Parental rights are sacrosanct, except when they are not. This proves Doug Casey’s opinion that politicians want not to help you but to control you.
https://rumble.com/v29jr3e-system-update-show-41.html
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Ohio Train Disaster: How Corruption and Greed Created Catastrophe, w/ David Sirota. Plus, Hawley’s New Social Media Law | SYSTEM UPDATE #41
Posted by M. C. on February 15, 2023
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Corruption, greed, Ohio, Train Disaster | Leave a Comment »
Of Course The Sanctions on Russia Backfired — Governments Never Seem To Learn
Posted by M. C. on February 14, 2023
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Two Cheers for Matt Gaetz’s Ukraine War Resolution – Antiwar.com Original
Posted by M. C. on February 14, 2023
by Thomas Knapp
On February 9, US Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and ten Republican co-sponsors introduced a resolution “expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States must end its military and financial aid to Ukraine, and urges [sic] all combatants to reach a peace agreement.”
When Matt Gaetz is right (which really isn’t very often), he’s right.
If two authoritarian regimes – and make no mistake, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s gang has proven itself just as violent and authoritarian as Vladimir Putin’s – want to fight, there’s not much the supposedly “democratic” US regime can or should do to stop them. Not our circus. Not our monkeys.
The resolution notes, at length, the financial and military aid the US government has delivered, or pledged to deliver, to Ukraine. Every dime of that money comes out of Americans’ pockets, either through taxation or as a future extortion demand to pay off new debt.
Every bullet, bomb, artillery shell, and rocket delivered or pledged is explicitly intended to inflict violent death on men and women most of whom almost certainly would rather not be where they are or doing what they’re doing. And every bullet, bomb, artillery shell, and rocket delivered or pledged has a non-trivial chance of inflicting violent death on innocent civilian non-combatants.
The resolution does cite one, and only one, positive effect of US military aid to Ukraine: It has “severely depleted United States stockpiles, weakening United States readiness in the event of” the US government deciding to go inflict violent death on other, future battlefields.
Even assuming a “legitimate defense” function for government – which is sort of like believing the guy mugging you on the street might help you out if a second mugger shows up – those stockpiles could be “depleted” by 90% without impeding such a “legitimate” function, as it would still leave the US regime well-equipped to fend off any likely threat to you (or, more to the point, its own power), as opposed to “going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” But hey, baby steps, right?
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Tanks for Nuttin’ – TomDispatch.com
Posted by M. C. on February 14, 2023
Why do Ukrainians killed by Russia generate headlines, while deaths attributable to Mexican drug cartels — 100,000 Americans from drug overdoses annually – are treated as mere statistics?
https://tomdispatch.com/tanks-for-nuttin/
Andrew Bacevich
The name of the game in Ukraine seems to be escalation, not just in the fighting (with a major Russian offensive expected soon), but in weaponry, too. Only recently, after initially refusing, President Biden agreed to send advanced American M-1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine (partly to push Germany to dispatch its own advanced Leopard 2 tanks and other European countries to do the same). And that, sadly enough, represents just another step up the ladder to… well, who knows quite what.
The Ukrainians are now demanding that the U.S. (and so, as with those tanks, other NATO allies) supply its air force with F-16 jet fighters. In an unsettling analog to the German tank accord, the Polish government seemed to agree to deliver some of its F-16s to the Ukrainians, with one proviso: that NATO (that is, the U.S.) agree to do the same. In Washington, those planes had been considered a “red line” not to be crossed and not so long ago President Biden offered a flat “no” to the very idea — as he had, once upon a time, with those tanks, too. In other words, in a phrase now in use at the Pentagon, he “M1-ed” the idea. As it happens, sentiment at the Pentagon already seems to be shifting, suggesting that the president’s F-16 position may soon prove to be so yesterday. Only recently, in fact, the U.S. agreed to send Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs that would double the range of that country’s rocket batteries, though like the tanks and possible planes actual delivery remains in an undefined future.
Here’s a question to consider: Once promises are indeed made to deliver those F-16s, what can Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demand next? It’s worth recalling that, in 1994 in a remarkable move, the Ukrainians returned to Russia the massive nuclear arsenal left there when the Soviet Union collapsed. It had briefly made the new nation into the third-largest nuclear power on Earth. The Ukrainians did so, however, only after the Russians agreed “to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” No small irony there, right?
Is it too farfetched, then, to imagine that, once those F-16s are assured, Zelensky could begin demanding tactical nuclear weapons? After all, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his confederates have already muttered more than once about using such weaponry against Ukraine.
I know, I know, that’s certainly one wild jump too far, except that so much has proven unnervingly too far in the first major European war since World War II ended. As TomDispatch regular Andrew Bacevich, author of the remarkable new book On Shedding an Obsolete Past: Bidding Farewell to the American Century, suggests today, perhaps nothing is inconceivable when what’s at stake is “civilization” itself (as defined in both Moscow and Washington). Tom
Tanks for Nuttin’
Is Civilization at Stake in Ukraine?
“To defend civilization, defeat Russia.” Writing in the unfailingly bellicose Atlantic, an American academic of my acquaintance recently issued that dramatic call to arms. And lest there be any confusion about the stakes involved, the image accompanying his essay depicted Russian President Vladimir Putin with a Hitler mustache and haircut.
Cast Putin as the latest manifestation of the Führer and the resurrection of Winston Churchill can’t be far behind. And, lo, more than a few observers have already begun depicting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as the latest reincarnation of America’s favorite British prime minister.
These days, it may be Western-supplied missiles downing “kamikaze drones” rather than Spitfires tangling with Messerschmitts over southern England, but the basic scenario remains intact. In the skies above Ukraine and on the battlefields below, the “finest hour” of 1940 is being reenacted. Best of all, we know how this story ends — or at least how it’s supposed to end: with evil vanquished and freedom triumphant. Americans have long found comfort in such simplified narratives. Reducing history to a morality play washes away annoying complexities. Why bother to think when the answers are self-evident?
A Case of Whataboutism?
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: civilization, NATO, Tanks, Ukraine | Leave a Comment »
The Consent Factory
Posted by M. C. on February 14, 2023
https://open.substack.com/pub/cjhopkins/p/the-consent-factory?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android
So, Matt Taibbi is going after the Consent Factory. No, not my blog. The actual Consent Factory. The unimaginably powerful, mostly decentralized, global-capitalist propaganda apparatus that manufactures what passes for “reality” in our increasingly totalitarian age. Or he is going after the U.S. division of it, anyway.
Needless to say, I’m pretty excited.
Why am I so excited, you ask? Haven’t I been hopping up and down and bouncing off the walls of my enclosure hooting and screeching about how the so-called “Twitter Files” are a “limited hangout” and hurling verbal feces at all and sundry involved like an agitated baboon?
Well, yes, in fact, I have. And I intend to keep on doing that. But here’s what I’m excited about. Pay close attention to the job description in Matt’s recent help-wanted ad for freelancers:
“[W]e’re trying to map a new wing of the U.S. government’s propaganda apparatus that popped into view thanks to the Twitter Files. State-directed censorship is scary, but the more disturbing activity we’re seeing inside companies like Twitter involves what you might call ‘offensive’ information operations, a type of aggressive official messaging that all governments practice but is supposed to be restricted by law in the United States.”
Matt goes on to explain the background of the project:
“In a remarkably short time since the end of the Obama presidency, the U.S. government has funded an elaborate network of NGOs and think-tanks whose researchers call themselves independent ‘disinformation experts.’ They describe their posture as defensive — merely ‘tracking’ or ‘countering’ foreign disinformation — but in truth they aggressively court both the domestic news media and platforms like Twitter, often becoming both the sources for news stories and/or the referring authorities for censorship requests. The end result has been relentless censorship of, and mountains of (often deceptive) state-sponsored propaganda about, legitimate American political activity.”
OK, sure, Matt’s Racket News project will almost certainly be limited in scope to operations in the United States, and will probably still be a limited hangout to the degree that it presents a propaganda/disinformation/censorship model wherein power flows downward from the U.S. government to the corporate media and social-media corporations in the outmoded despotic (i.e., Orwellian) fashion that everyone is used to understanding the functioning of oppressive power according to, and I’ll definitely hoot and screech about that. However, at least as far as I’m aware, this project will be the first attempt by any high-profile independent journalist to investigate and report on an essential component of the aforementioned official-propaganda apparatus in any kind of systematic manner (“systematic” being the important term here, as we’re talking about a cohesive system, and not a series of arbitrary individual actions).
Or at least that sounds like what Matt has in mind.
If Matt and the Racket team pull this off, it will be quite a journalistic accomplishment, which will be totally ignored, perfunctorily dismissed, branded “far-right disinformation,” and then methodically visibility filtered by the official propaganda-and-disinformation apparatus that the project intends to expose a part of.
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Tanker Rates To Haul Gasoline Soar 400% After Russian Sanctions | ZeroHedge
Posted by M. C. on February 14, 2023
About 400 tankers, or 20% of the global fleet, recently “switched” from hauling fuels for traditional countries to carrying Russian petroleum products,
Central planning + Blowback
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/tanker-rates-jump-400-after-russian-sanctions
BY TYLER DURDEN
Clean product tanker rates soared last week after the European Union and G-7 nations targeted Russia’s petroleum sales. Restrictions on Russian crude exports began in early December. The sanctions have been a ploy by Western countries to limit Russian crude and crude product exports, though it’s definitely not working.
Sanctions have redirected Russian energy flows from Europe to Asia. The rejiggering of supply chains means Russia has to rely more on tankers. According to Bloomberg, this has led to a 400% surge in the daily rates for clean product tankers.
The latest data from the Baltic Exchange in London shows clean product tankers rates have reached $55,857 per day, surging 58% just last Thursday.
According to trading giant Trafigura, Russia relies on a “shadow fleet” of tankers to move crude and crude products. The trading firm said the fleet is about 600 ships.
Bloomberg said the surge in tanker rates has been “spurred in part by a bifurcation of the fleet with some tankers serving Moscow’s interests and others the international market. It highlights a possible flipside of aggressive measures aimed at limiting Russia’s petroleum revenues.”
“Russian volumes continue to flow at more or less the same rate and that takes up a lot of ships.”
“Ultimately, the spike shows demand is pretty good, and the fundamentals are strong,” Lars Bastian Ostereng, an analyst at Arctic Securities.
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What Mises Understood about Prices and Trade That Socialist Economists Did Not – Foundation for Economic Education
Posted by M. C. on February 14, 2023
However, when the utter failure of socialist economics was definitively exposed for all to see in the demise of the Soviet Union, Robert Heilbroner, who had spent most of his career as an unabashed socialist, raised the white flag and admitted that Mises was correct about socialism in a September 1990 New Yorker article entitled “After Communism.”
Walter Block
Robert Batemarco
Socialism is a very popular system. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders attracts thousands of fellow economic innocents on college campuses, and even professional economists of the ilk of Paul Samuelson were taken in by the siren song of this ineffective and evil system. (He predicted in his economics textbook that the USSR would overtake the American economy).
There stood Ludwig von Mises, like the Rock of Gibraltar, standing in the path of socialists of all types and varieties. He laid down the line: under socialism without free market prices, planning would necessarily be irrational. How and why, then, the existence of this pernicious system in Russia from 1917 to 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. How is it that socialism still exists in places like Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela? That is because market prices, generated elsewhere, were available to the economic dictators. During the period of USSR socialism, there was the Chicago board of trade and Consumers’ Reports. They made market prices available to the Soviet planners; they were a not-totally-unreasonable approximation to Russian realities. Nowadays, at least quasi-market prices are available in many areas of the world (they are only quasi since every government, bar none, engages in taxes and subsidies, price ceilings and floors, etc., which would not exist in the pure free market, and thus still misallocate resources on their basis).
Without prices that reflect consumer desires and relative scarcities, it is impossible to determine whether platinum or steel should be used, for example, for rails for locomotives. The former is more efficient, but is needed elsewhere in the economy. But to what degree? Or, should a tunnel be dug through a mountain; or should the new road go all around it? The former is much more expensive, now, but will save gigantic transportation costs for years to come. Without accurate prices and interest rates, it is impossible to make a rational calculation of the relevant benefits and costs. Should rowboats be constructed of wood, metal or plastic? A rational decision, again depends upon free market prices, which are to the economy what maps are to geography.
It is no accident that there was virtually one-way traffic between East and West Germany, and between North and South Korea. The latter in each pair instituted systems that were at least within sight of the free enterprise, private property, limited government system advocated by Mises. The former were—and now are in the case of last mentioned—economic basket cases.
But Mises’ contribution to the socialist calculation debate—in his 1922 book Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis—was but the tip of the iceberg in terms of his overall accomplishments. He also made important contributions to the theory of money in his 1912 book The Theory of Money and Credit. There, he demonstrated that whichever monetary commodity arises from the free interplay of market forces is the only path to soundness. He must be credited with a critique of interventionism (small interventions escalate); he did so in his 1977 book A Critique of Interventionism. In many of his publications he made the case for private property rights and economic freedom (the two are necessarily intertwined). His sterling contribution to the Austrian business cycle theory (an artificial lowering of the interest rates creates an unsustainable boom, which necessarily ends in a depression) can be found in his 1912 book, The Theory of Money and Credit.
Perhaps his most profound contribution concerns praxeology (in his 1962 book, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science and especially in his magisterial 1949 book, Human Action). This is the view that there is such a thing as economic law, which can only be illustrated, not tested.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Ludwig von Mises, prices, Socialist Economists, Trade | Leave a Comment »
Whatever They Decide These UFOs Are, The Answer Will Be More US Militarism
Posted by M. C. on February 13, 2023
As we’ve discussed previously, the empire has been going to extraordinary lengths to make sure the public plays along with a long-term campaign to secure US unipolar planetary hegemony. However this UFO narrative ends up playing out, we may be certain that it will be used to facilitate this agenda.
US war planes have shot down three unidentified objects in North American airspace over the last three days, which is entirely without precedent.
On Sunday an octagon-shaped object was reportedly shot down over Lake Huron near the Canadian border after first being detected some 1,300 miles away over Montana on Saturday night. On Saturday a cylindrical object was reportedly shot down over Canada’s Yukon territory by an American F-22, and on Friday an object “about the size of a small car” was reportedly shot down after being detected over Alaska.
Unlike the Chinese balloon that was shot down earlier this month which the US claims was an instrument of espionage, as of this writing there’s still no solid consensus as to what these last three objects were or where they came from. While all three were found at high altitude like the balloon, the Pentagon is refusing to classify them as such, with the head of US Northern Command General Glen VanHerck going as far as to say it hadn’t yet been determined how these objects are even staying aloft.
“I’m not going to categorize them as balloons. We’re calling them objects for a reason,” VanHerck told the press on Sunday. “I’m not able to categorize how they stay aloft. It could be a gaseous type of balloon inside a structure or it could be some type of a propulsion system. But clearly, they’re — they’re able to stay aloft.”
VanHerck also made headlines for saying he couldn’t rule out extraterrestrial origin for the objects.
11:38 AM ∙ Feb 12, 20231,820Likes749Retweets
To further confuse things, China has detected a UFO of its own that it was preparing to shoot down according to a report on Sunday. Last month Russia reported that it had shot down a UFO as well. A report on Saturday said the air force of Uruguay is investigating strange lights over the sky in the western part of the country.
But of course it could still be balloons. Moon of Alabama made a pretty good argument the other day that the object shot down over Alaska was likely a failed US weather balloon. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he was told by the White House that all of these mystery objects are believed by US officials to have been Chinese spy balloons, though the White House swiftly disputed this claim, saying it’s too early to categorize them as such.
For myself, I remain comfortable not knowing what the hell is going on with any of this right now. I’ve written periodically about how there’s an abundance of reasons to be intensely skeptical of the new UFO narrative that entered the mainstream in 2017 under highly suspicious circumstances, but I’m also uninterested in pretending I know everything about this weird universe we’ve all tumbled into. I remain open to all possibilities, from mundane balloons, to a sudden increase in interest in aerial objects that have long been common, to US government psyop, to lightbulb-headed visitors from the great unknown.
So I don’t really know what these UFOs are. But I do know what they will be used for.
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Mission Accomplished: Seymour Hersh, Nordstream, and What’s Left on the Cutting Room Floor – Gold Goats ‘n Guns
Posted by M. C. on February 13, 2023
What’s obvious to me is that Hersh and his source are either working for someone else or pawns in a larger game (my inkling is the latter). What that game is hasn’t been fully revealed to us. This is Act II of this Whodunit, it’s not the end of the story. By any means.
https://tomluongo.me/2023/02/10/mission-accomplished-seymour-hersh-nordstream/
Author: Tom Luongo
On Wednesday, I turned 55 and I got one of the best birthday presents a guy like me could ever ask for, a major geopolitical bombshell. Seymour Hersh published his first article in a long time on the bombing of the Nordstream pipeline bombing, directly implicating major players within the “Biden” administration.
Hersh’s story is noteworthy not just because of what it says, but for the timing of him hitting the publish button and to whom this story is directly aimed.
And, more importantly, who it is NOT aimed at.
To be clear, I don’t think for a second that Hersh is whitewashing anything here. If he is, well, I’ll leave that to the reader. I believe his story is incomplete and a little too Bourne Identity versus Mission Impossible for my tastes.
Regardless of your conclusions, I think we all can agree we need much better screenwriters than the current crop haunting the halls of SIS in London and at the CIA in Langley.
Their contempt for us is obvious in the shoddy stories they’re telling us now.
Mission Identity: Bourne Impossible
The Bourne story is pretty straightforward. Agent Bourne is sent on an assassination mission. He has a moment of conscience and his latent humanity asserts itself as he regains his memory. The mystery was in rebuilding his past which, in the end, is pretty straightforward.
It’s Phil Dick’s We Can Remember it For You, Wholesale, but done right, versus both versions of Total Recall.
Reading Hersh’s article gave me more of the impression of the first act of a Mission Impossible film rather than the whole movie. The missions Ethan Hunt chooses to accept are simple and straightforward, retrieve some Macguffin and stop the bad guys before the boom.
And then as the story unfolds we uncover layer upon layer of what’s really going on. If you’ve seen the last two films, written and directed by Chris Macquarrie, you can probably see where I’m going here.
In Macquarrie’s version of modern spy craft, there are overlapping and contradictory goals of the various intelligence agencies and governments these people work for. These all meet and clash in plot twists so thick and heavy it’s a miracle anyone watching can keep up, given the frenetic pace. {Tom’s note: It speaks to just how good the film-making craft on display is}
In fact, when you parse through the arch-plot of these films, Hunt is fighting The Syndicate — a rogue group of disaffected agents who cause celibre is to tear down the old order through the tragedy of a nuclear event.
It hits a little too close to reality given the post-COVID world envisioned by The Davos Crowd. Cue the arguments about ‘predictive programming’ and all that (see my podcast with former screenwriter Mel K on this.)
These agents are the chaos unleashed by unscrupulous politicians and agency heads on an unsuspecting world. The Syndicate itself was the brainchild of the British government to give the Prime Minister a resource with which he could end-run Parliament to fight terrorism.
Does this not bear some resemblance to Hersh’s story of a “Biden” inner circle trying to do the same thing in keeping the act of war against Russia and Germany a secret from Congress.
In Macquarrie’s scripts, MI-6’s role in trying to cover their tracks over the creation of The Syndicate forms the backbone of the plot of both the aptly named MI:5 and MI:6 films. I’m not accusing Hersh of anything here, except maybe a little myopia. But, the omission of the Brits’ involvement in any part of his story, is, well, curious.
And this is exactly my problem with Hersh’s story, because it puts all the onus of the operation directly on this Gang of 4 in the “Biden” administration and Norway as patsy through NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, which neatly confirms the narrative we’ve been subjected to for nearly two years about an out-of-control US.
Stop me if you’ve heard this studio pitch before:
The US government, desperate to hold onto its global empire, feeling the heat of a failing dollar reserve standard, picked a fight in Ukraine kill two birds with one war: 1) keep Europe a vassal state, especially Germany, tied to the US and 2) destroy Russia with full spectrum multi-theatre warfare.
In this pursuit the “Biden” administration’s neoconservative Cold Warriors were given carte blanche to rain havoc over both its allies and its enemies, no act outside the operational bounds. Bombing the Nordstream pipelines is just another depraved act by a fading global hegemon.
It’s a neat story and Hersh fills the role, sadly in my mind, of useful idiot here advancing what is clearly only half the story.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Bourne Identity, NordStream, Seymour Hersh | Leave a Comment »
Horrified Satan Distances Self From Grammys | Babylon Bee
Posted by M. C. on February 12, 2023
https://babylonbee.com/news/horrified-satan-distances-self-from-grammys
LOS ANGELES, CA — In a rare public statement, The Prince of Darkness has distanced himself from last night’s Grammys performance by Sam Smith, which he denounced as “cringy” and “appalling.”
“Listen, folks, I enjoy demonic sexual perversion just as much as the next guy, but this is just too much,” said the frustrated Father of Lies. “I’m the god of this world! I appear as an angel of light! It’s supposed to be sneaky and subtle! Has Hollywood lost its ability to be subtle? What on earth happened to this town?”
“And how am I supposed to corrupt the next generation when no one watches this garbage anymore?” he lamented. “At least I still have TikTok.”
Sources close to nonbinary gay performer Sam Smith revealed the singer is “extremely disappointed” by the Devil’s reaction. “We worked for weeks on this loving ode to our evil master! WEEKS! And he doesn’t even like it? What do we have to do to get our Unholy Father to notice us? WAaaaaaaa!”
Sam Smith then started dancing harder and singing louder while cutting himself with knives in hopes the Evil One would hear him.
Satan then urged the world to “please ignore these weirdos” and focus on the important work of protecting reproductive freedom while fighting for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Grammys, Satan | Leave a Comment »
