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Question Everything!
MEN OF PEACE
"I don't know how to save the world. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all Earth's inhabitants, none of us will survive - nor will we deserve to." Leonard Peltier
Saturday, January 31, 2015
Beating Up on Sarah Palin
Beating Up on Sarah Palin
I’ll skip linking to the various conservative media outlets whacking Sarah Palin around. But it’s going on, it’s ugly and it’s pointless. Even more pointless are the columns claiming that liberals were right about Palin.
A few things
1. Palin isn’t running for president. She’s been around politics enough to know how it’s done and this isn’t how. After ’08, it would have been nice if she had committed to the governorship while making plans for 2012, but that didn’t happen. Instead she joined a conservative vanguard and helped push conservative populism.
It wasn’t enough, but it’s a whole lot more than we got from McCain, Romney, etc
The second tragedy of ’08 (besides Obama) was that the McCain team ruined a promising candidate through overexposure and lack of preparation.
2. Sarah Palin is the closest thing that conservatives have to a populist figure. That is someone who can connect to people who aren’t interested in politics and couldn’t name two candidates in a primary. There are a few Republican candidates who are good with audiences, e.g. Christie, Huckabee, Carson, but their politics are suspect.
And they don’t cross over into popular culture.
So when Matt Lewis writes that Palin dumbed down conservatism by “playing the victim card, engaging in identity politics, co-opting some of the cruder pop-culture references, and conflating redneck lowbrow culture with philosophical conservatism.”
He’s missing the point.
National politics isn’t about ideas, it’s about personalities and culture. And considering how tenuous the Republican hold is these days, “conflating redneck lowbrow culture with philosophical conservatism” is something it needs.
Palin’s approach doesn’t work on a national level. That well has been poisoned and she hasn’t done much to change that by appealing to a larger audience, but writing off what she has done is foolish. So is writing off her supporters.
We’re not going to win elections with philosophy. Ideally someone like Reagan can bridge the gap by putting philosophy into populist terms. We’re good at the philosophy, we’re bad at the populism part.
There’s plenty to learn from Sarah Palin. Both from where she succeeded and where she failed.
3. Preemptively protecting X by bashing Y is how we ended up with the mess in 2012 and Romney on the ticket. Taking a more objective perspective, instead of acting as bodyguards for our favorite candidate might produce better results. Especially since the conservative side of the ticket is fairly light anyway. The fighting is on the RINO side.
About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.
I’ll skip linking to the various conservative media outlets whacking Sarah Palin around. But it’s going on, it’s ugly and it’s pointless. Even more pointless are the columns claiming that liberals were right about Palin.
A few things
1. Palin isn’t running for president. She’s been around politics enough to know how it’s done and this isn’t how. After ’08, it would have been nice if she had committed to the governorship while making plans for 2012, but that didn’t happen. Instead she joined a conservative vanguard and helped push conservative populism.
It wasn’t enough, but it’s a whole lot more than we got from McCain, Romney, etc
The second tragedy of ’08 (besides Obama) was that the McCain team ruined a promising candidate through overexposure and lack of preparation.
2. Sarah Palin is the closest thing that conservatives have to a populist figure. That is someone who can connect to people who aren’t interested in politics and couldn’t name two candidates in a primary. There are a few Republican candidates who are good with audiences, e.g. Christie, Huckabee, Carson, but their politics are suspect.
And they don’t cross over into popular culture.
So when Matt Lewis writes that Palin dumbed down conservatism by “playing the victim card, engaging in identity politics, co-opting some of the cruder pop-culture references, and conflating redneck lowbrow culture with philosophical conservatism.”
He’s missing the point.
National politics isn’t about ideas, it’s about personalities and culture. And considering how tenuous the Republican hold is these days, “conflating redneck lowbrow culture with philosophical conservatism” is something it needs.
Palin’s approach doesn’t work on a national level. That well has been poisoned and she hasn’t done much to change that by appealing to a larger audience, but writing off what she has done is foolish. So is writing off her supporters.
We’re not going to win elections with philosophy. Ideally someone like Reagan can bridge the gap by putting philosophy into populist terms. We’re good at the philosophy, we’re bad at the populism part.
There’s plenty to learn from Sarah Palin. Both from where she succeeded and where she failed.
3. Preemptively protecting X by bashing Y is how we ended up with the mess in 2012 and Romney on the ticket. Taking a more objective perspective, instead of acting as bodyguards for our favorite candidate might produce better results. Especially since the conservative side of the ticket is fairly light anyway. The fighting is on the RINO side.
About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.
New York Times Claims Hillary “Embelished” Lie About Being Under Fire in Bosnia
New York Times Claims Hillary “Embelished” Lie About Being Under Fire in Bosnia
It’s not a lie if you believe it. That’s the defense that the New York Times is going with.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/opinion/why-our-memory-fails-us.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=MostEmailed&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article
It begins by exonerating Neil DeGrasse Tyson for smearing Bush by backing up his defense that he had confused the president’s tribute to the dead astronauts with a remark about Muslims that he never made. The problem with this defense is that the two remarks “Our God is the God who named the stars” and “the same creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today” are different.
Furthermore Tyson’s critics had found a whole list of similar problems with his public statements, including various versions of the same story about jury duty that had supposedly happened to him.
But the absurd cover-up hits new heights when it references Hillary Clinton’s fake sniper incident.
Politicians are often caught misremembering their past, in part because their lives are so well documented. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign was momentarily sidetracked by her own false memory of a time when, on a trip to Bosnia as first lady, she had to skip a greeting ceremony and run from her plane under sniper fire. As often happens, her memory was an embellishment of a real event, a hooked fish that got bigger in the retelling — there was fighting in the region, but not close enough to be a threat. Our memories tend to morph to match our beliefs about ourselves and our world. Mrs. Clinton did go to dangerous places, but on the tarmac in Bosnia she was met by children, not bullets.
Hillary Clinton is a civilian, if she had ever been under fire, she would have remembered it.
There was nothing to embellish here because there was no truth whatsoever to her story. Not even on a Tysonesque level. Claiming that you were under sniper fire when you weren’t is a lie.
It’s not possible to confuse being met by children with being met by sniper fire.
Whether or not there was fighting elsewhere doesn’t matter because she never experienced it. Claiming falsely to have been carjacked doesn’t mean your statement becomes partly true if someone else was carjacked elsewhere in the city.
That’s an absurd level of reality distortion even for the New York Times.
Furthermore Hillary Clinton had a long, long record of lies. When dealing with a compulsive liar, it’s ridiculous to take one lie out of context and try to make excuses for it.
by Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
It’s not a lie if you believe it. That’s the defense that the New York Times is going with.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/opinion/why-our-memory-fails-us.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=MostEmailed&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article
It begins by exonerating Neil DeGrasse Tyson for smearing Bush by backing up his defense that he had confused the president’s tribute to the dead astronauts with a remark about Muslims that he never made. The problem with this defense is that the two remarks “Our God is the God who named the stars” and “the same creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today” are different.
Furthermore Tyson’s critics had found a whole list of similar problems with his public statements, including various versions of the same story about jury duty that had supposedly happened to him.
But the absurd cover-up hits new heights when it references Hillary Clinton’s fake sniper incident.
Politicians are often caught misremembering their past, in part because their lives are so well documented. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign was momentarily sidetracked by her own false memory of a time when, on a trip to Bosnia as first lady, she had to skip a greeting ceremony and run from her plane under sniper fire. As often happens, her memory was an embellishment of a real event, a hooked fish that got bigger in the retelling — there was fighting in the region, but not close enough to be a threat. Our memories tend to morph to match our beliefs about ourselves and our world. Mrs. Clinton did go to dangerous places, but on the tarmac in Bosnia she was met by children, not bullets.
Hillary Clinton is a civilian, if she had ever been under fire, she would have remembered it.
There was nothing to embellish here because there was no truth whatsoever to her story. Not even on a Tysonesque level. Claiming that you were under sniper fire when you weren’t is a lie.
It’s not possible to confuse being met by children with being met by sniper fire.
Whether or not there was fighting elsewhere doesn’t matter because she never experienced it. Claiming falsely to have been carjacked doesn’t mean your statement becomes partly true if someone else was carjacked elsewhere in the city.
That’s an absurd level of reality distortion even for the New York Times.
Furthermore Hillary Clinton had a long, long record of lies. When dealing with a compulsive liar, it’s ridiculous to take one lie out of context and try to make excuses for it.
by Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
Why Blame “Anti-Vaxxers” Instead of Immigrants for Measles Outbreaks?
Why Blame “Anti-Vaxxers” Instead of Immigrants for Measles Outbreaks?
The usual clickbait sites are gleefully blaming “anti-vaxxers”, parents opposed to vaccines for their children, for the measles outbreak. They are certainly a safe target, but overlooked is the simple fact that there would be no outbreaks without immigration from countries where measles is widespread.
So much vitriol is spent on blaming parents who don’t vaccinate, while blaming those who import the disease, especially Obama with his border rush amnesty, is politically incorrect.
Asked if the anti-vaccination movement contributed to the latest outbreak in California, a spokesman for the state health department Carlos Villatoro, said in an email: “We think that unvaccinated individuals have been the principal factor.”
Obviously unvaccinated individuals are a factor and the average liberal smiles having his prejudices reaffirmed. But unvaccinated, does not necessarily mean those opposed to vaccinations.
The United States eliminated measles, but immigration, particularly from the Third World, kept bringing it back.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/01/23/how-the-u-s-went-from-eliminating-measles-to-a-measles-outbreak-at-disneyland/
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association — Pediatrics last year found that 88 percent of measles cases in the country “were internationally imported or epidemiologically or virologically linked to importation.”
There were a few cases not linked to any kind of importation over a period from 2001 to 2011, but they did not seem to be endemic, researchers said. The study ultimately found that while endemic measles was still eliminated, international importation remained a serious risk.
As long as people are traveling to and from other countries, and as long as some of these people may be unvaccinated and they may come into contact with other unvaccinated people, the risk remains of measles cases in the United States.
It’s doubtful that measles cases skyrocketed last year, increasingly threefold, because of Jenny McCarthy. There was a little thing called amnesty which brought with it a border rush and plenty of other diseases.
by Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
The usual clickbait sites are gleefully blaming “anti-vaxxers”, parents opposed to vaccines for their children, for the measles outbreak. They are certainly a safe target, but overlooked is the simple fact that there would be no outbreaks without immigration from countries where measles is widespread.
So much vitriol is spent on blaming parents who don’t vaccinate, while blaming those who import the disease, especially Obama with his border rush amnesty, is politically incorrect.
Asked if the anti-vaccination movement contributed to the latest outbreak in California, a spokesman for the state health department Carlos Villatoro, said in an email: “We think that unvaccinated individuals have been the principal factor.”
Obviously unvaccinated individuals are a factor and the average liberal smiles having his prejudices reaffirmed. But unvaccinated, does not necessarily mean those opposed to vaccinations.
The United States eliminated measles, but immigration, particularly from the Third World, kept bringing it back.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/01/23/how-the-u-s-went-from-eliminating-measles-to-a-measles-outbreak-at-disneyland/
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association — Pediatrics last year found that 88 percent of measles cases in the country “were internationally imported or epidemiologically or virologically linked to importation.”
There were a few cases not linked to any kind of importation over a period from 2001 to 2011, but they did not seem to be endemic, researchers said. The study ultimately found that while endemic measles was still eliminated, international importation remained a serious risk.
As long as people are traveling to and from other countries, and as long as some of these people may be unvaccinated and they may come into contact with other unvaccinated people, the risk remains of measles cases in the United States.
It’s doubtful that measles cases skyrocketed last year, increasingly threefold, because of Jenny McCarthy. There was a little thing called amnesty which brought with it a border rush and plenty of other diseases.
by Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
How Do We Get Back to Where We Were?
As a Historian I always believe even a little history might help push back the darkness swirling around us
How Do We Get Back to Where We Were?
It’s hard to be a conservative when there’s little left to conserve. The increasing pace of America’s progression from free markets to a command economy has reached such a pace and become so obvious that way back in 2009 the Russian Prime Minister used his spotlight time at the World Economic Forum to warn America not to follow the socialist path.
http://www.weforum.org/en/events/ArchivedEvents/AnnualMeeting2009/index.htm
http://www.therightperspective.org/2009/02/11/putin-warns-us-about-socialsm/
The Russian newspaper Pravda,once the leading communist voice on earth published an article entitled, ‘American capitalism gone with a whimper’. People around the world can see the individual decisions of producers and consumers are being replaced by the form letters of a faceless central-planning bureaucracy even if the Obama boosters still haven’t swallowed the red pill and watched the matrix dissolve.http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/
http://www.arrod.co.uk/essays/matrix.php
Pushed by the breathtaking speed of America’s devolution into a command economy some conservatives have entered the ranks of the radicals. They’re beginning to think about how to cure the systemic political problems precipitating the November Revolution of 2008. One solution some are embracing is known as the Sovereignty Movement. This is a movement of citizens and state representatives attempting to right the listing ship-of-state by appealing to the 10th Amendment which says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
http://www.economywatch.com/economy-articles/command-economy.html
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/02/09/state-sovereignty-movement-quietly-growing/
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/html/amdt10.html
The 10th Amendment addressed one of the most hard-fought points in the establishment of a central government. The States even though they surrendered some of their sovereignty didn’t want to lose it all. Specifically they didn’t want to lose the power to make internal decisions. They did not want to be powerless before a distant national bureaucracy. So as the cap-stone of the Bill of Rights the 10th Amendment was meant to reassure the States they would remain sovereign within their borders. However, since the 1830s, court rulings have garbled the once universally accepted meaning of the 10th Amendment as the Federal Government extended its authority from roads to schools to GM to Health Care to whatever they want.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Tenth+Amendment
10th Amendment
Now some are turning to a resurrection of the straightforward meaning of the 10th Amendment as a way to mitigate the ever expanding power of centralized control and social engineering combined with perpetual re-election and runaway pork-barrel deficit spending. But, is this enough?
As a Historian, I always believe even a little history might help push back the darkness swirling around us. In 1787, at the close of the Constitutional Convention, as Benjamin Franklin left Independence Hall, a lady asked “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy.” “A republic,” replied Franklin “if you can keep it.”
Many have the mistaken idea that the United States is a democracy. It’s not. It’s a representative republic. The Framers distrusted unfettered democracy, therefore, they inserted several mechanisms into the Constitution which added some innovations between direct democracy and the power to rule.
http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_directdemocracy.html
http://www.albatrus.org/english/goverment/govenrment/democracy%20versus%20repubblic.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/republic
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/aspects/demrep.html
One of the great innovations the Framers built into our system is the federal concept. Since this is an important component of our political legacy that has been overlooked in our contemporary education system, let me define what is meant by federal. A federal system is a union of states with a central authority wherein the member states still retain certain defined powers of government.
According to the Constitution, the Federal Government cannot mandate policies relating to local issues such as housing, business, transportation, etc. within the States. At least this was how the Constitution was interpreted by President James Madison, the Father of the Constitution. He expressed this clearly in a veto statement in 1817. In that there has never been anyone more qualified to address the original intent of the framers, I believe it is important to bring his entire statement into this article:http://www.sweetspeeches.com/s/142-james-madison-veto-message-on-the-internal-improvements-bill
To the House of Representatives of the United States:
Having considered the bill this day presented to me entitled “An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements,” and which sets apart and pledges funds “for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions for the common defense,” I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States to return it with that objection to the House of Representatives, in which it originated.
The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated
The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation within the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.
“The power to regulate commerce among the several States” cannot include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses in order to facilitate, promote, and secure such a commerce without a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.
To refer the power in question to the clause “to provide for the common defense and general welfare” would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms “common defense and general welfare” embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being expressly declared “that the Constitution of the United States and laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Such a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are unsusceptible of judicial cognizance and decision.
A restriction of the power “to provide for the common defense and general welfare” to cases which are to be provided for by the expenditure of money would still leave within the legislative power of Congress all the great and most important measures of Government, money being the ordinary and necessary means of carrying them into execution.
If a general power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses, with the train of powers incident thereto, be not possessed by Congress, the assent of the States in the mode provided in the bill cannot confer the power. The only cases in which the consent and cession of particular States can extend the power of Congress are those specified and provided for in the Constitution.
I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly given by the Constitution, and believing that it cannot be deduced from any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction and a reliance on insufficient precedents; believing also that the permanent success of the Constitution depends on a definite partition of powers between the General and the State Governments, and that no adequate landmarks would be left by the constructive extension of the powers of Congress as proposed in the bill, I have no option but to withhold my signature from it, and to cherishing the hope that its beneficial objects may be attained by a resort for the necessary powers to the same wisdom and virtue in the nation which established the Constitution in its actual form and providently marked out in the instrument itself a safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest.
This is an eloquent expression of how the Constitution was meant to be understood. However, through expansive interpretations by activist judges this gradually morphed into almost limitless Federal control of the domestic affairs of the States.
http://www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/judicial_activism
Another vital component of our Constitutional heritage is the protection provided by a system of “Checks and Balances” wherein each level or branch of government acts as a barrier to other levels or branches of government from acquiring too much power. The most important check on the power of the Federal Government in relation to the constituent States was the Senate. In the Constitution the people directly elected the House of Representatives to represent their interests, the various State legislatures elected the members of the Senate to represent the individual states.
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_cnb.html
The adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 mandating the popular election of Senators fatally damaged this system. Since then, the States have been reduced from equal partners with the Federal Government to a group of individual lobbyists. Before this amendment senators remained in office based upon how they upheld the rights of their state. The hot and cold winds of populist considerations didn’t compromise the Senator’s ability to serve. This freedom to vote against populist sentiment allowed the Senators to balance the directly elected House.http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_Am17.html
Now we have two houses of Congress trying to spend enough of other people’s money to make political profits for themselves. So, what do I propose? Resurrect the 10th Amendment, repeal the 17th and while we’re at it we should drive a stake through the heart of the 16th which allows progressive taxation and all that’s still on the conservative side of radicalism.
Restore the balance and save the Republic!
By Dr. Robert R. Owens
Spare the Blogger and Lash Us Instead
Spare the Blogger and Lash Us Instead
On Jan. 9, the government of Saudi Arabia publicly whipped a liberal Muslim writer, Raif Badawi, flogging him 50 times outside a mosque in Jeddah. It was the first installment of the 1,000 lashes to which Badawi had been sentenced – in addition to 10 years in prison and a fine of more than $250,000 – for the crime of “insulting Islam” on his former website, the Saudi Free Liberals Forum.
Two days later, following the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Saudi ambassador to France joined in the great Paris solidarity march in defense of freedom of expression.
Such hypocrisy was more than seven members of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom could abide. The commission – an independent, bipartisan federal agency – had several times expressed concern about the persecution of Badawi; it denounced his lashing as “a cruel and barbaric act” inflicted “for nothing more than creating an online forum for diverse views to be expressed freely.” Last week, writing in their individual capacities to the Saudi embassy in Washington, the seven commissioners drew attention to the glaring inconsistency between Saudi Arabia’s public show of support for civil liberties in France and its brutal denial of those very liberties in Badawi’s case.
Then, in a powerful demonstration of genuine solidarity, they offered to share personally in his flogging.
“If your government will not remit the punishment of Raif Badawi, we respectfully ask that you permit each of us to take 100 of the lashes that would be given to him,” they wrote. “We would rather share in his victimization than stand by and watch him being cruelly tortured.”
The signatories are as intellectually distinguished as they are religiously and politically diverse. They include Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor and former ambassador to the Vatican; Zuhdi Jasser, a physician and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; Robert George, a notable public scholar and professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University; and Eric Schwartz, a former assistant secretary of state who is now dean of the University of Minnesota’s school of public affairs. Another commissioner, Daniel I. Mark, is a political scientist at Villanova University; Hannah Rosenthal is president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation; and Katrina Lantos Swett, the commission chairman, heads an international human-rights foundation.
Of course, the chances are nil that the Saudis will agree to administer lashes to prominent American thinkers and social activists. But that doesn’t make the commissioners' willingness to share in Badawi’s suffering insincere. “If you’re a serious religious person, you don’t make such an offer unless you’re prepared to carry it out,” George told me. The same conviction was expressed by Mark, who in a blog post titled “#IAmRaif” wrote that he had been thinking hard about “what it means to sacrifice for others, to go to the Cross, as some might say, in the fight for justice.”
Vocal appeals in support of Badawi have come not just from the American commissioners, but also from Nobel laureates, from Amnesty International, from members of Congress, and from PEN, the international writers' organization. But from the president of the United States there has so far been only silence.
Protesters hold a vigil for Raif Badawi outside the Saudi embassy in London. The 31-year-old Muslim moderate has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison as punishment for setting up a website, the Saudi Free Liberals Forum.
President Obama cut short his state visit to India this week so he could travel to Saudi Arabia to pay his respects to the deceased King Abdullah. Yet “the Saudi who should be on the president’s mind and heart right now,” George insists emphatically, “is not Abdullah, it is Raif Badawi – the brutalized freedom advocate who has become the living symbol of the oppression practiced by Saudi Arabia’s rulers.”
Obama’s silence is a source of particular distress to Jasser, a faithful Muslim who since 9/11 has made opposition to radical Islam his life’s mission. “Everybody asks why more moderate Muslims don’t speak out against the poison of Islamism,” Jasser said by phone the other day. “Well, Badawi’s ordeal is a clinic in what happens when they do.” It would so hearten reformers and moderates within Islam, he says, if the president would publicly express concern for liberals like Badawi – the way Ronald Reagan made a point of mentioning Soviet refuseniks like Natan Sharansky by name.
Realpolitik may require an ongoing US relationship with the Saudis. But Americans are not obliged to pretend that Saudi Arabia – where liberals are whipped, dissidents are tortured, and jihadists are incubated – isn’t one of the world’s leading producers of intolerance and fanaticism. Badawi and others like him are the antidote to those toxins. They need all the solidarity we can give them.
By Jeff Jacoby
On Jan. 9, the government of Saudi Arabia publicly whipped a liberal Muslim writer, Raif Badawi, flogging him 50 times outside a mosque in Jeddah. It was the first installment of the 1,000 lashes to which Badawi had been sentenced – in addition to 10 years in prison and a fine of more than $250,000 – for the crime of “insulting Islam” on his former website, the Saudi Free Liberals Forum.
Two days later, following the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Saudi ambassador to France joined in the great Paris solidarity march in defense of freedom of expression.
Such hypocrisy was more than seven members of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom could abide. The commission – an independent, bipartisan federal agency – had several times expressed concern about the persecution of Badawi; it denounced his lashing as “a cruel and barbaric act” inflicted “for nothing more than creating an online forum for diverse views to be expressed freely.” Last week, writing in their individual capacities to the Saudi embassy in Washington, the seven commissioners drew attention to the glaring inconsistency between Saudi Arabia’s public show of support for civil liberties in France and its brutal denial of those very liberties in Badawi’s case.
Then, in a powerful demonstration of genuine solidarity, they offered to share personally in his flogging.
“If your government will not remit the punishment of Raif Badawi, we respectfully ask that you permit each of us to take 100 of the lashes that would be given to him,” they wrote. “We would rather share in his victimization than stand by and watch him being cruelly tortured.”
The signatories are as intellectually distinguished as they are religiously and politically diverse. They include Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard law professor and former ambassador to the Vatican; Zuhdi Jasser, a physician and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy; Robert George, a notable public scholar and professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University; and Eric Schwartz, a former assistant secretary of state who is now dean of the University of Minnesota’s school of public affairs. Another commissioner, Daniel I. Mark, is a political scientist at Villanova University; Hannah Rosenthal is president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation; and Katrina Lantos Swett, the commission chairman, heads an international human-rights foundation.
Of course, the chances are nil that the Saudis will agree to administer lashes to prominent American thinkers and social activists. But that doesn’t make the commissioners' willingness to share in Badawi’s suffering insincere. “If you’re a serious religious person, you don’t make such an offer unless you’re prepared to carry it out,” George told me. The same conviction was expressed by Mark, who in a blog post titled “#IAmRaif” wrote that he had been thinking hard about “what it means to sacrifice for others, to go to the Cross, as some might say, in the fight for justice.”
Vocal appeals in support of Badawi have come not just from the American commissioners, but also from Nobel laureates, from Amnesty International, from members of Congress, and from PEN, the international writers' organization. But from the president of the United States there has so far been only silence.
Protesters hold a vigil for Raif Badawi outside the Saudi embassy in London. The 31-year-old Muslim moderate has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison as punishment for setting up a website, the Saudi Free Liberals Forum.
President Obama cut short his state visit to India this week so he could travel to Saudi Arabia to pay his respects to the deceased King Abdullah. Yet “the Saudi who should be on the president’s mind and heart right now,” George insists emphatically, “is not Abdullah, it is Raif Badawi – the brutalized freedom advocate who has become the living symbol of the oppression practiced by Saudi Arabia’s rulers.”
Obama’s silence is a source of particular distress to Jasser, a faithful Muslim who since 9/11 has made opposition to radical Islam his life’s mission. “Everybody asks why more moderate Muslims don’t speak out against the poison of Islamism,” Jasser said by phone the other day. “Well, Badawi’s ordeal is a clinic in what happens when they do.” It would so hearten reformers and moderates within Islam, he says, if the president would publicly express concern for liberals like Badawi – the way Ronald Reagan made a point of mentioning Soviet refuseniks like Natan Sharansky by name.
Realpolitik may require an ongoing US relationship with the Saudis. But Americans are not obliged to pretend that Saudi Arabia – where liberals are whipped, dissidents are tortured, and jihadists are incubated – isn’t one of the world’s leading producers of intolerance and fanaticism. Badawi and others like him are the antidote to those toxins. They need all the solidarity we can give them.
By Jeff Jacoby
Without Obama We Would Never Know
Without Obama We Would Never Know
If it were not for President Obama and Democrats, would you know that the Taliban is not a terrorist organization but just an “armed insurgency?”
The Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai, a 16-year-old Pakistani child advocate for girl’s education, in the face because she simply wanted an education. Then how could we forget the December attack in Pakistan where the Taliban killed 145 people, mostly children in their school uniforms. What about the story of the 7-year-old Afghanistan boy who was hung by the Taliban simply because he had American dollars in his pocket? But the Obama administration and Democrats want to educate the American people in the facts – they are not terrorists!
If it were not for President Obama and Democrats, we would not know that trading 5 Taliban terrorists, for Bo Bergdahl, a deserter, is not negotiating with terrorists. Yet when Jordan decides to trade a female terrorist responsible for a 2005 suicide bomb attack for a Japanese war veteran held by ISIS, the White House says (via (Fox News Sunday):
“We don’t pay ransom, we don’t give concessions to terrorist organizations.”
“We don’t get into negotiation with terrorists. We don’t pay ransom because that cash than fuels further kidnappings, which just continue to exacerbate the problem. So, we’re not going to do that.”
Meanwhile, it has been suggested that the Army has plans to charge Bergdahl with desertion. And one of the terrorists exchanged by Obama for Bergdahl is now a top ISIS commander.
As reported by the National Report, “Mullah Mohammed Fazi, one of the five Guantanamo Bay detainees released by the Obama administration in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, has been confirmed to be currently in Iraq. Fazi, the Taliban’s former Defense Minister, is serving in a leadership capacity within the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.”
If it were not for President Obama and Democrats, would you know that ISIS/ISIL, who behead innocent men, women and children from every religious faction, while praising Allah, have nothing to do with Islam? I mean how we would ever know this if we did not have Obama and Democrats telling us so?
Let’s look at our recent and continuing economic and foreign policy lessons we continue to learn from President Obama and Democrats. Direct from the horse’s mouth, at the recent SOTU, (State of the Union):
Obama:
“America, in 2014, had a "breakthrough year.” “Our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999” “Our employment rate is lower that it was before the financial crisis.”
The Reality:
Unemployment is at 5.6%, yet if you added back into the mix all the Americans who have dropped out of the workforce because they have given up trying to find a job, we would be looking at an unemployment rate of 9.1%. According to the Economic Policy Institute, over 6 million Americans have quit looking for jobs that are not there. They say, “The unemployment rate published, (5.6%) drastically understates the weakness of job opportunities.”
But how would those unemployed Americans sitting at home, disillusioned and hopeless in rebuilding their lives because the economy still stinks, know that the economy and the job market is really GREAT, if Obama didn’t tell us this?
Obama:
“Tonight for the first time since 9/11 our combat mission in Afghanistan, [Iraq] is over…. The Shadow of crisis has passed and the State of the Union is strong.”
The Reality:
According to the Huffington Post, a liberal alternative to the Drudge Report, “In the annals of U.S. foreign policy, Afghanistan stands as a typical case where a flawed military strategy has sidelined viable political solutions. The U.S. has had a war strategy, but no political strategy or a clear exit strategy. Many of the warlords who Balkanized the country in the 1990s act as high-ranking officials and parliamentarians, ranks they have acquired through the flagrant abuse of ethnic loyalties and tribal quotas. Furthermore, some of these warlords-turned-demagogues have been implicated in crimes against humanity, but remain immune to prosecution with the tacit approval of the United States.”
And from Newsweek: “A leading politician in Iraq has warned that unless the United States and its allies can quickly liberate the parts of Iraq under ISIS control, people there may soon learn to live with the militants. "Time, is not on our side.”
And from the The Boston Globe: “The recent terrorist attack in Paris against the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket stunned the city. For three days we watched the drama unfold; the brazen assault and massacre, the desperate search for the brothers, the subsequent standoff, and a deadly hostage situation that targeted the Jewish community. The conclusions to both crises were violent and virtually simultaneous.”
As stated in the Business Insider in July of 2014: “The most extreme faction of Al Qaeda is winning, and it’s leading to the destruction of Iraq.”
Obama:
“We believed we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil and protect our planet. And today, America is number one in oil and gas. America is number one in wind power. Every three weeks we bring online as much solar power as we did in all of 2008. And thanks to lower gas prices and higher fuel standards, the typical family this year should save $750 at the pump.”
The Reality:
From the Washington Times: “President Obama has gone to war. But not with the Islamic State group, Iran, North Korea or any foreign threat. Mr. Obama, at the urging of environmental extremists, has declared war on America’s oil and natural gas producers. His weapon of choice is a new Environmental Protection Agency regulation to cut methane emissions by up to 45 percent by 2025.”
From the Wall Street Journal: "The Obama administration said Tuesday it would veto legislation that would authorize the Keystone XL pipeline.“
From the Washington Examiner: "Oil, natural gas and coal production in this country are at record levels. But this is despite Obama’s policies, not, as he implied, because of them. Oil, natural gas and coal production are zooming upwards on private land, but plummeting on government lands. Immediately after taking office in 2009, Obama canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah. Then in January 2010, Obama issued new regulations further restricting energy development on all federal lands. Obama instituted not one but two comprehensive drilling bans in the Gulf of Mexico, the first of which was declared illegal by a federal judge. After lifting his second ban, Obama refused to issue permits for any new drilling in the Gulf, which EIA estimated cut domestic offshore oil production by 13 percent that year alone. Obama has leased less than half as many offshore acres as President Clinton did at the same point in his tenure. And Obama is blocking access to 19 billion barrels of oil in the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, another 10 billion barrels estimated in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan coast, and another 10 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Even so, the United States is undergoing an energy revolution, making the U.S. dramatically less dependent on oil from hostile foreign nations. Increased natural gas production is making manufacturing here competitive again due to lower production costs, which in turn fuels a manufacturing employment expansion the country has not seen in decades. It’s the fruit of Americans working together voluntarily in the private sector. Think what they could do if Obama and the bureaucrats would get out-of-the-way.”
From CNN: “Solyndra, Abound Solar, Beacon Power, and Ener1, Obama’s green energy, firms that all received money from the stimulus totaling over $1 billion dollars, have all gone bankrupt.
Obama:
"Will we allow ourselves to be sorted into factions and turned against one another – or will we recapture the sense of common purpose that has always propelled America forward?”
The Reality:
From the National Review: “Considered politically toxic by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Al Sharpton has been enthusiastically embraced by President Obama. He has bragged about helping to pick a new attorney general and communed with the current one. In fact, a much-quoted Politico profile last summer, described Al Sharpton as Obama’s "go-to man on race.”
From Breitbart: “President Barack Obama invited Al Sharpton to a series of White House meetings on Monday concerning the Ferguson riots, but he did not feel it was necessary to give someone from the Ferguson police department a seat at the table. Obama also met with two ‘youth leaders’ from Ferguson. Obama later cited their stories and said that hearing ‘young people feeling marginalized and distrustful even after they’ve done everything right’ only ‘violates’ his ‘belief in what America can do.’”
Meanwhile, protestors in Ferguson trashed, vandalized and destroyed over 40 business in Ferguson in protest.
A few of the many other headlines on the Ferguson riots:
“Elderly Man Attacked With His Own Oxygen Tank and Carjacked By Protesters.”
“Ferguson Rioters Attack Little Kids At Christmas tree Lighting Event.”
“Reporter Attacked, Robbed at Gunpoint in Ferguson; Protesters Set his Car on Fire”
“Pack of Teens Beat Man to Death Near Ferguson”
“Rioters Attack Police Car in Ferguson”
“Micheal Brown’s Mother to Face Robbery charges.”
“Fox Reporter Attacked by Masked Man in Ferguson”
“Officer Violently Attacked, Shot During Ferguson-Related Riot”
I guess we wouldn’t know that the Ferguson protesters did everything right if it weren’t for President Obama, Eric Holder and Al Sharpton clearing that up for us.
From The National Review: "President Obama said that police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “acted stupidly” in arresting a prominent black Harvard professor last week after a confrontation at the man’s home.“
From the Huffington Post, "Obama on Trayvon Martin Case: If I had a son he would look like Trayvon”: “‘We fund a lot of jurisdictions all across the country. And if we can identify best practices, then for us to be able to say, you need to adopt these best practices, and if you don’t, then perhaps some of the funding that’s available around some things that law enforcement cares about become less available,’ Obama said. ‘We’re going to provide more to folks who are doing the right thing and we’re going to be investigating folks who are not doing the right thing.’”
The American people have been lied to over and over and over again by this President and members of the Democratic party. Decisions are no longer made in the best interest of the country, but in the best interest of politics. The current administration’s cabinet has been filled with Obama cheerleaders who are determined to continue with President Obama’s agenda to “fundamentally transform the United States” into something we no longer even recognize – a nation that now has no morals, has shut out God and welcomed in Islam, where lying is the new truth, part time work is now the norm, and we, the taxpayer are responsible for funding every illegal in the country to make sure they have a homes, food, education and healthcare, while we go without. Add insult to injury, Webster’s dictionary has to be rewritten because you are not allowed to use half the words in it for fear of offending someone!
It is time for change.
By Leigh Bravo
If it were not for President Obama and Democrats, would you know that the Taliban is not a terrorist organization but just an “armed insurgency?”
The Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai, a 16-year-old Pakistani child advocate for girl’s education, in the face because she simply wanted an education. Then how could we forget the December attack in Pakistan where the Taliban killed 145 people, mostly children in their school uniforms. What about the story of the 7-year-old Afghanistan boy who was hung by the Taliban simply because he had American dollars in his pocket? But the Obama administration and Democrats want to educate the American people in the facts – they are not terrorists!
If it were not for President Obama and Democrats, we would not know that trading 5 Taliban terrorists, for Bo Bergdahl, a deserter, is not negotiating with terrorists. Yet when Jordan decides to trade a female terrorist responsible for a 2005 suicide bomb attack for a Japanese war veteran held by ISIS, the White House says (via (Fox News Sunday):
“We don’t pay ransom, we don’t give concessions to terrorist organizations.”
“We don’t get into negotiation with terrorists. We don’t pay ransom because that cash than fuels further kidnappings, which just continue to exacerbate the problem. So, we’re not going to do that.”
Meanwhile, it has been suggested that the Army has plans to charge Bergdahl with desertion. And one of the terrorists exchanged by Obama for Bergdahl is now a top ISIS commander.
As reported by the National Report, “Mullah Mohammed Fazi, one of the five Guantanamo Bay detainees released by the Obama administration in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, has been confirmed to be currently in Iraq. Fazi, the Taliban’s former Defense Minister, is serving in a leadership capacity within the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.”
If it were not for President Obama and Democrats, would you know that ISIS/ISIL, who behead innocent men, women and children from every religious faction, while praising Allah, have nothing to do with Islam? I mean how we would ever know this if we did not have Obama and Democrats telling us so?
Let’s look at our recent and continuing economic and foreign policy lessons we continue to learn from President Obama and Democrats. Direct from the horse’s mouth, at the recent SOTU, (State of the Union):
Obama:
“America, in 2014, had a "breakthrough year.” “Our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999” “Our employment rate is lower that it was before the financial crisis.”
The Reality:
Unemployment is at 5.6%, yet if you added back into the mix all the Americans who have dropped out of the workforce because they have given up trying to find a job, we would be looking at an unemployment rate of 9.1%. According to the Economic Policy Institute, over 6 million Americans have quit looking for jobs that are not there. They say, “The unemployment rate published, (5.6%) drastically understates the weakness of job opportunities.”
But how would those unemployed Americans sitting at home, disillusioned and hopeless in rebuilding their lives because the economy still stinks, know that the economy and the job market is really GREAT, if Obama didn’t tell us this?
Obama:
“Tonight for the first time since 9/11 our combat mission in Afghanistan, [Iraq] is over…. The Shadow of crisis has passed and the State of the Union is strong.”
The Reality:
According to the Huffington Post, a liberal alternative to the Drudge Report, “In the annals of U.S. foreign policy, Afghanistan stands as a typical case where a flawed military strategy has sidelined viable political solutions. The U.S. has had a war strategy, but no political strategy or a clear exit strategy. Many of the warlords who Balkanized the country in the 1990s act as high-ranking officials and parliamentarians, ranks they have acquired through the flagrant abuse of ethnic loyalties and tribal quotas. Furthermore, some of these warlords-turned-demagogues have been implicated in crimes against humanity, but remain immune to prosecution with the tacit approval of the United States.”
And from Newsweek: “A leading politician in Iraq has warned that unless the United States and its allies can quickly liberate the parts of Iraq under ISIS control, people there may soon learn to live with the militants. "Time, is not on our side.”
And from the The Boston Globe: “The recent terrorist attack in Paris against the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket stunned the city. For three days we watched the drama unfold; the brazen assault and massacre, the desperate search for the brothers, the subsequent standoff, and a deadly hostage situation that targeted the Jewish community. The conclusions to both crises were violent and virtually simultaneous.”
As stated in the Business Insider in July of 2014: “The most extreme faction of Al Qaeda is winning, and it’s leading to the destruction of Iraq.”
Obama:
“We believed we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil and protect our planet. And today, America is number one in oil and gas. America is number one in wind power. Every three weeks we bring online as much solar power as we did in all of 2008. And thanks to lower gas prices and higher fuel standards, the typical family this year should save $750 at the pump.”
The Reality:
From the Washington Times: “President Obama has gone to war. But not with the Islamic State group, Iran, North Korea or any foreign threat. Mr. Obama, at the urging of environmental extremists, has declared war on America’s oil and natural gas producers. His weapon of choice is a new Environmental Protection Agency regulation to cut methane emissions by up to 45 percent by 2025.”
From the Wall Street Journal: "The Obama administration said Tuesday it would veto legislation that would authorize the Keystone XL pipeline.“
From the Washington Examiner: "Oil, natural gas and coal production in this country are at record levels. But this is despite Obama’s policies, not, as he implied, because of them. Oil, natural gas and coal production are zooming upwards on private land, but plummeting on government lands. Immediately after taking office in 2009, Obama canceled 77 leases for oil and gas drilling in Utah. Then in January 2010, Obama issued new regulations further restricting energy development on all federal lands. Obama instituted not one but two comprehensive drilling bans in the Gulf of Mexico, the first of which was declared illegal by a federal judge. After lifting his second ban, Obama refused to issue permits for any new drilling in the Gulf, which EIA estimated cut domestic offshore oil production by 13 percent that year alone. Obama has leased less than half as many offshore acres as President Clinton did at the same point in his tenure. And Obama is blocking access to 19 billion barrels of oil in the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, another 10 billion barrels estimated in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan coast, and another 10 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Even so, the United States is undergoing an energy revolution, making the U.S. dramatically less dependent on oil from hostile foreign nations. Increased natural gas production is making manufacturing here competitive again due to lower production costs, which in turn fuels a manufacturing employment expansion the country has not seen in decades. It’s the fruit of Americans working together voluntarily in the private sector. Think what they could do if Obama and the bureaucrats would get out-of-the-way.”
From CNN: “Solyndra, Abound Solar, Beacon Power, and Ener1, Obama’s green energy, firms that all received money from the stimulus totaling over $1 billion dollars, have all gone bankrupt.
Obama:
"Will we allow ourselves to be sorted into factions and turned against one another – or will we recapture the sense of common purpose that has always propelled America forward?”
The Reality:
From the National Review: “Considered politically toxic by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Al Sharpton has been enthusiastically embraced by President Obama. He has bragged about helping to pick a new attorney general and communed with the current one. In fact, a much-quoted Politico profile last summer, described Al Sharpton as Obama’s "go-to man on race.”
From Breitbart: “President Barack Obama invited Al Sharpton to a series of White House meetings on Monday concerning the Ferguson riots, but he did not feel it was necessary to give someone from the Ferguson police department a seat at the table. Obama also met with two ‘youth leaders’ from Ferguson. Obama later cited their stories and said that hearing ‘young people feeling marginalized and distrustful even after they’ve done everything right’ only ‘violates’ his ‘belief in what America can do.’”
Meanwhile, protestors in Ferguson trashed, vandalized and destroyed over 40 business in Ferguson in protest.
A few of the many other headlines on the Ferguson riots:
“Elderly Man Attacked With His Own Oxygen Tank and Carjacked By Protesters.”
“Ferguson Rioters Attack Little Kids At Christmas tree Lighting Event.”
“Reporter Attacked, Robbed at Gunpoint in Ferguson; Protesters Set his Car on Fire”
“Pack of Teens Beat Man to Death Near Ferguson”
“Rioters Attack Police Car in Ferguson”
“Micheal Brown’s Mother to Face Robbery charges.”
“Fox Reporter Attacked by Masked Man in Ferguson”
“Officer Violently Attacked, Shot During Ferguson-Related Riot”
I guess we wouldn’t know that the Ferguson protesters did everything right if it weren’t for President Obama, Eric Holder and Al Sharpton clearing that up for us.
From The National Review: "President Obama said that police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “acted stupidly” in arresting a prominent black Harvard professor last week after a confrontation at the man’s home.“
From the Huffington Post, "Obama on Trayvon Martin Case: If I had a son he would look like Trayvon”: “‘We fund a lot of jurisdictions all across the country. And if we can identify best practices, then for us to be able to say, you need to adopt these best practices, and if you don’t, then perhaps some of the funding that’s available around some things that law enforcement cares about become less available,’ Obama said. ‘We’re going to provide more to folks who are doing the right thing and we’re going to be investigating folks who are not doing the right thing.’”
The American people have been lied to over and over and over again by this President and members of the Democratic party. Decisions are no longer made in the best interest of the country, but in the best interest of politics. The current administration’s cabinet has been filled with Obama cheerleaders who are determined to continue with President Obama’s agenda to “fundamentally transform the United States” into something we no longer even recognize – a nation that now has no morals, has shut out God and welcomed in Islam, where lying is the new truth, part time work is now the norm, and we, the taxpayer are responsible for funding every illegal in the country to make sure they have a homes, food, education and healthcare, while we go without. Add insult to injury, Webster’s dictionary has to be rewritten because you are not allowed to use half the words in it for fear of offending someone!
It is time for change.
By Leigh Bravo
How Saudis Promulgate Obama's Anti-Oil Crusade
How Saudis Promulgate Obama's Anti-Oil Crusade
Have you heard about the secret conspiracy between the Saudis and the White House? I haven’t either, probably because there isn’t one. But events are playing out exactly as one would expect if such a conspiracy existed.
With no help from Barack Obama, the U.S. has launched an energy revolution, becoming the world’s leading oil and natural gas producer. This has dismayed environmentalists and donors in and out of the Obama administration. After all, Obama bet big – really big – on green energy. The oil and gas boom is not the energy revolution Obama was looking for.
Saudi Arabia and other petro-monarchies aren’t happy about it either (which is one reason the United Arab Emirates and other OPEC states bankroll anti-fracking propaganda in the West). Until recently, Saudi Arabia was the world’s biggest oil producer, and it is still arguably the most important one in global markets because its oil is so easy to get out of the ground. The cheaper it is to extract, the easier it is to maintain profits when prices go down. That means the Saudis have an outsized ability to affect the global price of oil.
And that’s exactly what they’re doing. “Saudi Arabia,” writes Nathan Vardi of Forbes, “is making a massive $750 billion bet in 2015 that the oil kingdom can endure lower oil prices longer than other major oil producing countries both within and outside OPEC, even including American shale.”
If the Saudis can keep oil at or below $50 a barrel, many American fracking and offshore operations will either have to close up shop – which is already happening – or never launch in the first place, because the profit just isn’t there.
This is typical behavior for the Saudis and for OPEC, which, after all, is an international price-fixing cartel that would be illegal under our antitrust laws if it were an American outfit.
The White House, meanwhile, is only too happy to take credit for low gas prices and our decreased dependence on foreign oil. It’s also happy to take advantage of them. Not only does the president boast – as he did in his State of the Union address – about low gas prices, despite having done next to nothing to make them possible (nearly all new oil and gas production has been on state or private lands), he’s taking a bow for the economic benefits as if he deserves the credit.
One small example: Obama is constantly touting a newly low unemployment rate as if it were the result of his policies. The odd thing is that, as American Enterprise Institute economist Mark Perry notes, literally all of the job gains of the past seven years were generated by one state: oil-rich Texas.
From December 2007 to December 2014, according to Perry, Texas has added 1.25 million payroll jobs and 190,000 non-payroll jobs. Meanwhile, the other 49 states and D.C. combined have 275,000 fewer jobs than they did at the start of the recession. One wonders: If Obama is responsible for all these job gains, why did he put them all in George W. Bush’s home state?
Anyway, back to the non-conspiracy. By artificially keeping oil prices low, the Saudis get to deal a powerful blow to the energy revolution in the U.S. (They also get to deliver a severe economic blow to their enemies the Iranians, which is nice.) In exchange, Obama gets an unearned political windfall and can claim vindication for his ineffectual economic policies.
Obama is paying back the Saudis by permanently taking the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve’s billions of barrels of oil off the table for all time. By doing so, he also puts the entire Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System (TAPS) on a starvation diet. North Slope oil production is half of what it once was, and if it falls below 350,000 barrels per day, the TAPS itself will start to become economically and technically unfeasible. In other words, Saudi Arabia’s short-term economic hit is an investment in future dependence on Saudi oil.
Of course, there need not be a conspiracy, just a convergence of economic and political interests. But the fact remains that Obama could never have gotten away with restricting energy development in ANWR before an election or when gas prices were high. This is Obama’s window, and it appears the Saudis are holding it open for him for as long as he needs.
By Jonah Goldberg
Have you heard about the secret conspiracy between the Saudis and the White House? I haven’t either, probably because there isn’t one. But events are playing out exactly as one would expect if such a conspiracy existed.
With no help from Barack Obama, the U.S. has launched an energy revolution, becoming the world’s leading oil and natural gas producer. This has dismayed environmentalists and donors in and out of the Obama administration. After all, Obama bet big – really big – on green energy. The oil and gas boom is not the energy revolution Obama was looking for.
Saudi Arabia and other petro-monarchies aren’t happy about it either (which is one reason the United Arab Emirates and other OPEC states bankroll anti-fracking propaganda in the West). Until recently, Saudi Arabia was the world’s biggest oil producer, and it is still arguably the most important one in global markets because its oil is so easy to get out of the ground. The cheaper it is to extract, the easier it is to maintain profits when prices go down. That means the Saudis have an outsized ability to affect the global price of oil.
And that’s exactly what they’re doing. “Saudi Arabia,” writes Nathan Vardi of Forbes, “is making a massive $750 billion bet in 2015 that the oil kingdom can endure lower oil prices longer than other major oil producing countries both within and outside OPEC, even including American shale.”
If the Saudis can keep oil at or below $50 a barrel, many American fracking and offshore operations will either have to close up shop – which is already happening – or never launch in the first place, because the profit just isn’t there.
This is typical behavior for the Saudis and for OPEC, which, after all, is an international price-fixing cartel that would be illegal under our antitrust laws if it were an American outfit.
The White House, meanwhile, is only too happy to take credit for low gas prices and our decreased dependence on foreign oil. It’s also happy to take advantage of them. Not only does the president boast – as he did in his State of the Union address – about low gas prices, despite having done next to nothing to make them possible (nearly all new oil and gas production has been on state or private lands), he’s taking a bow for the economic benefits as if he deserves the credit.
One small example: Obama is constantly touting a newly low unemployment rate as if it were the result of his policies. The odd thing is that, as American Enterprise Institute economist Mark Perry notes, literally all of the job gains of the past seven years were generated by one state: oil-rich Texas.
From December 2007 to December 2014, according to Perry, Texas has added 1.25 million payroll jobs and 190,000 non-payroll jobs. Meanwhile, the other 49 states and D.C. combined have 275,000 fewer jobs than they did at the start of the recession. One wonders: If Obama is responsible for all these job gains, why did he put them all in George W. Bush’s home state?
Anyway, back to the non-conspiracy. By artificially keeping oil prices low, the Saudis get to deal a powerful blow to the energy revolution in the U.S. (They also get to deliver a severe economic blow to their enemies the Iranians, which is nice.) In exchange, Obama gets an unearned political windfall and can claim vindication for his ineffectual economic policies.
Obama is paying back the Saudis by permanently taking the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve’s billions of barrels of oil off the table for all time. By doing so, he also puts the entire Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System (TAPS) on a starvation diet. North Slope oil production is half of what it once was, and if it falls below 350,000 barrels per day, the TAPS itself will start to become economically and technically unfeasible. In other words, Saudi Arabia’s short-term economic hit is an investment in future dependence on Saudi oil.
Of course, there need not be a conspiracy, just a convergence of economic and political interests. But the fact remains that Obama could never have gotten away with restricting energy development in ANWR before an election or when gas prices were high. This is Obama’s window, and it appears the Saudis are holding it open for him for as long as he needs.
By Jonah Goldberg
Defense Against Demagogues
Defense Against Demagogues
When gasoline sold at record prices, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said, “I think it’s time to say to these people, ‘Stop ripping off the American people.’” When the average price of regular gas was close to $4 a gallon, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called for Congress to look into breaking up giant oil companies. The claim was that “Wall Street greed (was) fueling high gas prices.”
Today in some places, gasoline is selling for less than $2 a gallon, less than half of its peak price in 2008. The idiotic explanation that attributed high oil prices to greed might now be adjusted to argue that big oil executives have been morally rejuvenated. They are no longer greedy and no longer want to rip off the American people. My guess is that everyone in the oil business would like to charge higher prices. Plus, there’s no legal prohibition against big and powerful Exxon Mobil’s selling its regular gas today for $4 a gallon. Exxon stations don’t do so because the market wouldn’t bear that price.
The attempt to explain human behavior by greed is foolhardy. If we define greed as people wanting much more than what they have, then everyone is greedy. Show me someone who doesn’t want more of something, be it cars, houses, clothing, food, peace, admiration, love or war. The fact that people want more is responsible for most of the good things that get done. You’ll see Texas cattle ranchers this winter making the personal sacrifice of going out in blizzards to care for their herds. As a result of their sacrifice, New Yorkers will have beef on their grocery shelves. Which do you think best explains cattlemen’s behavior, concern about New Yorkers or their wanting more for themselves?
This year’s congressional efforts to reduce corporate income tax will create great opportunities for demagogues. The United States has the highest corporate income tax rate among the 34 industrialized nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The effect of high corporate taxes gives corporations incentives to lower their effective tax rates by engaging in activities that lower their competitiveness and to shift profits to foreign subsidiaries.
Demagogues will claim that corporations should pay their fair share of taxes. The fact of the matter, which even MIT economists understand but might not publicly admit, is corporations do not pay taxes. An important subject area in economics, called tax incidence, says the entity upon whom a tax is levied does not necessarily bear the full burden of the tax. Some of the tax burden is shifted to another party. If a tax is levied on a corporation – and if the corporation is to survive – it will have one of three responses or some combination thereof. It will raise the price of its product, lower dividends or lay off workers. The important point is that only people, not some legal fiction called a corporation, bear the burden of any tax. Corporations are merely government tax collectors.
Here’s a tax-related question: Which worker receives the higher pay, a worker on a road construction project moving dirt with a shovel or a worker moving dirt atop a giant earthmover? If you said the guy on the earthmover, go to the head of the class. But why? It’s not because he’s unionized or that employers just love earthmover operators. It’s because he is more productive; he has more physical capital with which to work.
It’s not rocket science to conclude that whatever lowers the cost of capital formation will enable companies to buy more capital, such as earthmovers. The result is that workers will be more productive and earn higher wages. Policies that raise the cost of capital formation – such as capital gains taxes, low depreciation allowances and high corporate income taxes – reduce capital formation and do not serve the interests of workers, investors or consumers.
The greatest tool in the arsenal of demagogues is economic ignorance, which my colleagues in George Mason University’s economics department battle against tooth and nail.
By Walter E. Williams
When gasoline sold at record prices, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said, “I think it’s time to say to these people, ‘Stop ripping off the American people.’” When the average price of regular gas was close to $4 a gallon, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called for Congress to look into breaking up giant oil companies. The claim was that “Wall Street greed (was) fueling high gas prices.”
Today in some places, gasoline is selling for less than $2 a gallon, less than half of its peak price in 2008. The idiotic explanation that attributed high oil prices to greed might now be adjusted to argue that big oil executives have been morally rejuvenated. They are no longer greedy and no longer want to rip off the American people. My guess is that everyone in the oil business would like to charge higher prices. Plus, there’s no legal prohibition against big and powerful Exxon Mobil’s selling its regular gas today for $4 a gallon. Exxon stations don’t do so because the market wouldn’t bear that price.
The attempt to explain human behavior by greed is foolhardy. If we define greed as people wanting much more than what they have, then everyone is greedy. Show me someone who doesn’t want more of something, be it cars, houses, clothing, food, peace, admiration, love or war. The fact that people want more is responsible for most of the good things that get done. You’ll see Texas cattle ranchers this winter making the personal sacrifice of going out in blizzards to care for their herds. As a result of their sacrifice, New Yorkers will have beef on their grocery shelves. Which do you think best explains cattlemen’s behavior, concern about New Yorkers or their wanting more for themselves?
This year’s congressional efforts to reduce corporate income tax will create great opportunities for demagogues. The United States has the highest corporate income tax rate among the 34 industrialized nations of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The effect of high corporate taxes gives corporations incentives to lower their effective tax rates by engaging in activities that lower their competitiveness and to shift profits to foreign subsidiaries.
Demagogues will claim that corporations should pay their fair share of taxes. The fact of the matter, which even MIT economists understand but might not publicly admit, is corporations do not pay taxes. An important subject area in economics, called tax incidence, says the entity upon whom a tax is levied does not necessarily bear the full burden of the tax. Some of the tax burden is shifted to another party. If a tax is levied on a corporation – and if the corporation is to survive – it will have one of three responses or some combination thereof. It will raise the price of its product, lower dividends or lay off workers. The important point is that only people, not some legal fiction called a corporation, bear the burden of any tax. Corporations are merely government tax collectors.
Here’s a tax-related question: Which worker receives the higher pay, a worker on a road construction project moving dirt with a shovel or a worker moving dirt atop a giant earthmover? If you said the guy on the earthmover, go to the head of the class. But why? It’s not because he’s unionized or that employers just love earthmover operators. It’s because he is more productive; he has more physical capital with which to work.
It’s not rocket science to conclude that whatever lowers the cost of capital formation will enable companies to buy more capital, such as earthmovers. The result is that workers will be more productive and earn higher wages. Policies that raise the cost of capital formation – such as capital gains taxes, low depreciation allowances and high corporate income taxes – reduce capital formation and do not serve the interests of workers, investors or consumers.
The greatest tool in the arsenal of demagogues is economic ignorance, which my colleagues in George Mason University’s economics department battle against tooth and nail.
By Walter E. Williams
5 Things You’re Not Being Told About Fukushima
5 Things You’re Not Being Told About Fukushima
In March 2011, a massive earthquake and an ensuing tsunami triggered the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant. Almost 4 years later we’re still seeing repercussions of the disaster, and the effects will likely continue for decades. This disaster is contributing to untold health concerns and environmental damage.
Five Things You Should Know About Fukushima
While you may have heard information about Fukushima in the news, there are some stories the mainstream media isn’t covering. Let’s dive into 5 things you’re not being told about the Fukushima situation.
1. Two Trillion Becquerels of Radioactive Material Escaped Reactor 1
A recent report from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) says 2 trillion becquerels of radiation may have flowed into the Fukushima power plant bay in a short amount of time. From August 2013 to May 2014, documents estimate that the No. 1 reactor leaked more than 10 times the limit of radioactive material TEPCO set before the meltdown. [1] That’s a lot of radiation drifting out into the Pacific Ocean!
2. US West Coast Will Experience Peak Radiation in 2015
Scientific reports suggest levels of Cesium-137 will peak in water supplies on the US West Coast and in Canada by the end of this year. [2] Cesium-137 is a radioactive isotope that presents a strong danger to human health. After drinking contaminated water, your body’s tissues can be exposed to low levels of gamma and beta radiation which could increase your risk for certain types of cancer. [3]
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/fukushima-radiation-peak-2015/
3. Thyroid Cancer is Spreading in Japan
Radiation in water is just one concern; thyroid cancer, often linked to radiation exposure, is on the rise among youth in the Fukushima Prefecture. Local government officials want to downplay a connection to radiation from the triple meltdown and these new cases of cancer. While it’s still too soon to determine an actual cause, experts agree that the rate of incidence is disturbingly high. [4]
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/8-must-know-facts-about-fukushima/
4. Japan is Planning to Build More Nuclear Plants
After the natural disasters that led to the Fukushima meltdown, all of Japan’s nuclear reactors were suspended. In 2012, the Japanese government created a regulatory agency to restore public confidence in nuclear power. Recently, the agency approved the reopening of 2 of Japan’s 48 reactors. [5] There are many that believe the safety certification of the two reactors at Sendai Power Plant was pushed by the current government. The current prime minister is unashamedly pro-nuclear and wants to reopen and build more reactors. But, in an earthquake-prone country, is this really the best idea?
5. Experts Can’t Agree on the Health Dangers
With a pro-nuclear government in power, Japan is seeing something similar to what happened in Ukraine after Chernobyl. Nuclear authorities tend to deny the negative results reported by researchers in an attempt to further their goals; in this case, a return to nuclear power. [6] Many scientists are rather miffed with a watered-down UN report that came out in late 2013. [7] They argue it ignored negative scientific studies and lacked documentation for certain claims, leaving some worried that authorities won’t acknowledge the radiation threat until it’s too late. [8]
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/iodine-and-radiation-how-it-works/
Fukushima is a Bad Situation
The Fukushima disaster has left us a terrible legacy we can’t give back. Unfortunately, the Japanese—especially those in the Fukushima Prefecture—can’t even drink their sorrows away. The sake brewers there are finding no one wants to buy their products due to reports of contaminated rice and water. [9]
What do you think about the Fukushima disaster? Please tell us your thoughts and/or concerns in the comments.
-Dr. Edward F. Group III, DC, NP, DACBN, DCBCN, DABFM
References:
The Japan Times. Two trillion becquerels of radioactive material may have escaped No. 1. The Japan Times.http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/09/07/national/two-trillion-becquerels-radioactive-material-may-escaped-1/#.VL8FMf3F9G2
Smith, J. et al. Arrival of the Fukushima radioactivity plume in North American continental waters. Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/12/25/1412814112.full.pdf
Davies, L. Increasing Incidence of Thyroid Cancer in the United States, 1973-2002. The Journal of the American Medical Association. 295 (18).
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=202835
Radiation Medical Science Center for the Fukushima Health Management Survey. Proceedings of the 17th Prefectural Oversight Committee Meeting for Fukushima Health Management Survey. Fukushima Radiation and Health.
http://www.fmu.ac.jp/radiationhealth/results/20141225.html
Fackler, M. Three Years After Fukushima, Japan Approves a Nuclear Plant. The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/world/asia/japanese-nuclear-plant-declared-safe-to-operate-for-first-time-since-fukushima-daiichi-disaster.html?_r=0
Boyd, J. Experts clash on Fukushima radiation effects. Aljazeera.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/08/experts-clash-fukushima-radiation-effects-201482912519236690.html
United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. UNSCEAR 2013 Report. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.
http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2013_1.html
Imanaka, Tetsuji. Current Topics about the Radiological Consequences by the Chernobyl Accident. Research Reactor Institute, Kyoto University .
http://www.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/NSRG/reports/kr79/kr79pdf/Imanaka.pdf
Balfour, B. The woes of Fukushima’s sake brewers. BBC News.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30793331
In March 2011, a massive earthquake and an ensuing tsunami triggered the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant. Almost 4 years later we’re still seeing repercussions of the disaster, and the effects will likely continue for decades. This disaster is contributing to untold health concerns and environmental damage.Five Things You Should Know About Fukushima
While you may have heard information about Fukushima in the news, there are some stories the mainstream media isn’t covering. Let’s dive into 5 things you’re not being told about the Fukushima situation.
1. Two Trillion Becquerels of Radioactive Material Escaped Reactor 1
A recent report from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) says 2 trillion becquerels of radiation may have flowed into the Fukushima power plant bay in a short amount of time. From August 2013 to May 2014, documents estimate that the No. 1 reactor leaked more than 10 times the limit of radioactive material TEPCO set before the meltdown. [1] That’s a lot of radiation drifting out into the Pacific Ocean!
2. US West Coast Will Experience Peak Radiation in 2015
Scientific reports suggest levels of Cesium-137 will peak in water supplies on the US West Coast and in Canada by the end of this year. [2] Cesium-137 is a radioactive isotope that presents a strong danger to human health. After drinking contaminated water, your body’s tissues can be exposed to low levels of gamma and beta radiation which could increase your risk for certain types of cancer. [3]
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/fukushima-radiation-peak-2015/
3. Thyroid Cancer is Spreading in Japan
Radiation in water is just one concern; thyroid cancer, often linked to radiation exposure, is on the rise among youth in the Fukushima Prefecture. Local government officials want to downplay a connection to radiation from the triple meltdown and these new cases of cancer. While it’s still too soon to determine an actual cause, experts agree that the rate of incidence is disturbingly high. [4]
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/8-must-know-facts-about-fukushima/
4. Japan is Planning to Build More Nuclear Plants
After the natural disasters that led to the Fukushima meltdown, all of Japan’s nuclear reactors were suspended. In 2012, the Japanese government created a regulatory agency to restore public confidence in nuclear power. Recently, the agency approved the reopening of 2 of Japan’s 48 reactors. [5] There are many that believe the safety certification of the two reactors at Sendai Power Plant was pushed by the current government. The current prime minister is unashamedly pro-nuclear and wants to reopen and build more reactors. But, in an earthquake-prone country, is this really the best idea?
5. Experts Can’t Agree on the Health Dangers
With a pro-nuclear government in power, Japan is seeing something similar to what happened in Ukraine after Chernobyl. Nuclear authorities tend to deny the negative results reported by researchers in an attempt to further their goals; in this case, a return to nuclear power. [6] Many scientists are rather miffed with a watered-down UN report that came out in late 2013. [7] They argue it ignored negative scientific studies and lacked documentation for certain claims, leaving some worried that authorities won’t acknowledge the radiation threat until it’s too late. [8]
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/iodine-and-radiation-how-it-works/
Fukushima is a Bad Situation
The Fukushima disaster has left us a terrible legacy we can’t give back. Unfortunately, the Japanese—especially those in the Fukushima Prefecture—can’t even drink their sorrows away. The sake brewers there are finding no one wants to buy their products due to reports of contaminated rice and water. [9]
What do you think about the Fukushima disaster? Please tell us your thoughts and/or concerns in the comments.
-Dr. Edward F. Group III, DC, NP, DACBN, DCBCN, DABFM
References:
The Japan Times. Two trillion becquerels of radioactive material may have escaped No. 1. The Japan Times.http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/09/07/national/two-trillion-becquerels-radioactive-material-may-escaped-1/#.VL8FMf3F9G2
Smith, J. et al. Arrival of the Fukushima radioactivity plume in North American continental waters. Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/12/25/1412814112.full.pdf
Davies, L. Increasing Incidence of Thyroid Cancer in the United States, 1973-2002. The Journal of the American Medical Association. 295 (18).
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=202835
Radiation Medical Science Center for the Fukushima Health Management Survey. Proceedings of the 17th Prefectural Oversight Committee Meeting for Fukushima Health Management Survey. Fukushima Radiation and Health.
http://www.fmu.ac.jp/radiationhealth/results/20141225.html
Fackler, M. Three Years After Fukushima, Japan Approves a Nuclear Plant. The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/world/asia/japanese-nuclear-plant-declared-safe-to-operate-for-first-time-since-fukushima-daiichi-disaster.html?_r=0
Boyd, J. Experts clash on Fukushima radiation effects. Aljazeera.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/08/experts-clash-fukushima-radiation-effects-201482912519236690.html
United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. UNSCEAR 2013 Report. United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation.
http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2013_1.html
Imanaka, Tetsuji. Current Topics about the Radiological Consequences by the Chernobyl Accident. Research Reactor Institute, Kyoto University .
http://www.rri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/NSRG/reports/kr79/kr79pdf/Imanaka.pdf
Balfour, B. The woes of Fukushima’s sake brewers. BBC News.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30793331
Free Energy Within, Without and Beyond
Free Energy Within, Without and Beyond
I have been fascinated watching all the news coming out about free energy. What has been particularly intriguing to me is to see that some people still can’t even open themselves to the possibility of such a thing. They always bring up the “laws of physics”, saying that it is scientifically impossible, and so forth. It suddenly became clear to me, that to be available for the possibility of free energy, YOUR energy has to be free. Otherwise, it is just simply not possible for you to see it. You will just see the reflection of yourself in the world.
Here’s what i see. I see that we are in an incredibly vast place, exploding with stars, which are powerhouses of energy. The stars are all part of galaxies that are spinning in SUCH a vast dimension that it is truly beyond our capacity to conceive. OK, here’s the simple question. What is making all of that move? Isn’t it requiring amounts of energy so huge, that an infinitesimal fraction of it would power every human need on the whole planet…? Even just in the solar system…there’s the Sun. what an amazing amount of energy! We are being blasted with it every day, even when it is cloudy. Non stop. And besides all the light and heat, there’s a tsunami of electromagnetic energy coming out of Sol, every moment, waves of it washing over the earth.
And then there are all the planets in the solar system, including the Earth itself. What keeps them all going? They spin, and rotate through their orbits non stop, without showing any signs of running out of steam.
So what kind of energy would you call all this energy? It certainly doesn’t cost anything, does it? So, then, i’d say it’s free. Therefore, free energy exists. There’s no debate, really.
The question is, are there ways to harness this vast energy? Of course there are.
Now let’s consider how we get energy here on planet Earth. The biggest part is the oil business. The oil feeds fires, in all sorts of ways. The internal combustion engine, for example. Thousands of explosions per minute in every engine on the planet. Even considering that for a moment can yield an understanding of how violent and UNelegant the whole process is. To me it always feels like we’re still stuck in the stone age with the internal combustion engine in every car. It is a crude and primitive way to go. No matter how you look at it, all of the oil method of energy is based on burning, consuming something, that we presuppose to be finite. That attaches a monetary value to it, because there’s not enough to go around, or so we’re told. So it becomes a kind of addiction that we are forced into paying for on a regular basis.
Oil has been compared to the blood of the earth, which would make the oil business a parasitic operation. Imagine that, burning the blood of the earth. What does that do to her? Do we care? And the byproducts of the burning is always this carbon pollution. Seems to me the earth needs its blood where it belongs, underground.
But also even eating food is a kind of burning process. “carbo”hydrates and all. Somehow we persist in the idea that we can’t extract energy here unless we are burning, consuming, destroying. But even the whole idea of “extracting” it feels primitive. When the sun shines on your face, do you need to “extract” the heat? No, it’s natural, and nothing is destroyed, no energy lost.
See how does the burning paradigm works its way into every aspect of your life? It reinforces the idea that we are carbon based life-forms, which is an idea that is deeply resistant to the emerging paradigm of infinite boundless energy. Those of us who are open to it are going through an unprecedented transformation of body-mind, a graduation from the carbon based way of life.
It’s hard to even put into words, but to me it feels like the remembrance of our sacred geometrical vehicle, one that exists in free space as an eternal being. It is like the blueprint or source code of the eternal being, which can realign the entire physical vehicle with the wholeness of innate perfection. This goes beyond even the concept of healing. The carbon based body has to respond to it, and once your center of gravity is ‘re-located’ in the eternal Self, the process takes care of itself. It puts the physical body through some very uncomfortable changes at times, to be sure, but it is possible for the body to be transformed into something way more refined and subtle than is most people’s customary state. Alive and aware, and seeing beyond the five sense realm, into the realm of primal space, where all potential exists. More and more able to enjoy free energy from within and beyond, less and less dependent on food, even. Yogis even get to the place in meditation where breathing stops, as if bypassed, connected directly to Source.
Just think about what life would be like with free energy. No more electricity bills, no more gasoline for transportation, no more heating bills. Think of the actual real world freedom that would bring to people. Isn’t it obvious why those who control the money wouldn’t want people to have such a thing? Very bad for business. No more “consumers”. And no more slaves.
OK, so how do we free our own energy? First of all, drop the past. There’s no energy there. The past is like oil. Oil is sunlight from centuries ago that got trapped underground with the lifeforms of that time, if you go with the fossil fuel idea. So, why are we trying to extract sunlight that way, when we are being bombarded with it here and now, every day? Seems like a lot of unnecessary and messy steps in between that don’t really need to be there. This is the same way ego works. Do it MY way, the hard way. The reason is obviously because there’s no way to control sunlight, to charge money for it, and ultimately to enslave people. The ego always has to extract some personal gain for itself, otherwise it’s not really interested. So the oil business is like the ego business. Self-serving and controlling. And also, the ego is obsessed with past and future. And its function is to distract you from your source of power in the present. (the power of now.) The power of the now is intrinsically free. There is no way it could be turned into a sellable commodity, any more than solar power could be.
When we free our energy from the knots in the body/mind that keep it trapped, we more and more begin to realize ourselves as universal beings, without limits, infinite, eternal, and free. We become more and more present, until we pop into the now in an irreversible way. Then we cross the threshold into the realm of free energy. When you become absolutely present, an energy source becomes available to you that is inconceivable. It is exactly like the Sun. In fact it is the Real Sun, of which the sun in the sky is just a reflection, or doorway. When your being opens in this way, the possibility of free energy is not only conceivable, it’s as obvious as the sun in the sky. But if you are stuck in your small minded concerns, you will never allow yourself to notice it. You have everything neatly named and quantified, and if you can’t see it, then it’s not real. This is a state of mind the “powers that were” have wanted to keep you in now for millennia. You will only accept what an “authority” tells you on something. And that authority has to exist “outside” you. The idea of external authority just reinforces the paradigm of duality, which is not how things truly are. At your Source you have access to original knowing, primal intelligence beyond words. This knowing has an absolute certainty to it that is not possible to put into words, and yet it can inform all of your words. It is the answer to all questions, ultimately. It stops the mind’s incessant search, undoes its obsession with owning and knowing. It relegates the mind back to its true function, as servant. The sun rises in the heart and takes the throne, its authority obvious. No certificates needed.
There are new scientists coming now who are seeing at an entirely new level. This is a paradigm shattering moment, and free energy is one of the cornerstones of it. If everyone has their own affordable free energy generator (and the technology has existed at least since Nikola Tesla), then the resource wars will simply stop. Because who cares? Who needs an electric company? Who needs a gas station? The controllers will become unemployed. And these free energy devices are not based on burning and destroying anything. They are more electrically based, using principles of electromagnetism, which is elegant, clean, and inexhaustible. Magnets don’t lose their magnetic fields. It is not an energy that decreases over time.
The answer is obvious. These technologies exist, and have been suppressed, in order to keep people under control. There are countless examples of inventors being killed or stifled, their patents being bought or stolen, and put on the shelf, and their laboratories destroyed. And of course, all these accounts are left out of the history books. Why did we never learn about the amazing Nikola Tesla in school? Of all the scientists and inventors who ever lived, he should be right out there on top of the heap. Certainly worthy of a mention. But no, nothing. That alone has to make you wonder.
So let’s open our minds and hearts. Amazing miracles abound on this planet. Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by those who tell you that anything at all is impossible. This is a place of infinite potential, this now moment. Potential is power. Allow yourself to embody this infinite potential. Be the messenger of infinity that you are.
Free energy is Consciousness Itself.
by Kit Walker
I have been fascinated watching all the news coming out about free energy. What has been particularly intriguing to me is to see that some people still can’t even open themselves to the possibility of such a thing. They always bring up the “laws of physics”, saying that it is scientifically impossible, and so forth. It suddenly became clear to me, that to be available for the possibility of free energy, YOUR energy has to be free. Otherwise, it is just simply not possible for you to see it. You will just see the reflection of yourself in the world.
Here’s what i see. I see that we are in an incredibly vast place, exploding with stars, which are powerhouses of energy. The stars are all part of galaxies that are spinning in SUCH a vast dimension that it is truly beyond our capacity to conceive. OK, here’s the simple question. What is making all of that move? Isn’t it requiring amounts of energy so huge, that an infinitesimal fraction of it would power every human need on the whole planet…? Even just in the solar system…there’s the Sun. what an amazing amount of energy! We are being blasted with it every day, even when it is cloudy. Non stop. And besides all the light and heat, there’s a tsunami of electromagnetic energy coming out of Sol, every moment, waves of it washing over the earth.
And then there are all the planets in the solar system, including the Earth itself. What keeps them all going? They spin, and rotate through their orbits non stop, without showing any signs of running out of steam.
So what kind of energy would you call all this energy? It certainly doesn’t cost anything, does it? So, then, i’d say it’s free. Therefore, free energy exists. There’s no debate, really.
The question is, are there ways to harness this vast energy? Of course there are.
Now let’s consider how we get energy here on planet Earth. The biggest part is the oil business. The oil feeds fires, in all sorts of ways. The internal combustion engine, for example. Thousands of explosions per minute in every engine on the planet. Even considering that for a moment can yield an understanding of how violent and UNelegant the whole process is. To me it always feels like we’re still stuck in the stone age with the internal combustion engine in every car. It is a crude and primitive way to go. No matter how you look at it, all of the oil method of energy is based on burning, consuming something, that we presuppose to be finite. That attaches a monetary value to it, because there’s not enough to go around, or so we’re told. So it becomes a kind of addiction that we are forced into paying for on a regular basis.
Oil has been compared to the blood of the earth, which would make the oil business a parasitic operation. Imagine that, burning the blood of the earth. What does that do to her? Do we care? And the byproducts of the burning is always this carbon pollution. Seems to me the earth needs its blood where it belongs, underground.
But also even eating food is a kind of burning process. “carbo”hydrates and all. Somehow we persist in the idea that we can’t extract energy here unless we are burning, consuming, destroying. But even the whole idea of “extracting” it feels primitive. When the sun shines on your face, do you need to “extract” the heat? No, it’s natural, and nothing is destroyed, no energy lost.
See how does the burning paradigm works its way into every aspect of your life? It reinforces the idea that we are carbon based life-forms, which is an idea that is deeply resistant to the emerging paradigm of infinite boundless energy. Those of us who are open to it are going through an unprecedented transformation of body-mind, a graduation from the carbon based way of life.
It’s hard to even put into words, but to me it feels like the remembrance of our sacred geometrical vehicle, one that exists in free space as an eternal being. It is like the blueprint or source code of the eternal being, which can realign the entire physical vehicle with the wholeness of innate perfection. This goes beyond even the concept of healing. The carbon based body has to respond to it, and once your center of gravity is ‘re-located’ in the eternal Self, the process takes care of itself. It puts the physical body through some very uncomfortable changes at times, to be sure, but it is possible for the body to be transformed into something way more refined and subtle than is most people’s customary state. Alive and aware, and seeing beyond the five sense realm, into the realm of primal space, where all potential exists. More and more able to enjoy free energy from within and beyond, less and less dependent on food, even. Yogis even get to the place in meditation where breathing stops, as if bypassed, connected directly to Source.
Just think about what life would be like with free energy. No more electricity bills, no more gasoline for transportation, no more heating bills. Think of the actual real world freedom that would bring to people. Isn’t it obvious why those who control the money wouldn’t want people to have such a thing? Very bad for business. No more “consumers”. And no more slaves.
OK, so how do we free our own energy? First of all, drop the past. There’s no energy there. The past is like oil. Oil is sunlight from centuries ago that got trapped underground with the lifeforms of that time, if you go with the fossil fuel idea. So, why are we trying to extract sunlight that way, when we are being bombarded with it here and now, every day? Seems like a lot of unnecessary and messy steps in between that don’t really need to be there. This is the same way ego works. Do it MY way, the hard way. The reason is obviously because there’s no way to control sunlight, to charge money for it, and ultimately to enslave people. The ego always has to extract some personal gain for itself, otherwise it’s not really interested. So the oil business is like the ego business. Self-serving and controlling. And also, the ego is obsessed with past and future. And its function is to distract you from your source of power in the present. (the power of now.) The power of the now is intrinsically free. There is no way it could be turned into a sellable commodity, any more than solar power could be.
When we free our energy from the knots in the body/mind that keep it trapped, we more and more begin to realize ourselves as universal beings, without limits, infinite, eternal, and free. We become more and more present, until we pop into the now in an irreversible way. Then we cross the threshold into the realm of free energy. When you become absolutely present, an energy source becomes available to you that is inconceivable. It is exactly like the Sun. In fact it is the Real Sun, of which the sun in the sky is just a reflection, or doorway. When your being opens in this way, the possibility of free energy is not only conceivable, it’s as obvious as the sun in the sky. But if you are stuck in your small minded concerns, you will never allow yourself to notice it. You have everything neatly named and quantified, and if you can’t see it, then it’s not real. This is a state of mind the “powers that were” have wanted to keep you in now for millennia. You will only accept what an “authority” tells you on something. And that authority has to exist “outside” you. The idea of external authority just reinforces the paradigm of duality, which is not how things truly are. At your Source you have access to original knowing, primal intelligence beyond words. This knowing has an absolute certainty to it that is not possible to put into words, and yet it can inform all of your words. It is the answer to all questions, ultimately. It stops the mind’s incessant search, undoes its obsession with owning and knowing. It relegates the mind back to its true function, as servant. The sun rises in the heart and takes the throne, its authority obvious. No certificates needed.
There are new scientists coming now who are seeing at an entirely new level. This is a paradigm shattering moment, and free energy is one of the cornerstones of it. If everyone has their own affordable free energy generator (and the technology has existed at least since Nikola Tesla), then the resource wars will simply stop. Because who cares? Who needs an electric company? Who needs a gas station? The controllers will become unemployed. And these free energy devices are not based on burning and destroying anything. They are more electrically based, using principles of electromagnetism, which is elegant, clean, and inexhaustible. Magnets don’t lose their magnetic fields. It is not an energy that decreases over time.
The answer is obvious. These technologies exist, and have been suppressed, in order to keep people under control. There are countless examples of inventors being killed or stifled, their patents being bought or stolen, and put on the shelf, and their laboratories destroyed. And of course, all these accounts are left out of the history books. Why did we never learn about the amazing Nikola Tesla in school? Of all the scientists and inventors who ever lived, he should be right out there on top of the heap. Certainly worthy of a mention. But no, nothing. That alone has to make you wonder.
So let’s open our minds and hearts. Amazing miracles abound on this planet. Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by those who tell you that anything at all is impossible. This is a place of infinite potential, this now moment. Potential is power. Allow yourself to embody this infinite potential. Be the messenger of infinity that you are.
Free energy is Consciousness Itself.
by Kit Walker
The Super Bowl Comes to Town
The Super Bowl Comes to Town
Rich! We’re all going to be rich! If only we could have the Super Bowl here every year!
It has gotten a little noisy in the skies near my home. With the Super Bowl here in metro-Phoenix this weekend the Scottsdale Airport is doing a rip-roaring business – emphasis on “roaring”.
The airport is described as “a general aviation reliever facility with no commercial commuter or airline service.”
But does it ever get the private jets of the rich and famous. The Super Bowl is just one of the draws. The Phoenix Open is underway in Scottsdale this weekend as well.
Altogether the area’s general aviation airports expect 1,100 private jets, but the Scottsdale airport is the busiest of them all. Officials expect 30 – 32 departures per hour from Sunday night through Monday.
At least all those visitors are making us locals rich, Rich, RICH! At least that’s what the rah-rah types in local government and their media mascots tell us.
Unfortunately, none of the typical claims about the crony capitalism of professional sports hold up to realistic examination.
I say this as one who was a leader in the fight against the very taxpayer-funded stadium in the Phoenix-metro city of Glendale where Super Bowl XLIX will be played this year.
George Will once call Glendale “less a community with professional sports facilities than a sports enterprise with a community held hostage.”
Glendale taxpayers still suffer today from the inflated promises they were made years ago about the way all their new sports facilities would make them rich. It turned out to be nothing more than a bubble machine.
Can’t say I didn’t warn them.
The footballs may be underinflated, but the promises aren’t.
Just last year the car rental tax that was supposed to pay for the football facility was declared unconstitutional. I sent the judge a note of appreciation since I was making that argument 15 years ago.
It’s not that I have anything against lavish sports facilities. But why should people with no stake in the business be made to pay for it? By some estimates the owners of the Arizona Cardinals saw their personal net worth grow by more than $300 million thanks to the boondoggle.
That’s a nice chunk of change. Do you suppose working families or single mothers trying to raise their kids or anyone else who paid so that multi-millionaires would have a place to play will be getting dividend checks from the team or the NFL?
But that’s not how crony capitalism works.
As for Super Bowl XLIX itself, its boosters claim that it will bring an estimated $500 million in “economic impact” to Arizona.
Economic impact. Whatever that means. The mayor of Glendale says his host city will lose money on the event, just like the $1 million it lost on the 2008 Super Bowl.
Numbers-crunchers who aren’t affiliated with the teams or their boosters report that what spending these big events generate comes from crowding out other spending. One study has discovered that there is no measurable impact on a community when its teams are on strike or in a lockout.
The NFL and the teams get crony treatment at every turn. In fact the league is tax exempt and has an antitrust-exemption. How does that happen? Humorist Ron Hart explained the “the NFL hands out cash to politicians like ‘The Bachelor’ hands out roses — with the same intentions.”
Around here we are charged sales tax on just about everything, but the NFL even gets sales taxes waived on their pricey Super Bowl tickets. I’d sure like to my taxes waived, too. But sweetheart deals like that are for cronies..
The real essence of crony capitalism, whether it’s the NFL or the banksters, is this: It privatizes profits and socializes losses.
It’s the new American way.
Now, who do you like on Sunday, New England or Seattle?
Or Katy Perry?
By Charles Goyette
Rich! We’re all going to be rich! If only we could have the Super Bowl here every year!
It has gotten a little noisy in the skies near my home. With the Super Bowl here in metro-Phoenix this weekend the Scottsdale Airport is doing a rip-roaring business – emphasis on “roaring”.
The airport is described as “a general aviation reliever facility with no commercial commuter or airline service.”
But does it ever get the private jets of the rich and famous. The Super Bowl is just one of the draws. The Phoenix Open is underway in Scottsdale this weekend as well.
Altogether the area’s general aviation airports expect 1,100 private jets, but the Scottsdale airport is the busiest of them all. Officials expect 30 – 32 departures per hour from Sunday night through Monday.
At least all those visitors are making us locals rich, Rich, RICH! At least that’s what the rah-rah types in local government and their media mascots tell us.
Unfortunately, none of the typical claims about the crony capitalism of professional sports hold up to realistic examination.
I say this as one who was a leader in the fight against the very taxpayer-funded stadium in the Phoenix-metro city of Glendale where Super Bowl XLIX will be played this year.
George Will once call Glendale “less a community with professional sports facilities than a sports enterprise with a community held hostage.”
Glendale taxpayers still suffer today from the inflated promises they were made years ago about the way all their new sports facilities would make them rich. It turned out to be nothing more than a bubble machine.
Can’t say I didn’t warn them.
The footballs may be underinflated, but the promises aren’t.
Just last year the car rental tax that was supposed to pay for the football facility was declared unconstitutional. I sent the judge a note of appreciation since I was making that argument 15 years ago.
It’s not that I have anything against lavish sports facilities. But why should people with no stake in the business be made to pay for it? By some estimates the owners of the Arizona Cardinals saw their personal net worth grow by more than $300 million thanks to the boondoggle.
That’s a nice chunk of change. Do you suppose working families or single mothers trying to raise their kids or anyone else who paid so that multi-millionaires would have a place to play will be getting dividend checks from the team or the NFL?
But that’s not how crony capitalism works.
As for Super Bowl XLIX itself, its boosters claim that it will bring an estimated $500 million in “economic impact” to Arizona.
Economic impact. Whatever that means. The mayor of Glendale says his host city will lose money on the event, just like the $1 million it lost on the 2008 Super Bowl.
Numbers-crunchers who aren’t affiliated with the teams or their boosters report that what spending these big events generate comes from crowding out other spending. One study has discovered that there is no measurable impact on a community when its teams are on strike or in a lockout.
The NFL and the teams get crony treatment at every turn. In fact the league is tax exempt and has an antitrust-exemption. How does that happen? Humorist Ron Hart explained the “the NFL hands out cash to politicians like ‘The Bachelor’ hands out roses — with the same intentions.”
Around here we are charged sales tax on just about everything, but the NFL even gets sales taxes waived on their pricey Super Bowl tickets. I’d sure like to my taxes waived, too. But sweetheart deals like that are for cronies..
The real essence of crony capitalism, whether it’s the NFL or the banksters, is this: It privatizes profits and socializes losses.
It’s the new American way.
Now, who do you like on Sunday, New England or Seattle?
Or Katy Perry?
By Charles Goyette
How to Start a Nuclear War
How to Start a Nuclear War
The United States has just made an exceptionally dangerous, even reckless decision over Ukraine. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who ended the Cold War, warns it may lead to a nuclear confrontation with Russia.
Rule number one of geopolitics: nuclear-armed powers must never, ever fight.
Yet Washington just announced that by spring, it will deploy unspecified numbers of military “trainers” to Ukraine to help build Kiev’s ramshackle national guard. Also being sent are significant numbers of US special heavy, mine resistant armored vehicles that have been widely used in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US and Poland are currently covertly supplying Ukraine with some weapons.
The US soldiers will just be for training, and the number of GI’s will be modest, claim US military sources. Of course. Just like those small numbers of American “advisors” and “trainers” in Vietnam that eventually grew to 550,000. Just as there are now US special forces in over 100 countries. We call it “mission creep.”
The war-craving neocons in Washington and their allies in Congress and the Pentagon have long wanted to pick a fight with Russia and put it in its place for daring to oppose US policies against Iran, Syria and Palestine. What neocons really care about is the Mideast.
Some neocon fantasies call for breaking up the Russian Federation into small, impotent parts. Many Russians believe this is indeed Washington’s grand strategy, mixing military pressure on one hand and social media subversion on the other, aided by Ukrainian oligarchs and rightists. A massive propaganda campaign is underway, vilifying Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin as “the new Hitler.”
Back to eastern Ukraine. You don’t have to be a second Napoleon to see how a big war could erupt.
Ukrainian National Guard forces, stiffened by American “volunteers” and “private contractors,” and led by US special forces, get in a heavy fire fight with pro-Russian separatist forces. Washington, whose military forces are active in the Mideast, Central America, the Philippines, Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, South Korea, has been blasting Moscow for allegedly sending some 9,000 soldiers into neighboring Ukraine.
The Americans, who have never been without total air superiority since the 1950’s Korean War, call in US and NATO air support. Pro-Russian units, backed by Russian military forces just across the border, will reply with heavy rocket fire and salvos of anti-aircraft missiles. Both sides will take heavy casualties and rush in reinforcements.
Does anyone think the Russians, who lost close to 40 million soldiers and civilians in World War II, won’t fight to defend their Motherland?
Heavy conventional fighting could quickly lead to commanders calling for tactical nuclear strikes delivered by aircraft and missiles. This was a constant fear in nearly all NATO v Warsaw Pact Cold War scenarios – and the very good reason that both sides avoided direct confrontation and confined themselves to using proxy forces.
Tactical nuclear strikes can lead to strategic strikes, then intercontinental attacks. In a nuclear confrontation, as in naval battles, he who fires first has a huge advantage.
“We can’t allow Russia to keep Crimea,” goes another favorite neocon mantra. Why not? Hardly any Americans could even find Crimea on a map.
Crimea belonged to Russia for over 200 years. I’ve been all over the great Russian naval base at Sevastopol. It became part of Ukraine when Kiev declared independence in 1991, but the vital base was always occupied and guarded by Russia’s military. Ukrainians were a minority in the Crimea – whose original Tatar inhabitants were mostly ethnically cleansed by Stalin. Most of those Russian troops who supposedly “invaded” Ukraine actually came from the giant Sevastopol base, which was under joint Russian and Ukrainian sovereignty.
Only fools and the ignorant can have believed that tough Vlad Putin would allow Ukraine’s new rightist regime to join NATO and hand one of Russia’s most vital bases and major exit south to the western alliance.
Two of Crimea’s cities, Sevastopol and Kerch, were honored as “Hero Cities” of the Soviet Union for their gallant defense in World War II. Over 170,000 Soviet soldiers died in 1942 defending Sevastopol in a brutal, 170-day siege. Another 100,000 died retaking the peninsula in 1944.
In total, well over 16 million Soviet soldiers died in the war, destroying in the process 70% of the German Wehrmacht and 80% of the Luftwaffe. By contrast, US losses in that war, including the Pacific, were 400,000.
One might as well ask Texas to give up the Alamo or Houston as to order Russia to get out of Crimea, a giant graveyard for the Red Army and the German 11th army.
In 2013, President Putin proposed a sensible negotiated settlement to the Ukraine dispute: autonomy for eastern Ukraine and its right to speak Russians as well as Ukrainian. If war or economic collapse is to be avoided, this is the solution. Eastern Ukraine was a key part of the Soviet economy. Its rusty heavy industry would be wiped out if Ukraine joined the EU – just as was East Germany’s obsolete industries when Germany reunified.
So now it appears that Washington’s economic warfare over Ukraine is going to turn military, even though the US has no strategic or economic interests in Ukraine. Getting involved in military operations there when the US is still bogged down in the Mideast and Afghanistan is daft. Even more so, when President Barack Obama’s “pivot toward Asia” is gathering momentum.
Didn’t two world war at least teach the folly of waging wars on two fronts?
By Eric Margolis
The United States has just made an exceptionally dangerous, even reckless decision over Ukraine. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who ended the Cold War, warns it may lead to a nuclear confrontation with Russia.
Rule number one of geopolitics: nuclear-armed powers must never, ever fight.
Yet Washington just announced that by spring, it will deploy unspecified numbers of military “trainers” to Ukraine to help build Kiev’s ramshackle national guard. Also being sent are significant numbers of US special heavy, mine resistant armored vehicles that have been widely used in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US and Poland are currently covertly supplying Ukraine with some weapons.
The US soldiers will just be for training, and the number of GI’s will be modest, claim US military sources. Of course. Just like those small numbers of American “advisors” and “trainers” in Vietnam that eventually grew to 550,000. Just as there are now US special forces in over 100 countries. We call it “mission creep.”
The war-craving neocons in Washington and their allies in Congress and the Pentagon have long wanted to pick a fight with Russia and put it in its place for daring to oppose US policies against Iran, Syria and Palestine. What neocons really care about is the Mideast.
Some neocon fantasies call for breaking up the Russian Federation into small, impotent parts. Many Russians believe this is indeed Washington’s grand strategy, mixing military pressure on one hand and social media subversion on the other, aided by Ukrainian oligarchs and rightists. A massive propaganda campaign is underway, vilifying Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin as “the new Hitler.”
Back to eastern Ukraine. You don’t have to be a second Napoleon to see how a big war could erupt.
Ukrainian National Guard forces, stiffened by American “volunteers” and “private contractors,” and led by US special forces, get in a heavy fire fight with pro-Russian separatist forces. Washington, whose military forces are active in the Mideast, Central America, the Philippines, Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, South Korea, has been blasting Moscow for allegedly sending some 9,000 soldiers into neighboring Ukraine.
The Americans, who have never been without total air superiority since the 1950’s Korean War, call in US and NATO air support. Pro-Russian units, backed by Russian military forces just across the border, will reply with heavy rocket fire and salvos of anti-aircraft missiles. Both sides will take heavy casualties and rush in reinforcements.
Does anyone think the Russians, who lost close to 40 million soldiers and civilians in World War II, won’t fight to defend their Motherland?
Heavy conventional fighting could quickly lead to commanders calling for tactical nuclear strikes delivered by aircraft and missiles. This was a constant fear in nearly all NATO v Warsaw Pact Cold War scenarios – and the very good reason that both sides avoided direct confrontation and confined themselves to using proxy forces.
Tactical nuclear strikes can lead to strategic strikes, then intercontinental attacks. In a nuclear confrontation, as in naval battles, he who fires first has a huge advantage.
“We can’t allow Russia to keep Crimea,” goes another favorite neocon mantra. Why not? Hardly any Americans could even find Crimea on a map.
Crimea belonged to Russia for over 200 years. I’ve been all over the great Russian naval base at Sevastopol. It became part of Ukraine when Kiev declared independence in 1991, but the vital base was always occupied and guarded by Russia’s military. Ukrainians were a minority in the Crimea – whose original Tatar inhabitants were mostly ethnically cleansed by Stalin. Most of those Russian troops who supposedly “invaded” Ukraine actually came from the giant Sevastopol base, which was under joint Russian and Ukrainian sovereignty.
Only fools and the ignorant can have believed that tough Vlad Putin would allow Ukraine’s new rightist regime to join NATO and hand one of Russia’s most vital bases and major exit south to the western alliance.
Two of Crimea’s cities, Sevastopol and Kerch, were honored as “Hero Cities” of the Soviet Union for their gallant defense in World War II. Over 170,000 Soviet soldiers died in 1942 defending Sevastopol in a brutal, 170-day siege. Another 100,000 died retaking the peninsula in 1944.
In total, well over 16 million Soviet soldiers died in the war, destroying in the process 70% of the German Wehrmacht and 80% of the Luftwaffe. By contrast, US losses in that war, including the Pacific, were 400,000.
One might as well ask Texas to give up the Alamo or Houston as to order Russia to get out of Crimea, a giant graveyard for the Red Army and the German 11th army.
In 2013, President Putin proposed a sensible negotiated settlement to the Ukraine dispute: autonomy for eastern Ukraine and its right to speak Russians as well as Ukrainian. If war or economic collapse is to be avoided, this is the solution. Eastern Ukraine was a key part of the Soviet economy. Its rusty heavy industry would be wiped out if Ukraine joined the EU – just as was East Germany’s obsolete industries when Germany reunified.
So now it appears that Washington’s economic warfare over Ukraine is going to turn military, even though the US has no strategic or economic interests in Ukraine. Getting involved in military operations there when the US is still bogged down in the Mideast and Afghanistan is daft. Even more so, when President Barack Obama’s “pivot toward Asia” is gathering momentum.
Didn’t two world war at least teach the folly of waging wars on two fronts?
By Eric Margolis
The Conspiracy of Language
The Conspiracy of Language
Here’s a good exercise that will help alter your conscious awareness and put punch and clarity where slosh once existed. Don’t even use the words “hope” or “believe”. Every time you’re tempted to say, write or even think these debilitating, nebulous concepts, replace “I hope” or “I believe” with “I think” or “it appears to me” or something else realistic that clearly indicates what you really mean.
These types of inhibitors are a subtle trick of the programmed language we’ve been handed.
We don’t need full evidence to make conjectures or intuitive surmisings. Just call them what they are. Hope is one of the most misleading and disempowering terms we’ve ever been handed, as is belief. Drop them entirely. We tend to know what people seem to mean when using these terms, but they’re still just as intellectually and spiritually crippling.
Catch Yourself
When you catch yourself using these terms you’ll be surprised at how often they appear and how much this exercise strengthens your perception and awareness. These misleading terms run around humanity like viruses just waiting to infect the unwary. Just as we wash our hands regularly when going out in public, we need to do the same with our minds and the use of their dirty language.
It’s a bit like fear porn and falling for the dark side of viewing the world around us. Sure we need to be aware of the sickness pervading society and the machinations of the would-be Controllers, but these language tricks are all potential traps to sap our energy and powers of true intention and conscious awareness, the very tools we so desperately need to rise above this ongoing fray with the forces around us.
Free Your Mind – Meet the Trivium
The above segues nicely into something I’ve wanted to bring up for some time. Many are familiar with this rational approach to learning and discovering as it’s quite remarkably lucid and helps one stand back and clearly assess the information before us and regain our intellectual and even spiritual sovereignty.
Unfortunately and as expected, this method of learning has been lost or adulterated in today’s world as evidenced by the confusion and blind ignorance that are so rampant in society and our deliberately dumbed down educational system.
The ideas of “hope” and “belief” are deeply intertwined in religious thought and hence all of society. They are perfect examples of false, misleading and disempowering concepts that learning techniques such as the Trivium can quickly dispel for upcoming generations. This subject deserves serious study but I’ll include some introductory information here to help give the feel of what this is about and hopefully stir your interest in this fascinating and liberating conscious learning technology.
In medieval universities the Trivium combined with the Quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts. This teaching method is based on a curriculum outlined by Plato. One of the key intentions behind applying the Trivium and the Quadrivium is to distinguish between reality and fiction. By training the mind how to think – instead of what to think – this method provides a teaching of the arts and the science of the mind as well as the art of the science of matter.
Tools of Knowing
The Trivium and the Quadrivium are often presented in a Pythagorean triangle which represents the human way of knowing :
Any observation enters our mind through the 5 senses. Then we use our mind and apply the Trivium and the Quadrivium in order to process the observation. This process consists of several steps which enable us to understand how the observation relates to what we already know, how we can explain this new piece of information to others and how we can store it in a methodical way.
The Trivium method of thought
The Trivium is the first half of the 7 Liberal Arts. It consists of 3 elements : General grammar, formal logic and classical rhetoric. Sacred texts often refer to these 3 elements as knowledge, understanding and wisdom. The overarching topic of the Trivium is communication and language.
Within the process of seeing, conceptualizing and speaking it is important to be aware that the created concept about how we think reality is, does not equate reality as it really is.
In other words, the map is not the territory.
Aristotle who is considered to be one of the originators of the ideas behind the Trivium stated that an educated man should be capable of considering and investigating any idea or concept thoroughly without necessarily embracing or dismissing it. If during any discussion it becomes obvious that the other person is emotionally involved regarding a particular subject matter, then it is impossible to have a rational discussion based on the Trivium with them. Any emotional attachment to a particular belief blocks any kind of rational or logical argumentation. [Emphasis mine].(more;)http://www.matrixwissen.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=275:the-7-liberal-arts-trivium-quadrivium-and-logical-fallacies&catid=145:die-7-freien-kuenste&Itemid=124&lang=en
[*Note the direct reference to those emotionally attached to a belief and how it blocks rational discourse. – Z]
Sounds Too Rational?
We’re dealing with the rational mind, which works in conjunction with our imaginative/creative mind. These work in concert. Above all is keeping a conscious awareness above both processes, but each has its place, just as we inhabit a physical body that works in conjunction with Spirit.
Here’s an excellent interview that explains the subject in more detail for those so inclined:
Logic, Fallacies, and the Trivium. Tony Myers Interviews Jan Irvin:
[You can find much more on the Trivium and other terrific information from the Tragedy and Hope website as well as at GnosticMedia, two great resources.]http://www.gnosticmedia.com/?s=Trivium
http://www.matrixwissen.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=275:the-7-liberal-arts-trivium-quadrivium-and-logical-fallacies&catid=145:die-7-freien-kuenste&Itemid=124&lang=en
Don’t Hope or Believe – Know or Don’t Know
It’s not that big of a deal when you think about it. The biggest trick is in the language and how it’s been appropriated and used in this ongoing onslaught of group-think. The above Yoda quote takes it to another level, but it is still the same dynamic. Having a truly conscious frame of reference, if we can call it that, requires us to have a foundation based in detachment first of all.
Learning to let things sit or even pass until reality takes shape is as important as finding seeming factual information.
The reality we’re experiencing is fundamentally an illusion. There’s nothing wrong with changing viewpoints, perceptions and understandings. After all, we’re continually evolving spiritually within a very confining environment that is engineered to distract and delude our thinking and comprehension of the world around us.
Why the deliberate confusion? For us to draw awake and aware conclusions would mean the inevitable fall of their power structure.
Then so be it. Illusion cannot stand in the face of truth and conscious awareness.
We need to watch our language and what we unconsciously adopt as our medium of exchange. Abolishing the use or application of words and concepts like “hope” and “belief” is a great starting point on the road to recovering our power. There are many such Trojan horse words and expressions.
Beware the conspiracy of language. Use the language, but don’t let it use you.
Here’s to the joy of getting free and awakening!
Much love, Zen
by Zen Gardner
Here’s a good exercise that will help alter your conscious awareness and put punch and clarity where slosh once existed. Don’t even use the words “hope” or “believe”. Every time you’re tempted to say, write or even think these debilitating, nebulous concepts, replace “I hope” or “I believe” with “I think” or “it appears to me” or something else realistic that clearly indicates what you really mean.
These types of inhibitors are a subtle trick of the programmed language we’ve been handed.
We don’t need full evidence to make conjectures or intuitive surmisings. Just call them what they are. Hope is one of the most misleading and disempowering terms we’ve ever been handed, as is belief. Drop them entirely. We tend to know what people seem to mean when using these terms, but they’re still just as intellectually and spiritually crippling.
Catch Yourself
When you catch yourself using these terms you’ll be surprised at how often they appear and how much this exercise strengthens your perception and awareness. These misleading terms run around humanity like viruses just waiting to infect the unwary. Just as we wash our hands regularly when going out in public, we need to do the same with our minds and the use of their dirty language.
It’s a bit like fear porn and falling for the dark side of viewing the world around us. Sure we need to be aware of the sickness pervading society and the machinations of the would-be Controllers, but these language tricks are all potential traps to sap our energy and powers of true intention and conscious awareness, the very tools we so desperately need to rise above this ongoing fray with the forces around us.
Free Your Mind – Meet the Trivium
The above segues nicely into something I’ve wanted to bring up for some time. Many are familiar with this rational approach to learning and discovering as it’s quite remarkably lucid and helps one stand back and clearly assess the information before us and regain our intellectual and even spiritual sovereignty.
Unfortunately and as expected, this method of learning has been lost or adulterated in today’s world as evidenced by the confusion and blind ignorance that are so rampant in society and our deliberately dumbed down educational system.
The ideas of “hope” and “belief” are deeply intertwined in religious thought and hence all of society. They are perfect examples of false, misleading and disempowering concepts that learning techniques such as the Trivium can quickly dispel for upcoming generations. This subject deserves serious study but I’ll include some introductory information here to help give the feel of what this is about and hopefully stir your interest in this fascinating and liberating conscious learning technology.
In medieval universities the Trivium combined with the Quadrivium comprised the seven liberal arts. This teaching method is based on a curriculum outlined by Plato. One of the key intentions behind applying the Trivium and the Quadrivium is to distinguish between reality and fiction. By training the mind how to think – instead of what to think – this method provides a teaching of the arts and the science of the mind as well as the art of the science of matter.
Tools of Knowing
The Trivium and the Quadrivium are often presented in a Pythagorean triangle which represents the human way of knowing :
Any observation enters our mind through the 5 senses. Then we use our mind and apply the Trivium and the Quadrivium in order to process the observation. This process consists of several steps which enable us to understand how the observation relates to what we already know, how we can explain this new piece of information to others and how we can store it in a methodical way.
The Trivium method of thought
The Trivium is the first half of the 7 Liberal Arts. It consists of 3 elements : General grammar, formal logic and classical rhetoric. Sacred texts often refer to these 3 elements as knowledge, understanding and wisdom. The overarching topic of the Trivium is communication and language.
Within the process of seeing, conceptualizing and speaking it is important to be aware that the created concept about how we think reality is, does not equate reality as it really is.
In other words, the map is not the territory.
Aristotle who is considered to be one of the originators of the ideas behind the Trivium stated that an educated man should be capable of considering and investigating any idea or concept thoroughly without necessarily embracing or dismissing it. If during any discussion it becomes obvious that the other person is emotionally involved regarding a particular subject matter, then it is impossible to have a rational discussion based on the Trivium with them. Any emotional attachment to a particular belief blocks any kind of rational or logical argumentation. [Emphasis mine].(more;)http://www.matrixwissen.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=275:the-7-liberal-arts-trivium-quadrivium-and-logical-fallacies&catid=145:die-7-freien-kuenste&Itemid=124&lang=en
[*Note the direct reference to those emotionally attached to a belief and how it blocks rational discourse. – Z]
Sounds Too Rational?
We’re dealing with the rational mind, which works in conjunction with our imaginative/creative mind. These work in concert. Above all is keeping a conscious awareness above both processes, but each has its place, just as we inhabit a physical body that works in conjunction with Spirit.
Here’s an excellent interview that explains the subject in more detail for those so inclined:
Logic, Fallacies, and the Trivium. Tony Myers Interviews Jan Irvin:
[You can find much more on the Trivium and other terrific information from the Tragedy and Hope website as well as at GnosticMedia, two great resources.]http://www.gnosticmedia.com/?s=Trivium
http://www.matrixwissen.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=275:the-7-liberal-arts-trivium-quadrivium-and-logical-fallacies&catid=145:die-7-freien-kuenste&Itemid=124&lang=en
Don’t Hope or Believe – Know or Don’t Know
It’s not that big of a deal when you think about it. The biggest trick is in the language and how it’s been appropriated and used in this ongoing onslaught of group-think. The above Yoda quote takes it to another level, but it is still the same dynamic. Having a truly conscious frame of reference, if we can call it that, requires us to have a foundation based in detachment first of all.
Learning to let things sit or even pass until reality takes shape is as important as finding seeming factual information.
The reality we’re experiencing is fundamentally an illusion. There’s nothing wrong with changing viewpoints, perceptions and understandings. After all, we’re continually evolving spiritually within a very confining environment that is engineered to distract and delude our thinking and comprehension of the world around us.
Why the deliberate confusion? For us to draw awake and aware conclusions would mean the inevitable fall of their power structure.
Then so be it. Illusion cannot stand in the face of truth and conscious awareness.
We need to watch our language and what we unconsciously adopt as our medium of exchange. Abolishing the use or application of words and concepts like “hope” and “belief” is a great starting point on the road to recovering our power. There are many such Trojan horse words and expressions.
Beware the conspiracy of language. Use the language, but don’t let it use you.
Here’s to the joy of getting free and awakening!
Much love, Zen
by Zen Gardner
The Shackles Of Physicality
The Shackles Of Physicality
It’s not that we awaken within a three-dimensional physical universe, as an ‘enlightened being’—that is, as a space-time entity who has had some shift in her perceptual capabilities—it’s rather that the universe (including one’s body) is finally recognized to be, not a universe at all, but a mixture of sense percepts and conceptualizations — the non-dual nature of which suddenly become readily apparent in that moment of awakening, and makes it abundantly clear that there isn’t anything physical going on.
Physicality is thereby revealed as the mental fabrication it always was — and at last, we’re liberated from an imagined bondage.
‘Imagined’, because the whole problem is that we see everything through this fallacious model wherein we ‘exist’ as objects in space-time, and therefore subjects to a variety of ‘laws’ we have invented; the most prominent of which is the law of causation and, let’s not forget, the law of you-must-inevitably-die-someday.
Upon awakening then, we’re liberated from these constraints. No longer are we confined by such artificial bounds, because we now recognize that both the constraints and whoever is constrained is merely a product of that false physical model of reality; a model now and forever put on the shelf along tooth fairies, unicorns and santa claus.http://www.uncoveringlife.com/enlightenment-what-it-is/
Let me put this in another way. Every apparent thing, including the so called physical universe, is reducible to our knowing of it. Strip away all the falseness, all the erroneus conceptual structures surrounding our experience of reality and we’re left with just perception.
http://www.uncoveringlife.com/objective-reality/
And perception is nothing but pure knowing.
And there’s nothing physical about knowing.
Knowing does not have width or height. It doesn’t have breadth or depth. There is no start or end to knowing.
What you’re looking at right now is knowing made manifest.
And if you ask yourself how wide this manifestation is—that is, if you ask yourself whether it’s physical—you’ll see that it can’t be done. I mean, how wide is you field of vision? How wide is your field of feeling? In order to measure its width, we would have to start on one end of the field of experiencing and measure against the other. But there are no ends to this moment. There are no borders to experiencing. We can’t locate the left border and measure the distance to the right. There are no borders. There’s nothing physical about knowing. There’s nothing physical going on.
And besides, in order to measure its width, we would have to do so within a frame of reference, namely another ‘space’, a larger meta-reality in which the manifestation takes place. But there is no such frame of reference. This moment doesn’t takes place in space.
Where’s does it take place, then?
Nowhere but here.
Göran Backlund
It’s not that we awaken within a three-dimensional physical universe, as an ‘enlightened being’—that is, as a space-time entity who has had some shift in her perceptual capabilities—it’s rather that the universe (including one’s body) is finally recognized to be, not a universe at all, but a mixture of sense percepts and conceptualizations — the non-dual nature of which suddenly become readily apparent in that moment of awakening, and makes it abundantly clear that there isn’t anything physical going on.
Physicality is thereby revealed as the mental fabrication it always was — and at last, we’re liberated from an imagined bondage.
‘Imagined’, because the whole problem is that we see everything through this fallacious model wherein we ‘exist’ as objects in space-time, and therefore subjects to a variety of ‘laws’ we have invented; the most prominent of which is the law of causation and, let’s not forget, the law of you-must-inevitably-die-someday.
Upon awakening then, we’re liberated from these constraints. No longer are we confined by such artificial bounds, because we now recognize that both the constraints and whoever is constrained is merely a product of that false physical model of reality; a model now and forever put on the shelf along tooth fairies, unicorns and santa claus.http://www.uncoveringlife.com/enlightenment-what-it-is/
Let me put this in another way. Every apparent thing, including the so called physical universe, is reducible to our knowing of it. Strip away all the falseness, all the erroneus conceptual structures surrounding our experience of reality and we’re left with just perception.
http://www.uncoveringlife.com/objective-reality/
And perception is nothing but pure knowing.
And there’s nothing physical about knowing.
Knowing does not have width or height. It doesn’t have breadth or depth. There is no start or end to knowing.
What you’re looking at right now is knowing made manifest.
And if you ask yourself how wide this manifestation is—that is, if you ask yourself whether it’s physical—you’ll see that it can’t be done. I mean, how wide is you field of vision? How wide is your field of feeling? In order to measure its width, we would have to start on one end of the field of experiencing and measure against the other. But there are no ends to this moment. There are no borders to experiencing. We can’t locate the left border and measure the distance to the right. There are no borders. There’s nothing physical about knowing. There’s nothing physical going on.
And besides, in order to measure its width, we would have to do so within a frame of reference, namely another ‘space’, a larger meta-reality in which the manifestation takes place. But there is no such frame of reference. This moment doesn’t takes place in space.
Where’s does it take place, then?
Nowhere but here.
Göran Backlund
Secession Begins at Home
Secession Begins at Home
[This article is adapted from a talk presented at the Houston Mises Circle, January 24, 2015.]
http://mises.org/library/secession-begins-home
Presumably everyone in this room, or virtually everyone, is here today because you have some interest in the topic of secession. You may be interested in it as an abstract concept or as a viable possibility for escaping a federal government that Americans now fear and distrust in unprecedented numbers.
As Mises wrote in 1927:http://mises.org/library/liberalism-classical-tradition
The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish to belong is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest.
I’m sure this sentiment is shared by many of you. Mises understood that mass democracy was no substitute for liberal society, but rather the enemy of it. Of course he was right: nearly 100 years later, we have been conquered and occupied by the state and its phony veneer of democratic elections. The federal government is now the putative ruler of nearly every aspect of life in America.
That’s why we’re here today entertaining the audacious idea of secession — an idea Mises elevated to a defining principle of classical liberalism.
It’s tempting, and entirely human, to close our eyes tight and resist radical change — to live in America’s past.
But to borrow a line from the novelist L.P. Hartley, “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” The America we thought we knew is a mirage; a memory, a foreign country.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely why we should take secession seriously, both conceptually — as consistent with libertarianism — and as a real alternative for the future.
Does anyone really believe that a physically vast, multicultural, social democratic welfare state of 330 million people, with hugely diverse economic, social, and cultural interests, can be commanded from DC indefinitely without intense conflict and economic strife?
Does anyone really believe that we can unite under a state that endlessly divides us? Rich vs. poor, black vs. white, Hispanic vs. Anglo, men vs. women, old vs. young, secularists vs. Christians, gays vs. traditionalists, taxpayers vs. entitlement recipients, urban vs. rural, red state vs. blue state, and the political class vs. everybody?
Frankly it seems clear the federal government is hell-bent on Balkanizing America anyway. So why not seek out ways to split apart rationally and nonviolently? Why dismiss secession, the pragmatic alternative that’s staring us in the face?
Since most of us in the room are Americans, my focus today is on the political and cultural situation here at home. But the same principles of self-ownership, self-determination, and decentralization apply universally — whether we’re considering Texas independence or dozens of active breakaway movements in places like Venice, Catalonia, Scotland, and Belgium.
I truly believe secession movements represent the last best hope for reclaiming our birthright: the great classical liberal tradition and the civilization it made possible. In a world gone mad with state power, secession offers hope that truly liberal societies, organized around civil society and markets rather than central governments, can still exist.
Secession as a “Bottom-Up” Revolution
“But how could this ever really happen?” you’re probably thinking.
Wouldn’t creating a viable secession movement in the US necessarily mean convincing a majority of Americans, or at least a majority of the electorate, to join a mass political campaign much like a presidential election?
I say no. Building a libertarian secession movement need not involve mass political organizing: in fact, national political movements that pander to the Left and Right may well be hopelessly naïve and wasteful of time and resources.
Instead, our focus should be on hyper-localized resistance to the federal government in the form of a “bottom-up” revolution, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe terms it.http://mises.org/library/what-must-be-done-0
Hoppe counsels us to use what little daylight the state affords us defensively: just as force is justified only in self-defense, the use of democratic means is justified only when used to achieve nondemocratic, libertarian, pro-private property ends.
In other words, a bottom-up revolution employs both persuasion and democratic mechanisms to secede at the individual, family, community, and local level — in a million ways that involve turning our backs on the central government rather than attempting to bend its will.
Secession, properly understood, means withdrawing consent and walking away from DC — not trying to capture it politically and “converting the King.”
Secession is Not a Political Movement
Why is the road to secession not political, at least not at the national level? Frankly, any notion of a libertarian takeover of the political apparatus in DC is fantasy, and even if a political sea change did occur the army of 4.3 million federal employees is not simply going to disappear.
Convincing Americans to adopt a libertarian political system — even if such an oxymoron were possible — is a hopeless endeavor in our current culture.
Politics is a trailing indicator. Culture leads, politics follows. There cannot be a political sea change in America unless and until there is a philosophical, educational, and cultural sea change. Over the last 100 years progressives have overtaken education, media, fine arts, literature, and pop culture — and thus as a result they have overtaken politics. Not the other way around.
This is why our movement, the libertarian movement, must be a battle for hearts and minds. It must be an intellectual revolution of ideas, because right now bad ideas run the world. We can’t expect a libertarian political miracle to occur in an illibertarian society.
Now please don’t get me wrong. The philosophy of liberty is growing around the world, and I believe we are winning hearts and minds. This is a time for boldness, not pessimism.
Yet libertarianism will never be a mass —which is to say majority — political movement.
Some people will always support the state, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves about this. It may be due to genetic traits, environmental factors, family influences, bad schools, media influences, or simply an innate human desire to seek the illusion of security.
But we make a fatal mistake when we dilute our message to seek approval from people who seemingly are hardwired to oppose us. And we waste precious time and energy.
What’s important is not convincing those who fundamentally disagree with us, but the degree to which we can extract ourselves from their political control.
This is why secession is a tactically superior approach in my view: it is far less daunting to convince liberty-minded people to walk away from the state than to convince those with a statist mindset to change.
What About the Federales?
Now I know what you’re thinking, and so does the aforementioned Dr. Hoppe:
Wouldn’t the federales simply crush any such attempt (at localized secession)?
They surely would like to, but whether or not they can actually do so is an entirely different question … it is only necessary to recognize that the members of the governmental apparatus always represent, even under conditions of democracy, a (very small) proportion of the total population.
Hoppe envisions a growing number of “implicitly seceded territories” engaging in noncompliance with federal authority:
Without local enforcement, by compliant local authorities, the will of the central government is not much more than hot air.
It would be prudent … to avoid a direct confrontation with the central government and not openly denounce its authority …
Rather, it seems advisable to engage in a policy of passive resistance and noncooperation. One simply stops to help in the enforcement in each and every federal law …
Finally, he concludes as only Hoppe could (remember this is the 1990s):
Waco, a teeny group of freaks, is one thing. But to occupy, or to wipe out a significantly large group of normal, accomplished, upstanding citizens is quite another, and quite a more difficult thing.
Now you may disagree with Dr. Hoppe as to the degree to which the federal government would actively order military violence to tamp down any secessionist hotspots, but his larger point is unassailable: the regime is largely an illusion, and consent to its authority is almost completely due to fear, not respect. Eliminate the illusion of benevolence and omnipotence and consent quickly crumbles.
Imagine what a committed, coordinated libertarian base could achieve in America! 10 percent of the US population, or roughly thirty-two million people, would be an unstoppable force of nonviolent withdrawal from the federal leviathan.
As Hoppe posits, it is no easy matter for the state to arrest or attack large local groups of citizens. And as American history teaches, the majority of people in any conflict are likely to be “fence sitters” rather than antagonists.
Left and Right are Hypocrites Regarding Secession
One of the great ironies of our time is that both the political Left and Right complain bitterly about the other, but steadfastly refuse to consider, once again, the obvious solution staring us in the face.
Now one might think progressives would champion the Tenth Amendment and states’ rights, because it would liberate them from the Neanderthal right wingers who stand in the way of their progressive utopia. Imagine California or Massachusetts having every progressive policy firmly in place, without any preemptive federal legislation or federal courts to get in their way, and without having to share federal tax revenues with the hated red states.
Imagine an experiment where residents of the San Francisco bay area were free to live under a political and social regime of their liking, while residents of Salt Lake City were free to do the same.
Surely both communities would be much happier with this commonsense arrangement than the current one, whereby both have to defer to Washington!
But in fact progressives strongly oppose federalism and states’ rights, much less secession! The reason, of course, is that progressives believe they’re winning and they don’t intend for a minute to let anyone walk away from what they have planned for us.
Democracy is the great political orthodoxy of our times, but its supposed champions on the Left can’t abide true localized democracy — which is in fact the stated aim of secession movements.
They’re interested in democracy only when the vote actually goes their way, and then only at the most attenuated federal level, or preferably for progressives, the international level. The last thing they want is local control over anything! They are the great centralizers and consolidators of state authority.
“Live and let live” is simply not in their DNA.
Our friends on the Right are scarcely better on this issue.
Many conservatives are hopelessly wedded to the Lincoln myth and remain in thrall to the central warfare state, no matter the cost.
As an example, consider the Scottish independence referendum that took place in September of 2014.
Some conservatives, and even a few libertarians claimed that we should oppose the referendum on the grounds that it would create a new government, and thus two states would exist in the place of one. But reducing the size and scope of any single state’s dominion is healthy for liberty, because it leads us closer to the ultimate goal of self-determination at the individual level, to granting each of us sovereignty over our lives.
Again quoting Mises:
If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done. (italics added)
Furthermore, some conservatives argue that we should not support secession movements where the breakaway movement is likely to create a government that is more “liberal” than the one it replaces. This was the case in Scotland, where younger Scots who supported the independence referendum in greater numbers hoped to create strong ties with the EU parliament in Brussels and build a Scandinavian-style welfare state run from Holyrood (never mind that Tories in London were overjoyed at the prospect of jettisoning a huge number of Labour supporters!).
But if support for the principle of self-determination is to have any meaning whatsoever, it must allow for others to make decisions with which we disagree. Political competition can only benefit all of us. What neither progressives nor conservatives understand — or worse, maybe they do understand — is that secession provides a mechanism for real diversity, a world where we are not all yoked together. It provides a way for people with widely divergent views and interests to live peaceably as neighbors instead of suffering under one commanding central government that pits them against each other.
Secession Begins With You
Ultimately, the wisdom of secession starts and ends with the individual. Bad ideas run the world, but must they run your world?
The question we all have to ask ourselves is this: how seriously do we take the right of self-determination, and what are we willing to do in our personal lives to assert it?
Secession really begins at home, with the actions we all take in our everyday lives to distance and remove ourselves from state authority — quietly, nonviolently, inexorably.
The state is crumbling all around us, under the weight of its own contradictions, its own fiscal mess, and its own monetary system. We don’t need to win control of DC.
What we need to do, as people seeking more freedom and a better life for future generations, is to walk away from DC, and make sure we don’t go down with it.
How To Secede Right Now
So in closing, let me make a few humble suggestions for beginning a journey of personal secession. Not all of these may apply to your personal circumstances; no one but you can decide what’s best for you and your family. But all of us can play a role in a bottom-up revolution by doing everything in our power to withdraw our consent from the state:
Secede from intellectual isolation. Talk to like-minded friends, family, and neighbors — whether physically or virtually — to spread liberty and cultivate relationships and alliances. The state prefers to have us atomized, without a strong family structure or social network;
secede from dependency. Become as self-sufficient as possible with regard to food, water, fuel, cash, firearms, and physical security at home. Resist being reliant on government in the event of a natural disaster, bank crisis, or the like;
secede from mainstream media, which promotes the state in a million different ways. Ditch cable, ditch CNN, ditch the major newspapers, and find your own sources of information in this internet age. Take advantage of a luxury previous generations did not enjoy;
secede from state control of your children by homeschooling or unschooling them;
secede from college by rejecting mainstream academia and its student loan trap. Educate yourself using online learning platforms, obtaining technical credentials, or simply by reading as much as you can;
secede from the US dollar by owning physical precious metals, by owning assets denominated in foreign currencies, and by owning assets abroad;
secede from the federal tax and regulatory regimes by organizing your business and personal affairs to be as tax efficient and unobtrusive as possible;
secede from the legal system, by legally protecting your assets from rapacious lawsuits and probate courts as much as possible;
secede from the state healthcare racket by taking control of your health, and questioning medical orthodoxy;
secede from your state by moving to another with a better tax and regulatory environment, better homeschooling laws, better gun laws, or just one with more liberty-minded people;
secede from political uncertainly in the US by obtaining a second passport; or
secede from the US altogether by expatriating.
Most of all, secede from the mindset that government is all-powerful or too formidable an opponent to be overcome. The state is nothing more than Bastiat’s great fiction, or Murray’s gang of thieves writ large. Let’s not give it the power to make us unhappy or pessimistic.
All of us, regardless of ideological bent and regardless of whether we know it or not, are married to a very violent, abusive spendthrift. It’s time, ladies and gentlemen, to get a divorce from DC.
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
By Jeff Deist
Mises.org
[This article is adapted from a talk presented at the Houston Mises Circle, January 24, 2015.]
http://mises.org/library/secession-begins-home
Presumably everyone in this room, or virtually everyone, is here today because you have some interest in the topic of secession. You may be interested in it as an abstract concept or as a viable possibility for escaping a federal government that Americans now fear and distrust in unprecedented numbers.
As Mises wrote in 1927:http://mises.org/library/liberalism-classical-tradition
The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish to belong is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest.
I’m sure this sentiment is shared by many of you. Mises understood that mass democracy was no substitute for liberal society, but rather the enemy of it. Of course he was right: nearly 100 years later, we have been conquered and occupied by the state and its phony veneer of democratic elections. The federal government is now the putative ruler of nearly every aspect of life in America.
That’s why we’re here today entertaining the audacious idea of secession — an idea Mises elevated to a defining principle of classical liberalism.
It’s tempting, and entirely human, to close our eyes tight and resist radical change — to live in America’s past.
But to borrow a line from the novelist L.P. Hartley, “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” The America we thought we knew is a mirage; a memory, a foreign country.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely why we should take secession seriously, both conceptually — as consistent with libertarianism — and as a real alternative for the future.
Does anyone really believe that a physically vast, multicultural, social democratic welfare state of 330 million people, with hugely diverse economic, social, and cultural interests, can be commanded from DC indefinitely without intense conflict and economic strife?
Does anyone really believe that we can unite under a state that endlessly divides us? Rich vs. poor, black vs. white, Hispanic vs. Anglo, men vs. women, old vs. young, secularists vs. Christians, gays vs. traditionalists, taxpayers vs. entitlement recipients, urban vs. rural, red state vs. blue state, and the political class vs. everybody?
Frankly it seems clear the federal government is hell-bent on Balkanizing America anyway. So why not seek out ways to split apart rationally and nonviolently? Why dismiss secession, the pragmatic alternative that’s staring us in the face?
Since most of us in the room are Americans, my focus today is on the political and cultural situation here at home. But the same principles of self-ownership, self-determination, and decentralization apply universally — whether we’re considering Texas independence or dozens of active breakaway movements in places like Venice, Catalonia, Scotland, and Belgium.
I truly believe secession movements represent the last best hope for reclaiming our birthright: the great classical liberal tradition and the civilization it made possible. In a world gone mad with state power, secession offers hope that truly liberal societies, organized around civil society and markets rather than central governments, can still exist.
Secession as a “Bottom-Up” Revolution
“But how could this ever really happen?” you’re probably thinking.
Wouldn’t creating a viable secession movement in the US necessarily mean convincing a majority of Americans, or at least a majority of the electorate, to join a mass political campaign much like a presidential election?
I say no. Building a libertarian secession movement need not involve mass political organizing: in fact, national political movements that pander to the Left and Right may well be hopelessly naïve and wasteful of time and resources.
Instead, our focus should be on hyper-localized resistance to the federal government in the form of a “bottom-up” revolution, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe terms it.http://mises.org/library/what-must-be-done-0
Hoppe counsels us to use what little daylight the state affords us defensively: just as force is justified only in self-defense, the use of democratic means is justified only when used to achieve nondemocratic, libertarian, pro-private property ends.
In other words, a bottom-up revolution employs both persuasion and democratic mechanisms to secede at the individual, family, community, and local level — in a million ways that involve turning our backs on the central government rather than attempting to bend its will.
Secession, properly understood, means withdrawing consent and walking away from DC — not trying to capture it politically and “converting the King.”
Secession is Not a Political Movement
Why is the road to secession not political, at least not at the national level? Frankly, any notion of a libertarian takeover of the political apparatus in DC is fantasy, and even if a political sea change did occur the army of 4.3 million federal employees is not simply going to disappear.
Convincing Americans to adopt a libertarian political system — even if such an oxymoron were possible — is a hopeless endeavor in our current culture.
Politics is a trailing indicator. Culture leads, politics follows. There cannot be a political sea change in America unless and until there is a philosophical, educational, and cultural sea change. Over the last 100 years progressives have overtaken education, media, fine arts, literature, and pop culture — and thus as a result they have overtaken politics. Not the other way around.
This is why our movement, the libertarian movement, must be a battle for hearts and minds. It must be an intellectual revolution of ideas, because right now bad ideas run the world. We can’t expect a libertarian political miracle to occur in an illibertarian society.
Now please don’t get me wrong. The philosophy of liberty is growing around the world, and I believe we are winning hearts and minds. This is a time for boldness, not pessimism.
Yet libertarianism will never be a mass —which is to say majority — political movement.
Some people will always support the state, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves about this. It may be due to genetic traits, environmental factors, family influences, bad schools, media influences, or simply an innate human desire to seek the illusion of security.
But we make a fatal mistake when we dilute our message to seek approval from people who seemingly are hardwired to oppose us. And we waste precious time and energy.
What’s important is not convincing those who fundamentally disagree with us, but the degree to which we can extract ourselves from their political control.
This is why secession is a tactically superior approach in my view: it is far less daunting to convince liberty-minded people to walk away from the state than to convince those with a statist mindset to change.
What About the Federales?
Now I know what you’re thinking, and so does the aforementioned Dr. Hoppe:
Wouldn’t the federales simply crush any such attempt (at localized secession)?
They surely would like to, but whether or not they can actually do so is an entirely different question … it is only necessary to recognize that the members of the governmental apparatus always represent, even under conditions of democracy, a (very small) proportion of the total population.
Hoppe envisions a growing number of “implicitly seceded territories” engaging in noncompliance with federal authority:
Without local enforcement, by compliant local authorities, the will of the central government is not much more than hot air.
It would be prudent … to avoid a direct confrontation with the central government and not openly denounce its authority …
Rather, it seems advisable to engage in a policy of passive resistance and noncooperation. One simply stops to help in the enforcement in each and every federal law …
Finally, he concludes as only Hoppe could (remember this is the 1990s):
Waco, a teeny group of freaks, is one thing. But to occupy, or to wipe out a significantly large group of normal, accomplished, upstanding citizens is quite another, and quite a more difficult thing.
Now you may disagree with Dr. Hoppe as to the degree to which the federal government would actively order military violence to tamp down any secessionist hotspots, but his larger point is unassailable: the regime is largely an illusion, and consent to its authority is almost completely due to fear, not respect. Eliminate the illusion of benevolence and omnipotence and consent quickly crumbles.
Imagine what a committed, coordinated libertarian base could achieve in America! 10 percent of the US population, or roughly thirty-two million people, would be an unstoppable force of nonviolent withdrawal from the federal leviathan.
As Hoppe posits, it is no easy matter for the state to arrest or attack large local groups of citizens. And as American history teaches, the majority of people in any conflict are likely to be “fence sitters” rather than antagonists.
Left and Right are Hypocrites Regarding Secession
One of the great ironies of our time is that both the political Left and Right complain bitterly about the other, but steadfastly refuse to consider, once again, the obvious solution staring us in the face.
Now one might think progressives would champion the Tenth Amendment and states’ rights, because it would liberate them from the Neanderthal right wingers who stand in the way of their progressive utopia. Imagine California or Massachusetts having every progressive policy firmly in place, without any preemptive federal legislation or federal courts to get in their way, and without having to share federal tax revenues with the hated red states.
Imagine an experiment where residents of the San Francisco bay area were free to live under a political and social regime of their liking, while residents of Salt Lake City were free to do the same.
Surely both communities would be much happier with this commonsense arrangement than the current one, whereby both have to defer to Washington!
But in fact progressives strongly oppose federalism and states’ rights, much less secession! The reason, of course, is that progressives believe they’re winning and they don’t intend for a minute to let anyone walk away from what they have planned for us.
Democracy is the great political orthodoxy of our times, but its supposed champions on the Left can’t abide true localized democracy — which is in fact the stated aim of secession movements.
They’re interested in democracy only when the vote actually goes their way, and then only at the most attenuated federal level, or preferably for progressives, the international level. The last thing they want is local control over anything! They are the great centralizers and consolidators of state authority.
“Live and let live” is simply not in their DNA.
Our friends on the Right are scarcely better on this issue.
Many conservatives are hopelessly wedded to the Lincoln myth and remain in thrall to the central warfare state, no matter the cost.
As an example, consider the Scottish independence referendum that took place in September of 2014.
Some conservatives, and even a few libertarians claimed that we should oppose the referendum on the grounds that it would create a new government, and thus two states would exist in the place of one. But reducing the size and scope of any single state’s dominion is healthy for liberty, because it leads us closer to the ultimate goal of self-determination at the individual level, to granting each of us sovereignty over our lives.
Again quoting Mises:
If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done. (italics added)
Furthermore, some conservatives argue that we should not support secession movements where the breakaway movement is likely to create a government that is more “liberal” than the one it replaces. This was the case in Scotland, where younger Scots who supported the independence referendum in greater numbers hoped to create strong ties with the EU parliament in Brussels and build a Scandinavian-style welfare state run from Holyrood (never mind that Tories in London were overjoyed at the prospect of jettisoning a huge number of Labour supporters!).
But if support for the principle of self-determination is to have any meaning whatsoever, it must allow for others to make decisions with which we disagree. Political competition can only benefit all of us. What neither progressives nor conservatives understand — or worse, maybe they do understand — is that secession provides a mechanism for real diversity, a world where we are not all yoked together. It provides a way for people with widely divergent views and interests to live peaceably as neighbors instead of suffering under one commanding central government that pits them against each other.
Secession Begins With You
Ultimately, the wisdom of secession starts and ends with the individual. Bad ideas run the world, but must they run your world?
The question we all have to ask ourselves is this: how seriously do we take the right of self-determination, and what are we willing to do in our personal lives to assert it?
Secession really begins at home, with the actions we all take in our everyday lives to distance and remove ourselves from state authority — quietly, nonviolently, inexorably.
The state is crumbling all around us, under the weight of its own contradictions, its own fiscal mess, and its own monetary system. We don’t need to win control of DC.
What we need to do, as people seeking more freedom and a better life for future generations, is to walk away from DC, and make sure we don’t go down with it.
How To Secede Right Now
So in closing, let me make a few humble suggestions for beginning a journey of personal secession. Not all of these may apply to your personal circumstances; no one but you can decide what’s best for you and your family. But all of us can play a role in a bottom-up revolution by doing everything in our power to withdraw our consent from the state:
Secede from intellectual isolation. Talk to like-minded friends, family, and neighbors — whether physically or virtually — to spread liberty and cultivate relationships and alliances. The state prefers to have us atomized, without a strong family structure or social network;
secede from dependency. Become as self-sufficient as possible with regard to food, water, fuel, cash, firearms, and physical security at home. Resist being reliant on government in the event of a natural disaster, bank crisis, or the like;
secede from mainstream media, which promotes the state in a million different ways. Ditch cable, ditch CNN, ditch the major newspapers, and find your own sources of information in this internet age. Take advantage of a luxury previous generations did not enjoy;
secede from state control of your children by homeschooling or unschooling them;
secede from college by rejecting mainstream academia and its student loan trap. Educate yourself using online learning platforms, obtaining technical credentials, or simply by reading as much as you can;
secede from the US dollar by owning physical precious metals, by owning assets denominated in foreign currencies, and by owning assets abroad;
secede from the federal tax and regulatory regimes by organizing your business and personal affairs to be as tax efficient and unobtrusive as possible;
secede from the legal system, by legally protecting your assets from rapacious lawsuits and probate courts as much as possible;
secede from the state healthcare racket by taking control of your health, and questioning medical orthodoxy;
secede from your state by moving to another with a better tax and regulatory environment, better homeschooling laws, better gun laws, or just one with more liberty-minded people;
secede from political uncertainly in the US by obtaining a second passport; or
secede from the US altogether by expatriating.
Most of all, secede from the mindset that government is all-powerful or too formidable an opponent to be overcome. The state is nothing more than Bastiat’s great fiction, or Murray’s gang of thieves writ large. Let’s not give it the power to make us unhappy or pessimistic.
All of us, regardless of ideological bent and regardless of whether we know it or not, are married to a very violent, abusive spendthrift. It’s time, ladies and gentlemen, to get a divorce from DC.
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
By Jeff Deist
Mises.org
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