MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Imperialist Justice is crumbling

Posted by M. C. on February 7, 2023

In times of peace as well as in times of war, the Western domination over the rest of the world, as much as that of the United States over its allies, passes through the instrumentation of Law. Thus, the international tribunals do not seek to render justice, but to confirm the world order and to punish those who challenge it. U.S. law and European law also serve to force the rest of the world to comply with the policies of Washington and Brussels. This system is beginning to fade out.

by Thierry Meyssan

https://www.voltairenet.org/article218666.html

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the West has used international courts and the U.S. justice system to impose its law. They convict those they fight and never try their own criminals. This conception of justice has become the absolute example of their double standards. Yet the weakening of Western domination since Russia’s victory in Syria and even more so since the war in Ukraine is beginning to have an impact on this system.

THE END OF WESTERN DOMINANCE BEGAN IN 2016

On May 5, 2016, President Vladimir Putin proclaimed the victory of civilization over barbarism, i.e., of Syria and Russia over the jihadists armed and supported by the West. He organized a televised symphony concert in the ruins of Palmyra, the ancient city where Queen Zenobia had made all religions live together in harmony. Symbolically, this concert of the Mariinsky orchestra of St. Petersburg was titled: “Prayer for peace”. Mr. Putin spoke via video conference.

Westerners did not understand what was happening because they were not aware that the jihadists were only puppets of their secret services. In their eyes, and especially since the September 11 attacks, they were their enemies. They did not understand that the damage done by jihadis at home and in the rest of the world was not at all the same. For example, the 9/11 attacks -attributed against all logic to jihadis- killed 2,977 people, while Daesh killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Africans.

THE END OF THE INSTRUMENTATION OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE

The trial that began in The Hague in 2011 of an African leader overthrown by the West saw a change in atmosphere after the Palmyra concert. Let’s recall the facts: in 2000, Laurent Gbagbo was elected president of Côte d’Ivoire. The man was the candidate of the United States. He first established an authoritarian regime that favored certain ethnic groups to the detriment of others. Then, he realized that he was only getting richer thanks to his ally and decided to serve his country. Immediately, the United States and France encouraged a rebellion against him, arguing that they had made mistakes. Eventually, after intervention by the United Nations, the French army overthrew President Gbagbo in 2011 and installed President Alassane Ouattara, a personal friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The deposed Gbagbo was arrested to be tried by the International Criminal Court for “genocide. However, the Court, seeing the international tide turning, never succeeded in establishing the facts. It acquitted Laurent Gbagbo, in 2019, then on appeal in 2020. Since then, we saw the French presence in Africa inexorably receding.

The International Criminal Court, contrary to the project of its founders, had become an instrument of domination condemning only African nationalists. It has never investigated the crimes of US presidents, British prime ministers, or French presidents. Its bias in the service of imperialism was evident when its prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, falsely claimed to be holding Saif al-Islam Gaddafi in order to discourage Libyans from resisting NATO’s illegal war.

THE BEGINNING OF EQUAL INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE FOR ALL

Similarly, on December 30, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution asking the International Court of Justice, the UN’s internal court, to judge the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This is a spectacular reversal of the majority since this occupation has lasted for… 75 years. There is no doubt that the Court will condemn Israel, forcing the 195 member states of the United Nations to draw the consequences.

The Western states are now trying to set up a new tribunal, since the existing ones are failing them. Its promoters intend to “condemn Vladimir Putin for Russian crimes in Ukraine”. The aim is to make people forget the responsibility of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande who co-signed the Minsk Agreements, without ever having the intention of applying them, and who allowed 20,000 Ukrainians to be murdered. It is also a question of denying that, by virtue of the responsibility to protect, Russian President Vladimir Putin intervened militarily to enforce these Agreements, validated by Security Council Resolution 2202.

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Government By Panic

Posted by M. C. on February 7, 2023

We may never know if it was spying, but the Chinese balloon served its purpose, feeding our political establishment’s tireless efforts to keep the public freaked out

Matt Taibbi

https://open.substack.com/pub/taibbi/p/government-by-panic?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

“This is completely an isolated and accidental incident caused by force majeure, but the U.S. still hyped up the incident on purpose and even used force to attack.” — Chinese foreign minister Mao Ning

Empires can’t be ruled without belief. Without confidence in official words, subjects will lack direction, becoming “lost at sea,” as Revolt of the Public author Martin Gurri put it. They’ll support Brexit, Catalan independence, Trump; they’ll wear yellow vests, throw away masks, even refuse the shot. When you tell them Beto O’Rourke is Robert Kennedy, they vote as if he were Ralph Nader.

Now take a hypothetical. Say you’re a member of the American political establishment after the 2016 election of Donald Trump. You’re staring at four years as part of a government-in-exile and need a new message to solve your belief problem. What’s your answer?

My hypothesis is such people never bothered to find one. Instead, they declared a state of emergency.

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The Disturbing ‘Why’ Behind a Doctor Shortage In Canada

Posted by M. C. on February 7, 2023

Another bit of evidence is that medical school admissions are a small fraction of applications (about 5%). Ordinary unions are weaker, since they exclude people who are patently qualified to do the job in question. Physicians’ labor unions dismiss them before they can learn the craft.

The same people that create infection rates.

Luis Rivera

By Walter E. Block

https://walterblock.substack.com/p/the-disturbing-why-behind-a-doctor?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

There is a doctor shortage on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, Canada. This small community of slightly more than 2200 has no physician available to it; none at all. Nor is medical help available anywhere nearby. There is to be sure the possibility of a 50-minute ferry trip to the mainland, but during the winter this is all too often more theoretical than actual.

But this failure of Canadian socialized medicine is not the real story here. Rather, it is the fact that the authorities in charge refused the offer of a fully qualified clinician from Massachusetts, who offered his services for three months, entirely for free.

Why would any doctor in his right mind make any such offer? Dr. Paul Hart has strong ties to Canada in general, and to Newfoundland in particular, and wanted to “give back” to the Fogo (“fire” in Portuguese) Island community. He originally hailed from Toronto (that’s a big city in the Frozen North), went to Memorial University in Newfoundland and Labrador. He was struck by the plight of the Fogo-ites. He stated: “It’s my wish to say thank you to the province of Newfoundland for providing me with this phenomenal education and a wonderful medical career,”

Sorry, this nice guy tale still isn’t the story. The real story is that the Canadian government authorities rejected his supererogatory offer. Their excuse? According to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, such an offer could only be accepted by doctors in “active practice for at least four months in the last three years” and Dr. Hart, let me repeat that, Doctor Hart, did not qualify since he has been doing telemedicine for two of the last three years. This physician is good enough for the patients in Massachusetts, but patients in Fogo Island must be made of less healthy protoplasm.

The real reason?

The Canadian government engages in restricted entry in behalf of its medical professionals. To be fair, the US authorities would undoubtedly have acted in much the same manner were a similar offer made from outside of its borders (they did exactly that during Katrina in 2005). They are under the thumb of the American Medical Association, the strongest labor union in the US. A similar situation applies in the country to the north of us.

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(Sales) Taxation is Theft

Posted by M. C. on February 7, 2023

https://rumble.com/v28l6bm-sales-taxation-is-theft.html

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Dailywire Article – DeSantis To Take Control Of Disney’s Orlando District Under New Legislation

Posted by M. C. on February 7, 2023

So Disney has the power of eminent domain! Eminent domain is supposed to result in something done for the public good. Often it is done for the benefit of the local developer.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/desantis-to-take-control-of-disneys-orlando-district-under-new-legislation

By  Ryan Saavedra

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during his inauguration ceremony on Jan. 3, 2023, in Tallahassee, Florida.
Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Newly released legislation by Florida Republicans on Monday will allow Governor Ron DeSantis to appoint all five leaders of Disney’s tax district in Orlando and will officially rename the district.

The bill will turn the Reedy Creek Improvement District into the the Central Florida Tourism Oversight and will deliver on DeSantis’ promise last year to take over the district.

DeSantis’ office said that the special tax district, which has allowed Disney to govern themselves since 1967, turned the theme park into “an unaccountable Corporate Kingdom.”

“Florida is dissolving the Corporate Kingdom and beginning a new era of accountability and transparency,” DeSantis’ office said. “These actions ensure a state-controlled district accountable to the people instead of a corporate-controlled kingdom.”

DeSantis’ office said that the legislation:

  • Permanently eliminates Disney’s self-governing status.
  • Imposes a state-controlled, term-limited board – with members appointed by the governor – on Disney and its property.
  • Allows the state to impose taxes on Disney for possible road projects outside of the District’s boundaries.
  • Ensures that Disney pays the $700+ million in unsecured debt – not Florida taxpayers.
  • Provides no control of the district to the leftist local government in Orange County, which threatened to leverage the situation to raise local taxes.
  • Imposes Florida law so that Disney is no longer given preferential treatment.
  • Prevents Disney from gaining more land by eminent domain.
  • Creates an avenue to compel Disney to contribute to local infrastructure.

DeSantis’ office also released a list of some of the powers that Disney previously had when they governed themselves:

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The CIA’s Deadly Drug-Running Operation – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2023

He stated: “When we talk about the failure of the war on drugs, it kind of took the wind out of our sails — all the investigators on that team — when we realized we were investigating our own government’s drug-smuggling operations.”

Is Air America still in business? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_America_(airline)

I’ll bet you never knew supplying drugs to the world’s addicts helps keep US free.

https://www.fff.org/2023/02/02/the-cias-deadly-drug-running-operation/

by Jacob G. Hornberger

In an article I wrote last August entitled “The Torture and Execution of Kiki Camarena,” I recommended a Netflix documentary entitled The Last Narc. It revolves around the torture and execution of a DEA agent named Kiki Camarena, who was operating out of Guadalajara, Mexico. (Yes, the DEA enforces America’s drug war in foreign countries.) 

While it was the Guadalajara drug cartel that kidnapped, tortured, and executed Carmarena, the documentary provides extremely persuasive evidence that the CIA participated in — and perhaps even orchestrated — the entire operation. The evidence presented in the documentary included statements from former Mexican police officials who were in the room when Camarena was being tortured. They stated that there was a CIA official in the room when Camarena was being tortured.

A few days ago, a Substack page entitled “The Border Chronicle” published an interview with David Hathaway, the elected sheriff in Santa Cruz County in Nogales, Arizona, which is located on the U.S.-Mexico border. While the primary purpose of the interview was to discuss border issues, surprisingly Hathaway provided a confirmation of what The Last Narc posited — that the CIA was, in fact, involved in the Camarena operation. 

You can listen to Part 1 of the Hathaway interview here. Part 2 will be posted later. By the way, “The Border Chronicle” provides excellent analyses of border issues in the context of America’s system of immigration controls.

Hathaway stated that he was a former DEA supervisory agent and spent several years working for the DEA. He stated: “When we talk about the failure of the war on drugs, it kind of took the wind out of our sails — all the investigators on that team — when we realized we were investigating our own government’s drug-smuggling operations.”

Hathaway said that when he first joined the DEA, he was stationed at the DEA office in Calexico, California. That was the city where Camarena was born and raised. Hathaway said that he was assigned to work for Operation Leyenda, which was an investigatory effort to get to the bottom of who had kidnapped, tortured, and executed Camarena. Hathaway stated:

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No War With China – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2023

The bigger picture for all of this is, of course, the geopolitical great game which Washington sees as a zero-sum challenge. Strategists in Washington have made it abundantly clear that the American imperative for pursuing its ambitions for global power and dominance is to prevent the rise of Russia and China and a multipolar world order. . . It is therefore logical, if not execrable, that Washington appears to be accelerating on a collision course against Russia and China.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/02/lew-rockwell/no-war-with-china/

By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

You might think that provoking nuclear war with Russia would be enough for brain-dead Biden and his gang of neocon controllers. But it isn’t. They want nuclear war with China too. The Chinese government regards Taiwan as part of China, but it hasn’t tried to take it over militarily. Biden decided this isn’t good enough. He warned the Chinese that if they use force against Taiwan, the US will use force against them. This risks nuclear war.

Michael D. Swaine, an authority of Chinese-American relations who has advised the State Department, explains what is going on in an article that was published in The Diplomat, January 23: “The past year has seen a significant escalation in tension between Washington and Beijing over Taiwan, with many strategists warning that China seems poised to invade the island. In order to preserve U.S. interests, they argue, Washington must rely primarily, if not entirely, on military deterrence.

But this strategy would almost certainly backfire. Rather than preventing a war with China over Taiwan, a policy centered on military deterrence could spark one.

Those who advocate an approach based almost exclusively on deterrence believe China aspires to replace the United States as the dominant regional power in Asia through largely military means. Seizing Taiwan by force or intimidation, they say, is a necessary first step toward subjugating other Asian nations, including U.S. allies like Japan. They believe that once it has gained broader military access to the Pacific by controlling Taiwan and dominating other nearby powers, China could then go on to threaten Hawaii and the continental United States.

According to this analysis, the only option for the United States is to double down on its military presence in the region, push its allies to greatly increase their defense spending and support for the U.S. stance, and move closer to Taiwan both politically and militarily, making it a de facto security ally in Asia. The clear implication is that Taiwan, as a critical strategic location, must never be unified with China.

But this approach to the Taiwan situation is based on a very dubious analysis of both Taiwan’s purported strategic value and China’s regional intentions.

In fact, despite the views of some American and Chinese defense analysts today, historically, neither Washington nor Beijing have ever regarded Taiwan as a key strategic linchpin in the region. For China, reunification with Taiwan is above all else an issue of territorial integrity and national pride; as such, it is critical to the legitimacy of the Communist Party regime in the eyes of its people. For the United States, Taiwan is linked to Washington’s credibility as a loyal supporter of a democratic friend and an ally to others such as Japan and South Korea.

From a purely military perspective, it is highly problematic to assert that control over Taiwan would give Beijing decisive leverage over Japan, South Korea, or other Asian countries, much less the United States. And there is no clear evidence to show that China believes its security depends on militarily defeating or intimidating its Asian neighbors.

Moreover, while some Asian countries are certainly hedging against China’s growing military power and the danger of a Sino-American conflict by increasing their defense spending, the region as a whole is more worried about economic issues such as recovering from the pandemic, overcoming recession, and promoting sustainable growth through continued close economic ties with both the United States and China.

For the United States, a deterrence policy predicated on keeping Taiwan separate from China for strategic reasons is totally incompatible with its one China policy, whereby Washington opposes any unilateral move toward Taiwan independence, maintains strategic ambiguity regarding its defense of Taiwan, and remains open to the possibility of peaceful, uncoerced unification. This position remains the core of the understanding reached in 1972, which formed the basis of the normalization of Sino-American relations, in which the U.S. acknowledged the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China while Beijing stressed that peaceful unification would be a top priority of its cross-strait policy.

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Will U.S. ‘Interests’ Become Sacrificed on Altar of New Indo-Pacific Strategy? — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2023

Since the architects of this agenda are not known for their commitment to reality, the objectives also include a fair amount of tools that aren’t available but are imagined to be so.

Chief among the list of imaginary tools to subdue China, we find the incredible economic power of the mighty U.S. dollar whose business everyone in the world is believed to desperately desire.

https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/02/04/will-us-interests-become-sacrificed-on-altar-of-new-indo-pacific-strategy/

Matthew Ehret

As the trans-Atlantic world is pulled into the vortex of a McCarthyite nightmare with a renewed wave of anti-Russian and now anti-China hysterics, a wave of new “Asia Pacific” doctrines have emerged across captured states… I mean “member” states throughout NATO.

Starting with the February 2022 American ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’, similar anti-China programs have popped up left and right with one principled target in mind: eliminate the threat of China through every tool available.

By early June 2022, the UK announced its own branding of the Asia Pivot remixed into the oddly named ‘Indo-Pacific Tilt’ which focuses less on the liberal eco-friendly language of the EU and devotes itself entirely to vastly increasing its military presence in China’s backyard.

After NATO’s June 2022 Madrid Summit officially designated China as ‘a systemic rival’, Canada’s foreign ministry announced its own Indo-Pacific Strategy in November 2022 followed by an absurd 26 page program published in January 10, 2023 outlining the details of Canada’s new role in the Pacific (which will be the subject of a subsequent report).

On January 25, 2023 NATO’s ironically named ‘Science for Peace and Security Program’ launched a new ‘cooperative initiative on the Indo-Pacific, followed by a January 30, 2023 Atlantic Council Indo-Pacific Security Initiative focused on dealing with “China’s growing threat to the international order”. The same day the Atlantic Council unveiled this new doctrine, an American intelligence spook named Markus Garlauskas was named the program’s new director.

While efforts have been made to avoid using an explicitly militaristic language within the majority of the seemingly unconnected reports outlined above, the fact is that what is emerging is a mutation of Obama’s toxic ‘Asia Pivot’. Unlike the small kinetic wars against non-nuclear states like Iraq or Libya, this new war plan against China is a diverse hodgepodge of every single tool of asymmetrical war launched all at once and targeting not only China, but more importantly China’s weaker neighbors. Besides the obvious conventional military and color revolutionary techniques which I’ve written about extensively in other locations, this new era of Indo-Pacific Strategies rely upon:

1- Seducing Asian neighbors into trade deals, economic partnerships, and military partnerships with the Trans Atlantic community which pull them out of China’s orbit

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A Genuine Check and Balance: Privatize Law and Order | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2023

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/a-genuine-check-and-balance-privatize-law-and-order/

by Michael Huemer

Here, I explain the anarcho-capitalist solution to the basic social problem (from fakenous): Recap from two previous posts: 

– The basic problem of human social life: People are selfish. How do we stop them causing enormous amounts of harm to others, to benefit themselves? 

– A traditional solution: Have a government to police the people. 

– The basic problem of government: Government officials are selfish. How do we stop them from causing enormous amounts of harm to others, to benefit themselves? 

Traditional solutions to the problem of government are pretty lame. They really aren’t thought through at all well, and they don’t work very well empirically. 

Here, I explain how the libertarian solution is better. I’m only going to talk about police and courts here, though; I’m not going to discuss national defense or anything else. 

– 

  1. The Private Solution 

– 

The anarcho-capitalist solution to the basic social problem is similar to the government solution, except that there are multiple, competing agencies for enforcing rights, instead of just one. In other words, anarcho-capitalists want to privatize the essential functions of governments (i.e., the functions that we actually need; other functions can be eliminated). 

So your neighborhood could have an homeowner’s association that would hire a private security company instead of government police. Many competing security companies would operate in the same area (like security guard companies in the status quo; today, there are more private security guards in America than there are government police). In case of a dispute (including disputes about whether someone committed a crime), you would go to a private arbitration company instead of government courts. Many competing arbitrators would operate in the same area. 

– 

  1. Two Differences 

– 

You might wonder whether this arrangement counts as an instance of the “government” solution — if your HOA is hiring security guards and enforcing rules, maybe it is just a small government?

That is a semantic question that doesn’t matter. But here is a substantive question that matters: Is the anarcho-capitalist solution subject to the same problems as government? Why don’t we just have the problem that, since the people running security companies and arbitration companies are selfish, they will do things that benefit themselves and harm the rest of society? 

In reply, there are two important differences that explain why an-cap is better than traditional government: 

– 

2.1. Voluntariness vs. Coercion 

– 

In the anarcho-capitalist society, individuals (or private organizations) voluntarily choose to hire a security company; in our society, everyone is forced to “hire” the government, whether they want to or not. 

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America First: A Tribute to Pat Buchanan – Revolver News

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2023

Not perfect but who is? Hey, I voted for him!

https://www.revolver.news/2023/01/america-first-a-tribute-to-pat-buchanan/

There may be no more iconic moment in Donald Trump’s entire presidential campaign than his February 2016 debate showdown with Jeb Bush. The debate, held in Greenville, South Carolina just days before a crucial primary, was rigged against Trump from the start. While polls showed Trump with a big lead, the actual crowd in Greenville was full of movement conservative die-hards nostalgic for George W. Bush. Jeb Bush thought he could use the memory of his brother as a secret weapon to turn the tide, win the state, and save his flailing campaign. It did not go as planned:

For eight years, Republicans had danced awkwardly around the Iraq War, so obviously a national calamity, out of dogmatic loyalty to their last president and to the idea of interventionism itself.

But Donald Trump broke the taboo. He called Iraq what it was, an idiotic near-criminal disaster, and didn’t back down even as a crowd of the people he was trying to win over booed and heckled.

Seven years on, the battle has been almost won. In 2020, Republicans celebrated Donald Trump as the first president in forty years not to start a war on his watch. They praised him for negotiating an end to Afghanistan, and avoiding new quagmires in Syria or Iran. On Ukraine, it is Republicans rather than Democrats who question the wisdom of spending hundreds of billions of dollars with no strategic endgame on a war that never needed to happen and serves no U.S. interests.

By making the Republican Party turn against interventionism and forever wars, Donald Trump changed the country for the better. And when he did so, he was channeling one very specific man: Pat Buchanan.

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