 23, 2024
Interesting insight to the capabilities of your ears and brain. Think of this while you are hearing that story for the 7th time on Christmas.
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Rothbard’s Theory of International Relations and the State
Posted by M. C. on December 22, 2024
for the oligarchic rule of the State is its parasitic nature—the fact that it lives coercively off the production of the citizenry. To be successful to its practitioners, the fruits of parasitic exploitation must be confined to a relative minority, otherwise a meaningless plunder of all by all would result in no gains for anyone.
The root myth that enables the State to wax fat off war is the canard that war is a defense by the State of its subjects. The facts, of course, are precisely the reverse. For if war is the health of the State, it is also its greatest danger. A State can only “die” by defeat in war or by revolution. In war, therefore, the State frantically mobilizes the people to fight for it against another State, under the pretext that it is fighting for them.
https://mises.org/mises-wire/rothbards-theory-international-relations-and-state
Murray Rothbard is well known as an opponent of warfare perpetrated by states. This includes acts of war by states against other states, as well as acts of war by states against non-state organizations and individuals. Consequently, Rothbard historical scholarship and his political commentary is characterized by consistent opposition to aggressive warfare and imperialism as practiced by states in general, and by the United States government in particular.
Thus, Rothbard’s normative analysis of foreign policy and international relations is quite clear in his many prescriptive statements calling for fewer wars, smaller wars, and more limited warfare in general. In this, Rothbard follows a long tradition of libertarian or radical “classical liberal” theorists.
But did Rothbard provide us with a positive or descriptive analysis of international relations? That is, did Rothbard have a value-free theory of international relations describing the structure of the international system? The answer is yes if we extrapolate from his analysis of the nature of the state and how states interact with each other.
The Fundamental Characteristics of Rothbard’s International System
Rothbard’s description of international relations is characterized by four key tenets of states and their foreign policy:
- The international system is anarchic.
- States are controlled by an oligarchic ruling elite insulated from non-state actors, and a state’s foreign policy is primarily determined by the state’s elites who seek to preserve the system.
- Above all else, states seek to preserve themselves, and they seek to expand their own power, relative to other states, when possible.
- War can be a tool of domestic policy. In some cases, states tend toward war because wars offer an opportunity for states to expand the state’s power over the domestic population.
The Anarchic System
In his essay “War, Peace, and the State,” Rothbard writes:
In the modern world, each land area is ruled over by a State organization, but there are a number of States scattered over the earth, each with a monopoly of violence over its own territory. No super-State exists with a monopoly of violence over the entire world; and so a state of “anarchy” exists between the several States.
This observation is hardly unique to Rothbard, and has been employed by international relations scholars from several different schools for many decades. Scholars differ on what they believe to be the implications and outcomes of the anarchic system, however. For Rothbard, the international system is characterized by violence partly because it is dominated by states—which are institutions founded on coercion. Rothbard recognizes, of course, that not all states are equally aggressive all the time. Some states are revisionist states and others are defensive, status quo states. This varies with the state of the international system at various times. Moreover, state violence is often traced back to previous acts of state violence, as in the case of the post-World War I revisionist states which were reacting to the harsh provisions imposed by the victorious allies. Because states are focused on their own interests and preservation, states will only engage in international cooperation when it is of benefit to the state itself. What is of benefit to the ordinary people of each state—i.e., peace, freedom, and free trade—is rarely of primary importance to those who decide foreign policy.
States Are Ruled by a Small Minority
Central to Rothbard’s view of the state is the fact that “’we’ are not the government; the government is not ‘us.’ The government does not in any accurate sense ‘represent’ the majority of the people.” This view has its origins in classical-liberal exploitation theory, and it is certainly reflected in Rothbard’s view of international relations. For examine, in For a New Liberty, Rothbard writes:
the normal and continuing condition of the State is oligarchic rule: rule by a coercive elite which has managed to gain control of the State machinery. There are two basic reasons for this: one is the inequality and division of labor inherent in the nature of man, which gives rise to an “Iron Law of Oligarchy” in all of man’s activities; and second is the parasitic nature of the State enterprise itself.
Overall, Rothbard accepted the main tenets of elitism as he also shows when he writes:
for the oligarchic rule of the State is its parasitic nature—the fact that it lives coercively off the production of the citizenry. To be successful to its practitioners, the fruits of parasitic exploitation must be confined to a relative minority, otherwise a meaningless plunder of all by all would result in no gains for anyone.
For Rothbard, this holds true whether or not a regime is allegedly a democracy, and the presence of democratic institutions does not fundamentally change a state’s behavior in the international sphere. Rothbard notes that, in evaluating state behavior in war:
The theoretical reason why focusing on democracy or dictatorship misses the point is that States—all States—rule their population and decide whether or not to make war. And all States, whether formally a democracy or dictatorship or some other brand of rule, are run by a ruling elite. Whether or not these elites, in any particular case, will make war upon another State is a function of a complex interweaving web of causes, including temperament of the rulers, the strength of their enemies, the inducements for war, public opinion. While public opinion has to be gauged in either case, the only real difference between a democracy and a dictatorship on making war is that in the former more propaganda must be beamed at one’s subjects to engineer their approval. Intensive propaganda is necessary in any case—as we can see by the zealous opinion-moulding behavior of all modern warring States.
States Seek Self-Preservation
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Stay Alert! — House Tries To Glom Onto D.O.G.E. With A Very Unimpressive “D.O.G.E.” Bill
Posted by M. C. on December 21, 2024
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CNN Admits Reporter Duped: Assad ‘Victim’ Found In Syria Prison Was Regime Intel Officer
Posted by M. C. on December 20, 2024
In other words the CNN fake was so bad they had ‘fess up…sort of.
by Tyler Durden
The long and colorful history of major media promotion of false, government-serving narratives has a new chapter.
Last week, CNN aired a melodramatic report from reporter Clarissa Ward that was supposed to show a CNN crew amazingly rescuing a victim of the Assad regime from the bowels of a Damascus dungeon. After days of mounting skepticism and pointed questions ricocheting across social media, alternative new sites and here at ZeroHedge, CNN now says the “rescued” man was actually a regime intelligence officer, and there are reports that he himself perpetrated crimes against civilians.
The man identified himself as Adel Ghurbai, and said he lived in the central Syrian city of Homs. However, over the weekend, the self-described Syrian fact-checking site Verify-Sy said he was actually Salama Mohammad Salama, aka “Abu Hamza”, an infamous and cruel first lieutenant in Syrian Air Force Intelligence:
Abu Hamza reportedly managed several security checkpoints in Homs and was involved in theft, extortion, and coercing residents into becoming informants. According to locals, his recent incarceration—lasting less than a month—was due to a dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer. This led to his detention in one of Damascus’s cells, as per neighborhood sources.
…
Despite his seemingly innocent and composed demeanor in the CNN report, Salama has a grim history. He participated in military operations on several fronts in Homs in 2014, killed civilians, and was responsible for detaining and torturing numerous young men in the city without cause or on fabricated charges. Many were targeted simply for refusing to pay bribes, rejecting cooperation, or even for arbitrary reasons like their appearance. These details were corroborated by families of victims and former detainees who spoke with Verify-Sy.
On Monday, CNN posted a report — written by Tim Lister and Eyad Kourdi but not Ward — revealing the network had been duped.
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The King James Test for American Democracy
Posted by M. C. on December 20, 2024
For generations, American politicians spoke reverently of the Constitution as America’s highest law. But in recent years, the Constitution has fallen into disrepute. The rule of law now means little more than the enforcement of the secret memos of the commander-in-chief.
by James Bovard
On December 1, President Joe Biden announced that he was pardoning his son Hunter for all the crimes he committed from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024. President Biden absolved all of his son’s felonies because of his “serious addictions” and because Hunter was purportedly mistreated by Biden’s own appointees at the Justice Department. But going back 40 years to his time as chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Joe Biden favored vociferously and mercilessly prosecuting hapless individuals for the same offenses for which he absolved his son.
Biden’s pardon of his son epitomizes how presidents and their families are now above the law. It also illustrates how the “King James Test for American Democracy” could become the death of the Constitution.
The American Revolution was heavily influenced by a political backlash that began across the ocean in the early 1600s. King James I claimed a “divine right” to unlimited power in England, sparking fierce clashes with Parliament. Since the 9/11 attacks, some of the same moral and legal principles have been advanced in this nation, but few people recognize the historical roots.
The divine right of kings
Before he became king of England in 1604, James was king of Scotland. He cemented his claims to absolute power there by launching witch panics and burning hundreds of Scottish women alive to sanctify his power. Harsh methods were not a problem because James insisted that God would never allow an innocent person to be accused of witchcraft. “While James’s assertion of his [Scottish] royal authority is evident in his highly unorthodox act of taking control of the pre-trial examinations, it is his absolutism which is most apparent in his advocating the use of torture to force confessions during the investigations,” according to the University of Texas’s Allegra Geller, author of “Daemonologie and Divine Right: The Politics of Witchcraft in Late Sixteenth-Century Scotland.” Torture produced “confessions” that spurred further panic and the destruction of far more victims. England did not have similar witch panics because officials were almost entirely prevented from using torture to generate false confessions. James justified the illicit torture, “asserting his belief that as an anointed king, he was above the law,” and similar rationales emitted from the Bush administration from 2002 onward in the name of the 9/11 attacks.
After Queen Elizabeth died and James became king, he vowed that he had no obligation to respect the rights of the English people: “A good king will frame his actions according to the law, yet he is not bound thereto but of his own goodwill.” And “law” was whatever James decreed. Nor did he flatter the men elected to the House of Commons: “In the Parliament (which is nothing else but the head court of the king and his vassals) the laws are but craved by his subjects and only made by him at their rogation.” James proclaimed that God intended for the English to live at his mercy: “It is certain that patience, earnest prayers to God, and amendment of their lives are the only lawful means to move God to relieve them of their heavy curse” of oppression. And there was no way for Parliament to subpoena God to confirm his blanket endorsement of King James.
His laws, his rules
James reminded his subjects that “even by God himself [kings] are called Gods.”
Seventeenth-century Englishmen recognized the grave peril in the king’s words. A 1621 Parliament report eloquently warned: “If [the king] founds his authority on arbitrary and dangerous principles, it is requisite to watch him with the same care, and to oppose him with the same vigor, as if he indulged himself in all the excesses of cruelty and tyranny.” Historian Thomas Macaulay observed in 1831, “The policy of wise tyrants has always been to cover their violent acts with popular forms. James was always obtruding his despotic theories on his subjects without the slightest necessity. His foolish talk exasperated them infinitely more than forced loans would have done.” Macaulay scoffed that James was “in his own opinion, the greatest master of king-craft that ever lived, but who was, in truth, one of those kings whom God seems to send for the express purpose of hastening revolutions.” After James’s son, Charles I, relied on the same dogmas and ravaged much of the nation, he was beheaded. Charles I’s son ascended to the English throne in 1660, but his abuses spurred the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and sweeping reforms that sought to forever curb the power of monarchs.
A century and a half after King James denigrated Parliament, a similar declaration of absolute power spurred the American Revolution. The Stamp Act of 1765 compelled Americans to purchase British stamps for all legal papers, newspapers, cards, advertisements, and even dice. After violent protests erupted, Parliament rescinded the Stamp Act but passed the Declaratory Act, which decreed that Parliament “had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever.” The Declaratory Act canonized Parliament’s right to use and abuse Americans as it pleased.
The Declaratory Act ignited an intellectual powder keg among colonists determined not to live under the heel of either monarchs or parliaments. Thomas Paine wrote in 1776 that “in America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.” The Founding Fathers, having endured oppression, sought to build a “government of laws, not of men.” That meant that “government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand — rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers,” as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek noted in 1944.
For generations, American politicians spoke reverently of the Constitution as America’s highest law. But in recent years, the Constitution has fallen into disrepute. The rule of law now means little more than the enforcement of the secret memos of the commander-in-chief.
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Americans are blaming corporate employees instead of corporate owners.
Posted by M. C. on December 17, 2024
Briana Boston might have been carried away by her outrage in her expressions to employees of Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance company, but what the local Government did is vastly worse than that — and none of these Government officials is being charged with anything. Why aren’t Floridians outraged against the elected Government officials who are doing the work of the billionaires, instead of the work of the voters?
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/americans-are-blaming-corporate-employees
Luigi Mangione, the accused murderer of the United Health Insurance Division CEO Brian R. Thompson, issued a “manifesto” afterward explaining it (which is suppressed, blocked from publication, by America’s Deep-State-controlled ‘news’-media) saying:
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I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”
However, that as the explanation for what Mangione did is to hold a top employee as being a top person responsible for the world’s most corrupt regime, which is the U.S. Government — the Government that is now producing a shorter life-expectancy in the U.S. than it did in 2014 (and which is also producing, by its imperialism, and associated illegal economic sanctions, coups, and outright military invasions and military occupations, and arming of terrorists to overthow Governments they want to overthrow, vast misery, in places throughout the word, such as in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Venezuela, and Palestine). And, so, Mangione’s manifesto is not intelligent, because the controlling owners, America’s billionaires (nobody’s mere employees), are the top and most powerful persons not only in the corporations that they control and which are eliciting such outrage from these customers, but they are also the top individuals controlling and served by the U.S. Government that does their bidding and NOT the bidding of the voters, the public. And this is by now a clearly documented fact. (For example: why does every other economically advanced country provide basic medical care as a basic human right to every citizen while the U.S. still does not do that?) Similarly, then, these — the controlling billionaires — are ultimately the persons who were responsible for America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, and overthrow of Syria’s Government and placement of al-Qaeda in charge there today, and who were likewise responsible for America’s overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s Government in a very bloody February 2014 coup that started Ukraine’s war. That group of perhaps around a thousand people are the ones who are ultimately responsible for what the U.S. Government does and refuses to do. It’s not top executives in either Government or corporations, who are just doing the jobs they were hired to do, but the top owners who control and hire and fire both. It wouldn’t be done by their employees if they weren’t being PAID to DO it. Murdering employees can’t achieve any good, at all. What America needs is real regime-change, not mere employee-change, and ONLY its own population can do that, if it will — and no one such as Luigi Mangione can be a part of this. It would need to be, instead, a well-organized, brilliantly led, and rapidly growing movement, outside of any Party-politics, to re-establish democracy here, which became lost on 25 July 1945 (which was when the U.S. empire became founded, which started all of this misery throughout the world, and not ONLY overpriced healthcare here at home).
And yet it seems as-if what Mangione did isn’t just a fluke.
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Santa, Please Bring Me a War for Christmas
Posted by M. C. on December 17, 2024
“Understand this deeply—you nearly lost your country and your freedom to a deranged, totalitarian-leaning enemy of our nation’s soul and destiny. Take this personally.” — Mel K
Of course, it’s difficult to swallow the govt’s statements that, basically, they dunno nuffins ‘bout no drones.
The theory I lean toward is the notion that “Joe Biden” (meaning the DC blob) is desperately seeking some way to obstruct or fend-off the January 20th inauguration of Mr. Trump. Because, well, to put it bluntly, a whole lot of blobistas are worried about going to jail when the likes of Kash Patel, John Ratcliffe, Tulsi-G, and Pam Bondi get their mitts on the levers of power and start opening up the files. They’ve got thirty-five days to. . . to do something! (Somebody, please do something!!!)
https://www.kunstler.com/p/santa-please-bring-me-a-war-for-christmas
So, you expected “Joe Biden” to serve up a neat little Christmas-time World War Three, lobbing ATACMS into Russia and all, but instead, surprise surprise, you got The War of the Worlds: mysterious drones hovering on-high over the endless muffler shops, manicure parlors, mafia palazzos, and mosques of New Jersey. But there seems to be more to this than, say, the stunt that Orson Welles pulled in 1938, scaring a few rubes over the radio. This ain’t no foolin’ around.
It’s been going on for weeks. And not just in New Jersey. But around New York City, up the Hudson River Valley above Stewart Airport, over in Massachusetts, down in Pennsylvania, and out in Ohio in the vicinity of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Howls of “WTF” echo all over the cable news channels. The US government — that is, the twilighting “Joe Biden” admin — plays dumb.
Alejandro Mayorkas, our unimpeachably frank Homeland Security chief, told ABC-News on Sunday “that there’s no question that drones are being sighted.” I’m sure that told you a lot. He went on to explain that the FAA changed its rules last year allowing drones to fly at night. Are we to suppose that avid US drone-owners waited until the very last month of this year to start flying their pet aircraft after dark? Pentagon spox John Kirby, added helpfully at a news conference that federal investigators had been “unable to corroborate reports of any unauthorized drones above New Jersey.” (Translation: DARPA and other Pentagon ops are too busy figuring out new ways to surveil and kill you to bother with these drone swarms.)
Theories abound and multiply. One is that these are US Govt drones seeking signals of radioactivity emanating from a nuclear bomb supposedly purloined out of Ukraine’s old Soviet arsenal — and possibly stashed in a shipping container or some-such other hidey-hole along our east coast. It’s a good story. It’s rumored that some-60 Uke nukes from that era have gone missing in the decades since. Of course, the theoretical owner of such a device would have to be pretty dumb to not stash his nuke in a lead-shielded casket to prevent detection. In the meantime, what else can be said or done? Standing by on that mushroom cloud. . . .
Blogger / Author and former White House stenographer (2002 – 2018) Mike McCormick had a neat theory: that shipping interests were testing drone deliveries of imported goods from offshore in an attempt to work-around the longshoreman’s union contract negotiations currently underway. The union has been fighting against automation that would eliminate the good-paying jobs of 85,000 dock-workers. Any takers on that one?
Of course, it’s difficult to swallow the govt’s statements that, basically, they dunno nuffins ‘bout no drones.
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To Help Syria, America Must Walk Away
Posted by M. C. on December 17, 2024
Irresponsible American interaction with a terrorist group was briefly exposed during the Arab Spring in Syria, and was summarized well in an LA Times article: “In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA.”
Jefferson was right in promoting non-interventionism, and we have no business other than to pursue foreign and domestic policies that benefit the security and prosperity of our own country. Meddling in government transitions in the Middle East is not an issue American soldiers take an oath to solve when joining the military. As cliche as it sounds, we have our own problems to fix.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/to-help-syria-america-must-walk-away/
by Lora Karch
The short-lived Assad dynasty has a complex history that ironically came to power by participating in a series of coups that ultimately established the family’s leadership in 1971. Bashar’s father, Hafez, was a key player in the 1963 Syrian Coup d’Etat that brought the Ba’ath party into power; and eventually declared himself president after initiating a third coup from his role as defense minister in 1970. Since then, Hafez and his son’s reign entrenched corruption over all public and private sectors across the country.
As an Assyrian-American, I visited family often in northeast Syria growing up, and distinctly remember my confusion as a child when I observed portraits of Assad on every building, school, and street billboard. My aunts begged me to be quiet when I raised concerns about his control.
It’s no secret that the Syrian people have been oppressed across many facets of their lives under the Assad regime. Some family members in Al Hasakah argued that this made life safer, others believed the opposite. Regardless, the Arab Spring in 2011 demonstrated the breaking point of an oppressed population, further burdened by the effects of western sanctions on a dictatorship that citizens did not elect in the first place. Though we are still waiting for the dust to settle, the global celebrations by the Syrian population and diaspora are well deserved.
The downfall of the Assad regime in Syria should be seen as a canon event that was bound to ensue the domestic upheavals of the last decade. It’s natural that an unelected reign would also face its own demise. Though we don’t know Syria’s imminent future, one should consider historical context when watching the recent chaos, and keep in mind the reasons why America should not get involved in the rebuilding process.
The case of Iraq from 2003 to present serves as a blaring example as to why American involvement in Syrian domestic affairs post-Assad is not a good idea. Historically, western involvement in regime change in the Middle East does not bode well for the locals. The United States under George W. Bush first invaded Iraq under the infamous guise of weapons of mass destruction and the dethroning of an oppressive Saddam Hussein. After the “liberation campaign” led by American soldiers, over 200,000 civilians were dead, many more displaced, and a complete obliteration of all infrastructure had taken place. Additionally, the post-Hussein elections yielded a grand shift in power from the Sunni faction to the Shia and Kurdish, which produced escalation of sectarian tensions and bombings, beheadings, and kidnappings.
The U.S. government was forced to deploy thousands more troops after 2014 when ISIS captured one third of the country and grew in numbers. Iraq became a battleground for four more years until ISIS was virtually defeated and the government regained control of its territory. However, demonstrations in 2019, dubbed the “Tishreen movement,” demanded fundamental reform of the western implemented political system, and proved lethal with 450 dead and over 20,000 wounded. Using a new electoral system in the 2021 election, another unprecedented shift in power yielded shifting alliances and tensions that sometimes inspired drone attacks. Despite a checkered past and the remaining obstacles to reach a healthy government, Iraq was recently described as more “secure, stable, and open” by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the United Nations Security Council.
One can argue the above escalation in Iraq can be correlated with the original American-sponsored election that sparked tensions and snowballed into years of more death and destruction for Iraqi locals. Perhaps the population was not ready for democracy. It wasn’t until recently that hope reignited for the country’s economy through a development road project that attracted investment from a few Gulf countries. Current President Abdul Latif Rashid has also announced that his country is “now at peace,” but one should recognize this is at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives. A similar long-winded democratic campaign in Syria could cost more civilian lives and destroy infrastructure, a feat both Syrian citizens and American tax dollars cannot afford.
An additional result of oppression combined with near-decade long uprisings is the formation of salafi-jihadist extremist groups such as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). This group being the ultimate reason for Assad’s downfall further complicates the situation, as it seems Syria is being handed to this Turkey–backed group (which theoretically makes it a NATO-backed terrorist group, a complexity not even I would like to address at the moment). Lest we forget, HTS was added to the U.S. State Department’s existing designation of its predecessor, al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in May 2018, and a “dangerous opposition group.” Simply put, acknowledging HTS as the new Syrian governing entity would legitimize the terrorist organization and is not responsible foreign policy.
Considering HTS’s classification as an FTO and the $10 million bounty on its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the implications of the peaceful transition of power that Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali promised to supervise present an ethical dilemma that the West need not be involved in. Essentially, al-Jalali has recognized the imminent transfer of government to an extremist organization. If the American government follows suit and considers the pending removal of the $10 million bounty, it would be extremely problematic and could plausibly lead to another reallocation and drainage of American hard power. Have we not learned from our experience with the Taliban while withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan in 2021?
Additionally, many concerning reports regarding the safety of minority groups under HTS power in Syria emphasize the group’s past brutality, including against Christians. Curfews imposed in HTS-dominated areas now run from 5pm to 5am, further restricting daily life, and leaving many minority groups feeling uneasy. Bread and water shortages have worsened, and a Christian physician was killed by sniper fire while trying to flee Aleppo. Any diplomatic interaction between American soldiers and HTS terrorists would indirectly endorse these worsening conditions, and place the United States on morally shaky ground.
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