Keynes Must Die
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
May 23, 2016
In 2012, Barack Obama warned that the United States would fall into a depression if Ron Paul’s plan to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget were enacted.
Wait, I beg your pardon. It wasn’t Obama who warned that budget cuts would lead to a depression.
It was Mitt Romney.
Romney went on to become the nominee of the self-described free-market party.
An ideological rout is complete when both sides of respectable opinion take its basic ideas for granted. That’s how complete the Keynesian victory has been.
In fact, Keynesianism had swept the boards a decade before Romney was even born.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, the seminal treatise by John Maynard Keynes, appeared during the Great Depression, a time when a great many people were beginning to doubt the merits and resilience of capitalism. It was a work of economic theory, but its boosters insisted that it also offered practical answers to urgent, contemporary questions like: how had the Depression occurred, and why was it lasting so long?
The answer to both questions, according to Keynes and his followers, was the same: not enough government intervention.
Now as Murray N. Rothbard showed in his 1963 book America’s Great Depression, and as Lionel Robbins and others had written at the time, the Depression had certainly not been caused by too little government intervention. It was caused by the world’s government-privileged central banks, and it was prolonged by the various quack remedies that governments kept trotting out.
But that wasn’t a thesis governments were eager to hear. Government officials were rather more attracted to the message Keynes was sending them: the free market can lead to depressions, and prosperity requires more government spending and intervention.
Let’s say a brief word about the book that launched this ideological revolution. If I may put it kindly, the General Theory was not the kind of text one might expect to sweep the boards.
Paul Samuelson, who went on to become one of the most notable American popularizers of Keynesianism, admitted in a candid moment that when he first read the book, he “did not at all understand what it was about.” “I think I am giving away no secrets,” he went on, “when I solemnly aver – upon the basis of vivid personal recollection – that no one else in Cambridge, Massachusetts, really knew what it was all about for some twelve to eighteen months after publication.”
The General Theory, he said, is a badly written book, poorly organized; any layman who, beguiled by the author’s previous reputation bought the book, was cheated of his five shillings. It is not well suited for classroom use. It is arrogant, bad-tempered, polemical, and not overly generous in its acknowledgments. It abounds in mares’ nests and confusions.… In short, it is a work of genius.
Murray N. Rothbard, who after the death of Ludwig von Mises was considered the dean of the Austrian School of economics, wrote several major economic critiques of Keynes, along with a lengthy and revealing biographical essay about the man. The first of these critiques came in the form of an essay written when Murray was just 21 years old: “Spotlight on Keynesian Economics.” The second appeared in his 1962 treatise Man, Economy and State, and the third as a chapter in his book For a New Liberty.
Murray minced no words, referring to Keynesianism as “the most successful and pernicious hoax in the history of economic thought.” “All of the Keynesian thinking,” he added, “is a tissue of distortions, fallacies, and drastically unrealistic assumptions.”
Beyond the problems with the Keynesian system were the unfortunate traits of Keynes himself. I will let Murray describe them to you:
The first was his overweening egotism, which assured him that he could handle all intellectual problems quickly and accurately and led him to scorn any general principles that might curb his unbridled ego. The second was his strong sense that he was born into, and destined to be a leader of, Great Britain’s ruling elite….
The third element was his deep hatred and contempt for the values and virtues of the bourgeoisie, for conventional morality, for savings and thrift, and for the basic institutions of family life.
While a student at Cambridge University, Keynes belonged to an exclusive and secretive group called the Apostles. This membership fed his egotism and his contempt for others. He wrote in a private letter, “Is it monomania – this colossal moral superiority that we feel? I get the feeling that most of the rest [of the world outside the Apostles] never see anything at all – too stupid or too wicked.”
As a young man, Keynes and his friends became what he himself described as “immoralists.” In a 1938 paper called “My Early Beliefs,” he wrote:
We entirely repudiated a personal liability on us to obey general rules. We claimed the right to judge every individual case on its merits, and the wisdom to do so successfully. This was a very important part of our faith, violently and aggressively held, and for the outer world it was our most obvious and dangerous characteristic. We repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions and traditional wisdom. We were, that is to say, in the strict sense of the term, immoralists.
Keynes was 55 years old when he delivered that paper. And even at that advanced stage of his life he could affirm that immoralism is “still my religion under the surface.… I remain and always will remain an immoralist.”
In economics, Keynes exhibited the same kind of approach he had taken toward philosophy and life in general. “I am afraid of ‘principle,’” he told a parliamentary committee in 1930. That, of course, is the attitude of anyone who craves influence and the exercise of power; principle would only get in the way of these things.
Thus, Keynes supported free trade, then turned on a dime in 1931 and became a protectionist, then during World War II favored free trade again. As Murray puts it, “Never did any soul-searching or even hesitation hobble his lightning-fast changes.”
The General Theory broke down the world’s population into several groups, each with its own characteristics. Here Keynes was able to vent his lifelong hatreds.
First, there was the great mass of consumers, dumb and robotic, whose consumption decisions were fixed and determined by outside forces, such that Keynes could reduce them to a “consumption function.”
Then there was a subset of consumers, the bourgeois savers, whom Keynes especially despised. In the past, such people had been praised for their thrift, which made possible the investment that raised living standards. But the Keynesian system severed the link between savings and investment, claiming that the two had nothing to do with each other. Savings were, in fact, a drag on the system, Keynes said, and could generate recessions and depressions.
Thus, did Keynes dethrone the bourgeoisie and their traditional claim to moral respectability. Thrift was foolishness, not wisdom.
The third group was the investors. Here Keynes was somewhat more favorable. The activities of these people could not be reduced to a mathematical function. They were dynamic and free. Unfortunately, they were also given to wild, irrational swings in behavior and outlook. These irrational swings set the economy on a roller coaster.
And now we arrive at a fourth and final group. This group is supremely rational, economically knowledgeable, and indispensable to economic stability. This group can override the foolish decisions of the others and keep the economy from falling into depressions or inflationary excess.
You probably won’t be shocked to learn that the far-seeing wizards who comprise Keynes’s fourth group are government officials.
To understand exactly what Keynes expected government officials to do, let’s say a brief word about the economic system Keynes developed in the General Theory. His primary claim is that the market economy is given to a chronic state of underemployment of resources. If it is not to descend into and remain mired in depression, it requires the wise supervision and interventions of the political class.
Again, we may safely reject the possibility that the political classes of the Western world embraced Keynesianism because politicians had made a profound study of the works of Keynes. To the contrary, Keynesianism appealed to two overriding motivations of government officials: their need to appear indispensable, and their urge to wield power. Keynesianism dangled these ideas before the political class, who in turn responded like salivating dogs. There wasn’t anything more romantic or dignified to it than that, I am sorry to report.
By the early 1970s, however, Keynesian economics had suffered a devastating blow. Or, to adopt Murray’s more colorful phrase, it had become “dead from the neck up.”
Keynesianism could not account for the stagflation, or inflationary recession, that the U.S. experienced in the ’70s.
It was supposed to be the role of the Keynesian planners to steer the economy in such a way as to avoid the twin threats of an overheating, inflationary economy and an underperforming, depressed economy. During a boom, Keynesian planners were to “sop up excess purchasing power” by raising taxes and taking spending out of the economy. During a depression, Keynesians were to lower taxes and increase government spending in order to inject spendinginto the economy.
But in an inflationary recession, this entire approach had to be thrown out. The inflationary part meant spending had to be reduced, but the recession part meant spending had to be increased. How, Murray asked, could the Keynesian planners do both at once?
They couldn’t, of course, which is why Keynesianism began to wane in the 1970s, though it has made an unwelcome comeback since the 2008 financial crisis.
Murray had dismantled the Keynesian system on a more fundamental level in Man, Economy, and State. He showed that the relationships between large economic aggregates that Keynesians posited, and which were essential to their system, did not hold after all. And he exploded the major concepts employed in the Keynesian analysis: the consumption function, the multiplier, and the accelerator, for starters.
Now, why does any of this matter today?
The errors of Keynes have empowered sociopathic political classes all over the world and deprived the world of the economic progress we would otherwise have enjoyed.
Japan is a great example of Keynesian devastation: the Nikkei 225, which hit 38,500 in 1990, has never managed to reach even half that level since. A quarter century ago the index of industrial production in Japan was at 96.8; after 25 years of aggressive Keynesian policy that gave Japan the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the world, the index of industrial production is…still 96.8.
The United States, meanwhile, has had sixteen years of fiscal stimulus or preposterously low-interest rates, all of which Keynesians have cheered. The result? Two million fewer breadwinner jobs than when Bill Clinton left office.
No amount of stimulus ever seems to be quite enough. And when the stimulus fails, the blinkered Keynesian establishment can only think to double down, never to question the policy itself.
But there is an alternative, and it’s the one Murray N. Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises championed: the Austrian School of economics and its analysis of the pure market economy.
Against the entire edifice of establishment opinion, the Mises Institute stands as a rebuke. To the dissidents, to the intellectually curious, to those inclined to be skeptical of so-called experts who have brought us nothing but ruin, the Mises Institute has been a beacon.
We have trained an entire generation of Austrian scholars, journalists, and financial professionals. We put in the hard work so that when a catastrophe like the 2008 crisis occurred, an Austrian response was ready.
But with your help, we can do so much more. The Keynesians are pretending they have everything under control, but we know that’s a fantasy. An even greater opportunity than 2008 awaits us, and we want to help guide public opinion and train a cadre of bright young scholars for that day. With your help, we can, at last, awaken from the Keynesian nightmare.
As the Korean translator of an Austrian text put it, “Keynes must die so the economy may live.” With your help, we can hasten that glorious day.
Monday, May 23, 2016
Monday, May 9, 2016
What Happened To The Revolution?
What Happened to the Revolution?
The socialist philosophy has at its core the desire to run people’s lives. It is by design an authoritarian system.
Ron Paul | Infowars.com - May 9, 2016
In a recent interview I was asked why Bernie Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist” had seemingly attracted so much support among young people. In fact polls suggest Sanders is the most popular candidate among people aged 18-29, and 51 percent of that same age group appears fed up with “capitalism in its current form,” according to a recent Harvard study.
It was just four years ago that so many young people turned out to hear and support my message of personal liberty, non-aggression, and non-intervention at home and abroad. I was thrilled that so many young people were attracted to a candidate whose main message was “I don’t want to run your life.”
Socialism, of course, is the opposite philosophy. The socialist philosophy has at its core the desire to run people’s lives. It is by design an authoritarian system. Who would willingly give up so much of their own property to the state to redistribute to others? That is where the use of government force comes into play. Socialism tells how much of your money you can keep, how you can spend it, if you can spend it, which of your personal habits must be modified in order to qualify for your “free” healthcare, what course of study you must pursue to qualify for your “free” education, and so on.
But we also know the false promises can be very seductive. Socialism preys on that human fault that would like to have something for nothing. You deserve an education, the socialist tells young people, so I will give you one for free. He never tells the student that he will pay for that education many times over in the hidden tax called inflation. Or the student may “pay” for that education with unemployment after college as his potential employer was forced to shut down over the high taxes required to pay for all the things the socialist promises.
So am I surprised that it seems so many young people have fallen for the seductive lies of socialism? Well I don’t really believe they have. They are frustrated by a system they are told is capitalism. They are angry over the same things I have been talking about for years.
Our current system is far from the free-markets that we in the Austrian school of economics espouse. We have a system of cronyism, corporatism, inflationism, regulated and managed trade to the benefit of special interests, and the criminality of central banking. Unfortunately because of our faulty and biased education system and the relentless propaganda of the mainstream media, many young people are taught that the mess they see all around them is all caused by “capitalism.”
Politics is about getting people excited about a candidate. Ours is a much longer effort. The young generation that first attended my rallies in 2007 is by now in its mid-20s. They are raising a new generation that in many cases will be home-schooled and outside the propaganda machine that is modern public education. They understand that the real freedom revolution will not be won at the ballot box, but in the battleground of ideas. They continue to learn the freedom philosophy and they support the various educational organizations that provide the intellectual ammunition for our fight. I am more optimistic than ever that our message is taking hold and growing deep roots. Ideas really can change the world.
Contrary to what many would like us to believe, the Freedom Revolution is alive and well!
The socialist philosophy has at its core the desire to run people’s lives. It is by design an authoritarian system.
Ron Paul | Infowars.com - May 9, 2016
In a recent interview I was asked why Bernie Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist” had seemingly attracted so much support among young people. In fact polls suggest Sanders is the most popular candidate among people aged 18-29, and 51 percent of that same age group appears fed up with “capitalism in its current form,” according to a recent Harvard study.
It was just four years ago that so many young people turned out to hear and support my message of personal liberty, non-aggression, and non-intervention at home and abroad. I was thrilled that so many young people were attracted to a candidate whose main message was “I don’t want to run your life.”
Socialism, of course, is the opposite philosophy. The socialist philosophy has at its core the desire to run people’s lives. It is by design an authoritarian system. Who would willingly give up so much of their own property to the state to redistribute to others? That is where the use of government force comes into play. Socialism tells how much of your money you can keep, how you can spend it, if you can spend it, which of your personal habits must be modified in order to qualify for your “free” healthcare, what course of study you must pursue to qualify for your “free” education, and so on.
But we also know the false promises can be very seductive. Socialism preys on that human fault that would like to have something for nothing. You deserve an education, the socialist tells young people, so I will give you one for free. He never tells the student that he will pay for that education many times over in the hidden tax called inflation. Or the student may “pay” for that education with unemployment after college as his potential employer was forced to shut down over the high taxes required to pay for all the things the socialist promises.
So am I surprised that it seems so many young people have fallen for the seductive lies of socialism? Well I don’t really believe they have. They are frustrated by a system they are told is capitalism. They are angry over the same things I have been talking about for years.
Our current system is far from the free-markets that we in the Austrian school of economics espouse. We have a system of cronyism, corporatism, inflationism, regulated and managed trade to the benefit of special interests, and the criminality of central banking. Unfortunately because of our faulty and biased education system and the relentless propaganda of the mainstream media, many young people are taught that the mess they see all around them is all caused by “capitalism.”
Politics is about getting people excited about a candidate. Ours is a much longer effort. The young generation that first attended my rallies in 2007 is by now in its mid-20s. They are raising a new generation that in many cases will be home-schooled and outside the propaganda machine that is modern public education. They understand that the real freedom revolution will not be won at the ballot box, but in the battleground of ideas. They continue to learn the freedom philosophy and they support the various educational organizations that provide the intellectual ammunition for our fight. I am more optimistic than ever that our message is taking hold and growing deep roots. Ideas really can change the world.
Contrary to what many would like us to believe, the Freedom Revolution is alive and well!
Thursday, May 5, 2016
This Would Be A Dream Come True
Ron Paul, Secretary of State
Neocons in dire fear Paul will shut down Pax Americana
Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com - May 5, 2016
On Wednesday, the neocon journalist Jennifer Rubin tweeted under the hashtag #thingstoworryabout. She is afraid Ron Paul will be selected as Secretary of State in a Trump administration.
Rubin, described as a “conservative” journalist, works for The Washington Post where she espouses the neocon line on foreign policy. As an advocate for “American exceptionalism,” she supports military intervention and the never-ending war on terror.
So far, Donald Trump has not said he will appoint Ron Paul as Secretary of State.
It’s a great idea, though.
As Secretary of State, Paul would rollback Pax Americana and pursue a policy of noninterventionism. He would follow George Washington’s advice and oppose entangling alliances with other nations and wars of aggression. Paul would bring the troops home from hundreds of US bases in Korea, Japan, Europe and elsewhere around the world. He would shut down foreign aid. He rejects the dangerous confrontation with Iran, the embargo against Cuba, and military actions elsewhere. He advocates ending US participation in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Free trade with all and entangling alliances with none has always been the best policy in dealing with other countries on the world stage,” he writes. “This is the policy of friendship, freedom and non-interventionism and yet people wrongly attack this philosophy as isolationist. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“Truly conservative in the sense of the words ‘to conserve our true values’ means being serious about taking our oath of office to the Constitution,” Paul writes. “Limit the government’s size, the spending, the deficits, and the exposure around the world. If the US is as great as I believe it should be and can be and has been, we will have influence around the world. We cannot spread our greatness and our goodness through the barrel of a gun. It fails because it destroys our goodness by doing it that way.”
Ron Paul opposes globalist trade treaties and organizations that diminish US sovereignty. He stands against the United Nations, NATO, the International Criminal Court, the Law of the Sea Treaty, the World Trade Organization, and the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. He opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
“There’s nobody in this world that could possibly attack us today… we could defend this country with a few good submarines. If anybody dared touch us we could wipe any country off of the face of the earth within hours. And here we are, so intimidated and so insecure and we’re acting like such bullies that we have to attack third-world nations that have no military and have no weapons,” he told The Washington Post in 2007.
“Look, we are bankrupt as a nation,” Paul explained during his bid for the presidency. “Our army marches in Chinese boots, while our air force flies on Saudi oil. We cannot continue to enforce a Pax Americana while our southern border allows illegals and terrorists to pour into our country. And we certainly shouldn’t be footing the defense bill for countries with whom our industries compete in the global marketplace. Bring our soldiers home. Secure America first.”
Neocons are in dire fear Trump will institute Paul’s libertarian values on foreign policy and shut down the neocon war machine. That’s why they are scrambling to undermine his presidential bid. That’s why they proposed a third party running Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio.
Neocons in dire fear Paul will shut down Pax Americana
Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com - May 5, 2016
On Wednesday, the neocon journalist Jennifer Rubin tweeted under the hashtag #thingstoworryabout. She is afraid Ron Paul will be selected as Secretary of State in a Trump administration.
Rubin, described as a “conservative” journalist, works for The Washington Post where she espouses the neocon line on foreign policy. As an advocate for “American exceptionalism,” she supports military intervention and the never-ending war on terror.
So far, Donald Trump has not said he will appoint Ron Paul as Secretary of State.
It’s a great idea, though.
As Secretary of State, Paul would rollback Pax Americana and pursue a policy of noninterventionism. He would follow George Washington’s advice and oppose entangling alliances with other nations and wars of aggression. Paul would bring the troops home from hundreds of US bases in Korea, Japan, Europe and elsewhere around the world. He would shut down foreign aid. He rejects the dangerous confrontation with Iran, the embargo against Cuba, and military actions elsewhere. He advocates ending US participation in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Free trade with all and entangling alliances with none has always been the best policy in dealing with other countries on the world stage,” he writes. “This is the policy of friendship, freedom and non-interventionism and yet people wrongly attack this philosophy as isolationist. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“Truly conservative in the sense of the words ‘to conserve our true values’ means being serious about taking our oath of office to the Constitution,” Paul writes. “Limit the government’s size, the spending, the deficits, and the exposure around the world. If the US is as great as I believe it should be and can be and has been, we will have influence around the world. We cannot spread our greatness and our goodness through the barrel of a gun. It fails because it destroys our goodness by doing it that way.”
Ron Paul opposes globalist trade treaties and organizations that diminish US sovereignty. He stands against the United Nations, NATO, the International Criminal Court, the Law of the Sea Treaty, the World Trade Organization, and the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. He opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
“There’s nobody in this world that could possibly attack us today… we could defend this country with a few good submarines. If anybody dared touch us we could wipe any country off of the face of the earth within hours. And here we are, so intimidated and so insecure and we’re acting like such bullies that we have to attack third-world nations that have no military and have no weapons,” he told The Washington Post in 2007.
“Look, we are bankrupt as a nation,” Paul explained during his bid for the presidency. “Our army marches in Chinese boots, while our air force flies on Saudi oil. We cannot continue to enforce a Pax Americana while our southern border allows illegals and terrorists to pour into our country. And we certainly shouldn’t be footing the defense bill for countries with whom our industries compete in the global marketplace. Bring our soldiers home. Secure America first.”
Neocons are in dire fear Trump will institute Paul’s libertarian values on foreign policy and shut down the neocon war machine. That’s why they are scrambling to undermine his presidential bid. That’s why they proposed a third party running Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
What Are We Still Not Being Told About Chernobly
On the 30th Anniversary of Chernobyl, Here’s What We Are Still Not Being Told
Devastation continues decades later
Claire Bernish | Anti Media - April 27, 2016
On the 30th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe yet, a new report shows radioactive contamination from the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl in Ukraine still lingers in startlingly large amounts across the border in neighboring Belarus.
In an exclusive report by the Associated Press, fresh milk from a Belarusian dairy farm contained a radioactive isotope, traceable to the Chernobyl disaster, at “levels 10 times higher than the nation’s food safety limits” — thirty years after the accident occurred.
Though the AP turned to a laboratory to test the milk, dairy farmer Nikolai Chubenok called the results “impossible.”
“There is no danger,” Chubenok asserted to AP journalists at his farm, just 28 miles from the site of the 1986 explosion and meltdown. “How can you be afraid of radiation?”
Though Chubenok and the Belarusian government — itself notoriously authoritarian and intent on denying the dangers still present — might insist on the area’s safety, other reports from doctors and scientists paint the landscape in a vastly different light.
Belarusian milk, though indicative, is inadequate in illustrating the astronomical devastation of the Chernobyl legacy.
In 1996, ten years after the explosions, meltdown, and raging nuclear fires at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated the disaster had spewed “400 times more radioactive material into the Earth’s atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”
Lichens and mushrooms so thoroughly absorbed this radioactivity, in particular radioactive cesium, that reindeer over 1,000 miles away in Norway — where the meat is eaten — remain unfit for human consumption. Wormwood Forest, near the accident site, stands as an eerie monument of contamination with dead trees turned ginger-colored. Mass evacuations of humans from the areas surrounding Chernobyl naturally led to an explosion in wildlife numbers in species such as boars and wolves. And, as scientists discovered in 2011, birds displayed 5 percent smaller brains than average due to radioactivity lingering in the atmosphere.
Estimating the total number of human casualties resulting from the spectacularly failed foray into nuclear energy has largely been an exercise in futility. Greenpeace estimated ten years ago the total number of cancer cases resulting from Chernobyl would top 250,000 — with around 93,000 of those being fatal. Based on a Belarusian study, Greenpeace surmised 60,000 people had perished in Russia and potentially an additional 140,000 in the Ukraine and Belarus would die directly as a result of Chernobyl radioactive contamination. That study challenged the lowball estimate of 4,000 total deaths proffered by the United Nations in 2005 — a figure eventually abandoned once it realized “unacceptable uncertainties” made quantifying fatalities too tricky.
As Timothy A. Mousseau wrote for U.S. News & World Report, “in the past decade population biologists have made considerable progress in documenting how radioactivity affects plants, animals, and microbes […]
“Our studies provide new fundamental insights about consequences of chronic, multigenerational exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation … The cumulative effects of these injuries result in lower population sizes and reduced biodiversity in high-radiation areas.
“Radiation exposure has caused genetic damage and increased mutation rates in many organisms in the Chernobyl region. So far, we have found little convincing evidence that many organisms there are evolving to become more resistant to radiation.”
In myriad ways, the Chernobyl catastrophe earned the distinction of being a darkly pivotal moment in history — not only did world perception of nuclear power drastically change, but an unsuccessful attempt by government to downplay the extent of the accident is widely believed to have cemented the downfall of the Soviet regime.
Though the devastation at Fukushima often earns comparisons to Chernobyl, the latter still stands dubiously as the worst civic nuclear calamity in history. Thirty years after Chernobyl became a household name, its impacts are still experienced on an eye-opening scale.
Perhaps, when considering both Chernobyl and Fukushima, it’s imperative we ask whether risks of potentially devastating consequences resultant of human error or technical failure could possibly be worth our continued attempts to harness nuclear energy — particularly when advances in solar and wind could make the long-term ‘experiment’ technologically and critically obsolete.
Devastation continues decades later
Claire Bernish | Anti Media - April 27, 2016
On the 30th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe yet, a new report shows radioactive contamination from the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl in Ukraine still lingers in startlingly large amounts across the border in neighboring Belarus.
In an exclusive report by the Associated Press, fresh milk from a Belarusian dairy farm contained a radioactive isotope, traceable to the Chernobyl disaster, at “levels 10 times higher than the nation’s food safety limits” — thirty years after the accident occurred.
Though the AP turned to a laboratory to test the milk, dairy farmer Nikolai Chubenok called the results “impossible.”
“There is no danger,” Chubenok asserted to AP journalists at his farm, just 28 miles from the site of the 1986 explosion and meltdown. “How can you be afraid of radiation?”
Though Chubenok and the Belarusian government — itself notoriously authoritarian and intent on denying the dangers still present — might insist on the area’s safety, other reports from doctors and scientists paint the landscape in a vastly different light.
Belarusian milk, though indicative, is inadequate in illustrating the astronomical devastation of the Chernobyl legacy.
In 1996, ten years after the explosions, meltdown, and raging nuclear fires at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated the disaster had spewed “400 times more radioactive material into the Earth’s atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”
Lichens and mushrooms so thoroughly absorbed this radioactivity, in particular radioactive cesium, that reindeer over 1,000 miles away in Norway — where the meat is eaten — remain unfit for human consumption. Wormwood Forest, near the accident site, stands as an eerie monument of contamination with dead trees turned ginger-colored. Mass evacuations of humans from the areas surrounding Chernobyl naturally led to an explosion in wildlife numbers in species such as boars and wolves. And, as scientists discovered in 2011, birds displayed 5 percent smaller brains than average due to radioactivity lingering in the atmosphere.
Estimating the total number of human casualties resulting from the spectacularly failed foray into nuclear energy has largely been an exercise in futility. Greenpeace estimated ten years ago the total number of cancer cases resulting from Chernobyl would top 250,000 — with around 93,000 of those being fatal. Based on a Belarusian study, Greenpeace surmised 60,000 people had perished in Russia and potentially an additional 140,000 in the Ukraine and Belarus would die directly as a result of Chernobyl radioactive contamination. That study challenged the lowball estimate of 4,000 total deaths proffered by the United Nations in 2005 — a figure eventually abandoned once it realized “unacceptable uncertainties” made quantifying fatalities too tricky.
As Timothy A. Mousseau wrote for U.S. News & World Report, “in the past decade population biologists have made considerable progress in documenting how radioactivity affects plants, animals, and microbes […]
“Our studies provide new fundamental insights about consequences of chronic, multigenerational exposure to low-dose ionizing radiation … The cumulative effects of these injuries result in lower population sizes and reduced biodiversity in high-radiation areas.
“Radiation exposure has caused genetic damage and increased mutation rates in many organisms in the Chernobyl region. So far, we have found little convincing evidence that many organisms there are evolving to become more resistant to radiation.”
In myriad ways, the Chernobyl catastrophe earned the distinction of being a darkly pivotal moment in history — not only did world perception of nuclear power drastically change, but an unsuccessful attempt by government to downplay the extent of the accident is widely believed to have cemented the downfall of the Soviet regime.
Though the devastation at Fukushima often earns comparisons to Chernobyl, the latter still stands dubiously as the worst civic nuclear calamity in history. Thirty years after Chernobyl became a household name, its impacts are still experienced on an eye-opening scale.
Perhaps, when considering both Chernobyl and Fukushima, it’s imperative we ask whether risks of potentially devastating consequences resultant of human error or technical failure could possibly be worth our continued attempts to harness nuclear energy — particularly when advances in solar and wind could make the long-term ‘experiment’ technologically and critically obsolete.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Monroe Doctrine Now The Obama Doctrine
Monroe Doctrine now the Obama Doctrine
CIA, NSA, State Dept. and Pentagon actively work to oust leaders in Latin America
Wayne Madsen | Infowars.com - April 27, 2016
Long discredited, the Monroe Doctrine, a policy set forth by President James Monroe that stipulates that the Western Hemisphere is America’s backyard over which it exercises complete tutelage, has been dusted off by Barack Obama.
The neo-Monroe Doctrine, which can be called the Obama Doctrine, has seen the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, State Department, and the Pentagon actively work to oust progressive leaders from power in Latin America.
The first leader to suffer under the Obama Doctrine was Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, ousted in a 2009 “constitutional coup” personally approved by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Moreover, Clinton’s close friend, lawyer Lanny Davis, began lobbying in Washington for the new military junta-led government.
Next in line for ouster was Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, a former Roman Catholic bishop and supporter of Marxist “liberation theology” within the Catholic Church. In 2012, Lugo was impeached by right-wingers in the Paraguayan legislature and removed from office.
Next came Argentina, where neo-fascist Mauricio Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires, defeated progressive Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner protege Daniel Scioli is a too-close-for-comfort 51.34% to 48.66% election held on November 22, 2015. The election was marred by reports of election fraud in Buenos Aires, Macri’s home turf. The United States is the world’s leader in corrupt elections, having refined the ability to purge voters’ rolls, flip votes on machines, miscount ballots, and generally confuse prospective voters with closed polling places and so-called “provisional ballots.”
Venezuela followed on December 6, 2015, when the U.S.-backed rightist opposition won control over the National Assembly. The rightists immediately commenced procedures to remove progressive socialist President Nicolas Maduro from power.
On February 21, 2016, Bolivia held a referendum on amending the Constitution to permit socialist progressive President Evo Morales and Vice President Álvaro García Linera to run for a third term in 2019. The referendum failed in a razor-thin 51.29% – 48.71% vote, almost exactly the same as the Argentine vote that put Macri into office. Morales claimed that “social media” sent out incorrect information to sway the Bolivian electorate. It was a fact that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a CIA cipher, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute, used Bolivian front groups to inundate Bolivia with anti-Morales propaganda.
Whereas America once exported to Latin America arms, tanks, and anti-riot gear to impose its will, it now exports election consultants who ensure widespread fraud.
The Obama Doctrine, rather than relying on tanks and troops in the streets to overthrow legitimate governments in Latin America, instead emphasizes the “constitutional” process to remove leaders not to Washington’s liking. Nothing else should be expected from a U.S. president who has proclaimed that he is a constitutional scholar.
Senator Aloysio Nunes, chairman of the Brazilian Senate Foreign Relations Committee and member of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), which is neither socialist nor democratic, traveled to Washington on the orders of the Brazilian Vice President Michael Temer of the right-wing Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), to coordinate with Obama administration and Republican Party officials the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff of the left-wing Workers’ Party. Temer is already acting as Brazil’s president in the wake of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies impeachment of Rousseff on purely political grounds.
Nunes hired the services of former Secretary of State and close Hillary Clinton friend Madeleine Albright to pave the way for the Obama administration’s backing for a new pro-U.S. government to take power in Brasilia. The problem for the Americans is that Rousseff, who was impeached over alleged corruption, is refusing to step down. It has been pointed out that all the major figures trying to oust Rousseff are, themselves, facing corruption investigations by Brazilian prosecutors.
What has happened to Rousseff is no different than the ouster of Paraguay’s Lugo. The impeachment process was abused in both cases to remove leaders independent of Washington. Nunes undoubtedly spoke to Obama administration officials and Republicans in Congress about the new government withdrawing from the BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Nunes and Temer also favor closer military relations with the United States.
In all the Latin American countries targeted by the United States for imposition of neo-fascist leaders, individuals close to the Clinton machine are found. Brazil’s rightist opposition has received lobbying support from Albright’s firm, Albright Stonebridge Group. Venezuela’s rightist opposition has been supported by longtime Clinton toadie James Carville’s firm, Greenberg Carville Shrum. Honduras’s junta that replaced Zelaya had the support of Trident DMG, co-founded by Lanny Davis.
A formerly CONFIDENTIAL CIA “Intelligence Memorandum,” dated December 29, 1975, concluded that Latin America had to be weaned away from “Third Worldism.” The conclusion was based on the votes of certain Latin American countries that had voted in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism. The countries were Brazil, Cuba, Grenada, Guyana, and Mexico. Eleven other countries in the Western Hemisphere abstained. The Israel Lobby in the United States began to push for regime change in Latin America and they had as their chief promoter then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Today, Kissinger pals Hillary Clinton, Albright, Davis, and other Clintonistas are using frayed relations between Israel and countries like Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and others as a rallying cry for regime change. After all, America is not permitted to have a foreign policy independent from that of Israel, even in its own hemisphere.
The CIA report indicated that America longed for a return to the past in Latin America when “the Latins found no affinity with the much less developed countries of Africa and Asia and tended to look at Middle East countries through an Israeli prism.”
For Latin America, the ugly Americans and their Israeli puppet masters have returned. And their “Queen” in all cases in Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been likened to “Richard Nixon in a pantsuit.”
CIA, NSA, State Dept. and Pentagon actively work to oust leaders in Latin America
Wayne Madsen | Infowars.com - April 27, 2016
Long discredited, the Monroe Doctrine, a policy set forth by President James Monroe that stipulates that the Western Hemisphere is America’s backyard over which it exercises complete tutelage, has been dusted off by Barack Obama.
The neo-Monroe Doctrine, which can be called the Obama Doctrine, has seen the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, State Department, and the Pentagon actively work to oust progressive leaders from power in Latin America.
The first leader to suffer under the Obama Doctrine was Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, ousted in a 2009 “constitutional coup” personally approved by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Moreover, Clinton’s close friend, lawyer Lanny Davis, began lobbying in Washington for the new military junta-led government.
Next in line for ouster was Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, a former Roman Catholic bishop and supporter of Marxist “liberation theology” within the Catholic Church. In 2012, Lugo was impeached by right-wingers in the Paraguayan legislature and removed from office.
Next came Argentina, where neo-fascist Mauricio Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires, defeated progressive Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner protege Daniel Scioli is a too-close-for-comfort 51.34% to 48.66% election held on November 22, 2015. The election was marred by reports of election fraud in Buenos Aires, Macri’s home turf. The United States is the world’s leader in corrupt elections, having refined the ability to purge voters’ rolls, flip votes on machines, miscount ballots, and generally confuse prospective voters with closed polling places and so-called “provisional ballots.”
Venezuela followed on December 6, 2015, when the U.S.-backed rightist opposition won control over the National Assembly. The rightists immediately commenced procedures to remove progressive socialist President Nicolas Maduro from power.
On February 21, 2016, Bolivia held a referendum on amending the Constitution to permit socialist progressive President Evo Morales and Vice President Álvaro García Linera to run for a third term in 2019. The referendum failed in a razor-thin 51.29% – 48.71% vote, almost exactly the same as the Argentine vote that put Macri into office. Morales claimed that “social media” sent out incorrect information to sway the Bolivian electorate. It was a fact that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a CIA cipher, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute, used Bolivian front groups to inundate Bolivia with anti-Morales propaganda.
Whereas America once exported to Latin America arms, tanks, and anti-riot gear to impose its will, it now exports election consultants who ensure widespread fraud.
The Obama Doctrine, rather than relying on tanks and troops in the streets to overthrow legitimate governments in Latin America, instead emphasizes the “constitutional” process to remove leaders not to Washington’s liking. Nothing else should be expected from a U.S. president who has proclaimed that he is a constitutional scholar.
Senator Aloysio Nunes, chairman of the Brazilian Senate Foreign Relations Committee and member of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), which is neither socialist nor democratic, traveled to Washington on the orders of the Brazilian Vice President Michael Temer of the right-wing Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), to coordinate with Obama administration and Republican Party officials the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff of the left-wing Workers’ Party. Temer is already acting as Brazil’s president in the wake of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies impeachment of Rousseff on purely political grounds.
Nunes hired the services of former Secretary of State and close Hillary Clinton friend Madeleine Albright to pave the way for the Obama administration’s backing for a new pro-U.S. government to take power in Brasilia. The problem for the Americans is that Rousseff, who was impeached over alleged corruption, is refusing to step down. It has been pointed out that all the major figures trying to oust Rousseff are, themselves, facing corruption investigations by Brazilian prosecutors.
What has happened to Rousseff is no different than the ouster of Paraguay’s Lugo. The impeachment process was abused in both cases to remove leaders independent of Washington. Nunes undoubtedly spoke to Obama administration officials and Republicans in Congress about the new government withdrawing from the BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Nunes and Temer also favor closer military relations with the United States.
In all the Latin American countries targeted by the United States for imposition of neo-fascist leaders, individuals close to the Clinton machine are found. Brazil’s rightist opposition has received lobbying support from Albright’s firm, Albright Stonebridge Group. Venezuela’s rightist opposition has been supported by longtime Clinton toadie James Carville’s firm, Greenberg Carville Shrum. Honduras’s junta that replaced Zelaya had the support of Trident DMG, co-founded by Lanny Davis.
A formerly CONFIDENTIAL CIA “Intelligence Memorandum,” dated December 29, 1975, concluded that Latin America had to be weaned away from “Third Worldism.” The conclusion was based on the votes of certain Latin American countries that had voted in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism. The countries were Brazil, Cuba, Grenada, Guyana, and Mexico. Eleven other countries in the Western Hemisphere abstained. The Israel Lobby in the United States began to push for regime change in Latin America and they had as their chief promoter then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Today, Kissinger pals Hillary Clinton, Albright, Davis, and other Clintonistas are using frayed relations between Israel and countries like Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and others as a rallying cry for regime change. After all, America is not permitted to have a foreign policy independent from that of Israel, even in its own hemisphere.
The CIA report indicated that America longed for a return to the past in Latin America when “the Latins found no affinity with the much less developed countries of Africa and Asia and tended to look at Middle East countries through an Israeli prism.”
For Latin America, the ugly Americans and their Israeli puppet masters have returned. And their “Queen” in all cases in Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been likened to “Richard Nixon in a pantsuit.”
Friday, March 18, 2016
To Oppose Free Trade Is To Embrace Violence
TO OPPOSE FREE TRADE IS TO EMBRACE VIOLENCE
Anti-trade ideologies that prefers violence to peace
Ryan McMaken | Mises.org - MARCH 18, 2016
Supporting free trade is simply a matter of taking no action when another person exchanges in non-violent exchange with another person.
That person may be right down the street, or that person may be in another country somewhere. No “free trade agreements” or other paperwork of any kind is required.
To oppose free trade, on the other hand, is to engage in the imposition of fines, prison terms, and other sanctions on people for engaging in non-violent exchange.
The Moral Argument
That latter part is usually ignored by average people who support restrictions on free trade for whatever reason. They frame their opposition to trade as if it were a mere academic question, and as if the reality of restricting free trade were simply a matter of saying “don’t do that” and then everyone will agree to stop doing it.
But, of course, anyone who favors restrictions on free trade needs to go the next step and outline exactly what fines and jail sentences should be imposed on merchants and others who have committed the “crime” of purchasing goods from non-government-approved sources, or who have sold goods to non-government-approved recipients.
Shall fines be $1,000 or $100,000? Shall perpetrators serve 90 days in jail or 5 years in prison? These are the questions that any opponent of free trade must answer. And if the answer is “yes” to any of these questions, let’s then outline which taxpayer-funded government agencies shall be in charge of hunting down the lawbreakers, prosecuting them, and jailing or fining them. The (presumably well-paid and well-pensioned) government agents won’t work for free. What spy apparatus shall be employed to keep an eye on all the potential violators?
And, of course, ignorance of the law will be no excuse, so everyone who wishes to import a trinket or widget from a foreign country will need to know all the laws, regulations, and sanctions that come with such a business venture. To not know this all could mean one’s life will be ruined by federal prosecutors.
For example, if you don’t know the details of the US law known as theLacey Act, you could be serving harsh prison sentences for violatingforeign laws, or for importing fish peacefully acquired, or for engaging in a seemingly endless list of activities that any normal person’s common sense would suggest are peaceful and legal.
Similarly, when Gibson Guitar Corporation was raided by a SWAT team for running afoul of some arcane law about the importation of wood, that was just the natural outcome to be expected from restricting free trade. Those laws were in place to protect domestic lumber industries from imports. But hey, the law’s just there to protect American, workers, right? So, apparently, it’s fine if those Gibson guitar people have their livelihoods and families ruined by legal fees, fines, and jail sentences.
Opponents of free trade, like supporters of the anti-Cuban embargo, for example, like to talk a good game about supporting freedom and liberty, but when all is said and done, their policies amount to nothing more than the sordid jailing and prosecution of non-violent merchants and consumers.
The anti-trade crowd likes to tell themselves that these laws only punish cigar-chomping villains in skyscrapers, but that’s not how laws work. Since laws aren’t written to apply to specific companies, they punish certain behaviors instead. Such laws may indeed restrict big, evil corporations, but they also end up applying to small entrepreneurs and small business owners, most of whom lack an army of attorneys, and usually end up in a far worse position than any big company might. Like the owners of the Gibson Guitar Corporation, many small- and medium-sized business owners simply seek out the lowest-cost goods so they can offer goods to their customers at a lower price. Those goods are often located in foreign countries. But, without an immense legal team, most ordinary people will be caught up in the net of trade restrictions.
The Economic Argument
So far, this all ignores the economic arguments against restricting free trade. Those of us not engaged in the direct importation of goods will also suffer when goods are restricted. Trade restrictions on pharmaceuticals, auto parts, food, and whatever else only makes those goods more expensive. And not all those goods are consumption goods, of course. Entrepreneurs use those goods to create new goods and then must charge higher prices to his customers also. A janitor who must pay higher prices for a truck or a shop vac due to trade restrictions must pass on a portion of that cost to the customer. And, with higher prices, the janitors will have fewer customers and fewer profits. Shopkeepers in turn must then have dirtier shops because they can afford fewer janitorial services.
Yes, a tiny portion of the population that’s engaged in the domestic manufacture of shop vacs and trucks will benefit. But, it’s the janitors and their customers (the hair salon and sandwich-shop owners) who are paying the price of subsidizing the factory workers.
These issues aren’t part of an intellectual exercise. The downside of restricted trade is very real for real people.
But, we don’t need me to explain the economic problem with restricting trade. Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, and the entire line of liberal, laissez faire economists agree on this point.
The Nationalist Argument
The nationalist program of using protectionism to shield American workers from competition is based on the idea that trade with outsiders hurts the local economy. But many who accept this idea in the international sphere then promptly forget the idea when applied domestically.
For example, we’re told by the nationalists that it hurts California workers if Californians buy goods from neighboring Mexico, but it’s apparently A-OK for Californians to buy goods from Illinois or New York, both of which are distant economies that likely contribute far less to the economic well-being of Californians than the economy of northern Mexico.
Murray Rothbard mocked this mindset in the context of immigration when he wondered why it’s not a problem when someone moves from Massachusetts to take a job in Michigan. In that case, the response is never to complain about how people from Massachusetts are stealing the jobs of people in Michigan. No, the argument is only applied if someone crosses an international boundary to do the same.
As with trade, then, it’s bizarre to argue that goods imported from Virginia to California are perfectly tolerable — and even beneficial — while imports from neighboring Tijuana are somehow damaging.
Rothbard noted the idea becomes more absurd the more local you get. The proposed economic justification for “Buy American” is no different from the demand to “Buy North Dakotan” or “Buy 55th Street.” While there certainly are groups that promote only buying goods from one’s home states (i.e., the “ABC — Always Buy Colorado” campaign), such efforts rarely rise above being a marketing gimmick and virtually no one supports trade restrictions between states.
Thus, by their actions, the demonstrated preference of Americans is to take advantage of the benefits of buying and using goods made thousands of miles away by people they’ll never meet. That is, they clearly accept the benefits of trade with a far-away economy (as is the case of trade between San Francisco and St. Louis), but they then turn around and reject the same reality when dealing with international trade.
At the heart of this mindset is pure mysticism, of course, since it requires one to believe that a person in Brownsville, Texas, has the same economic interests as a person in Portland, Maine, but entirely different interests from a person in nearby Monterrey, Mexico. It requires a belief in some sort of metaphysical or perhaps physically objective difference between humans in Monterrey and humans in Portland.
Even the most basic powers of observation should disabuse one of such a strange notion, and yet, American discussions of trade accept the idea as a given.
Left to their own peaceful trade, of course, such ideas would evaporate quickly as people pursued mutually beneficial economic relationships across borders and barriers of every kind.
Today however, we must continue to deal with people who accept an anti-trade ideology that prefers violence to peace, and coercion to freedom. Unfortunately, governments are perfectly happy to oblige them.
Supporting free trade is simply a matter of taking no action when another person exchanges in non-violent exchange with another person.
That person may be right down the street, or that person may be in another country somewhere. No “free trade agreements” or other paperwork of any kind is required.
To oppose free trade, on the other hand, is to engage in the imposition of fines, prison terms, and other sanctions on people for engaging in non-violent exchange.
The Moral Argument
That latter part is usually ignored by average people who support restrictions on free trade for whatever reason. They frame their opposition to trade as if it were a mere academic question, and as if the reality of restricting free trade were simply a matter of saying “don’t do that” and then everyone will agree to stop doing it.
But, of course, anyone who favors restrictions on free trade needs to go the next step and outline exactly what fines and jail sentences should be imposed on merchants and others who have committed the “crime” of purchasing goods from non-government-approved sources, or who have sold goods to non-government-approved recipients.
Shall fines be $1,000 or $100,000? Shall perpetrators serve 90 days in jail or 5 years in prison? These are the questions that any opponent of free trade must answer. And if the answer is “yes” to any of these questions, let’s then outline which taxpayer-funded government agencies shall be in charge of hunting down the lawbreakers, prosecuting them, and jailing or fining them. The (presumably well-paid and well-pensioned) government agents won’t work for free. What spy apparatus shall be employed to keep an eye on all the potential violators?
And, of course, ignorance of the law will be no excuse, so everyone who wishes to import a trinket or widget from a foreign country will need to know all the laws, regulations, and sanctions that come with such a business venture. To not know this all could mean one’s life will be ruined by federal prosecutors.
For example, if you don’t know the details of the US law known as theLacey Act, you could be serving harsh prison sentences for violatingforeign laws, or for importing fish peacefully acquired, or for engaging in a seemingly endless list of activities that any normal person’s common sense would suggest are peaceful and legal.
Similarly, when Gibson Guitar Corporation was raided by a SWAT team for running afoul of some arcane law about the importation of wood, that was just the natural outcome to be expected from restricting free trade. Those laws were in place to protect domestic lumber industries from imports. But hey, the law’s just there to protect American, workers, right? So, apparently, it’s fine if those Gibson guitar people have their livelihoods and families ruined by legal fees, fines, and jail sentences.
Opponents of free trade, like supporters of the anti-Cuban embargo, for example, like to talk a good game about supporting freedom and liberty, but when all is said and done, their policies amount to nothing more than the sordid jailing and prosecution of non-violent merchants and consumers.
The anti-trade crowd likes to tell themselves that these laws only punish cigar-chomping villains in skyscrapers, but that’s not how laws work. Since laws aren’t written to apply to specific companies, they punish certain behaviors instead. Such laws may indeed restrict big, evil corporations, but they also end up applying to small entrepreneurs and small business owners, most of whom lack an army of attorneys, and usually end up in a far worse position than any big company might. Like the owners of the Gibson Guitar Corporation, many small- and medium-sized business owners simply seek out the lowest-cost goods so they can offer goods to their customers at a lower price. Those goods are often located in foreign countries. But, without an immense legal team, most ordinary people will be caught up in the net of trade restrictions.
The Economic Argument
So far, this all ignores the economic arguments against restricting free trade. Those of us not engaged in the direct importation of goods will also suffer when goods are restricted. Trade restrictions on pharmaceuticals, auto parts, food, and whatever else only makes those goods more expensive. And not all those goods are consumption goods, of course. Entrepreneurs use those goods to create new goods and then must charge higher prices to his customers also. A janitor who must pay higher prices for a truck or a shop vac due to trade restrictions must pass on a portion of that cost to the customer. And, with higher prices, the janitors will have fewer customers and fewer profits. Shopkeepers in turn must then have dirtier shops because they can afford fewer janitorial services.
Yes, a tiny portion of the population that’s engaged in the domestic manufacture of shop vacs and trucks will benefit. But, it’s the janitors and their customers (the hair salon and sandwich-shop owners) who are paying the price of subsidizing the factory workers.
These issues aren’t part of an intellectual exercise. The downside of restricted trade is very real for real people.
But, we don’t need me to explain the economic problem with restricting trade. Adam Smith, Ludwig von Mises, and the entire line of liberal, laissez faire economists agree on this point.
The Nationalist Argument
The nationalist program of using protectionism to shield American workers from competition is based on the idea that trade with outsiders hurts the local economy. But many who accept this idea in the international sphere then promptly forget the idea when applied domestically.
For example, we’re told by the nationalists that it hurts California workers if Californians buy goods from neighboring Mexico, but it’s apparently A-OK for Californians to buy goods from Illinois or New York, both of which are distant economies that likely contribute far less to the economic well-being of Californians than the economy of northern Mexico.
Murray Rothbard mocked this mindset in the context of immigration when he wondered why it’s not a problem when someone moves from Massachusetts to take a job in Michigan. In that case, the response is never to complain about how people from Massachusetts are stealing the jobs of people in Michigan. No, the argument is only applied if someone crosses an international boundary to do the same.
As with trade, then, it’s bizarre to argue that goods imported from Virginia to California are perfectly tolerable — and even beneficial — while imports from neighboring Tijuana are somehow damaging.
Rothbard noted the idea becomes more absurd the more local you get. The proposed economic justification for “Buy American” is no different from the demand to “Buy North Dakotan” or “Buy 55th Street.” While there certainly are groups that promote only buying goods from one’s home states (i.e., the “ABC — Always Buy Colorado” campaign), such efforts rarely rise above being a marketing gimmick and virtually no one supports trade restrictions between states.
Thus, by their actions, the demonstrated preference of Americans is to take advantage of the benefits of buying and using goods made thousands of miles away by people they’ll never meet. That is, they clearly accept the benefits of trade with a far-away economy (as is the case of trade between San Francisco and St. Louis), but they then turn around and reject the same reality when dealing with international trade.
At the heart of this mindset is pure mysticism, of course, since it requires one to believe that a person in Brownsville, Texas, has the same economic interests as a person in Portland, Maine, but entirely different interests from a person in nearby Monterrey, Mexico. It requires a belief in some sort of metaphysical or perhaps physically objective difference between humans in Monterrey and humans in Portland.
Even the most basic powers of observation should disabuse one of such a strange notion, and yet, American discussions of trade accept the idea as a given.
Left to their own peaceful trade, of course, such ideas would evaporate quickly as people pursued mutually beneficial economic relationships across borders and barriers of every kind.
Today however, we must continue to deal with people who accept an anti-trade ideology that prefers violence to peace, and coercion to freedom. Unfortunately, governments are perfectly happy to oblige them.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Freedom And Liberty Both Lose In November
REGARDLESS WHO WINS IN NOVEMBER, FREEDOM AND LIBERTY BOTH LOSE
Candidates sometimes speak the language of liberty but do so interwoven with inconsistencies and contradictions
Richard M. Ebeling | The Future of Freedom Foundation - MARCH 16, 2016
Let us be clear. We are living, right now, in a time of emotional fear, hysterical anger, illogical demands, and dangerous temptations. In other words, liberty and prosperity are at risk. A decent and tolerant society is threatened. Common principles of humanity are being undermined.
All of this is concentrated and has been brought to a head in the rhetorical clamor and campaign conflagrations of a presidential election year. To try to understand what is going on, a mountain of words have been spoken by serious think tank scholars, by Sunday morning talk show pundits, or by evening television news 15-second “in-depth” interpreters, as well as miles of written commentaries that have been offered in hardcopy or on the online media and blog sites.
Pandering and Plundering Politicians, Left and Right
On the Democrat Party side, how can a corrupt, manipulative, lying, life-long power-lusting insider like Hillary Clinton be taken seriously and to be, seemingly, riding high to her party’s presidential candidate? How can a self-proclaimed “democratic” socialist, who has praised and apologized for communist dictatorships in Latin America and who chose to honeymoon with his bride in the former Soviet Union, arouse the mass enthusiasm of millions who see him as the deliverer of a transformative “political revolution” in America?
On the Republican Party side, how can a bombastic, rude and crude user of government privilege and favoritism for his business interests, like Donald Trump, who speaks most of the time in empty phrases and wrong-headed illogic on numerous economic and social issues, victoriously steamroll through state primaries and garner the support of millions merely because, many of those multitudes say, “he says it like it is”?
How can we explain the fate of the field of other Republican candidates, heralded in the summer of 2015 as the finest group of minds offered by the GOP for the office of the presidency in several decades? As the autumn began, one of them after another, first in the debates and the public opinion polls, and then in the primaries, failed to inspire or distinguish themselves. Each fell victim to voter indifference and then to Donald Trump’s meat grinder. Until, now, hardly any remain standing.
And what of the voters? Facing an uncertain employment future, experiencing seeming stagnant or low wage improvements, disoriented by a changing cultural environment; angered by political promises unfulfilled by those elected to high political office, as well as burdensome taxation and heavy-handed regulation; frustrated by crony “insiders” close to politicians and bureaucrats who “rig the game” for the benefit of special interests while leaving the costs and lost opportunities on the shoulders of ordinary citizens Sam and Sally, who have none of the “pull” to influence things their way, now insist: “We’ve had enough and we’re not going to take it any more.”
Broken Constitutions and Noses to Get What You Want
This is the sentiment and insistence of a sizable number of voters. And if it takes a socialist with utopian dreams dancing in his head, or a boorish billionaire who says he knows how to fix a broken system because he’s been playing it for decades for all its worth, then so be it. Put the “strongman” in charge to shake things up and give the ordinary guy an even break.
If it takes bending the Constitution or tearing down the wealth and position of some, well, those insiders and fat cats, those “establishment” types, have been rigging the rules for as long as can be remembered. So its time someone stuck it to them with some of the same political power, just in “the people’s” direction for a change.
And if some people have to be “roughed up,” if their words need to be shouted down or shut up, again, we’ve had enough of what they have had to say. Of course, who the “we” are and who the “they” are all depends upon who the “you” is.
Are you referring to the radical college professor who calls for some “muscle” to drive away a news reporter covering a campus demonstrationagainst freedom of speech? Or a presidential candidate who gets cheers from his followers when he suggests that a physical altercation against protesters at their meeting is a lot more fun than listening to a boring campaign speech?
What we are witnessing are the latest episodes in the continuing bankruptcy of the modern American political system. These millions of voters all along the political spectrum wrap their frustrations and demands in rhetoric of either restoring or establishing “real” and “true” American values.
Long Down the Road of Lost Liberty
The fact is the original or traditional premises and values of the American system have been eroding away for almost a century, now. Several decades ago, the libertarian social analyst and critic, Garet Garrett, penned an essay with the title, “The Revolution Was.” He pointed out that too many people concerned with the preservation of the American constitutional system of government and a free society failed to appreciate how much of the ideas and institutions for a society of liberty had already been eroded away by forces opposed to its preservation.
We are a lot further along this path today from when Garet Garrett tried to point out how far away from a free society we had already moved. To appreciate this, we must first remind ourselves what are the premises and institutions upon which a free society ultimately stands or falls.
The philosophical foundations were expressed, of course, in the Declaration of Independence, when the authors in 1776 insisted that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that government is formed among men to secure these rights from their violation by private individuals and groups or from government itself.
To guard against such violations by government, the very political institution meant to secure liberty is formally restrained in how it may use and apply its legitimized use of force in human affairs by constitutional rules. The American Constitution was meant to clearly demarcate the limited and enumerated functions of the federal government, with the additional restraining device of “divided government” between the branches of the federal government and then between the federal government and the duties and responsibilities of the individual state governments.
The restraining of government was meant to assure that political power remained a servant of the citizenry and their individual rights, and not a threatening master taking away or reducing their liberty. Secondly, federal government in terms of divided responsibility among national, state and local political decision-making was meant to reflect functions needing to be performed at different horizons of importance to the citizens, and to keep government control and decision-making as close to those citizens as those different governmental tasks allowed.
Freedom Needs Habits of the Heart and Mind
But pieces of paper upon which are written the administrative duties and responsibilities of different levels and branches of government is not sufficient in itself to maintain a society of individuals secure and protected in their rights. As the famous French social philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, pointed out in his Democracy in America, written after his extended visit to the United States in the 1830s, the free society is more than elections, and legislative procedures, or a written constitution. It is based upon “habits of the heart” and “character of the mind.”
That is, it is dependent upon a wide network of “structures of shared meaning” and values among the members of a society. They must believe in human worth, that is, the dignity of each individual, and a respect for and tolerance of the diversity of men’s dreams, wishes, hopes and values. And most importantly, that each and every individual has a “natural” or inviolable right to their own life, to be lived peacefully and honestly in whatever manner and form that the individual considers most likely to bring him meaning, happiness and fulfillment of the goals and purposes that he sets for himself.
There must be a shared view that human relationships should be based on voluntary consent and mutual agreement. Coercion and physical threat or intimidation in any and all forms should form no part in the patterns of human association and relationship. And that government’s own use of force should be reserved and restricted to its “negative” application, that is, always and only in defensively protecting people’s rights to their life, liberty and honestly acquired property and not any types of violation or weakening of these rights.
There needs to be at least an implicit agreement among the members of such a free society that what a man has honestly and peacefully earned through his mental and physical labors and his voluntary exchanges with others is rightfully his. Accumulated wealth and income, as long as it has been honesty and peacefully acquired, is not a mark of injustice or unfairness or unethical conduct, but rather an indication of the industry, energy, and successful effort in improving an individual’s own circumstances through mutually beneficial production, trade and association with others.
And more broadly, there needs to be a spirit and sense that whatever differences may exist among individuals due to accident of birth or social and historical circumstances, the idea and ideal is that each person is looked at, judged and evaluated as an individual in terms of his distinct qualities, characteristics, talents, abilities and achievements as an human being and not as a member of a collective group. Political and economic individualism should be matched with ethical and social individualism as we look at, interact and treat others in the community of mankind.
These principles and ideals when shared in common, again to use de Tocqueville’s phrases, the “habits of the heart” and “character of the mind,” gives unity to the members of a free society, while at the same time providing the respect, tolerance and “space” for diversities of among men as expressed in their individual and social interactive goals, purposes, ends, values and meanings for life and happiness.
American History an Incomplete Reflection of Its Own Ideals
America, of course, has never fully lived up to this conception of man, society and government. Slavery deprived humanity to millions during the first half of the country’s history; this was followed by legally imposed discrimination laws and practices that contemptuously treated those who were equal citizens of the nation as less than fully human as peaceful associative relationships and economic opportunities were closed to them in the name of explicit and implicit racial inequality.
Government, even in the early days of the nation’s history, never confined itself within the constraint of protecting rights rather than plundering them. Corruption, political special interest pandering, and misuse of the fiscal purse strings resulted in state and federal regulations and favoritism benefiting some at the expense of many others. Tariffs, subsidies, land grants, monopolies, and financial contracts awarding government money to companies undertaking “internal improvements” (public works projects in the more modern language) assured that the peacefully and productively earned income and wealth of many were politically transferred into the hands of those close to and influential over those holding political office.
However Incomplete, American Practice Gave Liberty to Multitudes
But however imperfect and hypocritical in practice, it remained nonetheless the fact that the idea and ideal of political, economic and social individualism were more believed in and implemented in the United States in the nineteenth century and into the 20th century than anywhere else on the face of the globe.
It generated a spirit of optimism, hope and effort that fostered multitudes to live and experience the fruits of those ideas and ideals to a degree never known before in human history. It gave Americans – even with the contradictions, inconsistencies and corruptions – a higher standard of living and a greater degree of actual individual freedom and opportunity than in any other part of the world.
The older or “classical” liberalism of the nineteenth century had called for the end of these various political privileges and forms of favoritism, that is, to abolish these remaining governmental inconsistences and exceptions. And it called for the social spirit of individualism and free market competition to overcome those attitudes and actions by people in contradiction with a full respect and tolerance of the dignity of men as individuals.
The Collectivist Counter-Revolution Against Liberty
But before these forces of liberal individualism could complete the liberation of humanity from plunder and prejudice, a counter-revolution emerged, a counter-revolution of new forms of collectivism, statism, and socialism. They rejected the individualist ideal and insisted that the group and the tribe came before the individual human being; that any person’s sense of identity and position in society was determined by and dependent upon into what “social class,” or racial group, or nation-state the individual was born and lived.
Any hardship, disappointment and sense of mistreatment or frustration experienced by an individual was the result of the exploitive, or oppressive, or “socially unjust” actions of those in some other social or racial group or nation-state other than the one to which he belonged.
Individual responsibility was replaced by group status and privilege. Rights were not something unalienable and belonging to individuals; instead, “rights” were “entitlements” belonging to members of a categorized group, and for the provision of which individuals in other groups were obligated to provide and supply.
The idea of a common humanity among all men as individuals was slowly but surely replaced with the notion of group “identities” based upon which the individual’s sense of self-esteem or social position and belonging was dependent.
Politics and the political process was not a restrained and limited institutional method for finding the most effective and efficient ways of delineating, protecting and enforcing the individual rights of each citizen to their life, liberty and honestly acquired property. Instead, politics and the political process was conceived as the arena in which the power of the government was captured and used to “redress grievances” by using legal force to redistribute wealth, reorder social and other status positions of privilege and favor for the benefit of “deserving” groups in place of “undeserving” groups.
Freedoms Curtailed for Controlled Entitlement
Freedom of speech and the press, the right of peaceful assembly and association were no longer considered the avenues through which each individual’s right to express, share, debate and manifest his ideas and ideals was guaranteed by limiting government’s ability to interfere with such peaceful acts and interactions.
Instead, freedom of speech and the press and freedom of association came to be considered tools of intellectual and ideological control and exploitation by the “powerful” against the social, racial or gender “under-privileged.” And as such, the spoken and written word and any forms and types of permitted association had to be modified, molded and controlled to assure collective social, racial and gender equity and balanced access and privilege through governmental regulation and planning.
Collectivist “Rights” Through Political Action
The individual was, now, portrayed as too weak and inconsequential to find his own way to betterment and happiness in such a setting of social, racial and gender oppression. Personal liberty and free association in the marketplace and other voluntary settings were declared to be “illusionary” notions of freedom.
“True” freedom and opportunity could only come through the advancement of the social, racial and gender group to which one belonged in a political competition for entitlement “rights.” In this circumstance, each group had to have leaders and leaderships that expressed and represented the “real” and “just” interests of the group for which they claimed the right, duty and responsibility to speak and act.
This road from political, economic and social individualism to collectivist identity and privilege through group competition for political power is what has brought us to our current political crisis as captured in this year’s presidential campaign.
Your job security is uncertain? Your income has not increased the way you had wished and desired? Your social status and acceptance by others has not matched your expectations and personal sense of deservedness? The ideas you want accepted by others and the actions and attitudes you want others to follow and express have not materialized?
Then the task is to use the government to give you what you want, and to force and compel others in society to conform to your vision of the good, right and just. If mouths have to be shut when you consider them to be speaking evil or “hurtful” words, if people must be coerced to act in the way you want them to, if wealth and opportunities of life must be redistributed by government’s police power so you and others in our group may have what you consider that which you rightful deserve, then so be it. That is the means and methods of “true” democracy, since if you and your group do not use government to get what you want, some other groups will do so at your expense.
This is the new America system: a democratic politics of power, plunder and privilege in a perpetual social conflict of social classes, racial groups and gender identities. It is a system in which the individual seems weak, small and powerless; and needing “leaders” who will use politics to bring them to the social, economic, racial and gender “promised lands” that are laid before the constituent-voters, if only this or that political candidate is elected to set the world right for the benefit of a coalition of collective groups who want certain things and to which they are told they are entitled.
This the outcome of the journey from liberal individualism to political collectivism that has placed before us Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and a cast of other remaining candidates who sometimes speak the language of liberty but do so interwoven with inconsistencies and contradictions that leave the message of freedom with no fully principled spokesman in this year’s race to the White House.
The path back to and forward towards liberty, therefore, will have to be journeyed far beyond the outcome of this November’s election.
Let us be clear. We are living, right now, in a time of emotional fear, hysterical anger, illogical demands, and dangerous temptations. In other words, liberty and prosperity are at risk. A decent and tolerant society is threatened. Common principles of humanity are being undermined.
All of this is concentrated and has been brought to a head in the rhetorical clamor and campaign conflagrations of a presidential election year. To try to understand what is going on, a mountain of words have been spoken by serious think tank scholars, by Sunday morning talk show pundits, or by evening television news 15-second “in-depth” interpreters, as well as miles of written commentaries that have been offered in hardcopy or on the online media and blog sites.
Pandering and Plundering Politicians, Left and Right
On the Democrat Party side, how can a corrupt, manipulative, lying, life-long power-lusting insider like Hillary Clinton be taken seriously and to be, seemingly, riding high to her party’s presidential candidate? How can a self-proclaimed “democratic” socialist, who has praised and apologized for communist dictatorships in Latin America and who chose to honeymoon with his bride in the former Soviet Union, arouse the mass enthusiasm of millions who see him as the deliverer of a transformative “political revolution” in America?
On the Republican Party side, how can a bombastic, rude and crude user of government privilege and favoritism for his business interests, like Donald Trump, who speaks most of the time in empty phrases and wrong-headed illogic on numerous economic and social issues, victoriously steamroll through state primaries and garner the support of millions merely because, many of those multitudes say, “he says it like it is”?
How can we explain the fate of the field of other Republican candidates, heralded in the summer of 2015 as the finest group of minds offered by the GOP for the office of the presidency in several decades? As the autumn began, one of them after another, first in the debates and the public opinion polls, and then in the primaries, failed to inspire or distinguish themselves. Each fell victim to voter indifference and then to Donald Trump’s meat grinder. Until, now, hardly any remain standing.
And what of the voters? Facing an uncertain employment future, experiencing seeming stagnant or low wage improvements, disoriented by a changing cultural environment; angered by political promises unfulfilled by those elected to high political office, as well as burdensome taxation and heavy-handed regulation; frustrated by crony “insiders” close to politicians and bureaucrats who “rig the game” for the benefit of special interests while leaving the costs and lost opportunities on the shoulders of ordinary citizens Sam and Sally, who have none of the “pull” to influence things their way, now insist: “We’ve had enough and we’re not going to take it any more.”
Broken Constitutions and Noses to Get What You Want
This is the sentiment and insistence of a sizable number of voters. And if it takes a socialist with utopian dreams dancing in his head, or a boorish billionaire who says he knows how to fix a broken system because he’s been playing it for decades for all its worth, then so be it. Put the “strongman” in charge to shake things up and give the ordinary guy an even break.
If it takes bending the Constitution or tearing down the wealth and position of some, well, those insiders and fat cats, those “establishment” types, have been rigging the rules for as long as can be remembered. So its time someone stuck it to them with some of the same political power, just in “the people’s” direction for a change.
And if some people have to be “roughed up,” if their words need to be shouted down or shut up, again, we’ve had enough of what they have had to say. Of course, who the “we” are and who the “they” are all depends upon who the “you” is.
Are you referring to the radical college professor who calls for some “muscle” to drive away a news reporter covering a campus demonstrationagainst freedom of speech? Or a presidential candidate who gets cheers from his followers when he suggests that a physical altercation against protesters at their meeting is a lot more fun than listening to a boring campaign speech?
What we are witnessing are the latest episodes in the continuing bankruptcy of the modern American political system. These millions of voters all along the political spectrum wrap their frustrations and demands in rhetoric of either restoring or establishing “real” and “true” American values.
Long Down the Road of Lost Liberty
The fact is the original or traditional premises and values of the American system have been eroding away for almost a century, now. Several decades ago, the libertarian social analyst and critic, Garet Garrett, penned an essay with the title, “The Revolution Was.” He pointed out that too many people concerned with the preservation of the American constitutional system of government and a free society failed to appreciate how much of the ideas and institutions for a society of liberty had already been eroded away by forces opposed to its preservation.
We are a lot further along this path today from when Garet Garrett tried to point out how far away from a free society we had already moved. To appreciate this, we must first remind ourselves what are the premises and institutions upon which a free society ultimately stands or falls.
The philosophical foundations were expressed, of course, in the Declaration of Independence, when the authors in 1776 insisted that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that government is formed among men to secure these rights from their violation by private individuals and groups or from government itself.
To guard against such violations by government, the very political institution meant to secure liberty is formally restrained in how it may use and apply its legitimized use of force in human affairs by constitutional rules. The American Constitution was meant to clearly demarcate the limited and enumerated functions of the federal government, with the additional restraining device of “divided government” between the branches of the federal government and then between the federal government and the duties and responsibilities of the individual state governments.
The restraining of government was meant to assure that political power remained a servant of the citizenry and their individual rights, and not a threatening master taking away or reducing their liberty. Secondly, federal government in terms of divided responsibility among national, state and local political decision-making was meant to reflect functions needing to be performed at different horizons of importance to the citizens, and to keep government control and decision-making as close to those citizens as those different governmental tasks allowed.
Freedom Needs Habits of the Heart and Mind
But pieces of paper upon which are written the administrative duties and responsibilities of different levels and branches of government is not sufficient in itself to maintain a society of individuals secure and protected in their rights. As the famous French social philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, pointed out in his Democracy in America, written after his extended visit to the United States in the 1830s, the free society is more than elections, and legislative procedures, or a written constitution. It is based upon “habits of the heart” and “character of the mind.”
That is, it is dependent upon a wide network of “structures of shared meaning” and values among the members of a society. They must believe in human worth, that is, the dignity of each individual, and a respect for and tolerance of the diversity of men’s dreams, wishes, hopes and values. And most importantly, that each and every individual has a “natural” or inviolable right to their own life, to be lived peacefully and honestly in whatever manner and form that the individual considers most likely to bring him meaning, happiness and fulfillment of the goals and purposes that he sets for himself.
There must be a shared view that human relationships should be based on voluntary consent and mutual agreement. Coercion and physical threat or intimidation in any and all forms should form no part in the patterns of human association and relationship. And that government’s own use of force should be reserved and restricted to its “negative” application, that is, always and only in defensively protecting people’s rights to their life, liberty and honestly acquired property and not any types of violation or weakening of these rights.
There needs to be at least an implicit agreement among the members of such a free society that what a man has honestly and peacefully earned through his mental and physical labors and his voluntary exchanges with others is rightfully his. Accumulated wealth and income, as long as it has been honesty and peacefully acquired, is not a mark of injustice or unfairness or unethical conduct, but rather an indication of the industry, energy, and successful effort in improving an individual’s own circumstances through mutually beneficial production, trade and association with others.
And more broadly, there needs to be a spirit and sense that whatever differences may exist among individuals due to accident of birth or social and historical circumstances, the idea and ideal is that each person is looked at, judged and evaluated as an individual in terms of his distinct qualities, characteristics, talents, abilities and achievements as an human being and not as a member of a collective group. Political and economic individualism should be matched with ethical and social individualism as we look at, interact and treat others in the community of mankind.
These principles and ideals when shared in common, again to use de Tocqueville’s phrases, the “habits of the heart” and “character of the mind,” gives unity to the members of a free society, while at the same time providing the respect, tolerance and “space” for diversities of among men as expressed in their individual and social interactive goals, purposes, ends, values and meanings for life and happiness.
American History an Incomplete Reflection of Its Own Ideals
America, of course, has never fully lived up to this conception of man, society and government. Slavery deprived humanity to millions during the first half of the country’s history; this was followed by legally imposed discrimination laws and practices that contemptuously treated those who were equal citizens of the nation as less than fully human as peaceful associative relationships and economic opportunities were closed to them in the name of explicit and implicit racial inequality.
Government, even in the early days of the nation’s history, never confined itself within the constraint of protecting rights rather than plundering them. Corruption, political special interest pandering, and misuse of the fiscal purse strings resulted in state and federal regulations and favoritism benefiting some at the expense of many others. Tariffs, subsidies, land grants, monopolies, and financial contracts awarding government money to companies undertaking “internal improvements” (public works projects in the more modern language) assured that the peacefully and productively earned income and wealth of many were politically transferred into the hands of those close to and influential over those holding political office.
However Incomplete, American Practice Gave Liberty to Multitudes
But however imperfect and hypocritical in practice, it remained nonetheless the fact that the idea and ideal of political, economic and social individualism were more believed in and implemented in the United States in the nineteenth century and into the 20th century than anywhere else on the face of the globe.
It generated a spirit of optimism, hope and effort that fostered multitudes to live and experience the fruits of those ideas and ideals to a degree never known before in human history. It gave Americans – even with the contradictions, inconsistencies and corruptions – a higher standard of living and a greater degree of actual individual freedom and opportunity than in any other part of the world.
The older or “classical” liberalism of the nineteenth century had called for the end of these various political privileges and forms of favoritism, that is, to abolish these remaining governmental inconsistences and exceptions. And it called for the social spirit of individualism and free market competition to overcome those attitudes and actions by people in contradiction with a full respect and tolerance of the dignity of men as individuals.
The Collectivist Counter-Revolution Against Liberty
But before these forces of liberal individualism could complete the liberation of humanity from plunder and prejudice, a counter-revolution emerged, a counter-revolution of new forms of collectivism, statism, and socialism. They rejected the individualist ideal and insisted that the group and the tribe came before the individual human being; that any person’s sense of identity and position in society was determined by and dependent upon into what “social class,” or racial group, or nation-state the individual was born and lived.
Any hardship, disappointment and sense of mistreatment or frustration experienced by an individual was the result of the exploitive, or oppressive, or “socially unjust” actions of those in some other social or racial group or nation-state other than the one to which he belonged.
Individual responsibility was replaced by group status and privilege. Rights were not something unalienable and belonging to individuals; instead, “rights” were “entitlements” belonging to members of a categorized group, and for the provision of which individuals in other groups were obligated to provide and supply.
The idea of a common humanity among all men as individuals was slowly but surely replaced with the notion of group “identities” based upon which the individual’s sense of self-esteem or social position and belonging was dependent.
Politics and the political process was not a restrained and limited institutional method for finding the most effective and efficient ways of delineating, protecting and enforcing the individual rights of each citizen to their life, liberty and honestly acquired property. Instead, politics and the political process was conceived as the arena in which the power of the government was captured and used to “redress grievances” by using legal force to redistribute wealth, reorder social and other status positions of privilege and favor for the benefit of “deserving” groups in place of “undeserving” groups.
Freedoms Curtailed for Controlled Entitlement
Freedom of speech and the press, the right of peaceful assembly and association were no longer considered the avenues through which each individual’s right to express, share, debate and manifest his ideas and ideals was guaranteed by limiting government’s ability to interfere with such peaceful acts and interactions.
Instead, freedom of speech and the press and freedom of association came to be considered tools of intellectual and ideological control and exploitation by the “powerful” against the social, racial or gender “under-privileged.” And as such, the spoken and written word and any forms and types of permitted association had to be modified, molded and controlled to assure collective social, racial and gender equity and balanced access and privilege through governmental regulation and planning.
Collectivist “Rights” Through Political Action
The individual was, now, portrayed as too weak and inconsequential to find his own way to betterment and happiness in such a setting of social, racial and gender oppression. Personal liberty and free association in the marketplace and other voluntary settings were declared to be “illusionary” notions of freedom.
“True” freedom and opportunity could only come through the advancement of the social, racial and gender group to which one belonged in a political competition for entitlement “rights.” In this circumstance, each group had to have leaders and leaderships that expressed and represented the “real” and “just” interests of the group for which they claimed the right, duty and responsibility to speak and act.
This road from political, economic and social individualism to collectivist identity and privilege through group competition for political power is what has brought us to our current political crisis as captured in this year’s presidential campaign.
Your job security is uncertain? Your income has not increased the way you had wished and desired? Your social status and acceptance by others has not matched your expectations and personal sense of deservedness? The ideas you want accepted by others and the actions and attitudes you want others to follow and express have not materialized?
Then the task is to use the government to give you what you want, and to force and compel others in society to conform to your vision of the good, right and just. If mouths have to be shut when you consider them to be speaking evil or “hurtful” words, if people must be coerced to act in the way you want them to, if wealth and opportunities of life must be redistributed by government’s police power so you and others in our group may have what you consider that which you rightful deserve, then so be it. That is the means and methods of “true” democracy, since if you and your group do not use government to get what you want, some other groups will do so at your expense.
This is the new America system: a democratic politics of power, plunder and privilege in a perpetual social conflict of social classes, racial groups and gender identities. It is a system in which the individual seems weak, small and powerless; and needing “leaders” who will use politics to bring them to the social, economic, racial and gender “promised lands” that are laid before the constituent-voters, if only this or that political candidate is elected to set the world right for the benefit of a coalition of collective groups who want certain things and to which they are told they are entitled.
This the outcome of the journey from liberal individualism to political collectivism that has placed before us Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump and a cast of other remaining candidates who sometimes speak the language of liberty but do so interwoven with inconsistencies and contradictions that leave the message of freedom with no fully principled spokesman in this year’s race to the White House.
The path back to and forward towards liberty, therefore, will have to be journeyed far beyond the outcome of this November’s election.
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Merrick Garland Is Obama's Supreme Court Nomination
OBAMA NOMINATES MERRICK GARLAND TO REPLACE SCALIA ON SUPREME COURT
...But Senate Dems passed resolution against election year appointments
RT - MARCH 16, 2016
President Barack Obama announced Judge Merrick Garland as his nominee to replace deceased Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, likely triggering a fierce battle with Senate Republicans who have vowed to block anyone from being appointed.
During a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House, Obama said his selection was extremely qualified for the position and that the Senate should take its responsibility to consider a nominee seriously.
Obama said that he chose Garland after an “exhaustive process,” calling the judge “one of America’s sharpest legal minds.”
Garland possesses honesty and integrity, as well as “respect and admiration from both sides of the aisle,” he added.
Garland is considered a moderate liberal justice. The 63-year-old is the chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Having served for nearly 20 years on the court, Garland was confirmed in a 76-23 vote back in 1997, earning the backing of 32 Republicans. He was also on the short list for the Supreme Court the last two times Obama appointed a nominee. In 2010, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) pushed Obama to nominate Garland instead of now-Justice Elena Kagan because “he would be very well supported by all sides.”
Garland was also a longtime prosecutor who helped the Justice Department who oversaw investigations into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. He graduated from Harvard Law School, worked as a clerk for Justice William Brennan, and worked at the multinational law firm Arnold and Porte.
At 63, Garland is the oldest nominee since President Richard Nixon nominated Justice Lewis Powell in 1971. He is two years older than Chief Justice John Roberts, marking a break from trend of presidents nominating younger justices to ensure they remain on the court for decades.
Prior to the president’s announcement, reports from Reuters suggested that Obama’s final decision was between federal appeals judges Garland and Sri Srinivasan. In an email, Obama laid out his thinking on the selection process.
“In putting forward a nominee today, I am fulfilling my constitutional duty. I’m doing my job,” the president wrote. “I hope that our Senators will do their jobs, and move quickly to consider my nominee. That is what the Constitution dictates, and that’s what the American people expect and deserve from their leaders.”
Obama added that any nominee should possess an independent mind, unimpeachable credentials, and a mastery of the law. Secondly, the justice should understand the judiciary system’s limits, and that the Supreme Court’s job is not to make the law but rather to interpret it.
Finally, the president said any nominee must understand “that justice is not about abstract legal theory, nor some footnote in a dusty casebook,” and that they must grasp “the way it affects the daily reality of people’s lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly-changing times.”
Regardless of any nominee’s qualifications, the Supreme Court nomination process will likely be embroiled in a political battle considering 2016 is a presidential election year. Any appointment could dramatically alter the balance of the court, currently filled with four conservative and four liberal justices.
Ever since Scalia’s death in mid-February, which occurred with 11 months left in Obama’s second term, Republicans have promised to block any nominee from consideration, much less a confirmation vote. They have argued that Obama should not appoint a justice in the middle of an election year, and that the next president should be able to make the decision.
Democrats, including Obama, have countered that it is the president’s constitutional responsibility to nominate someone and that it is the Senate’s responsibility to consider them.
President Barack Obama announced Judge Merrick Garland as his nominee to replace deceased Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, likely triggering a fierce battle with Senate Republicans who have vowed to block anyone from being appointed.
During a Rose Garden ceremony at the White House, Obama said his selection was extremely qualified for the position and that the Senate should take its responsibility to consider a nominee seriously.
Obama said that he chose Garland after an “exhaustive process,” calling the judge “one of America’s sharpest legal minds.”
Garland possesses honesty and integrity, as well as “respect and admiration from both sides of the aisle,” he added.
Garland is considered a moderate liberal justice. The 63-year-old is the chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Having served for nearly 20 years on the court, Garland was confirmed in a 76-23 vote back in 1997, earning the backing of 32 Republicans. He was also on the short list for the Supreme Court the last two times Obama appointed a nominee. In 2010, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) pushed Obama to nominate Garland instead of now-Justice Elena Kagan because “he would be very well supported by all sides.”
Garland was also a longtime prosecutor who helped the Justice Department who oversaw investigations into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. He graduated from Harvard Law School, worked as a clerk for Justice William Brennan, and worked at the multinational law firm Arnold and Porte.
At 63, Garland is the oldest nominee since President Richard Nixon nominated Justice Lewis Powell in 1971. He is two years older than Chief Justice John Roberts, marking a break from trend of presidents nominating younger justices to ensure they remain on the court for decades.
Prior to the president’s announcement, reports from Reuters suggested that Obama’s final decision was between federal appeals judges Garland and Sri Srinivasan. In an email, Obama laid out his thinking on the selection process.
“In putting forward a nominee today, I am fulfilling my constitutional duty. I’m doing my job,” the president wrote. “I hope that our Senators will do their jobs, and move quickly to consider my nominee. That is what the Constitution dictates, and that’s what the American people expect and deserve from their leaders.”
Obama added that any nominee should possess an independent mind, unimpeachable credentials, and a mastery of the law. Secondly, the justice should understand the judiciary system’s limits, and that the Supreme Court’s job is not to make the law but rather to interpret it.
Finally, the president said any nominee must understand “that justice is not about abstract legal theory, nor some footnote in a dusty casebook,” and that they must grasp “the way it affects the daily reality of people’s lives in a big, complicated democracy, and in rapidly-changing times.”
Regardless of any nominee’s qualifications, the Supreme Court nomination process will likely be embroiled in a political battle considering 2016 is a presidential election year. Any appointment could dramatically alter the balance of the court, currently filled with four conservative and four liberal justices.
Ever since Scalia’s death in mid-February, which occurred with 11 months left in Obama’s second term, Republicans have promised to block any nominee from consideration, much less a confirmation vote. They have argued that Obama should not appoint a justice in the middle of an election year, and that the next president should be able to make the decision.
Democrats, including Obama, have countered that it is the president’s constitutional responsibility to nominate someone and that it is the Senate’s responsibility to consider them.
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Russia Announces Syria Troop Pullout
RUSSIA ANNOUNCES SYRIA TROOP PULLOUT, PUTIN SAYS MAIN GOALS ACHIEVED
How will Obama administration respond?
Lydia Tomkiw | International Business Times - MARCH 14, 2016
Russia's main troops will withdraw from Syria beginning Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday. The Russian leader said he had achieved his goals after the Kremlin began airstrikes in Syria in late September, the BBC reported.
Putin spoke with Syrian President Bashar Assad about his decision, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed. The sudden announcement, close to the five-year anniversary of the conflict, comes as peace talks in Geneva continued Monday. Western leaders have accused Putin of using Russian airstrikes to prop up the regime of longtime ally Assad.
Russia's economy has been badly battered following the drop in oil prices and continuing Western economic sanctions over the country's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Low oil prices have forced the Kremlin to cut back its military budget by 5 percent in 2016, a move Putin still has to approve.
"I think that the tasks set to the defense ministry are generally fulfilled. That is why I order to begin withdrawal of most of our military group from Syria starting from tomorrow," Putin said, according to Russian news agency TASS. "Besides, our military, soldiers and officers demonstrated professionalism, teamwork and ability to organize combat work far away from their territory, having no common borders with the theater of war.”
Russia’s military operation in Syria has cost the government approximately $3 million a day, according to figures from IHS Jane’s, a military analysis group. Putin said he hoped the withdrawal of troops would help the peace process in Syria and instructed Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to increase Russia’s role in the peace process. Putin said Russia’s Hmeimim airbase, in Syria's coastal province of Latakia, and its port at Tartus would both continue operating.
In a telephone conversation, Putin and Assad discussed how Russia’s intervention in the conflict had “brought about a real turnabout in the fight against the terrorists in Syria,” according to a statement issued by the Kremlin. The leaders said the ceasefire agreed to between the U.S. and Russia at the end of February had decreased the death toll. The Syrian leader said he was prepared to discuss a political settlement to the continuing conflict “as soon as possible.” Both leaders said they hoped the United Nations-backed talks in Geneva would lead to results.
The civil war in Syria has left over 250,000 dead and displaced millions, partly spurring the refugee crisis in Europe.
Russia's main troops will withdraw from Syria beginning Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday. The Russian leader said he had achieved his goals after the Kremlin began airstrikes in Syria in late September, the BBC reported.
Putin spoke with Syrian President Bashar Assad about his decision, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed. The sudden announcement, close to the five-year anniversary of the conflict, comes as peace talks in Geneva continued Monday. Western leaders have accused Putin of using Russian airstrikes to prop up the regime of longtime ally Assad.
Russia's economy has been badly battered following the drop in oil prices and continuing Western economic sanctions over the country's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Low oil prices have forced the Kremlin to cut back its military budget by 5 percent in 2016, a move Putin still has to approve.
"I think that the tasks set to the defense ministry are generally fulfilled. That is why I order to begin withdrawal of most of our military group from Syria starting from tomorrow," Putin said, according to Russian news agency TASS. "Besides, our military, soldiers and officers demonstrated professionalism, teamwork and ability to organize combat work far away from their territory, having no common borders with the theater of war.”
Russia’s military operation in Syria has cost the government approximately $3 million a day, according to figures from IHS Jane’s, a military analysis group. Putin said he hoped the withdrawal of troops would help the peace process in Syria and instructed Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to increase Russia’s role in the peace process. Putin said Russia’s Hmeimim airbase, in Syria's coastal province of Latakia, and its port at Tartus would both continue operating.
In a telephone conversation, Putin and Assad discussed how Russia’s intervention in the conflict had “brought about a real turnabout in the fight against the terrorists in Syria,” according to a statement issued by the Kremlin. The leaders said the ceasefire agreed to between the U.S. and Russia at the end of February had decreased the death toll. The Syrian leader said he was prepared to discuss a political settlement to the continuing conflict “as soon as possible.” Both leaders said they hoped the United Nations-backed talks in Geneva would lead to results.
The civil war in Syria has left over 250,000 dead and displaced millions, partly spurring the refugee crisis in Europe.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Antibiotic Resistance Threat Is Real And Immediate
ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE IS NOT THEORETICAL: THE THREAT IS REAL AND IMMEDIATE
On the 61st anniversary of Alexander Fleming’s death, we are on the road back to where he started: the days of people dying from common infections and injuries
Mandeep Dhaliwal | The Guardian - MARCH 11, 2016
In 1928, as Alexander Fleming was sorting through a pile of petri dishes that he’d been cultivating bacteria in, he noticed something unusual. Mold growing in one of the dishes had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. After taking samples of the mold he found it belonged to the penicillium family. Fleming had accidentally stumbled across penicillin, the first antibiotic.
Although Fleming published a paper on the new discovery, it was largely ignored until the 1940s and the onset of World War II. With positive tests in mice and humans showing the true power of penicillin, the US government actively pushed industry into the mass production of the drug. By the end of the war, U.S. companies were making more than 650 billion units a month, which saved tens of thousands of lives then and millions since.
Today marks 61 years since the death of Fleming, and his discovery is still hailed as one of the greatest in medical history. However, we are now facing the prospect of this progress being undone, with the emerging crisis of new strains of antimicrobial resistant bacteria effectively nullifying existing antibiotics. We are on the road back to the days of people dying from common infections and injuries.
According to a study conducted in the UK, following direct intervention by the Prime Minister David Cameron, if we fail to find effective antibiotics and manufacture them at the scale needed, ten million people a year across the world will die by 2050. This would make antimicrobial resistance the world’s single biggest killer. The loss to global GDP will be $100 trillion (more than the whole global economy put together).
In November 2015, scientists declared that they had discovered bacteria resistant to the antibiotic of last resort, colistin. Furthermore, the resistant gene was found to transfer between bacteria strains, meaning many types of infection could quickly become untreatable.
Advertisement
The alarm is still ringing around the world but with coordinated action between government, industry, civil society and the public at the international, national and local levels, we can still turn the tide against antimicrobial resistance.
At the national level, governments are starting to take action. Obama, Cameron and Modi have all made personal statements about the need for action against antimicrobial resistance. The UK government has committed $300 million to support microbiology surveillance capacity in developing countries. G-7 and G-20 leaders have committed to take action and at the World Economic Forum in Davos, more than 80 companies committed to develop sustainable markets for antibiotics and to reinvigorate the basic scientific research and development needed to create a new generation of lifesaving drugs.
Action at the local level involves simple hand washing and immunization campaigns to stop the spread of infections in the first place. Thanks to public pressure, the food industry has also started to take action to reduce the misuse of antibiotics in agriculture. Civil society has a critical role to play both raising attention about how to avoid infection and to educate patients about the proper use of antibiotics, including when to take them and the importance of taking the full course of treatment.
Misuse is a global problem: in many countries, antibiotics are available over the counter at pharmacies, often in part because some areas don’t have enough doctors to responsibly prescribe antibiotics to those who need them. A new study published in PLOS found that lack of access to effective and affordable antibiotics still kills more children in India than drug resistance. If we don’t change the approach that has led us down this dark path, then any new antibiotics found will simply delay the problem.
This month, the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicine is holding global meetings in London and Johannesburg to discuss new ideas, thoughts and innovative ways that governments, civil society, pharmaceutical groups, human rights lawyers and academia can help both promote innovation and increase access to vaccines, diagnostics and medicines. The antimicrobial resistance crisis gives added urgency to the development of the Panel’s report, which will be released in June.
Last year we saw a breakthrough: entirely new antibiotics were discovered for the first time in almost thirty years. To develop approximately 15 new drugs would cost $16-35 billion over the next ten years, which pales in significance to the estimated $100 trillion decrease in lost global economic output if we do not take action now.
Between the 20 richest countries and the major pharmaceutical companies there is no excuse for not finding the money needed (approximately $2 billion per year) to tackle the crisis. The return on investment makes it the right economic decision.
Unlike Fleming in 1928, we know how important antibiotics are and what is needed to protect the world from a doomsday scenario. We have all the information at hand to make critical policy changes. Drug resistance is not a theoretical threat that we should probably do something about. The science is clear: the threat is real and immediate. Now action must follow.
In 1928, as Alexander Fleming was sorting through a pile of petri dishes that he’d been cultivating bacteria in, he noticed something unusual. Mold growing in one of the dishes had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. After taking samples of the mold he found it belonged to the penicillium family. Fleming had accidentally stumbled across penicillin, the first antibiotic.
Although Fleming published a paper on the new discovery, it was largely ignored until the 1940s and the onset of World War II. With positive tests in mice and humans showing the true power of penicillin, the US government actively pushed industry into the mass production of the drug. By the end of the war, U.S. companies were making more than 650 billion units a month, which saved tens of thousands of lives then and millions since.
Today marks 61 years since the death of Fleming, and his discovery is still hailed as one of the greatest in medical history. However, we are now facing the prospect of this progress being undone, with the emerging crisis of new strains of antimicrobial resistant bacteria effectively nullifying existing antibiotics. We are on the road back to the days of people dying from common infections and injuries.
According to a study conducted in the UK, following direct intervention by the Prime Minister David Cameron, if we fail to find effective antibiotics and manufacture them at the scale needed, ten million people a year across the world will die by 2050. This would make antimicrobial resistance the world’s single biggest killer. The loss to global GDP will be $100 trillion (more than the whole global economy put together).
In November 2015, scientists declared that they had discovered bacteria resistant to the antibiotic of last resort, colistin. Furthermore, the resistant gene was found to transfer between bacteria strains, meaning many types of infection could quickly become untreatable.
Advertisement
The alarm is still ringing around the world but with coordinated action between government, industry, civil society and the public at the international, national and local levels, we can still turn the tide against antimicrobial resistance.
At the national level, governments are starting to take action. Obama, Cameron and Modi have all made personal statements about the need for action against antimicrobial resistance. The UK government has committed $300 million to support microbiology surveillance capacity in developing countries. G-7 and G-20 leaders have committed to take action and at the World Economic Forum in Davos, more than 80 companies committed to develop sustainable markets for antibiotics and to reinvigorate the basic scientific research and development needed to create a new generation of lifesaving drugs.
Action at the local level involves simple hand washing and immunization campaigns to stop the spread of infections in the first place. Thanks to public pressure, the food industry has also started to take action to reduce the misuse of antibiotics in agriculture. Civil society has a critical role to play both raising attention about how to avoid infection and to educate patients about the proper use of antibiotics, including when to take them and the importance of taking the full course of treatment.
Misuse is a global problem: in many countries, antibiotics are available over the counter at pharmacies, often in part because some areas don’t have enough doctors to responsibly prescribe antibiotics to those who need them. A new study published in PLOS found that lack of access to effective and affordable antibiotics still kills more children in India than drug resistance. If we don’t change the approach that has led us down this dark path, then any new antibiotics found will simply delay the problem.
This month, the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicine is holding global meetings in London and Johannesburg to discuss new ideas, thoughts and innovative ways that governments, civil society, pharmaceutical groups, human rights lawyers and academia can help both promote innovation and increase access to vaccines, diagnostics and medicines. The antimicrobial resistance crisis gives added urgency to the development of the Panel’s report, which will be released in June.
Last year we saw a breakthrough: entirely new antibiotics were discovered for the first time in almost thirty years. To develop approximately 15 new drugs would cost $16-35 billion over the next ten years, which pales in significance to the estimated $100 trillion decrease in lost global economic output if we do not take action now.
Between the 20 richest countries and the major pharmaceutical companies there is no excuse for not finding the money needed (approximately $2 billion per year) to tackle the crisis. The return on investment makes it the right economic decision.
Unlike Fleming in 1928, we know how important antibiotics are and what is needed to protect the world from a doomsday scenario. We have all the information at hand to make critical policy changes. Drug resistance is not a theoretical threat that we should probably do something about. The science is clear: the threat is real and immediate. Now action must follow.
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Russia Threatens Invasion If North Korea Nuclear Rhetoric Continues
RUSSIA THREATENS INVASION IF NORTH KOREA NUCLEAR RHETORIC CONTINUES
The warning was issued in the form of a written statement from the Russian foreign ministry
Daily Caller | Russ Read - MARCH 9, 2016
North Korea’s provocative nuclear rhetoric has gotten so bad even the Kremlin has come out against the hermit kingdom, warning continued nuclear threats could justify an invasion.
The warning was issued in the form of a written statement from the Russian foreign ministry. It follows North Korea’s threat it would engage in a “preemptive and offensive nuclear strike” in reaction to the start of joint U.S.-South Korean war games Monday.
“We consider it to be absolutely impermissible to make public statements containing threats to deliver some ‘preventive nuclear strikes’ against opponents,” said the statement, as translated by the Russian TASS news agency. “Pyongyang should be aware of the fact that in this way the DPRK [North Korea] will become fully opposed to the international community and will create international legal grounds for using military force against itself in accordance with the right of a state to self-defense enshrined in the United Nations Charter.”
Russia also had harsh words for the U.S. and South Korea, condemning the “unprecedented” exercises. “The development of the situation on the Korean peninsula and around it is causing growing concern,” said a statement issued Monday, as reported by the Kremlin-funded RT news channel.
Part of the planned war games involved the U.S. and South Korea simulating strikes against North Korea’s nuclear facilities and special forces raids against Pyongyang leadership. Around 17,000 U.S. personnel and 300,000 South Korean personnel are participating in the ongoing eight-week war game. The troop levels represent about a one-third increase from last year’s similar war game.
North Korea’s sabre-rattling has reached a fever pitch in recent months. The pariah state carried out its fourth nuclear test in January and launched a rocket in violation of international sanctions in February. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned Congress in early February that North Korea had restarted its plutonium reactor and was poised to produce weapons-grade nuclear material within weeks.
In response to North Korean provocations, the United Nations security council voted unanimously last Thursday to pass a new round of sanctions against the country.
North Korea’s provocative nuclear rhetoric has gotten so bad even the Kremlin has come out against the hermit kingdom, warning continued nuclear threats could justify an invasion.
The warning was issued in the form of a written statement from the Russian foreign ministry. It follows North Korea’s threat it would engage in a “preemptive and offensive nuclear strike” in reaction to the start of joint U.S.-South Korean war games Monday.
“We consider it to be absolutely impermissible to make public statements containing threats to deliver some ‘preventive nuclear strikes’ against opponents,” said the statement, as translated by the Russian TASS news agency. “Pyongyang should be aware of the fact that in this way the DPRK [North Korea] will become fully opposed to the international community and will create international legal grounds for using military force against itself in accordance with the right of a state to self-defense enshrined in the United Nations Charter.”
Russia also had harsh words for the U.S. and South Korea, condemning the “unprecedented” exercises. “The development of the situation on the Korean peninsula and around it is causing growing concern,” said a statement issued Monday, as reported by the Kremlin-funded RT news channel.
Part of the planned war games involved the U.S. and South Korea simulating strikes against North Korea’s nuclear facilities and special forces raids against Pyongyang leadership. Around 17,000 U.S. personnel and 300,000 South Korean personnel are participating in the ongoing eight-week war game. The troop levels represent about a one-third increase from last year’s similar war game.
North Korea’s sabre-rattling has reached a fever pitch in recent months. The pariah state carried out its fourth nuclear test in January and launched a rocket in violation of international sanctions in February. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned Congress in early February that North Korea had restarted its plutonium reactor and was poised to produce weapons-grade nuclear material within weeks.
In response to North Korean provocations, the United Nations security council voted unanimously last Thursday to pass a new round of sanctions against the country.
Rothschild Family Indicted
ROTHSCHILD FAMILY INDICTED, MAINSTREAM MEDIA SILENT
Indictment could mean the beginning of the end for one of humanity's largest enemies
Indictment could mean the beginning of the end for one of humanity's largest enemies
Jon Bowne | Infowars.com - MARCH 9, 2016
The indictment of a Rothschild is not simply another dirty banker being brought to justice.
The imprisonment of the controlling interest of life on Earth would mean a stop to endless wars, illegal mass surveillance, debt slavery, and a Luciferian cultural agenda. Basically, peace on Earth.
The imprisonment of the controlling interest of life on Earth would mean a stop to endless wars, illegal mass surveillance, debt slavery, and a Luciferian cultural agenda. Basically, peace on Earth.
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Iran Threatens To Walk Away From Nuke Deal
Iran Threatens to Walk Away From Nuke Deal After New Missile Test
Islamic Republic breached international agreements by test-firing ballistic missiles
BY: Adam Kredo
March 8, 2016 12:40 pm
Iran on Tuesday again threatened to walk away from the nuclear agreement reached last year with global powers, hours after the country breached international agreements by test-firing ballistic missiles.
Iran’s most recent ballistic missile test, which violates current U.N. Security Council resolutions, comes a day after the international community’s nuclear watchdog organization disclosed that it is prohibited by the nuclear agreement from publicly reporting on potential violations by Iran.
Iranian leaders now say that they are poised to walk away from the deal if the United States and other global powers fail to advance the Islamic Republic’s “national interests.”
“If our interests are not met under the nuclear deal, there will be no reason for us to continue,” Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, warned during remarks delivered to a group of Iranian officials in Tehran.
“If other parties decide, they could easily violate the deal,” Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran’s state-controlled media. “However, they know this will come with costs.”
Araqchi appeared to allude to the United States possibly leveling new economic sanctions as a result of the missile test. The Obama administration moved forward with new sanctions earlier this year as a result of the country’s previous missile tests.
Iran’s latest missile test drew outrage from longtime regime critics on Capitol Hill.
“The administration’s response to Iran’s new salvo of threatening missile tests in violation of international law cannot once again be, it’s ‘not supposed to be doing that,’” Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) said in a statement. “Now is the time for new crippling sanctions against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ministry of Defense, Aerospace Industries Organization, and other related entities driving the Iranian ballistic missile program.”
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) warned that the nuclear agreement has done little to moderate Iran’s rogue behavior.
“Far from pushing Iran to a more moderate engagement with its neighbors, this nuclear deal is enabling Iran’s aggression and terrorist activities,” McCarthy said in a statement. “Sanctions relief is fueling Iran’s proxies from Yemen to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon. Meanwhile, Khamenei and the Iranian regime are acting with impunity because they know President Obama will not hold them accountable and risk the public destruction of his nuclear deal, the cornerstone of the president’s foreign policy legacy.”
McCarthy went on to demand that the Obama administration step forward with new sanctions as punishment for the missile test.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department had difficulty Monday explaining why the nuclear agreement limits public reporting by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, on potential deal violations by Iran.
Yukiya Amano, the IAEA’s chief, disclosed on Monday that his agency is no longer permitted to release details about Iran’s nuclear program and compliance with the deal. The limited public reporting is a byproduct of the nuclear agreement, according to Amano.
When asked about these comments again Tuesday, a State Department official told the Free Beacon that the IAEA’s reports would continue to provide a complete picture of Iran’s nuclear program, though it remains unclear if this information will be made publicly available.
“There isn’t less stringent monitoring or reporting on Iran’s nuclear program,” the official said. “The IAEA’s access to Iran’s nuclear program and its authorization to report on it has actually expanded. It’s a distortion to say that if there is less detail in the first and only post-Implementation Day IAEA report then that somehow implies less stringent monitoring or less insight into Iran’s nuclear program.”
While the IAEA “needs to report on different issues” under the final version of the nuclear agreement, the agency continues to provide “a tremendous amount of information about Iran’s current, much smaller nuclear program,” the source maintained.
The IAEA’s most recent February report—which was viewed by nuclear experts as incomplete and short on detail—“accurately portrays the status of Iran’s nuclear program,” including its efforts to uphold the nuclear deal, the official added.
“We expect this professional level of reporting to continue in the future,” the official said.
BY: Adam Kredo
March 8, 2016 12:40 pm
Iran on Tuesday again threatened to walk away from the nuclear agreement reached last year with global powers, hours after the country breached international agreements by test-firing ballistic missiles.
Iran’s most recent ballistic missile test, which violates current U.N. Security Council resolutions, comes a day after the international community’s nuclear watchdog organization disclosed that it is prohibited by the nuclear agreement from publicly reporting on potential violations by Iran.
Iranian leaders now say that they are poised to walk away from the deal if the United States and other global powers fail to advance the Islamic Republic’s “national interests.”
“If our interests are not met under the nuclear deal, there will be no reason for us to continue,” Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, warned during remarks delivered to a group of Iranian officials in Tehran.
“If other parties decide, they could easily violate the deal,” Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran’s state-controlled media. “However, they know this will come with costs.”
Araqchi appeared to allude to the United States possibly leveling new economic sanctions as a result of the missile test. The Obama administration moved forward with new sanctions earlier this year as a result of the country’s previous missile tests.
Iran’s latest missile test drew outrage from longtime regime critics on Capitol Hill.
“The administration’s response to Iran’s new salvo of threatening missile tests in violation of international law cannot once again be, it’s ‘not supposed to be doing that,’” Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) said in a statement. “Now is the time for new crippling sanctions against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ministry of Defense, Aerospace Industries Organization, and other related entities driving the Iranian ballistic missile program.”
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) warned that the nuclear agreement has done little to moderate Iran’s rogue behavior.
“Far from pushing Iran to a more moderate engagement with its neighbors, this nuclear deal is enabling Iran’s aggression and terrorist activities,” McCarthy said in a statement. “Sanctions relief is fueling Iran’s proxies from Yemen to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon. Meanwhile, Khamenei and the Iranian regime are acting with impunity because they know President Obama will not hold them accountable and risk the public destruction of his nuclear deal, the cornerstone of the president’s foreign policy legacy.”
McCarthy went on to demand that the Obama administration step forward with new sanctions as punishment for the missile test.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department had difficulty Monday explaining why the nuclear agreement limits public reporting by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, on potential deal violations by Iran.
Yukiya Amano, the IAEA’s chief, disclosed on Monday that his agency is no longer permitted to release details about Iran’s nuclear program and compliance with the deal. The limited public reporting is a byproduct of the nuclear agreement, according to Amano.
When asked about these comments again Tuesday, a State Department official told the Free Beacon that the IAEA’s reports would continue to provide a complete picture of Iran’s nuclear program, though it remains unclear if this information will be made publicly available.
“There isn’t less stringent monitoring or reporting on Iran’s nuclear program,” the official said. “The IAEA’s access to Iran’s nuclear program and its authorization to report on it has actually expanded. It’s a distortion to say that if there is less detail in the first and only post-Implementation Day IAEA report then that somehow implies less stringent monitoring or less insight into Iran’s nuclear program.”
While the IAEA “needs to report on different issues” under the final version of the nuclear agreement, the agency continues to provide “a tremendous amount of information about Iran’s current, much smaller nuclear program,” the source maintained.
The IAEA’s most recent February report—which was viewed by nuclear experts as incomplete and short on detail—“accurately portrays the status of Iran’s nuclear program,” including its efforts to uphold the nuclear deal, the official added.
“We expect this professional level of reporting to continue in the future,” the official said.
Secret Societies Are No Longer A Secret
SECRET SOCIETIES ARE NO LONGER A SECRET
The era of the New World Order hiding in the shadows is over
Jon Bowne | Infowars.com - MARCH 9, 2016
Now, the powerful political elite that have gradually lost the shield provided by a disintegrating public trust, can no longer hide from their mountains of crimes against humanity.
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
27 Giant Profitable Companies Paid No Taxes
27 GIANT PROFITABLE COMPANIES PAID NO TAXES
...Meanwhile Americans not inside D.C. are overtaxed
USA Today - MARCH 7, 2016
Death and taxes are supposed to be two certainties of life. But a few companies have at least escaped the taxes part.
There are 27 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500, including telecom firm Level 3 Communications (LVLT), airline United Continental (UAL) and automaker General Motors (GM), that reported paying no income tax expense in 2015 despite reporting pre-tax profits, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Only profitable firms were included in the analysis since firms that lost money - like many energy companies - wouldn't be expected to pay taxes.
Escaping the taxman, so far, hasn't been an advantage at least in the eyes of investors. Shares of the companies that paid no taxes are down 11% on average over the past 12 months, which is more than twice the 4.8% decline by the S&P 500 during the same period.
The underperformance might come as a bit of a surprise given how much time and effort some companies have put into lowering their tax bills.
"Income tax issues, while important, are not as important as how well as company is doing or how well an industry is performing," says Bill Selesky, investment analyst at Argus Research. "It gets to be an issue that I would put at the bottom of the list."
Yet, investors have paid closer attention to the tax rates companies pay as profit growth continues to stall along with revenue growth.
Companies must find any way possible to boost their bottom line, which for some involves looking for ways to reduce their tax liabilities.
Some have taken advantage of lower overseas tax rates, a practice that has drawn criticism. Drugmaker Pfizer (PFE) last year, for instance, drew fire last year for a plan to merge with rival Allergan (AGN) and move its headquarters to Ireland.
And on Sunday night, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took aim Johnson Controls (JCI), which is planning to merge with Tyco (TYC) and move its headquarters to Ireland.
"I am also going to go after companies like Johnson Controls in Wisconsin," Clinton said. "They came and got part of the bailout because they were an auto parts supplier. Now they want to move headquarters to Europe. They are going to have to pay an exit fee. We are going to stop this kind of job exporting and we are going to start importing and growing jobs again in our country."
Three of the 27 companies that paid no income tax in 2015 are based outside the U.S. including healthcare firm Mallinckrodt (MNK), financial firm Willis Towers Watson (WLTW) and insurer XL Group (XL). Several are real-estate investment trusts (REITs). Their unique “pass-through” accounting, which shifts the tax burden to shareholders rather than the company itself, has become a more popular structure as companies look to convert to REITs.
There are a number of reasons why a profitable company may not pay taxes. For instance, years of deep losses can affect a tax bill.
Take United Continental, which reported a $3.2 billion income tax credit in 2015 despite reporting earnings before taxes of $4.2 billion. Accounting rules allow the airline to offset taxes due with valuation allowances resulting from losses in past years. During 2015, these allowances amounted to $4.7 billion which erased the company's $1.5 billion tax bill based on its normal corporate tax rate.
It was a similar situation at Level 3. The company booked a tax credit of $3.2 billion in 2015 despite recording a pre-tax profit of $283 million in the same year. The tax gain was the result of credits associated with losses in previous years in addition to losses at Colorado-based TW Telecom, which Level 3 bought in 2014.
Not all companies breakdown in detail where they paid taxes, be it in the U.S. or elsewhere. But the location can be important to the overall taxes companies pay.
In 2015, General Motors saw a tax credit of of $1.9 billion, even though its earnings before taxes hit $7.7 billion. Uncle Sam got his due, as the company reported a U.S. federal income tax expense of more than $1 billion. Yet the company's global tax bill was a credit thanks mostly to a tax break connected with General Motors Europe.
Investors, though, should know many of these tax breaks and credits will likely eventually run out. United's 2015 annual regulatory filing warns investors as much: "The Company anticipates its effective tax rate will be approximately 37%, which reflects a more normalized rate after the release of the tax valuation allowance in 2015 and is based on the Company’s relative mix of domestic, foreign and state income tax expense."
And at GM, "this benefit will slowly dissipate over the 2016 and 2017 time frame," says Argus' Selesky says. He doesn't think it will be a problem, though.
"Assuming a decent global economy and a good mix of international revenue versus domestic U.S. revenue, GM should not have a problem counteracting that tax credit with better sales performance in some other part of the world," he says.
But when these companies' credits run out - the taxman will be waiting for his due.
There are 27 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500, including telecom firm Level 3 Communications (LVLT), airline United Continental (UAL) and automaker General Motors (GM), that reported paying no income tax expense in 2015 despite reporting pre-tax profits, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Only profitable firms were included in the analysis since firms that lost money - like many energy companies - wouldn't be expected to pay taxes.
Escaping the taxman, so far, hasn't been an advantage at least in the eyes of investors. Shares of the companies that paid no taxes are down 11% on average over the past 12 months, which is more than twice the 4.8% decline by the S&P 500 during the same period.
The underperformance might come as a bit of a surprise given how much time and effort some companies have put into lowering their tax bills.
"Income tax issues, while important, are not as important as how well as company is doing or how well an industry is performing," says Bill Selesky, investment analyst at Argus Research. "It gets to be an issue that I would put at the bottom of the list."
Yet, investors have paid closer attention to the tax rates companies pay as profit growth continues to stall along with revenue growth.
Companies must find any way possible to boost their bottom line, which for some involves looking for ways to reduce their tax liabilities.
Some have taken advantage of lower overseas tax rates, a practice that has drawn criticism. Drugmaker Pfizer (PFE) last year, for instance, drew fire last year for a plan to merge with rival Allergan (AGN) and move its headquarters to Ireland.
And on Sunday night, Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took aim Johnson Controls (JCI), which is planning to merge with Tyco (TYC) and move its headquarters to Ireland.
"I am also going to go after companies like Johnson Controls in Wisconsin," Clinton said. "They came and got part of the bailout because they were an auto parts supplier. Now they want to move headquarters to Europe. They are going to have to pay an exit fee. We are going to stop this kind of job exporting and we are going to start importing and growing jobs again in our country."
Three of the 27 companies that paid no income tax in 2015 are based outside the U.S. including healthcare firm Mallinckrodt (MNK), financial firm Willis Towers Watson (WLTW) and insurer XL Group (XL). Several are real-estate investment trusts (REITs). Their unique “pass-through” accounting, which shifts the tax burden to shareholders rather than the company itself, has become a more popular structure as companies look to convert to REITs.
There are a number of reasons why a profitable company may not pay taxes. For instance, years of deep losses can affect a tax bill.
Take United Continental, which reported a $3.2 billion income tax credit in 2015 despite reporting earnings before taxes of $4.2 billion. Accounting rules allow the airline to offset taxes due with valuation allowances resulting from losses in past years. During 2015, these allowances amounted to $4.7 billion which erased the company's $1.5 billion tax bill based on its normal corporate tax rate.
It was a similar situation at Level 3. The company booked a tax credit of $3.2 billion in 2015 despite recording a pre-tax profit of $283 million in the same year. The tax gain was the result of credits associated with losses in previous years in addition to losses at Colorado-based TW Telecom, which Level 3 bought in 2014.
Not all companies breakdown in detail where they paid taxes, be it in the U.S. or elsewhere. But the location can be important to the overall taxes companies pay.
In 2015, General Motors saw a tax credit of of $1.9 billion, even though its earnings before taxes hit $7.7 billion. Uncle Sam got his due, as the company reported a U.S. federal income tax expense of more than $1 billion. Yet the company's global tax bill was a credit thanks mostly to a tax break connected with General Motors Europe.
Investors, though, should know many of these tax breaks and credits will likely eventually run out. United's 2015 annual regulatory filing warns investors as much: "The Company anticipates its effective tax rate will be approximately 37%, which reflects a more normalized rate after the release of the tax valuation allowance in 2015 and is based on the Company’s relative mix of domestic, foreign and state income tax expense."
And at GM, "this benefit will slowly dissipate over the 2016 and 2017 time frame," says Argus' Selesky says. He doesn't think it will be a problem, though.
"Assuming a decent global economy and a good mix of international revenue versus domestic U.S. revenue, GM should not have a problem counteracting that tax credit with better sales performance in some other part of the world," he says.
But when these companies' credits run out - the taxman will be waiting for his due.
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