MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Battle for Eurasia

Posted by M. C. on January 2, 2023

Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.

So now at the start of a new year, the world faces a precarious predicament in Europe orchestrated by officials in Washington. They and their deluded European collaborators have a helluva nerve placing the entire world at risk to indulge their egos. Diplomacy is out the window. Ideologues are in the saddle.

http://www.patrickfoydossier.com/New-Entries/Entries/2023/1/battle-for-eurasia.html

Dear Friends + Interlocutors,

The Russo-Ukraine war, starting date either 2014 or 2022, is the culmination of NATO’s eastward march which began in the 1990s. The conflict did not spring from out of the blue, which is the impression you might get from the mainstream media. 

But why, one wonders, did NATO enlarge east in the first place? This policy decision was predicated on somebody’s dubious assumption that Russia remained an enduring enemy of the U.S. and Europe, even after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

If you bought that premise, then Russia still needed to be contained and checkmated by military power. In any case, certain Neocon characters in Washington were eager to prolong the Cold War no matter what. This time around they could lord it over Russia in a unipolar world created by the crack-up of the Soviet Union.

Note what the dean of Sovietologists, George Kennan, stated in At Century’s Ending: Refections, 1982-1995:

Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.

The unchallenged assumption—or was it just a pretense?!—that Russia remained an enemy of “the West” is without factual foundation. It was little more than a Neocon-Neoliberal wet dream to justify the prerogatives of American geostrategic primacy.

The U.S. and NATO won the Cold War, or at any rate were left standing, when communism imploded on the streets of Moscow and in the eastern bloc. No mystery. Russians and Eastern Europeans wanted a better life like everybody else. Karl Marx and the USSR were not up to the task.

The Soviet Union had vanished, almost overnight. The Warsaw Pact disbanded soon thereafter. Moscow was now anti-communist. Russia was reverting to its pre-Bolshevik, pro-Orthodox Christian status, a European state within the eastern outskirts of Europe. This renaissance scenario was what Vladimir Putin had in mind going forward when Yeltsin passed the baton to him in 1999.

Not surprisingly, Putin wanted to recoup Russia’s great power standing, reform and expand its wrecked economy, and cooperate with Europe in every way possible. He needed western Europe to resuscitate Russia. And Europe needed Russia’s raw materials, especially petroleum and natural gas. It looked to be exactly what it was: a win-win relationship based upon mutual self-interest.

But then Putin, like Yeltsin before him, could not help but observe NATO’s puzzling march east—which finally ended at Russia’s doorsteps. Why? What did Washington expect Moscow to conclude from this odd development? How would it react? Was it a deliberate provocation?

Remember that Washington had promised, after the unification of Germany in the early 1990s, that NATO—a military alliance controlled from Washington—would not move eastward one inch. But that promise was repeatedly broken, even in the face of strong protests and red-line warnings from Moscow.

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Artificial Art – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on January 2, 2023

When, however, I change the word “critique” of my work to “strengths,” I read “He is known for his clear and engaging writing style…and has a wide range of interests [that] gives him a unique perspective.”

As yet, it takes human intelligence, as I hope it always will, to decide which of these assessments is the more pertinent.

https://www.takimag.com/article/artificial-art/

Theodore Dalrymple

For all of us who scribble for publication, at however low a level, all activities other than writing take on at most a secondary importance. Even meals, necessary as they no doubt are, can come to seem unwanted interruptions of the real business of life, which is writing. We are apt to forget that reading in general, and of our work in particular, is not of the same importance to 99.99 percent of the population, including that part of it that has great power over our lives, as it is to us. It is a humbling thought (humbling, that is, for scribblers) that in many small towns it is easier to find an electronic cigarette or have oneself tattooed than to buy a book.

And now comes another blow to our self-esteem, that mental characteristic that is the most fundamental of all modern human rights. My fellow scribbler in this august journal, Mr. Charles Norman, alerted me recently to a site that, through artificial intelligence, will produce a coherent and even cogent short essay on almost any subject. He illustrated the site’s powers by requesting of it a Marxist-Leninist critique of Winnie-the-Pooh, citing the work of the late Marxist historian and ferocious snob Eric Hobsbawm. The resulting paragraphs, generated in a matter of seconds, were better written than many a contemporary PhD student could manage, and in fact approximated what I myself would have written if I had been asked to produce something on the same subject.

I then tried a Marxist analysis of Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” With true Marxist lack of humor, the answer came back almost instantaneously that, among other things, the oysters in the poem suffered from false consciousness, insofar as they were duped by the Walrus and the Carpenter to go for a walk with them in the belief that their exploiters meant well by them.

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Air Force to end ‘22 with no public data on Middle East air operations

Posted by M. C. on January 2, 2023

Making America safe…somehow.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-air-force/2022/12/29/air-force-to-end-22-with-no-public-data-on-middle-east-air-operations/

By Rachel S. Cohen

The Air Force will end 2022 without releasing any public data on the scope of air operations conducted in the Middle East this year.

The decision limits the transparency of American troops’ continued involvement in Iraq and Syria, amid dwindling public interest and shrinking military resources in the region.

“At this time, [Air Forces Central Command] is not releasing data specifying sortie type or weapons release,” spokesperson Capt. Kayshel Trudell said Tuesday.

Trudell declined to answer why AFCENT has again stopped publishing that information. She referred further questions to U.S. Central Command, which did not respond to a request for comment.

Since 2012, AFCENT — which provides Air Force aircraft and personnel to the broader combat effort in the Middle East — has published monthly tallies of airstrike and surveillance flights, munitions dropped, jet fuel used and other metrics to measure the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

The updates went on hiatus from March 2020 to December 2021, when the Air Force belatedly posted nearly two years’ worth of missing air war statistics. The military had said it was withholding the monthly updates amid peace talks with the Taliban.

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Going Down The Valley – a gospel tune, originally recorded by Pop Stoneman

Posted by M. C. on December 31, 2022

From the Gatekeeper of Traditional Music

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What Winter Days Are Made For – Happy New Year!

Posted by M. C. on December 31, 2022

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Latin America’s Descent into Interventionism Continues | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on December 31, 2022

Why would “populist” governments impose policies that perpetuate poverty and hurt the people? Interventionism does not aim to increase prosperity but take full control of a nation. The three mentioned policies are aimed at grasping full control of a country and make the population dependent, not deliver growth and improve social conditions.

https://mises.org/wire/latin-americas-descent-interventionism-continues

Daniel Lacalle

The latest estimates from consensus for the main Latin American economies show a continent facing a lost decade. The region GDP growth has been downgraded yet again to a modest 1.1% for 2023, with rising inflation and weakening gross fixed investment. Considering that the region was already recovering at a slower pace than other emerging markets, the outlook is exceedingly worrying.

The poor growth and high inflation expectations are even worse when we consider that consensus estimates still consider a tailwind coming from rising commodity prices and more exports due to the China re-opening.

How can a region with such high potential as Latin America be condemned to stagflation? The answer is simple. The rise of populist governments in Colombia, Chile and Brazil have increased the concerns about investor security, property rights and monetary discipline.

Argentina is expected to post a modest 0.2% GDP growth in 2023 with 95% inflation and a debt to GDP of 72%. Years of monetary and fiscal excess have destroyed the purchasing power of the local currency and dilapidated the prospect of real growth. In Argentina, poverty has escalated to 36.5% of the population and the government policies double down on interventionism, price controls and higher taxes with the expected negative result. Despite the tailwind of high demand for soja and cereals globally, Argentina dives deeper into Venezuela territory, where consensus expects another year of weak 3% bounce after destroying 80% of the output in a decade, with enormous inflation, 132%.

The problem? The new governments in Chile and Colombia are announcing policies that resemble those of the “Peronist left” in Argentina and the Fernandez government in Argentina is looking more like Maduro’s Venezuela each day.

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The Case for Disbanding Public Health Agencies | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on December 31, 2022

Public health cannot be trusted. Its practitioners have shown us repeatedly that they will never choose less restrictive policy options, undertake cost-benefit analyses of their actions, or accept accountability for the massacres and harms they cause. Our only option is to excise this cancerous discipline.

https://mises.org/wire/case-disbanding-public-health-agencies

Sanjeev Sabhlok

During March of 2020, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, showed us how public health can be managed ethically by refusing to lockdown Sweden’s residents. The rest of the public health discipline, however, entered the territory in which we now place the universally castigated discipline of eugenics. Eugenics breaches ethics and causes enormous harm to the fabric of mankind. Likewise, lockdowns breach ethics and have terrorized or killed millions of people worldwide.

I recently assisted Professor Gigi Foster in preparing a cost-benefit analysis of Australia’s response to covid-19. This analysis, published as a book, shows that the harm caused by lockdowns in Australia exceeds any benefits by at least sixty-eight times. Magnifying these to the rest of the world, I estimate that between three to ten million people have been killed, trillions of dollars have been destroyed, and billions of people have been harmed worldwide by lockdowns; a “gift” that will keep on giving well into the future.

Lockdowns did not only increase noncovid related deaths. A study I carried out jointly with Jason Gavrilis in mid-2022, published by the India Policy Institute, shows that lockdowns also increased covid-19 deaths. Countries which implemented lockdowns and related measures have experienced, on average, more covid-19 deaths than Sweden. If the findings of this study are validated by other researchers, then the sheer evil of these lockdowns and associated policies will baffle future generations.

In this article, I show that the public health response to covid-19 is not the exception but the rule. The evil policies of public health are the inevitable outcomes of the intrinsic information failures and incentives deeply embedded within its structure.

A Pattern of Depredations

What happened in 2020 is typical of public health. As Luc Bonneux and Wim Van Damme explained in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2011 bulletin, a “culture of fear” and “worst-case thinking” were the hallmarks of public health during the avian and swine flu of the early 2000s: “The pandemic policy was never informed by evidence, but by fear of worst-case scenarios.” Sweden’s ethical covid-19 response must not mislead us into thinking that public health can somehow be reformed. Tegnell is not representative of public health.

As a remedy, Bonneux and Van Damme asked that public health be “accountable for reasonableness in a process of openness, transparency and dialogue with all the stakeholders, and particularly the public.” But true to its character, public health did none of this during covid-19 and instead imposed extreme censorship across the world.

Exaggerations and Breach of Pandemic Plans

The pre-2020 public health literature was explicit that policies involving lockdowns must never be pursued since their harms vastly exceed their benefits. The WHO pandemic guidelines of 2019 insisted on proportionate measures, had an extensive discussion of the ethics of each measure, and ruled out reckless measures like lockdowns and border closures. I summarized this literature in The Great Hysteria and The Broken State and in a complaint to the International Criminal Court.

But what happened during the swine flu was multiplied a thousandfold with covid-19. Fixated on the worst-case scenario once again (recall the Neil Ferguson model), public health stoked what I call the Great Hysteria.

It has been evident since around April 2020 that covid-19 is not particularly lethal. Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University wrote to me on April 9, 2022, that covid-19 is 50–500 times less lethal than the Spanish flu. Covid-19 is essentially as lethal as the seasonal flu. Sweden’s official mortality statistics, which adjust the death rate for population size, show no evidence of excess mortality in Sweden in 2020 once we control for the dry tinder effect of 2019 (The mild flu season of 2019 meant that many more of the elderly were vulnerable to respiratory disease in 2020.). We have a so-called pandemic with a lethality similar to the seasonal flu; therefore, covid-19 caused virtually no excess deaths in Sweden during 2020.

Nonetheless, practitioners of public health, except in Sweden, drummed up hysteria by grossly exaggerating covid-19 (calling it a once-in-a-century pandemic) to support the adoption of Chinese Communist Party inspired lockdowns in breach of long-standing, well-established public health findings.

Power without Accountability

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Lock Up the White House Silverware!, by Philip Giraldi – The Unz Review

Posted by M. C. on December 31, 2022

Volodymyr Zelensky is in town!

PHILIP GIRALDI

https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/lock-up-the-white-house-silverware/

In my humble opinion the surfacing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington last week was possibly the most disgusting example of the corruption of our country and its values since Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu arranged for a similar invitation to address a rapturous Congress back in 2015. Zelensky’s “surprise” visit had in fact been arranged over the course of several months and was a carefully choreographed performance intended to pay political dividends for both the White House, for the Democratic Party in Congress and for Zelensky and his political supporters at home. He met privately with President Joe Biden in the White House, where he presumably received most of what he was seeking as well as a pledge of total support until “Ukraine wins.” He subsequently was invited to address a Joint Session of Congress, a privilege that was most definitely not arranged at short notice, with House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi predictably calling on all Congressmen to attend. The session began with a three minute standing ovation from the assembled Representatives and Senators.

So the creepy little con-man was enabled to have his say in a video link that reached a global audience. That it consisted of a gaggle of lies to justify the rapid passage of hundreds of billions of dollars from the struggling American taxpayer to a nation renowned only for its reputation as the most corrupt in Europe was not noted by the audience. As it has been from the start Joe Biden’s war, it is inevitable that the Democrats in Congress should leap around and fill the chamber with cheers every time Zelensky opened his mouth to emit yet another inanity. But to their shame, many Republicans joined in on the celebration of the odd diminutive man Zelensky, whose beatification was passionately embraced by the national media to make sure no one missed out on the importance of the event. The New York Times report on the visit began by describing Zelensky’s status as “a national hero and global superstar, having forged a leadership style blending personal daring with deft messaging to rally his people at home and his allies abroad.” In part, that message included describing his struggle as engaging in a battle pitting “good against evil.”

Nevertheless, those Republicans whose heads were not wedged up their keesters did boycott the event, to the tune of only 86 out of 213 being present. It seems that some Republicans are against the war generally speaking while others actually believe that the billions going to Ukraine should be audited to determine whether it is being stolen or not. Congressmen Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert attended but played with their cell phones and did not rise and applaud the stirring rhetoric coming from Zelensky, who was basically seeking many new weapons and lots more money justified not as “charity” but as an “investment” so he and Ukraine could work to bring rule of law, global security, democracy and freedom to the world. In the aftermath, one particularly delusional commentator has enthused how “There can be no more compelling or effective leader of the democratic free world today than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Fate has called upon him to rise to a level of courage and clarity few figures in history have demonstrated.”

In his speech, Zelensky clearly forgot to mention how he has eliminated freedom of speech and association in his own country as part of his war agenda, while also banning opposition parties and media and even harassing the Russian Orthodox Church. But the tweetosphere inevitably ignored those issues and erupted instead over the alleged bad behavior by some Republicans in not supporting such a great leader. One Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC), who is the anointed NBC television network’s Presidential Historian, tweeted, “For any members of Congress who refused to clap for Zelenskyy, we need to know from them exactly why.” Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) responded sarcastically to Beschloss, “Haul them before a Committee and force them to pledge allegiance to Ukraine and Zelensky or else face long-term imprisonment in a supermax. Refusing to clap for a foreign leader on command is a form of treason.”

And politicians too were inevitably prone to bombastic misrepresentation. Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia tweeted how “This disrespect is embarrassing. It embarrasses you, your constituents, the body we serve in, and our country. Huge numbers of President Zelensky’s people have been killed in a bloody war they did not seek. We must be able to debate foreign policy without mocking human suffering.”

Another lunkhead Democrat Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts declared war, asserting that “We’re in a global struggle between democracy and autocracy. And Ukraine is fighting on the frontlines of that struggle. Our support for Ukraine is sending a message to Moscow, it’s sending a message to Beijing. And it’s sending a message to other authoritarian regimes.” Auchincloss was apparently unaware that it is the United States government that has itself become more autocratic/despotic in that it is generally accepted that the president now has extralegally assumed the authority to allow war crimes to be committed in places like Syria, Afghanistan and Libya while also torturing people to death in secret prisons. The president and his Attorney General Merrick Garland are also rooting out “domestic terrorists” who generally speaking are white people who oppose Democratic Party policies.

Clearly, neither Beyer nor Auchincloss understands that a principled “debate” on foreign policy is not taking place at all in America, largely due to the ability of their party and colleagues to manage and control the process whereby it is possible to start an illegal/unconstitutional war that just might go nuclear without any real pushback from critics or the public.

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BlackRock Logo To Be Added To Ukrainian Flag

Posted by M. C. on December 31, 2022

The McProxy War continues.

https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/blackrock-logo-to-be-added-to-ukrainian?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

Caitlin Johnstone

Kyiv has announced the addition of a fifth corporate logo to the Ukrainian flag following news that BlackRock will be playing a crucial role in the reconstruction of the nation. The world’s largest investment management firm will join Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and McDonald’s upon the now-omnipresent blue and yellow flag.

“I understand some Ukrainians may be frustrated at the continual additions to our nation’s glorious flag,” Ukraine’s President Zelensky said during a speech announcing the change. “Just last month we added the Raytheon logo, and now we’re adding BlackRock. I am sure it was a bit awkward for our American friends as they were continually adding stars to their flag back when they were adding lots of new states to their republic, too.”

“The only difference is instead of adding states, we’re adding multinational megacorporations,” the leader said.

Zelensky then took a large bite of a McDonald’s Big Mac™️, saying, “Mmm mmm, I’m lovin it!” in English, eliciting awkward applause throughout the Walt Disney Company Presidential Press Hall.

Jordan @JordanChariton

BlackRock to “rebuild” Ukraine. This is going to make the neoliberalism and privatization the U.S. inflicted on post-Soviet Russia look like child’s play cnbc.comZelenskyy, BlackRock CEO Fink agree to coordinate Ukraine investmentUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink have agreed to coordinate investment in rebuilding Ukraine, Kyiv announced Wednesday8:53 PM ∙ Dec 28, 20221,196Likes348Retweets

Critics have complained that BlackRock’s new role in Ukraine could draw accusations of corruption, with some noting that the the company’s managing director Eric Van Nostrand was hired straight into a senior advisory position in the Biden administration’s Treasury Department just this past August, explicitly to shape US economic policy on Russia and Ukraine. 

Others have noted that BlackRock is a top beneficial owner of shares in major arms manufacturers who are reaping immense profits from the war in Ukraine, with tens of billions invested in Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. 

These words of caution have however not been sufficient to dissuade the Ukrainian government from selling Ukraine piece by piece to western oligarchs like billionaire BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, and now one more giant corporation gets another slice of the nation.

Eli Clifton @EliClifton

A Ukrainian Embassy reception was sponsored by Northrop, Lockheed and Raytheon, reports @mideastXmidwest. (Not The Onion) vox.com/world/2022/12/…

Image

2:57 PM ∙ Dec 16, 2022


2,234Likes1,036Retweets

We can expect more such deals to be signed by Kyiv, which is slated to be re-named Goldman Sachs City early next year.

The McProxy War continues.

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Flashback 2017: Security or Surveillance? … Edward Snowden on The Ron Paul Liberty Report

Posted by M. C. on December 30, 2022

The Ron Paul Liberty Report

https://rumble.com/v22m2fw-flashback-2017-security-or-surveillance-…-edward-snowden-on-the-ron-paul-.html

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