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Category Archives: Politics
The Drums of War Beat Louder
My forebodings/predictions about the Kremlin’s limited go-slow war in Ukraine are proving correct. Putin and Russia are demonized. Unprecedented sanctions amounting to piracy and theft have been imposed on Russia. The US and Europe are joining the war as de facto combatants. More countries are joining NATO with the result being the prospect of more US missile bases on Russia’s borders. The Western media controls the narrative, which is Russia is losing and can be defeated with more many billions of dollars from the US and more weapons that enrich the US military/security complex. Why any Russian government would expose itself to this and so many chances for miscalculation that ends in WW III is a mystery. What did the Kremlin imagine it was achieving by creating a situation that exposed Russia to many months of war propaganda, punishment, and Western preparations for wider war?
What peace needed was a quick decisive Russian victory that demonstrated extraordinary military power that completely stopped any further Western provocations of Russia. But the Kremlin was too liberal-minded to do what was necessary. Consequently the Kremlin made a strategic error, dropped the ball and has failed to protect Russia from provocations that are leading to WW III.
Instead, the Kremlin filled with liberal delusions long discarded in the West decided to show a good side by limiting itself to the rescue of the Donbass Russians. This gave the West adll it needed to present Russia as a military incompetent upstart. Among the Kremlin’s errors, the Kremlin overlooked that Ukraine’s distress from the limited Russian intervention created an opportunity for Poland to claim former Polish territories in western Ukraine where there are no Russian troops engaged. It is possible that the Polish government, disinformed by Western media’s picture of Russian military failure in Ukraine, will occupy western Ukraine as preparation to reclaiming it as Russia did Crimea and now Donbass. As Russia will have eastern and southern Ukraine, the country could simply disappear as Poland resurrects greater Poland. In its history, Ukraine has either been part of Poland’s empire or part of Russia.
If Poland moves into western Ukraine as it is tempted to do, opportunities for Polish-Russian conflict arise. As Poland is a NATO member, Washington has given Poland, as the British government did with World War II’s “Polish Guarantee,” the power to start a world war.
The Polish government has a penchant for emotional decisions, not responsible decisions. Just as the Polish military dictatorship thought the “British Guarantee” protected them, causing them to spurn Hitler’s demand for the return of German territory stripped from Germany in the Versailles Treaty despite President Wilson’s “guarantee” of no territorial losses, the Polish government thinks today that NATO membership protects Poland from Russian retaliation.
The government in Warsaw does not comprehend that the “NATO Guarantee” is worth no more than the British Government’s guarantee that launched WW II.
The governments that comprise the Western World have given Poland, once again, the decision whether there is to be a World War.
This deplorable and unsettling fact stares us in the face, but no Western media, not even online media, acknowledges it.
The situation that exists today is that either Russia and China must accept US hegemony or the neoconservaties will push Russia and China into war with the West. The hegemonic ambition of the neoconservatives is inconsistent with a peaceful world.
Paul Craig Roberts
A History of Infant Feeding
Finding Truth in a Dying Society
On his show last night, Mark Levin (whom I trust) said that the baby formula shortage is due, in part, to the Biden regime’s FDA shutting down baby formula plants in Texas. They claimed, without evidence, that the plant is unsafe; and now they refuse to say anything at all. It seems more like a political move to punish Texans for their defiance against the regime in D.C. on immigration, abortion and other matters. Levin also reported that a congresswoman in Florida has seen evidence of pallets of baby formula being sent to illegals waiting to come into America. Surprise, surprise.
If any of this is true, do you fathom what we’re up against? The totalitarians in Washington would literally rather starve babies–in AMERICA–than face even tepid opposition to their unlimited thirst for power. Do you seriously still doubt that Americans are now living in an occupied country? No different than if the Nazis, Soviets or today’s CCP had invaded and taken over our government?
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We are now living in a country our founders fought to escape.
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“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
— George Washington
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“Reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”
— Terence McKenna
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“If one rejects laissez faire [economics] on account of man’s fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government intervention.”
— Ludwig von Mises, economist
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A meme on social media states:
I see some Americans saying “I Stand With Ukraine.” Doubtful … You can’t even stand for your own Country or Flag. I stand with American people. I don’t give shxt about Ukraine or Russia.
I stand with GOOD Americans. Not the toxic, woke snowflakes who still support Biden and his ilk. They can go to the hell they are creating for us all.
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Healing also means taking responsibility for the role you play in your own suffering. (Unknown)
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No matter how long you have traveled in the wrong direction, you can always turn around. (Unknown)
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“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
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You get what you focus on , so focus on what you want. (Unknown)
Daily Dose of Reason
Inflation Malarkey
Faced with public outrage over the soaring prices of gasoline, food, and other items, President Biden has announced his intention to combat inflation. At the same time, monetary experts in the mainstream press are weighing in with their recommendations on how to fight inflation.
It’s all malarky. No doubt the next thing they are going to do is come up with buttons that say “Whip Inflation Now!” just as Republican President Ford did.
There is one — and only one — cause of inflation: the Federal Reserve System. The Fed is America’s central bank. It is in charge of the money supply. When it expands the money supply, it is inflating the money supply.
That’s what the Fed has been doing for years and decades. It’s been inflating the money supply. Once the pandemic hit, it hit the inflate button even more times, expanding the amount of money in circulation exponentially.
That’s how we also get those economic booms and busts. Each time they inflate the balloon, it bursts with a bigger pop. The next time it bursts, the pop will be even bigger than the last time.
There is nothing new in all this. Governments have been inflating the money supply throughout history. Inflation of the money supply has always been an easy way for governments to spend money. Ordinarily, to spend money they have to tax people. But people don’t like taxes. So governments instead just print money and spend it, in the process inflating or expanding the overall supply of money.
What happens when the Fed inflates or expands the money supply? It cheapens the value of everyone’s money. If there is $1 trillion in circulation and the Fed expands or inflates the money supply to $2 trillion, obviously that means that everyone’s dollars are going to buy less than before.
How is that monetary debauchery reflected? Through the prices of things that money buys. Like gasoline or food. Prices across the board start increasing, which is natural. There is no other way to reflect the reduced value of everyone’s money.
President Biden and many other politicians clearly do not get this. Neither do many commentators in the mainstream press. They have absolutely no idea that the Federal Reserve’s expansion of the money supply is reflected in rising prices of things that people buy. They think that the rising prices are because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or supply-chain issues. They think that the Federal Reserve has nothing to do with the monetary debauchery.
But the Federal Reserve has everything to do with inflation and monetary debauchery. That’s why prices are rising across the board.
The reverse side of a Washington Quarter Dollar, which was 90 percent silver. Licensed under Creative Commons.
In fact, that’s why year after year, decade after decade, the value of the U.S. dollar has diminished. That’s why you use cheap-alloyed coins to buy soft drinks from a machine rather than real silver quarters. At one time people used silver quarters to buy their soft drinks. But as the value of the government’s money cheapened due to Federal Reserve expansion or inflation, it was no longer smart to use silver coins to buy soft drinks.
It all had to do with the massive, ever-growing expenditures of the federal government, specifically with respect to its welfare-state programs, its regulatory programs, and especially its warfare-state programs. Does everyone remember those “free” stimulus checks? As we here at FFF pointed out at the time, they weren’t really going to be free, as people are now finding out when they fill their cars with gas.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone why there has always been so much chaos in the monetary sphere. The Federal Reserve is based on monetary central planning, which is a variation of the socialist paradigm. Socialism always produces crises and chaos.
There is only one solution to this monetary debauchery. That solution does not lie in reforming the Federal Reserve. It lies in terminating, abolishing, dismantling, and ending the Federal Reserve and establishing in its stead a free-market monetary system. Or as the Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek put it, the solution lies in “denationalizing money.” The free market produce the best of everything. It would produce the best monetary system in history and help place our nation back on the road to liberty and prosperity.
Jacob Hornberger, Future of Freedom Foundation
One Rule for Us, Another for Them
Politico recently reported that the Supreme Court will probably overturn Roe v. Wade. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted that the leak was a “call to arms,” and for progressives, it meant protests, threats, and property destruction.
White advocates are divided on abortion. There are pro-lifers who may oppose it because some people think it is eugenic. A white advocate might defend abortion for the same reason. However, that doesn’t mean extreme leftists would think he was an ally. There will be no separate peace.
Antifa activists are not divided. “We support abortion rights and reproductive freedom,” reads one of the “Points of Unity” for the antifa “Torch Network.” A masked and menacing antifa “black bloc” joined a pro-choice rally in Seattle.
In Wisconsin, someone threw a Molotov cocktail through the window of a pro-life group, Wisconsin Family Action. An activist also spray-painted the antifa slogan “All Cops Are Bastards” and “If abortions aren’t safe, then you aren’t either.” A group called “Jane’s Revenge,” named for the pre-Roe group of abortionists called “Jane’s Collective,” claimed responsibility via a said the attack was a “warning” that there could be more extreme methods, and that “anti-choice establishments, fake clinics [meaning crisis pregnancy centers], and violent anti-choice groups” must be dismantled within 30 days. It says it is “not a declaration of war” because “war has been upon us for decades.”
Mr. Evans says he would be “very surprised if this was not a legitimate attack.” Police are still investigating. The group sounds so extreme it may be a hoax, but at least one verified Twitter user praised the attack before losing or deleting her account. Her publication’s Samuel Alito (the author of the Court’s draft opinion), Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice John Roberts. Television host Joy Behrar said the protests would teach Justice Samuel Alito about “freedom of choice.” Mother Jones dismissed the “tone police” who suggest such tactics are immoral or ineffective. Many verified Twitter users promoted or defended protests, even though demonstrations at the homes of Supreme Court justices is a federal crime.
Gregory Hood
Watch “The Key to Unhappiness” on YouTube
Liars
We don’t call someone a liar only if they lie 100 percent of the time. We call someone a liar because he or she does not care about the TRUTH.
A liar is at war with reality. Facts are uttered when it’s convenient. Falsehoods are uttered when it’s convenient. Crucial facts are left out when it’s convenient. For whose convenience? The liar’s.
Anyone who has been close to an addict, a narcissit or a sociopath understands. You cannot EVER believe what a liar says. Even if the liar happens to be accurate 80 or 90 percent of the time. Why? Because you cannot TRUST someone who does not care about objective truth.
That’s what we’re all facing with today’s media and government. It’s not that they’re always lying. It’s that they do not care about truth. They will say whatever needs to be said — truthful, or not — in order to maintain and expand their power over people.
We saw this with the deception over COVID that goes on to this day. We saw this with the deliberate refusal to mention the violence of the Black Lives Matter rioters and looters. We saw this with the refusal to even report on evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, and overt punishment or censorship when discussion was even contemplated.
The media and our government are liars. It’s not really a partisan issue. Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are no better than Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden. The longer anyone has been in government, the less you can trust them. The media is so dishonest that they’re even worse than the media under a dictatorship. Under a dictatorship, you can at least excuse the fear. Our media does not yet have to lie (and a small number of them don’t); but they lie anyway, in order to advance the sociopathic, narcissistic and financial interests of those in power.
It’s sick to the point of evil. But it’s where we are. So just as you should arm yourself literally, you also must arm yourself intellectually and psychologically — with an understanding that the people you have been trained to trust on NBC, CNN, CBS and at the White House do not value the truth, or tell the truth.
Somehow, we will have to figure out the truth for ourselves. We have the brains to do so; if only more of us would use those brains.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
When Whites Became an Endangered Species
When the Sun reappeared after the nuclear winter that followed the 21st century’s nuclear war, no life was left in what formerly was Europe, Great Britain, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. Japanese no longer existed. The only white-skinned people were Russian and American/European expatriates living in South America, Africa, Thailand and other parts of Asia.
Wildlife organizations designated white people “an endangered species.” The few remnants outside Russia, now the world power with China, were rounded up and put in zoos. Programs were developed to breed them and reintroduce white people into their former territories once the radiation subsided. Russians were designated “non-white” as they lived for centuries under Asiatic rule. “Scratch a Russian, find a Tarter (Mongol)” sufficed for one of the ruling powers to escape the designation of White.
Because of the American neoconservatives’ responsibility for the nuclear war, gentile whites, when it should have been Zionist Jews, were blamed for the war for their pursuit of American hegemony. There were fierce debates whether preserving the white race was sensible or even permissible, considering their crimes documented by the New York Times’ 1619 Project, the curriculums of Harvard, Yale and the Ivy League universities, and the Western media’s insistence that all white persons are “racists.” Many objected that preserving the white race was the same as preserving Adolf Hitler.
Whites are the people who, according to their own school texts, written by white people and adopted by white school boards, were responsible for enslaving black people, for oppressing women, homosexuals, transgendered people, and people incapable of knowing their own gender. White people were guilty of using gender pronouns, which unfairly limited gender to male and female, a limitation on the species so old as to be biblical.
The relatively few whites who had been living as repatriated lords in lesser parts of the world now found themselves akin to animals subject to zoo keepers. Would they survive as an endangered species or be eliminated as a dangerous species? The richer ones who had gold coins in their personal possession lobbied for laws in the jurisdictions in which they lived that preserved them as an endangered species. In Africa the blacks bred the whites for slaves.
Russia and China, being the hegemonic powers, made the decision that white people would be declared an endangered species as it would be a century and more before their diminished numbers could result in a population of any size. Over this time whites would be educated into permanent self-doubt like the Americans did to the Germans in the 20th century.
Paul Craig Roberts
Is America Regressing to Tribalism?
The Republic of Sudan has 500 ethnic groups who speak over 400 languages. We do not have to be reminded how tribalism has played out over decades and even hundreds of years in terms of conflict and violence. The same disaster has befallen other African countries such as Ethiopia, not to mention other African regions and non-African continents. Native America tribes often fought each other. Conflict and even wars to the death between tribal collectives are part of world history.
American was founded as an exception. It was based on the principle of individual rights: everyone was equal before the law and the government could not initiate force against its own citizens. Many modern intellectuals claim to be baffled about what American exceptionalism is, but it is simply the principle of rights. It is not pure democracy as such—not just voting—but a republican form of government. The Constitution protects individuals from mob rule.
With some exceptions at certain periods, almost everyone was welcome. America was a country of immigrants. Between 1820 and 1996 there were over 61 million immigrants from over 40 countries and territories. The ideal was for America to be a melting pot—a place where people with radically different backgrounds and traditions would have equal rights and could live peacefully together, intermarry if they chose to, and make their way economically through free trade. They were free to have their own traditions and neighborhoods within the limits of the law.
To a great extent the melting pot has been a success. There are 200 or more Christian denominations in the U.S. and all world religions are represented. People are free to be agnostics or atheists. There is freedom of philosophy, but no state religion. We are officially a secular country. Religious traditions are allowed, but they may not contradict the Constitution. Everyone has the same rights and is bound by the same laws (though, in some cases, unfortunately, there are religious exemptions from the law). All races are represented in the U.S. (Race is defined by DNA, but many people have DNA from more than one race).
This is not to say that the path has always been smooth. The first issue that had to be addressed in America was slavery. Slavery eixisted since the first written records of human civilization. It was imposed on us by the British when we were a colony. The Declaration of Independence and the American revolution made slavery morally impossible. It was ended, heroically, by means of a bloody civil war. But we know that racism (sometimes accompanied by violence and by discrimination in the private and/or public sectors) did not just go away, though things have drastically improved over some 160 years. Blacks have been the worst but not the only victims of injustice. (The U. S. passed an anti-lynching law only recently). Jews have been discriminated against for thousands of years all over the world. Franklin Roosevelt, though he had Jews in his cabinet, turned away a ship loaded with Jews trying to escape the Nazis and they were later killed. There were Jewish quotas for admission to universities and professional schools in the US. Japanese citizens were put in internment camps during World War II. Anti-Asian quotas exist today in educational institutions. In recent years street violence has been directed at people of every race, some of which is due to a cultural decline with emotionality replacing reason in every aspect of society. (A minority of police today are biased against bothbali Backs and Hispanics. Police reform, including better selecsmtion, training and discipline is necessary). Immigration has been limited time and time again over the years and still is now.
A popular movement today demands “social justice,” which means that every collective must come out the same in results with respect to its percentage in the population. “Diversity” means getting the percentages “correct.” But observe that this requires that people be treated unjustly. For example, Asians must be (and are) discriminated against in school and university admissions, because they are too competent. Some of their spaces must be given to those of different races just based on a numbers game. In contrast, blacks, on the average, are to be held to lower standards in education and employment compared to others in order to get their numbers up, thus depriving more qualified people of those spots. This is social injustice.
There is no basis for to assuming that all disparities between collectives in every job category or profession are due to racial discrimination. Many factors could play a role, among them cultural factors such as the value placed on education and family traditions, not to mention the use of role models and personal attributes including interests and passions. The diversity movement is a revolt against merit—you are not to get what you deserve which means that it is a revolt against reality because everyone does not have the same skills, abilities, and energy. Members of a racial collective are not interchangeable units but individuals with the faculty of reason, which includes volition. There is no such thing as group rights.
It should be noted that there is another arbitrary element here. Which collectives are to be chosen for specials benefits or penalties? Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian are not the only possible collectives. And what of mixed races? What percentage of each racial DNA puts a person in a favored or disfavored group? Is the government to be the arbitrary of the correct racial mixtures? What about non-racial collectives such as the overweight, the weak and the uncoordinated in sports, the tone deaf in music, the dyslexic in reading, and so on. How would this work? Obviously, it would have to be based on which collective has the most political pull.
As I noted at the outset, all this pushes us in the direction of tribalism, even tribal warfare. If it comes, this will be the end of America. It will be a regression to the primitive.
Edwin Locke
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 
