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Posts Tagged ‘neoconservatives’

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Return of the War Nerds

Posted by M. C. on June 14, 2025

Being a neocon means never having to say you’re sorry. Their lack of shame displays a concomitant lack of self-reflection. Former Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol and his ilk are still part of the media talk show circuit as foreign policy experts, and none has ever suffered any public humiliation for the litany of disasters for which they bear responsibility.

Return of the War Nerds

By Wayne Allensworth

There’s an orchestrated campaign to bring back the neoconservative voices of the Bush administration, now rebranded as Democrats and opponents of the populist right.

They’re baaaack! The neoconservatives have been lurking around the Swamp, waiting for their moment. Their war wagon got rolling again with an August endorsement of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz signed by more than 200 neocon apparatchiks, who claim to believe that “another four years of a Trump presidency would irreparably damage our beloved democracy.”

That’s pretty rich coming from the cabal of utopian airheads who brought us the Iraq debacle based entirely on skewed intelligence, as well as a bloated national security surveillance state aimed, as George W. Bush opined, at fighting an endless war on terror. Recall that Dubya went so far as to claim that his administration would “rid the world of evildoers.” Perpetual war for perpetual peace. The neocon playbook defines victory as reaching the end of history by transforming all the world’s governments into liberal capitalist democracies; in other words, “woke” globalism. 

It took the neocon backbenchers several paragraphs to get to their real point, which was foreign policy. They ranted about Donald Trump and J. D. Vance’s alleged intention to kowtow to “dictators” like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. They breathlessly claim that democratic movements abroad would be “irreparably jeopardized” if Trump returns to the White House. Following the endorsement letter, former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, endorsed Harris-Walz, as did a list of former top-level GOP officials.

Notably, the neocons and their neoliberal allies are sometimes one and the same: Former State Department official Victoria Nuland, for instance, was a major player in backing the 2014 Ukrainian coup that led to the Russia-Ukraine war. Before taking posts in the Obama and Biden administrations, she previously had worked for Vice President Cheney. The neocons and neoliberals both fear and loathe the antiestablishment populism of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.

The “very vocal and visible migration of the group of people who had been called neocons in the Republican Party” to the Democrats is “one of the most notable political developments over the last eight years,” the progressive investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald has observed. Many neocons endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020; the trend continues in 2024, driven by Harris’s aggressive foreign policy comments at the Democratic National Convention. 

Harris’s remarks “affirmed the core worldview of these neocons,” Greenwald remarked, “about the U.S. role in the world, about what the United States president is obligated to do.” Before they became Republicans in the 1980s and infested the Reagan administration, many neocons were former Democrats and from hard-left family backgrounds. Yet they see the world through what Greenwald calls “a militaristic lens” and believe that war is always the answer. The GOP was once viewed as the best platform for their great global crusade. Now, as the MAGA political realignment that began in 2016 consolidates its power within the Republican Party, with former Democrats like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard endorsing Trump, the neocons view the Democrats as the best vehicle for their policies.

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The Case for Paleolibertarianism

Posted by M. C. on November 13, 2022

Since the role of the State schools is-as one official put it-to “mold these little plastic lumps on the social kneading board”-then a key part of the State agenda must be subverting the family. Libertarians, on the other hand, should cherish and support it.

Like all bureaucrats, police, prosecutors, and judges have no incentive to respond to consumer demand, in this case would-be consumers of protection against crime or justice against criminals. There is no consumer sovereignty when the State has a monopoly of fighting crime, and when the only crimes it treats seriously are those against itself: counterfeiting, tax evasion, etc

https://rothbardrockwellreport.substack.com/p/the-case-for-paleolibertarianism?r=iw8dv&utm_medium=android

The following was an article by Lew Rockwell, first published in Liberty Magazine in January 1990. Published prior to the first edition of the Rothbard-Rockwell Report.

This marked the beginning of the paleolibertarian movement.

“The conservative crack-up is near,” writes Charles Krauthammer. As Communism unravels, so does … the conservative alliance.” Indeed, old-fashioned conservatives (paleoconservatives) are splitting with statist neoconservatives.

Patrick J. Buchanan argues that America should “come home”: we are not “the world’s policeman nor its political tutor.” Ben Wattenberg, a neocon advocate of what Clare Boothe Luce called globaloney, denounces Buchanan as a “Neanderthal.” Joseph Sobran then notes that democracy is not a good in itself, but only in so far as it restricts State power. Jeanne Kirkpatrick-a former Humphrey Democrat like most of the neocons-says none of these intellectual arguments mean anything because the neocons hold State power and don’t intend to let go.

Despite Kirkpatrick, these intra-Right arguments are extremely significant, and more than foreign policy is involved. As the U.S.S.R. is revealed as a paper bear, good conservatives are returning to their Old Right roots in other areas as well.

Conservatives are questioning not only foreign intervention, but the entire New Deal-Great Society-Kinder Gentler apparatus. This worries the neocons even more, since-like their Svengali Irving Kristol-they give at most “two cheers for capitalism” but a full three cheers for the “conservative welfare state.”

This conservative crack-up presents an historic opportunity for the libertarian movement. The Cold War ruptured the Right; now the healing can begin, for Lord Acton’s axiom that “liberty is the highest political end of man” is at the heart not only of libertarianism but of the old conservatism as well. Many issues separate good conservatives from good libertarians, but their number is lessening and none of them is so broad as to prevent intelligent, exchange, and cooperation.

There have been more than ideological disputes, however; culture has also separated us, and there is no more powerful unifier or divider. So divisive has it been in this case that good libertarians and good conservatives have forgotten how to talk to each other.

For the sake of our common ideals we should restore the old concord. But can we? In my view, not until libertarianism is deloused.

The Conservatives Are Right: Freedom Isn’t Enough

Conservatives have always argued that political freedom is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the good society, and they’re right. Neither is it sufficient for the free society. We also need social institutions and standards that encourage public virtue, and protect the individual from the State.

Unfortunately, many libertarians – especially those in the Libertarian Party – see freedom as necessary and sufficient for all purposes. Worse, they equate freedom from State oppression with freedom from cultural norms, religion, bourgeois morality, and social authority.

In its 17-year history, the LP may never have gotten 1% in a national election, but it has smeared the most glorious political idea in human history with libertine muck. For the sake of that glorious idea, it’s time to get out the scrub brushes. Most Americans agree that aggression against the innocent and their property is wrong. Although these millions are potential libertarians, they are put off by the Woodstockian flavor of the movement. Hair may have left Broadway long ago, but the Age of Aquarius survives in the LP.

The cultural anti-norms that mark the libertarian image are abhorrent; they have nothing to do with libertarianism per se; and they are deadly baggage. Unless we dump that baggage, we will miss the greatest opportunity in decades.

Americans reject the national Democratic Party because they see it as disdaining bourgeois values. If they have ever heard of the LP, they rebuff it for similar reasons.

The Libertarian Party is probably irreformable-and irrelevant even if it weren’t. Libertarianism is neither. But unless we cleanse libertarianism of its cultural image, our movement will fail as miserably as the LP has. We will continue to be seen as a sect that “resists authority” and not just statism, that endorses the behaviors it would legalize, and that rejects the standards of Western civilization.

Arguments against the drug war, no matter how intellectually compelling, are undermined when they come from the party of the stoned. When the LP nominates a prostitute for lieutenant governor of California and she becomes a much-admired LP celebrity, how can regular Americans help but think that libertarianism is hostile to social norms, or that legalization of such acts as prostitution means moral approval? There. could be no more politically suicidal or morally fallacious connection, but the LP has forged it.

With their counter-cultural beliefs, many libertarians have avoided issues of increasing importance to middle-class Americans, such as civil rights, crime, and environmentalism.

The only way to sever libertarianism’s link with libertinism is with a cleansing debate. I want to start that debate, and on the proper grounds. As G.K. Chesterton said, “We agree about the evil; it is about the good that we should tear each others eyes out.”

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The insane neoconservatives who control US foreign policy are leading us to nuclear war

Posted by M. C. on June 24, 2022

The insane neoconservatives who control US foreign policy are leading us to nuclear war

Russia will never trust the West again – Kremlin. 

NATO Engaged in Direct Aggression Against Russia

Clarification: In this article I write that under the neoconservative Wolfowitz Doctrine of US hegemony, “the Kremlin has two choices. Russia can surrender its sovereignty or Russia can destroy the West. Russia has no other alternative. The entire world needs to understand this.” I am not advocating that Russia destroy the West. I am simply pointing out that for three decades the West has confronted Russia with this limited choice. Putin himself has complained about it over and over. I find it astonishing that the Western “foreign policy community,” whatever that is, has permitted a policy that corners a powerful nuclear power such as Russia in this way. And it continues. Now we have Lithuania blocking Russia’s access to part of Russia. This is insanity. This is confirming Russian conclusions that only force can constrain the West.

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NATO Engaged in Direct Aggression Against Russia

A wider war is Washington’s goal

Paul Craig Roberts

As I have many times written, the Kremlin’s Ukraine operation cannot be limited. Washington will not permit it to be limited. Washington has already widened the conflict, and is now widening the conflict further. The insane Jewish neoconservatives who have control over US foreign policy have prevailed on tiny, helpless Lithuania to violate the agreement with Russia for the provision of Kaliningrad and has received a Russian ultimatum. The moronic State Department spokesman Ned Price dismissed the ultimatum as “bluster.” The White House idiot says Washington backs Lithuania. In other words, Washington is egging on a wider war.

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Neoconservatives are the Flat-Earthers of Foreign Policy

Posted by M. C. on April 27, 2022

In October of 2001, George W. Bush rejected the Taliban’s offer to hand Osama Bin Laden over to America in exchange for evidence of his guilt. The war in Afghanistan could have been avoided. Instead, NATO declared Article V (war) for the first time in its history.

by Keith Knight 

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/neoconservatives-are-the-flat-earthers-of-foreign-policy/

Douglas Murray, the author of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, claims:

Neoconservatism is not a cabal or a party, but rather a sense, an instinct, a way of looking at the world. That way of looking at the world is, in my definition, a blend of idealism and realism. We look at the world as it is, but act in the world to make it as we would like it to be. This makes our instincts different from traditional conservatives who often distrust social engineering projects or any form of alteration of a status quo they perpetually see as being an irreversible if often quietly enjoyable decline.

These are not defining characteristics of neoconservatives. Communists, fascists, minarchists, libertarians, and conservatives would have no trouble saying that they have goals in mind and that there are realities that also must be dealt with. As a libertarian, I hold the ideal that the principles of self-ownership and voluntary contracts are worth striving for. I also recognize the reality: that many people believe that other people (i.e., the state or collective) own your body, and that voluntary contracts are exploitative.  

Murray also leaves out the small fact that in the pursuit of their alleged goals, neoconservatives often justify slavery in the form of military conscription and murdering civilians with bombings and blockades. 

The Unrealistic and Unideal 

To the Neoconservative I ask: 

When, if ever, would another country be morally justified in bombing British or American citizens and forming blockades around our countries to starve us?

Has the war on terrorism decreased the number of Al-Qaeda members or international terrorists since 2001? 

Have countries like Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen been “stabilized” or democratized? 

As a result of these interventions, are America and her allies stronger nations with more international respect?

If the National Socialist violation of Polish independence was a crime worthy of waging war in 1939, why was Poland given to Joseph Stalin in 1945?

Did Britain’s 1914 declaration of war on Germany stabilize Europe? 

It’s as though the Neoconservative has never stopped to think about costs, downsides, or unintended consequences of these policies. It turns out that politicians who are commonly seen as self-interested liars who will say anything to get elected are also untrustworthy when it comes to waging wars.

The 21st Century Opportunity to Lead the World

In July of 2021, Ayaan Hirsi Ali used her credentials as a former Muslim to debate at FreedomFest.  Ms. Ali says: 

…I read Bin laden. They’re not saying they’re acting the way that their acting because bombs are dropped on them… If they were saying, ‘It’s because of American foreign policy, it’s because of the bombs,’ I would be the first one in line to say, ‘Well, it’s very easy, we stop bombing, they stop attacking us, and they stop oppressing their people…’ This is a fact… Let’s read bin Laden together, let’s read al Qaeda together.

This is unequivocally false. Two sources using Bin Laden’s own words will suffice for now, but if you’d like 23 examples, see my video response to Ms. Ali.

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My Corner by Boyd Cathey-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Ukraine and the Neoconservatives

Posted by M. C. on January 12, 2022

http://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/

Friends,

In all the hysteria over the latest strain of the Coronavirus virus, the frenzied ideological (and essentially authoritarian and anti-constitutional) activities of the House January 6 “Investigatory” Committee, and the frenetic lead up to this recent Christmas, one significant anniversary was missed, or rather ignored, by our media, including the so-called “conservative” media: the birth on December 11, 1918 of arguably the 20th century’s greatest novelist and social/cultural critic, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Solzhenitsyn, let it be said, will long be remembered when the names of moronic fanatics like Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and others of that ilk, have become filthy curse words symbolizing the political and cultural nadir of our once great republic.

Yet, with all the ejaculatory exclamations and dire warnings, and subsequent demands for “American” and “NATO” action to thwart the supposed “threat” by the Russians, under that evil genius Vladimir Putin, to use bloodthirsty Cossack troops to invade and conquer poor, little democratic Ukraine, Solzhenitsyn’s comments shortly before he died on August 3, 2008, demand consideration.

No one can accuse the great Russian writer of being an advocate of violence, aggression or war. His experiences, so brutally and so vividly recounted in his various semi-autobiographical novels dissuade any dispassionate reader from that conclusion. He had seen the open jaws of bitter Hell, and that Hell attempted not only to swallow him but destroy him and his soul totally. That the Soviet Hell—the Gulag—did not succeed, and that he emerged stronger for it, a man of resilient and unquestioned Faith, is a remarkable example of how true religious conviction and Hope can indeed overcome even the worst trials, both physical and spiritual.

When Solzhenitsyn came to the United States and gave his famous address at Harvard, June 8, 1978, it was met first by shock, then by a studied if respectful silence by many in the media. For in that speech he had taken target at some of America’s showiest and most prized attributes:

He attacked moral cowardice and the selfishness and complacency he sees in the West. Materialism, sharp legal maneuvering, a press that invades privacy, “TV stupor” and “intolerable music,” all contribute to making the western way of life less and less a model for the world, he said. “A decline in courage,” Solzhenitsyn said, is the most striking feature of what he called “spiritual exhaustion” of the West. “The forces of evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?” “To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being….”

And that was in 1978.

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‘Federal Reserve Failure’ – Ron Paul’s 15 Nov Column

Posted by M. C. on November 16, 2021

Of course, most Republicans will continue opposing big increases in spending and debt … as long as a Democrat sits in the Oval Office. A Republican who becomes president will likely believe, as Dick Cheney has said, that President Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter. The difference between the parties is Republicans are less likely to raise taxes. So, no matter who controls Congress and the presidency, spending and debt can keep increasing.

https://mailchi.mp/ronpaulinstitute/fedfail?e=ff526b933a

Nov 15 – What do the Federal Reserve and neoconservatives have in common? They both refuse to admit that their policies — the neocons’ promotion of perpetual war and the Fed’s manipulation of the money supply — are complete failures, having produced the opposite of the promised results.

The latest example of the Federal Reserve engaging in Bill Kristol-like levels of denial is the Fed’s continued insistence that the return of 70s-style inflation is a “transitory” phenomenon resulting from the end of the lockdowns. The Fed has acknowledged the “transitory” inflation will last until at least 2022, yet it is still determined to keep interest rates at or near zero until the “jobs situation” improves.

To be fair, the Fed has finally announced plans to cut back on its money-pumping activities by reducing by 15 billion dollars a month its monthly purchase of 80 billion dollars of Treasury bonds and 40 billion dollars of mortgage-backed assets.

It is unlikely that the Fed will stick to its plans to “taper” its purchase of Treasury bonds. The Fed’s Treasury bond purchases enable the federal government to run up the debt without increasing taxes or paying punishingly high interest on the debt.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2030 the federal debt interest cost will more than double to 829 billion dollars. That is more than the government spent on the military in 2020!

Despite the looming fiscal crisis, Congress is unlikely to cut spending anytime soon. Instead, Congress members are debating a 1.75 trillion dollars “social spending” plan, having just passed a 1.2 trillion dollars infrastructure bill. Contrary to the claims of President Biden and his allies, this new spending will not reduce inflation. What it will do is hasten and deepen the inevitable economic crisis caused by government overspending.

Of course, most Republicans will continue opposing big increases in spending and debt … as long as a Democrat sits in the Oval Office. A Republican who becomes president will likely believe, as Dick Cheney has said, that President Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter. The difference between the parties is Republicans are less likely to raise taxes. So, no matter who controls Congress and the presidency, spending and debt can keep increasing.

The Fed may also take dramatic action to keep interest rates low if other purchasers of federal debt demand higher interest rates in anticipation of future inflation. Such a situation would be a sign of what Ludwig von Mises called a crack-up boom. A crack-up boom occurs when the public anticipates continuing devaluation of the currency, causing them to factor future price increases into their economic plans.

Crack-up booms are preceded or accompanied by economic crises that can lead to the rise of authoritarianism. However, this is not inevitable. Important steps can be taken including cutting spending on militarism and corporate welfare, phasing out the entitlement and welfare programs, and auditing and ending the Fed. Those of us who know the truth should seek to convince our fellow citizens of the importance of restoring a limited, constitutional government that does not try to run the economy, run the world, or run our lives.

—

Read more great articles on the Ron Paul Institute website.
Subscribe to free updates from the Ron Paul Institute. Copyright © 2021 by Ron Paul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

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My Corner by Boyd Cathey

Posted by M. C. on June 4, 2021

But that was then, and, like most established conservative organizations, the Federalist Society appears to have now become part of what Paul Gottfried calls “ConInc.,” that is, the stagnated national conservative bureaucracy, centered in Washington DC, dominated by Neoconservatives, and more concerned about not rocking the boat too much so as not to be attacked by the frenzied Left as “racist” or protecting “white supremacy”—or perhaps being taken off the A-List of invitees to posh DC social events and soirees.

http://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/

Friends,

The Federalist Society has a problem. It’s a condition that characterizes and infects almost the entirety of the present national conservative movement.

This hit home for me on May 31, in an essay by Leslie McAdoo Gordon, which  appeared at thefederalist.com. I read their Webzine almost every day, and occasionally it is the source for items of value and good information. But Gordon’s ill-informed attack on Confederate iconography was not one of them.

Peddled as a defense of retaining “Antietam” as the name of an American naval vessel, she begins her piece: “There is a move these days to revisit our monuments and the names we choose to publicly honor. This movement is good and just. It is a sign of our mature democracy that we can choose to stop honoring things that do not reflect our American ideals and celebrate those that do,” including rejecting anything related to the Confederacy.

Honoring and celebrating the history and symbols of the old South, once a common occurrence in the pages of the conservative quarterly Modern Age or in National Review, are now verboten, beyond the pale. General Robert E. Lee, praised by President Eisenhower in 1960 as “one of the supremely gifted men produced by our Nation…noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history,” is now exiled from the conservative pantheon, as is anything memorializing or commemorating Confederate heroes and iconography. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Colonel John “the Gray Ghost” Mosby, General Nathan Bedford Forrest—are now canceled, their monuments ingloriously pulled down, and their exploits stricken from textbooks, or worse, treated like depredations of Nazi fanatics.

I can remember attending a conference held by the Federalist Society at least thirty years ago, and recalling how impressed I was at the time (I believe it featured historian William J. Cooper, biographer of Jefferson Davis). For me it seemed that here was a bulwark against the outrages of the Warren Court and the concomitant shredding of the Constitution, and, perhaps even more significantly, a corrective to the progressivist misinterpretation of American history.

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The anti-war wing of both parties is dead

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2020

Each candidate has duly recited his lines about ending endless wars and can truthfully point to his opponent’s failure to do likewise. And whoever takes office in January can continue exactly that failure, probably without much political consequence. He can deplore his bombs and drop them too. Americans will remain preoccupied with more immediate domestic concerns; Washington will stay stuck in its interventionist consensus; and those endless wars will live up to their name.

https://news.yahoo.com/anti-war-wing-both-parties-195532097.html

Bonnie Kristian

Elect Joe Biden, former (Republican) Secretary of State Colin Powell said in his Democratic National Convention appearance Tuesday night, and he’ll “restore America’s leadership in the world.”

Powell’s comments were followed by a video touting Biden’s friendship with the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), another heavyweight GOP hawk. Meanwhile, there’s a pro-Biden super PAC of George W. Bush administration alumni, and Biden has racked up support from a who’s who of neoconservatives (Bill Kristol, Max Boot, David Frum, Jennifer Rubin), as commentators left and right have observed.

These alignments highlight an increasingly undeniable fact of American politics in 2020: The anti-war wing of both major parties is dead. Your presidential choice is between war and war. There’s no faction of Republicans or Democrats which combines real power with a durable, principled interest in turning American foreign policy away from global empire.

That’s not to say no one in major-party politics diverges from Washington’s standard-issue military interventionism. There’s Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) challenging Trump administration officials in Senate hearings and seeking to counter Trump’s more hawkish influences on the links. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has pushed for the U.S. to exit Yemen’s civil war and has slammed the administration’s January dalliance with executive warfare against Iran. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) tries every year to rein in abuses of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq, and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) has spent decades in lonely opposition to military adventurism. As a Democratic presidential candidate this past year, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was more interested in peace than the party establishment which has now twice rejected him as their standard-bearer.

I don’t mean to discount the good work of these and other comparatively anti-war legislators. It is not without effect. There’s some evidence, for example, that Paul steered Trump toward decreasing the U.S. military footprint in Syria. But neither should their ability to retain office confuse us into thinking they have more control over American foreign policy than they do.

The reality is these officials and anyone who agrees with them have little meaningful power on this issue — occasional influence, perhaps, but certainly not power than can be reliably wielded. Paul’s golf course chats with Trump may eke a win from time to time, but this is a lucky backchannel that can be dammed at any moment. It has no formal, institutional authority. This week’s handwringing at Foreign Policy about the supposed ascendancy of “isolationism” on left and right alike is absurd, the foreign policy version of Tucker Carlson’s bizarre claim of libertarian dominance of Washington. The main voices advocating greater restraint in American foreign affairs are not isolationist, and though they kick up quite a ruckus, they have little to no say over actual policy direction. How can anyone look at half a dozen wars and think we have an isolationism problem?

The Trump vs. Biden race only underlines this state of affairs. Neither will give us a foreign policy that can even plausibly be caricatured as isolationism, Trump’s inane protectionism notwithstanding.

The president pays occasional lip service to ending “endless wars” and prioritizing diplomacy (“the greatest deals,” in his parlance), but his better impulses are constantly overcome by his selfishness, short attention span, stupid militarism, and choice of counsel like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Trump has brought us closer to open conflict with China, squandered his chance for productive negotiations with North Korea, exacerbated tensions with Iran, and repeatedly recommitted to enabling Saudi war crimes. What few good foreign policy ideas he hits upon are almost always happenstance byproducts of service to his own political fortunes. He has yet to end a single war.

Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, are more conventional liberal interventionists than Trump, but the crucial assumption of intervention is same. There are a few points for war critics to like here, including Biden’s vehement opposition to the Obama-era surge in Afghanistan, Harris’s objection to U.S. involvement in Yemen, and their plan to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal. Biden pledges he’ll “end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East,” but, like Trump, lacks a specific plan to do so. Biden has no apparent interest in Pentagon cuts, has hired some markedly hawkish advisers (are all those neocons going to stick around, too?), and is trying to out-hawk Trump on China. Certainly with Biden we can expect more multilateral diplomacy and fewer reckless tweets, but there’s little reason to think he’ll break the broader foreign policy patterns of the past 20 years.

From a purely political perspective, what’s curious about all this is the mutual foregoing of potential electoral gain. Restraint rhetoric is consistently popular — our last three presidents all campaigned on it to some degree — and public opinion is on a years-long trend toward wanting a smaller U.S. military role abroad, one more tailored to defending U.S. interests, narrowly conceived. You’d think one party or the other would espy an opportunity here.

Or perhaps both already have. Each candidate has duly recited his lines about ending endless wars and can truthfully point to his opponent’s failure to do likewise. And whoever takes office in January can continue exactly that failure, probably without much political consequence. He can deplore his bombs and drop them too. Americans will remain preoccupied with more immediate domestic concerns; Washington will stay stuck in its interventionist consensus; and those endless wars will live up to their name.

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The Controversy Over Who Is Responsible for Coronavirus Is Heating Up – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on April 17, 2020

The politics of the virus will make it difficult for the truth to emerge.

Who takes the blame, who gets the research grants. Will truth tellers get Seth Riched?

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/04/14/the-controversy-over-who-is-responsible-for-coronavirus-is-heating-up/

Paul Craig Roberts

Let’s hope the Neoconservatives and American presstitutes don’t add a conflict with China to the ongoing virus and economic threats.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/state-department-cables-coronavirus-origin-chinese-lab-bats

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211291/U-S-government-gave-3-7million-grant-Wuhan-lab-experimented-coronavirus-source-bats.html

First, is the virus a bioweapon?  Second who is responsible?

Two sources concluded that the virus was a bioweapon.  One is Francis Boyle, who drafted the US implementing legislation for the Biowarfare Convention that became US law in, I believe, 1989.  Boyle says the US government violates the law and has 13,000 scientists working on biowarfare research.  Boyle said  in February that the gainer function of the virus was done at a UNC lab at which a Wuhan scientist was present, and the HIV features were done in Australia where a Wuhan scientist was present.  He says the scientists took the work back with them and the result was Covid-19.  Also in February or March a scientific paper by scientists in India concluded that the virus was man-made.  Their paper was taken down without explanation.

A top virologist, whose statements to the Belgium government concerning the inadequacy of the government’s response to the virus I have posted on my website, tells me that the Indian scientists were mistaken, and that the virus is naturally evolved.  As he is not involved in bioweapons work, I do not think he is covering up illegal activity by US and Chinese governments. He shows in his public concern every indication of being a highly principled person of unquestioned ability and character. Moreover, his position seems to be widely shared among experts.

As for responsibility, it seems both China and the US are responsible. It is clear from news reports that the US contributed millions of dollars to the Wuhan level 4 lab for research having to do with bats and coronavirus.  What this research was, we don’t know. We only know what they say. But the US government was aware of the bat coronavirus research and helped to fund it. There was also a report that after the virus outbreak the president of China suddenly removed the top people at the Wuhan facility and put in charge a woman who was an expert virologist.  The Chinese president XI thought something had gone wrong at the lab and said it was the duty of the government to protect the people.

We also know that various Chinese officials and press said the Americans had brought the virus with them when they came to Wuhan to participate in the military games.  The Chinese did not mean on purpose, but that someone among the US team was infected without having symptoms, often a feature of the virus. There was some discussion in which US health officials seemed to acknowledge that the virus might have been active in the US before it broke lose in a mass way.

We also know that Trump and now the neoconservative warmongers are blaming China for keeping quiet too long about the virus.  This claim as far as I can tell is false.  It seems to be mainly propaganda against China.

We also have had reports that a US military lab in Texas was suddenly closed out of pathogen concerns by the Obama regime.

How all this fits together or doesn’t I don’t know.

As the Democrats are blaming Trump for the virus, Trump blames China as that aligns the Democrats with the “enemy” China and is a way of showing that the Democrats are covering up for “Communist China” by shifting the blame to the president of the US.

The politics of the virus will make it difficult for the truth to emerge.

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Koch & Soros Unite To CENSOR The Internet

Posted by M. C. on August 24, 2019

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/koch-soros-unite-to-censor-the-internet_08212019

Mac Slavo

Establishment left-wing and establishment conservative billionaires are teaming up to censor the Internet.  It looks like elitists on both sides of the political aisle are trying to make sure you only get the information they want you to have.

Organizations established by left-winger George Soros and neo-conservative Charles Koch have been working together on a key priority of globalist neoliberals and neoconservatives: censorship of the Internet, according to Breitbart News. Censorship is necessary for tyranny so it makes sense that those who need the government to enslave humanity would be working together to achieve the means to an end.

Last year, the Charles Koch Institute pledged its support for the “After Charlottesville Project,” an initiative organized by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) aimed at combating “online extremism.”

Sponsors of the initiative include Comcast, NBC Universal, the Kresge Foundation, and the George Soros Charitable Foundation.

Other groups involved in the project include a host of Soros-funded organizations, including “Hope not Hate,” the British equivalent of the far-left SPLC, and the pro-immigration National Immigration Forum.

The former group, Hope not Hate, has a reputation for far-left extremism. Liberal anti-extremism campaigner Maajid Nawaz accused them of “book burning” after it announced a campaign to get allegedly “racist” books banned by major retailers. It was also forced to retract a smear against a Jewish pro-Israel activist last year.-Breitbart News

The Charles Koch Institute, once seen as a conservative nemesis of the left, has now aligned itself with this group of left-wing, pro-censorship, anti-Trump agitators. When it comes to censoring the Internet, both the progressive and “conservative” establishment appear to be converging on a common position.

The Charles Koch Institute now also appears committed to advancing Internet censorship and aligning with totalitarianism and slavery over freedom and libertarian principles. Koch is now for  “content moderation,” as they call it. Sarah Ruger, the Institute’s director of “free expression initiatives” has praised Airbnb for canceling the reservations of far-right activists, and has called for “online hate” to be treated like a “virus.”

As always, there’s an elephant in the room — what counts as “online hate?” Is it questioning the official narrative? Is it condemning authoritarians who harm others? Is it siding with morality even though it contradicts the existence of government?  What exactly is “online hate” and who gets to decide if you’re hateful?

 

Author: Mac Slavo
Views: Read by 728 people
Date: August 21st, 2019
Website: www.SHTFplan.com

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