Embittered old Never Trumper George Will says the GOP won’t investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol — in a rigged p.r. stunt run by Nancy Pelosi — because it feels terrified of its own voters.
George Will was supposed to be such a brilliant student of history. You would think he’d know that government, in a free country, is SUPPOSED to be afraid of the people.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
If winning a military battle is defined by the accomplishment of one’s military objectives, then Hamas won the current round of violence with its very first ballistic barrage on Jerusalem ten days ago. Israel, on the other hand, won’t win, can’t win and doesn’t even dream of winning. Like in recent ‘rounds’, all Israel hopes to achieve is an ‘image of victory.’ Despite its military might and destructive enthusiasm, Israel can’t prevail militarily because it doesn’t even remember what military objectives are or what they look like.
In the last seven decades Israel has worked relentlessly to divide the Palestinians in an attempt to dismantle their ability to resist as one people. This project had been so successful in the eyes of the Israelis that many of them started to believe that the Palestinian cause had evaporated into thin air. But then, completely out of the blue (as far as the Israelis are concerned), Hamas managed to unite the Palestinians into a unified fist of resistance: on Tuesday every Palestinian between the River and the Sea joined a strike called by Hamas. Such a collective, multi-sectorial strike didn’t happen in Palestine since 1936.
Military victory is not measured by the carnage you inflict on your foe. It isn’t measured by the number of casualties or the residential towers one reduces into dust. Admittedly, there is no room for comparison between Israeli military capabilities and Hamas’ firepower. Israel is one of the most technologically advanced military forces in the world. Hamas is decades behind, yet it wins over Israel in every round of violence.
The reason is simple. Hamas’ military objectives are simple and modest. Hamas has vowed to keep the resistance alive. It fulfills its promise. By achieving this goal Hamas has positioned itself as the Palestinian unifier. Israel, on the other hand, can’t decide its military goals. We hear Israel’s Defence Minister vowing to bring security to the Israelis but Hamas proves him wrong, continuing to rain Israel with rockets at a growing rate. Israel brags about its precision bombing of Hamas’ tunnels, yet rather cynically, Hamas keep operating from tunnels that seem intact and operational.
It doesn’t take a military genius to grasp that in order to stop Hamas, Israel needs to deploy ground forces and to engage in a fierce battle in the streets of Gaza. But this is exactly the one thing the IDF refuses to do and for a manifold of very good reasons. Firstly, the Israelis are fearful of a house-to-house battle. Second, Israel doesn’t want to control 2.5 million Gazans. Third, not one Israeli military leader is willing to face the relentless Israeli mothers brigade. In the region, however, Israel’s reluctance to send foot soldiers to Gaza is understood as cowardice and weakness.
For Israel, Gaza in particular and Palestine in general is a no-win situation.
But there is a deeper reasoning behind Israel’s hopeless situation. Israeli decision makers (both within the political realm and in the military) subscribe to the power of deterrence. For Israelis, the power of deterrence means punishing the Arabs so heavily that their will to fight would practically stop existing. For one reason or another, the Israelis manage to clumsily zigzag through their troubling history in the region in an attempt to validate this doctrine. For instance, Israel works hard to convince themselves that despite their military fiasco in Lebanon in 2006, Hezbollah has been reluctant to enter a new round of violence with Israel because it is intimidated by the consequences.
Examination of Israeli history actually defies the Israeli doctrine. When Arabs are defeated and humiliated in the battlefield they keep fighting until they win. When Arabs win, they often lose their motivation to keep fighting. They occasionally seek peace and harmony in accordance with the Islamic teaching.
In 1967 Israel defeated 3 Arab armies in just 6 days. Israel performed a perfect Blitzkrieg operation. The Israeli air force surprised and destroyed the Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian air forces on the ground in less than four hours. Simultaneously, Israeli Panzers raided into Sinai, within hours the Egyptian forces collapsed. The humiliation of the Egyptian army was unprecedented in military terms.
If the Israeli doctrine carried any validity, Egypt wouldn’t consider any military confrontation with Israel. But the reality on the ground proved the opposite. Just a few months after their June 1967 defeat, the Egyptian Army launched a war of attrition against Israel, one which exhausted the Israeli forces (including the air force). In the War of Attrition (1967-70) Egypt displayed new capabilities, relying on new Soviet ground-to-air missiles that obliterated Israeli air superiority. Yet Israel refused to draw the necessary conclusions. It was suffocated by hubris that prevented it from reading its neighbors and their intentions.
On 6 October 1973 (Yom Kippur) at 2 PM, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated attack on Israeli forces in the Suez Canal and in the Golan Heights. Within hours the two Arab armies managed to obliterate the Israeli defence lines. A few days later and thanks to a close American airlift Israel recovered. It gained its lost land in the occupied Golan heights and even managed to conquer some new territory in Syria. In the South, Israel managed to establish bridgehead over the Suez Canal. It encircled the Egyptian 3rd army and cut its supply lines. But Israel failed to push the Egyptian 3rd and 2nd armies back. The Egyptian army ended the war, claiming a narrow strip of Sinai back. It was this victory that empowered Anwar Sadat to launch a peace initiative four years later (1977).
Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian leader at the time, didn’t manage to claim a victory. Syria remained a defiant enemy of Israel. It is reasonable to speculate that if Assad was allowed to cling to some of his territorial gains in October ‘73, Israel and Syria could have proceeded into further reconciliatory talks.
The same logic can be applied to Hezbollah. The Lebanese Shia resistance movement is reluctant to fight Israel not because it is afraid of the consequences, as Israelis delude themselves, but because it already won significantly over the IDF. A war with Israel is dangerous for Hezbollah not because Israel will do its best once again to destroy Lebanese infrastructure and flatten half of Beirut, but because the outcome of such a war is unknown. Hezbollah is in a much better position retaining its status as the Arab military force that made the IDF run home with its tail between its legs (2006).
One may wonder whether Israeli strategists are so thick as not to grasp the most obvious facts about their neighbors and what fuels their motivation to fight. It may of course be possible that Israel’s decision makers aren’t as excited by tranquility as some of us want to believe. Gaza is where Israel tests its new weaponry and tactics. Gaza rockets are a necessary ingredient in the Iron Dome’s public relations. Most importantly, the Gaza crisis emerged when Netanyahu’s political options were running out. It was the Gaza current conflict that made the political powers in Israel subside and then crystalize lucidly within the realm of the hard right. This war made both Netanyahu and Hamas stronger.
It would be fair to argue that Hamas is operating within the modernist perception of conflicts as devised by Carl von Clausewitz. For the German military philosopher “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” In ‘postmodernist’ Israel, it seems war is one of the means that keeps some politicians out of prison.
Gilad Atzmon
People often struggle with “revenge versus forgiveness”. They ask themselves (or others): “When someone has wronged me, should I get back at them? Or, instead: turn the other cheek and forgive them?” It’s a false alternative. Usually the most effective way is simply to withdraw yourself from the person’s life. Withdraw the virtue and value you once offered them. Terminate it. Totally.
That sounds cold and harsh, to some people; but it’s actually rational and just. You don’t have to worry about planning a strategy of getting back. Usually that’s not worth the effort. If you’re going to keep someone in your life by pursuing a path of getting back at them, then why don’t you just keep them in your life? And if you’re really done with them, then why not just act in a way that’s consistent with your decision … and be done with them? Withdrawing the virtue and value that you once offered the other person — in whatever context (business, friendship, romance) — is often the most powerful, reasonable and truly fair way to go. It’s the right thing to do. Stop giving unworthy people what they don’t deserve: YOU.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
It is obvious that we must determine the origins of COVID or we cannot prevent the next pandemic. Americans were told ridiculous reasons for the virus. We were lied to about Pengolins sold in a Wuhan market causing it — without any evidence or any connecting of the dots.
On February 6, 2020, scientists from the South China University of Technology uploaded a paper that said it likely came from the Horseshoe Bat but it’s odd since it’s not sold at the Wuhan markets, and there are none near Wuhan. As it happened, two Wuhan universities conducted research on Horseshoe Bats.
They concluded the killer coronavirus likely came from a lab in Wuhan. The paper stayed on the Internet for weeks and healthcare officials in the US ignored it.
The reaction was to demonize anyone who said the lab is the likely origin. We weren’t even allowed to say it was the “Wuhan Virus,” since the media wanted to please Chinese communists.
A Chinese scientist, a virologist, who personally did experiments in China on the Coronavirus with the top virologists in the world, Li Meng Yan told Tucker early on, September 15, 2019, that the virus belonged to the Chinese military and was released deliberately — “of course.”https://lockerdome.com/lad/12870868049287782?pubid=ld-346-8789&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independentsentinel.com&rid=thelibertydaily.com&width=672
Politfact accused Dr. Yan of being a “pants on fire liar.” Facebook censored any mention of Dr. Yan. Brian Stelter mocked her and said the social media monopolies “intervened,” as if it was for our own good.
To rebel against Donald Trump, they continued the lie about the origins of the virus. Now that they got Biden elected, most attacks on Dr. Yan and her statements are retracted. Even Politifact retracted. Facebook hasn’t because they are too tight with China.
Dr. Yan was on Tucker last night, now exiled from her family and country for exposing the origins of the virus.https://lockerdome.com/lad/12925202103219302?pubid=ld-1800-5623&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independentsentinel.com&rid=thelibertydaily.com&width=672
Dr. Yan told Tucker that the virus came from a gain-of-function research project partly by NIH using US taxpayers’ money. The people behind this are the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Army.
Tucker asked her thoughts on why Drs. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins among others rejected the idea. She said it’s because the Chinese Communist Party wants everyone to believe it came from nature so they use their power, their influence, and their misinformation campaign, and use scientists to spread the false story so they won’t know it came from the lab.
The scientists lied.
She said she can tell from looking at it that it was created in the lab, and has proven it. There is no good purpose to gain-of-function research. It is too dangerous. The only purpose is to harm people and target people, she said.
Among the more nauseating elements of what has become the American national character is the moral preening, the lecturing of others on the virtuousness of the Exceptional Nation, on America’s incontinent goodness and sense of superiority. The world isn’t buying it. The internet makes fraud impossible.
Start with the domestic. The whole world can see, in what calls itself the richest country in the world, squalid, diseased, often rat-infested encampments of tens of thousands the homeless on the sidewalks of city after city: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Austin, on and on. In New York they live in subway stations, often on the trains. Forgotten diseases return. This must cause astonishment in civilized countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, China.
Next, crime, levels of which constitute a measure of civilization. American lawlessness is a wonder of the world. Over seven hundred killed annually in Chicago, three hundred in Baltimore, with perhaps three times as many shot but not killed. Similar numbers per capita can be adduced for many other cities. Equally elevated figures exist for assault, rape, carjacking, mugging, shoplifting. To citizens of Taiwan or South Korea these numbers must look more appropriate to civil war in Sudan than a country that regards itself as an example to the world.
America talks of its commitment to human rights. Yet the world just watched agape as some four hundred cities exploded in looting, arson, and vandalism citing abuse of human rights by the police. Uighurs? As the world can easily see, and does, the black population lives generation after generation in crime-infested, drug-ridden semi literacy. Racial relations are terrible, probably worsening, and so bad that whites dare not walk in black regions. The frequent horrific racial attacks by blacks on whites are carefully kept out of the American mass media, but the world can see them in foreign publications such as the Daily Telegraph.
The fetid, necrotic, and hopeless ghettos are widespread. Consider Newark, Camden, Trenton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, St Louis, Cincinnati, New Orleans, just to begin.
Human rights? America’s unending race riots appear in graphic detail all around the world. Cities burn, over and over, decade after decade, as American politicians speak of their values, which they seem to want the rest of the world to adopt.
Race relations in the most moral, preachy, and indispensable nation, two examples of many, many dozens that could be given:
Public disaffection is rampant in America. Washington is so afraid of its citizens that it called in over twenty thousand soldiers to assure calm when Biden was inaugurated. The whole earth watched, some in shock, others in amusement, as infuriated citizens stormed the Capitol. During a recent trial in Minneapolis troops were needed to protect the proceedings from an angry population, with stores boarding up in fear of looting. Can anyone imagine this in Tokyo?
And of course, few around the world can hve failed to notice the disparity between China’s quick and effective response to the epidemic and the chaos, verging on anarchy of the American, in which no one appeared to be in charge and much of the population refuses to cooperate with the government.
Americans are not an historically aware people and so have little idea of how or why they are regarded as they are abroad. Consider Mexico, where I live. People here know of the Mexican-American War (of which, preposterously many Americans have never heard) as well as the bombardment of Veracruz and Pershing’s incursion. Peoples remember their defeats and humiliations as the victors do not. Mexicans know they are powerless against America, resent it intensely. Latin Americans in general know of the almost endless list of invasions, coups, dictators installed, economic exploitation that Americans have never heard of. Today they see the persecution of Cuba, the attempt to starve Venezuela into giving Washington control of its oil, the coups and murder attempts against Maduro, the coup in Bolivia, other attempts in Ukraine and Byelorussia, on and on.
Many countries have endured American manipulation exploitation, invasion. Americans seldom know of these things, but the countries involved do. For example, China remembers that American (and European) gunboats seized Chinese ports, forced the opium trade on the country, and that American troops have rampaged through Beijing, looting, raping, and killing for sport. There was the burning of the Summer Palace (look it up if you haven’t heard of it.) During the Cold War, Americans saw themselves as on a moral crusade against Communism. The Chinese saw it as a crusade against China. Which is how the “trade war” looks to them now.
How does America appear to much of the world today? As a brutal, utterly unprincipled, destructive, out of control monster wreaking havoc on any country that doesn’t submit.
If this seems to you extreme, you are probably a normal American. But try for a second, if only as an exercise in mental gymnastics, to see how it looks from abroad.
America killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq and wrecked it for generations, has killed and killed and killed for almost twenty years in Afghanistan. Supervised the destruction of Libya, currently occupies much of Syria and kills there too, bombs Somalia, supports a grisly Saudi war against Yemen. In an earlier generation it killed millions in Southeast Asia.
At this writing America is the only country of note steadfastly supporting Israel’s search for lebensraum in the West Bank and its conversion of the Gaza Strip into the Warsaw Ghetto, with the IDF inflicting its usual devastation.
Human rights? The world saw the godawful photos of torture in America’s prison at Abu Ghraib. They know of the continuation of “enhanced interrogation,” in Guantanamo. These things could be seen, and were, everywhere from Kathmandu to Finland and all over the Moslem world, where they served to spur enlistment. The American media carefully do not speak of the horrors of the torture camps, or of the death and mutilation caused by the wars. Web sites in other countries are not as reticent. No, the pols speak ok American values.
Which leads to a question I often hear in Mexico: “Why don’t the gringos worry about their own problems instead of causing new ones for the rest of us?”
Amen.
Fred Reed, UNZ Review
Write Fred at jet.possum@gmail.com Put the letters pdq anywhere in the subject line to avoid autodeletion
Ayn Rand’s novella “Anthem” opens by foregrounding the triumph of the collective through the narrator’s struggle to express and justify his thoughts. In this world, there is no “I,” only the collective “we,” which has become synonymous with good. The novel opens,
“It is a sin to write this. It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. . . . And well we know that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.”
Only the “Council of Vocations” can approve such writing. The narrator, Equality 7-2521, struggles to conform even as he defies such rules: “We strive to be like all our brother men, for all men must be alike.” But he is not.
At six feet, Equality 7-2521 towers over other boys. His teacher warns, “There is evil in your bones.” In school, he is unhappy because “learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick.” How does he know? “The teachers told us so.”
Eventually, Equality 7-2521 tries to imitate the slow learners. But the teachers know, “and we were lashed more often than all the other children.” And when he turns fifteen, the Council of Vocations places him in the Home of the Street Sweepers, where he will have no more opportunities to display his “quick” mind. Equity achieved. [Source: Foundation for Economic Education]
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
I have been enthusiastically promoting Nicholas Wade’s long article on the origins of the COVID virus.
Wade compares the two common theories: (a) the “wet market” theory, that the virus jumped from bats, or from bats via some intermediate host, to humans at a live-animal market in Wuhan, China, and (b) the “lab escape” theory, that the virus originated in a lab, also in Wuhan, doing research into viruses.
Wade allows that we can’t say dispositively which theory is correct; but by a judicious and thoroughly-researched sifting of the facts we do know, he leaves his reader thinking that the lab escape theory is the more probable one.
I’ll confess some partiality here. I’m a major Wade fan. I read his articles in the New York Times for years, and I’ve reviewed at least three of his books, including his 2014 race-realist book A Troublesome Inheritance. I have some slight personal acquaintance with him, too; and yes, like me he’s an immigrant from Britain.
Well, this is a brilliant piece of science journalism; and I speak as a person who’s been reading science journalism since the Eisenhower administration. Wade might be wrong on the balance of probabilities—and the article where I found it, at the website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has a good argumentative comment thread—but for the sifting of facts and the weighing of probabilities, this piece is a classic. [The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan? by Nicholas Wade, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May 5, 2021]
That sifting, that weighing, that arguing, is science at its best. It doesn’t come easily to human beings. To quote myself
Scientific objectivity is a freakish, unnatural, and unpopular mode of thought, restricted to small cliques whom the generality of citizens regard with dislike and mistrust. There is probably a sizable segment in any population that believes scientists should be rounded up and killed.
We of that freakish brotherhood just turn away wearily when we hear some fool politician or pundit with a degree in Media Studies tell us to “follow the science!” Politics and political punditry are the last places to go to for scientific understanding. You need a guide who understands how long and grueling the path to scientific certainty is.
Nicholas Wade quotes Francis Bacon, grandfather of the Scientific Revolution, quote: “Truth is the daughter not of authority but time.” End quote. We don’t believe that the Earth goes round the Sun because Copernicus said so, although he did, or because Galileo agreed with him, although he did. We believe it because we have been persuaded by thousands of pieces of evidence accumulated over hundreds of years by legions of observers sifting, weighing, and arguing.
I should say, however, that prior to Wade’s article, the most striking piece I’d read on the origins of COVID was the one by Ron Unz at his own website in March this year, arguing a third possible origin for COVID. This is (c) the “American biowarfare” theory, that the virus was developed in our own labs then deliberately let loose in China by one of our intelligence agencies.
Ron’s article is almost as long as Nicholas Wade’s, and also comes with an argumentative comment thread—975 comments when I looked just now. There are of course all sorts of objections you can raise against it, although it’s highly probable your objection has already been posed in one of those 975.
What do I think of Ron’s theory? I wouldn’t rule it out, given the lawlessness and deep stupidity of our intelligence agencies. For sure, Ron makes as good a case for it as can be made.
And it is kind of … strange that other than China’s immediate neighbors, the second country to be seriously hit by COVID was Iran, bête noire of the neocons who run those agencies. Several senior Iranian officials died of COVID. Hmm.
However, I’m temperamentally inclined to believe that, while conspiracies and plots are glamorous, dramatic, and exciting to contemplate, carelessness and error are much bigger factors in human affairs. On those grounds, and having seen up close how things are done in China, I favor the lab escape theory as most probable.
Will Francis Bacon’s principle be vindicated? With the passing of enough time, shall we one day we may know the truth of the matter? I won’t be holding my breath. To either verify or decisively eliminate the lab-escape hypothesis, for example, we’d need to have a good look at the records of the Wuhan lab in late 2019 and early 2020, and have unsupervised interviews with relevant employees.
In communist China, that won’t happen. Those records have long since been reduced to their component molecules and the ashes dumped in the Mariana Trench; those employees, in the unlikely event they survived their interrogations by the secret police, are now employed at stone quarries on the Qinghai Plateau.
It’s coming up to fifty years ago since Lin Biao, who had been Mao Tse-tung’s right-hand man, disappeared from the scene and was declared to have been a counter-revolutionary traitor. Was he? Did he really die while trying to flee China? Why was he trying to flee? After fifty years, scholars are still arguing.
If the ChiCom regime collapses, we may get to learn something new about the origin of COVID. Unfortunately there are no signs of that happening. Right now, we just don’t know.
This topic has, though, generated some good deep public debate: not from the clown show of our national politics, of course, which is not capable of engaging with anything deeper than a kiddie pool, but from smart, sane, thoughtful inquirers like Nicholas Wade and Ron Unz. Thanks to them both for their work
The Biden administration’s push to dramatically increase tax rates on inherited wealth is running into some roadblocks with Democrats on Capitol Hill, potentially imperiling a key part of the president’s funding plan.” [Fox Business]
Hilarious. Democrats manipulate wealthy people into giving THEIR candidates money so they can turn us into a Communist country. When it comes time to do the work of turning us into a Communist country, the wealthy people say, “Wait a minute!”
The perils of contradictions. The leftists may have all the power right now … but they never had the brains.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Editor’s Note: My computer died two days ago. But, it has risen from the ashes like a Phoenix.
Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.”
George Orwell
The noose is dangling gently around our necks. Every day, they cinch it tighter. By the time we realize it’s strangling us, it will be too late.
Those who – gradually and gleefully – sacrifice their freedoms, their autonomy, their individuality, their livelihoods, and their relationships on the altar of the “common good” have forgotten this is the pattern followed by every totalitarian regime in history.
Everyone wonders how ordinary Germans could have been manipulated to participate or stand dumbstruck while their government was transformed into a genocidal juggernaut. This is how. Read Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler memoir to see how this can happen anywhere—including here.https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-9106533008329745&output=html&h=280&adk=1164625689&adf=182091728&pi=t.aa~a.372876087~i.14~rp.4&w=649&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1621350345&num_ads=1&rafmt=1&armr=3&sem=mc&pwprc=8684081392&psa=1&ad_type=text_image&format=649×280&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lewrockwell.com%2F2021%2F05%2Fno_author%2Fa-primer-for-the-propagandized-fear-is-the-mind-killer%2F&flash=0&fwr=0&pra=3&rh=163&rw=649&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&wgl=1&fa=27&adsid=ChAI8MuNhQYQ0YnV-fjOuMkNEkwAvRzVShi_WwsuYRqteEqNqilSc-4f49GtWvhhGv_FcVvNAHgfei7NVGBoh9ZrgaKkrVk8aQk9N64eLMlJQGf8S7_1v5Yw4wLEkX-8&uach=WyJBbmRyb2lkIiwiMTEiLCIiLCJTTS1UNzIwIiwiOTAuMC40NDMwLjIxMCIsW11d&dt=1621351002389&bpp=10&bdt=2125&idt=-M&shv=r20210511&cbv=%2Fr20190131&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3D7e035107d994f3bb%3AT%3D1621350979%3AS%3DALNI_MYgEGo5y5Acfwp_Nx3sood2nfQjEg&prev_fmts=0x0&nras=2&correlator=993426895268&frm=20&pv=1&ga_vid=1905934101.1599339146&ga_sid=1621351001&ga_hid=1166802542&ga_fc=0&u_tz=-240&u_his=1&u_java=0&u_h=1138&u_w=712&u_ah=1138&u_aw=712&u_cd=24&u_nplug=0&u_nmime=0&adx=16&ady=996&biw=712&bih=970&scr_x=0&scr_y=0&eid=31060005%2C31060957%2C31060840&oid=3&pvsid=3025049148244904&pem=653&eae=0&fc=1408&brdim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C712%2C0%2C712%2C970%2C712%2C970&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7Cs%7C&abl=NS&fu=128&bc=31&jar=2021-05-18-14&ifi=13&uci=a!d&btvi=1&fsb=1&xpc=xwpjIZRKDL&p=https%3A//www.lewrockwell.com&dtd=70
Everyone wonders how Russians could have permitted and even zealously reported fellow citizens for imprisonment and execution under Article 58, the penal code invented to incarcerate anyone who dared express the slightest whisper of noncompliance under Stalin’s homicidal state. This is how. Read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s meticulously documented The Gulag Archipelago to witness this progression of authoritarian lunacy.
Everyone wonders how Hutus could have suddenly started axing their Tutsi neighbors to death after being inundated with waves of anti-Tutsi propaganda from Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines. Read Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda.
The list goes on. And on. And on. From Machiavelli’s The Prince to Étienne de la Boetie’s The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude to Edward Herman’s and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent (and accompanying documentary) to BBC’s The Century of the Self, mechanisms of mass control have been chronicled for millennia.
George Orwell wrote,
As far as the mass of the people go, the extraordinary swings of opinion which occur nowadays, the emotions which can be turned on and off like a tap, are the result of newspaper and radio hypnosis.”
Can you imagine what master propagandist Edward Bernays would have done with access to today’s mainstream media conglomerate combined with the global surveillance infrastructure of Big Tech? And you really think that’s not happening now—with another century of psychological, neurological, and technological research under their belts?https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-9106533008329745&output=html&h=280&adk=1164625689&adf=2506718682&pi=t.aa~a.372876087~i.26~rp.4&w=649&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1621350345&num_ads=1&rafmt=1&armr=3&sem=mc&pwprc=8684081392&psa=1&ad_type=text_image&format=649×280&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lewrockwell.com%2F2021%2F05%2Fno_author%2Fa-primer-for-the-propagandized-fear-is-the-mind-killer%2F&flash=0&fwr=0&pra=3&rh=163&rw=649&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&wgl=1&fa=27&adsid=ChAI8MuNhQYQ0YnV-fjOuMkNEkwAvRzVShi_WwsuYRqteEqNqilSc-4f49GtWvhhGv_FcVvNAHgfei7NVGBoh9ZrgaKkrVk8aQk9N64eLMlJQGf8S7_1v5Yw4wLEkX-8&uach=WyJBbmRyb2lkIiwiMTEiLCIiLCJTTS1UNzIwIiwiOTAuMC40NDMwLjIxMCIsW11d&dt=1621351002389&bpp=4&bdt=2125&idt=-M&shv=r20210511&cbv=%2Fr20190131&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3D7e035107d994f3bb%3AT%3D1621350979%3AS%3DALNI_MYgEGo5y5Acfwp_Nx3sood2nfQjEg&prev_fmts=0x0%2C649x280&nras=3&correlator=993426895268&frm=20&pv=1&ga_vid=1905934101.1599339146&ga_sid=1621351001&ga_hid=1166802542&ga_fc=0&u_tz=-240&u_his=1&u_java=0&u_h=1138&u_w=712&u_ah=1138&u_aw=712&u_cd=24&u_nplug=0&u_nmime=0&adx=16&ady=1884&biw=712&bih=970&scr_x=0&scr_y=0&eid=31060005%2C31060957%2C31060840&oid=3&pvsid=3025049148244904&pem=653&eae=0&fc=1408&brdim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C712%2C0%2C712%2C970%2C712%2C970&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7Cs%7C&abl=NS&fu=128&bc=31&jar=2021-05-18-14&ifi=14&uci=a!e&btvi=2&fsb=1&xpc=LxceexEPLe&p=https%3A//www.lewrockwell.com&dtd=96
The present ability to curate reality and coerce obedience is unprecedented, far beyond what Orwell envisioned in 1984, Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, Huxley in Brave New World, and Burgess in A Clockwork Orange.
A textbook example of Problem Reaction Solution, the current tsunami of worldwide hysteria is the latest and potentially most threatening example of mass control in history.
The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining—despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative.
April’s 4.2 percent past year increase in the Consumer Price Index is not likely to dissuade the Federal Reserve from continuing its policy of near-zero interest rates. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell believes the rising prices are just a temporary phenomenon caused by the ending of lockdowns releasing pent-up consumer demand.
Powell may be right that the ending of lockdowns would inevitably be accompanied by a rise in prices. However, this is just the latest reason the Fed has given for putting off increasing interest rates. Powell does not want to admit that the real reason the Fed will continue to keep rates low is that increasing rates will cause the federal government’s interest payments to rise to unsustainable levels.
One way the Fed increases the money supply — and thus lowers interest rates — is by purchasing US Treasury securities. These purchases increase demand for US government debt, keeping government’s borrowing costs low. An expansionary monetary policy thus enables increased federal spending and deficits. Since the lockdowns, the Fed has worked overtime to monetize federal debt, doubling its holdings of Treasury securities.https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/ads?client=ca-pub-9106533008329745&output=html&h=280&adk=879074345&adf=3530780641&pi=t.aa~a.372876087~i.12~rp.4&w=649&fwrn=4&fwrnh=100&lmt=1621346711&num_ads=1&rafmt=1&armr=3&sem=mc&pwprc=8684081392&psa=1&ad_type=text_image&format=649×280&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lewrockwell.com%2F2021%2F05%2Fron-paul%2Fbig-government-and-big-inflation%2F&flash=0&fwr=0&pra=3&rh=163&rw=649&rpe=1&resp_fmts=3&wgl=1&fa=27&adsid=ChAI8MuNhQYQ0YnV-fjOuMkNEkwAvRzVSkrGd6X0eGVC8bTZJUGBcxfSpOk6U16NjDVdrBKA46iBmcFX8OVbYO59027gCmTBqDjWrzfnG0guj4AubsaRAzCBKCcmUj4r&uach=WyJBbmRyb2lkIiwiMTEiLCIiLCJTTS1UNzIwIiwiOTAuMC40NDMwLjIxMCIsW11d&dt=1621349967275&bpp=14&bdt=6480&idt=-M&shv=r20210511&cbv=%2Fr20190131&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie=ID%3D7e035107d994f3bb%3AT%3D1619189990%3AS%3DALNI_MYyu5F4Vm53BYKijby3yI8OwOAC-w&prev_fmts=0x0&nras=2&correlator=7373187450034&frm=20&pv=1&ga_vid=1905934101.1599339146&ga_sid=1621349964&ga_hid=931902315&ga_fc=0&u_tz=-240&u_his=1&u_java=0&u_h=1138&u_w=712&u_ah=1138&u_aw=712&u_cd=24&u_nplug=0&u_nmime=0&adx=16&ady=1016&biw=712&bih=970&scr_x=0&scr_y=0&eid=42530671%2C31060005&oid=3&pvsid=2588426869731136&pem=653&eae=0&fc=1408&brdim=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C712%2C0%2C712%2C970%2C712%2C970&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7Cs%7C&abl=NS&fu=128&bc=31&jar=2021-05-18-14&ifi=13&uci=a!d&btvi=1&fsb=1&xpc=opJFF5PPsy&p=https%3A//www.lewrockwell.com&dtd=57
A Truth in Accounting report from April concluded the real federal debt is 123 trillion dollars — over four times larger than the 28 trillion dollars “official” debt. The higher debt calculation includes the federal government’s unfunded liabilities. The biggest unfunded liabilities are the 55 trillion dollars in promised but unfunded Medicare benefits and the 41 trillion dollars in promised but unfunded Social Security benefits.
Congress could transition away from entitlement and welfare programs without harming current or soon-to-be beneficiaries by cutting spending on militarism and corporate welfare. Part of the savings from these cuts could be used to pay down the debt, and part could be used to provide payments for current and soon-to-be beneficiaries of government programs while we transition to a free market.
Unfortunately, there is not much appetite in Congress for spending cuts. The main Democratic criticisms of President Biden’s 1.52 trillion dollars budget, which increases spending by 8.4 percent, are that Biden is not proposing bigger increases in spending and debt, or in taxes on “the rich.” Biden’s budget increases are in addition to the trillions in other spending Biden is pursuing, including related to Covid, infrastructure, and his “American Families Plan.”
Republicans are making obligatory attacks on Biden’s spending, while also attacking Biden for increasing military spending to “only” 753 billion dollars. Republican complaints about Biden’s big spending ring hollow given their support for Presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush’s spending increases and Republicans’ proposals to spend billions on infrastructure.
Some conservatives have even embraced the madness of Modern Monetary Theory. These conservatives are urging people to stop worrying about spending and debt and instead figure out how to use Fed-financed government spending to advance conservative ends.
The refusal of Congress to cut spending means the Fed will keep increasing its balance sheet in an effort to monetize skyrocketing debt. Eventually, the increasing debt and inflation will lead to a major economic meltdown. The meltdown will likely include a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status.
The only way to avoid the crash is to spread the truth among enough people to force Congress to reverse course. Early steps in reversing course are blocking Biden’s big spending plans and passing Audit the Fed so the American people can finally know the truth about the Federal Reserve’s actions.
Ron Paul
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 
