The surprise resignation of Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman over a ceasefire agreement with Gaza - after a botched Israeli raid broke the initial ceasefire - has brought Israel to the brink of snap elections. Who are the main players and what to expect?
The International Atomic Energy Agency has again found Iran in compliance with the JCPOA nuclear deal - despite the US re-imposition of sanctions. Trump's National Security Advisor, John Bolton, said this week he would "squeeze hard" until the "pips squeak." Will sanctions after sanctions work...or are they just isolating the US?
By Ron Paul
It’s not often that US Government officials are honest when they talk about our foreign policy. The unprovoked 2003 attack on Iraq was called a “liberation.” The 2011 US-led destruction of Libya was a “humanitarian intervention.” And so on. So, in a way, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was refreshingly honest last week when, speaking about newly-imposed US sanctions, he told the BBC that the Iranian leadership “has to make a decision that they want their people to eat." It was an honest admission that new US sanctions are designed to starve Iranians unless the Iranian leadership accepts US demands. His statement also reveals the lengths to which the neocons are willing to go to get their “regime change” in Iran. Just like then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said it was “worth it” that half a million Iraqi children died because of our sanctions on that country, Pompeo is letting us know that a few million dead Iranians is also “worth it” if the government in Tehran can be overthrown. The US Secretary of State has demanded that Iran “act like a normal country” or the US would continue its pressure until Iran’s economy crumbles. How twisted is US foreign policy that Washington considers it “normal” to impose sanctions specifically designed to make life miserable – or worse – for civilians! Is it normal to threaten millions of people with starvation if their leaders refuse to bow down to US demands? Is the neoconservative obsession with regime change “normal” behavior? Is training and arming al-Qaeda in Syria to overthrow Assad “normal” behavior? If so, then perhaps Washington’s neocons have a point. As Iran is not imposing sanctions, is not invading its neighbors, is not threatening to starve millions of Americans unless Washington is “regime-changed,” perhaps Iran is not acting “normal.” So what is normal? The continued Saudi genocide in Yemen does not bother Washington a bit. In fact, Saudi aggression in Yemen is viewed as just another opportunity to strike out at Iran. By making phony claims that Yemen’s Houthis are “Iran-backed,” the US government justifies literally handing the Saudis the bombs to drop on Yemeni school busses while claiming it is fighting Iranian-backed terrorism! Is that “normal”? Millions of Yemenis face starvation after three years of Saudi attacks have destroyed the economy and a Saudi blockade prohibits aid from reaching the suffering victims, but Secretary Pompeo recently blamed Yemeni starvation on, you guessed it: Iran! And in a shocking display of cynicism, the US government is reportedly considering listing Yemen’s Houthis as a “terrorist” organization for the “crime” of fighting back against Saudi (and US) aggression. Labeling the Yemeni resistance a “terrorist” organization would effectively “legalize” the ongoing Saudi destruction of Yemen, as it could be justified as just another battle in the “war on terror.” It would also falsely identify the real culprits in the Yemen tragedy as Iran, which is repeatedly and falsely called the “number one sponsor of terrorism” by Pompeo and the rest of the Trump Administration neocons. So yes, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told one wicked truth last week. But before he demands that countries like Iran start acting “normal” or face starvation, perhaps he should look in the mirror. Are Pompeo and the neocons “normal”? I don’t think so.
The weekend commemoration of the end of World War I, and particularly the speech from the French president, demonstrate why the "war to end all wars" did not at all end all wars. They still don't get it, so we are forced to repeat it. How does our current policy look so much like that of the countries careening toward disaster in 1914?
While the average person is propagandized into thinking gold isn't money, the elites know better. He who has the gold, makes the rules, and many nations are either repatriating gold, or buying it outright. Why now? Can they see the writing on the wall for the U.S. dollar?
Trump accepted the resignation of his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, yesterday leading to an explosion of protest among the #Resistance anti-Trump people. Ironically, these are the very same people who have opposed Sessions for two years! Politics?
Political Theatre Gridlock --- Wars, Surveillance, Welfare and Debt Will Remain Bipartisan11/7/2018
By Liberty Report Staff
Conventional wisdom says the Republican loss of the House of Representatives be bad news for President Trump. More investigations? Endless Russiagate "revelations"? But what if it is actually a boon for the president? Contrarian analysis of the US mid-term elections in today's Liberty Report.
By Ron Paul
Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh is being used to justify new infringements on liberty. Of course, opponents of gun rights are claiming this shooting proves America needs more gun control. Even some who normally oppose gun control say the government needs to do more to keep guns out of the hands of the “mentally ill.” Those making this argument ignore the lack of evidence that background checks, new restrictions on the rights of those alleged to have a mental illness, or any other form of gun control would have prevented the shooter from obtaining a firearm. Others are using the shooter’s history of posting anti-Semitic comments on social media to call for increased efforts by both government and social media websites to suppress “hate speech.” The shooter posted anti-Semitic statements on the social media site Gab. Gab, unlike Twitter and Facebook, does not block or ban users for offensive comments. After the shooting Gab was suspended by its internet service provider, and PayPal has closed the site’s account. This is an effort to make social media websites responsible for the content and even the actions of their users, turning the sites’ operators into thought police. Some social media sites, particularly Facebook and Twitter, are eager to silence not just bigots but those using their platforms to advocate for liberty. Facebook has recently banned a number of libertarian pages— including Cop Block, a site opposing police misconduct. Twitter has also banned a number of conservatives and libertarians, as well as critics of American foreign policy. Some libertarians say we should not get upset as these are private companies exercising private property rights. However, these companies are working with government and government-funded entities such as the Atlantic Council, a group funded by NATO and the military-industrial complex, to determine who should and should not be banned. The effort to silence “hate speech” is not just about outlawing racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic speech. The real goal is to discredit, and even criminalize, criticism of the welfare-warfare state by redefining such criticism as “hate.” It is not just progressives who wish to use laws outlawing “hate speech” to silence political opponents. Some neoconservatives want to criminalize criticism of Israel for the nonsensical reason that any criticism of Israel is “anti-Semitic.” Other right-wing authoritarians wish to expand hate crime laws to include crimes committed against police officers. Ironically neoconservatives and other right-wing authoritarians are among the biggest purveyors of real “hate speech.” What could possibly be more hateful than speech advocating perpetual war? Cultural Marxists are also guilty of hate speech with their calls for both government and private violence against political opponents, and for the use of government force to redistribute property. Just about the only individuals advocating a political philosophy not based on hate are those libertarians who consistently advance the non-aggression principle. Preserving the right to free speech is vital to preserving liberty. All who value freedom should fight efforts to outlaw “hate speech.” “Hate speech” laws may initially be used to target bigoted and other truly hateful speech, but eventually they will be used to silence all critics of the welfare-warfare state and the authoritarian philosophies that justify omnipotent government. To paraphrase Ludwig von Misses, libertarians must fight hate speech—including the hate speech emanating from Washington, D.C.— with the “ideas of the mind.”
By Jeff Deist
The Most Important Election of our Lifetime™ may be a referendum on Trump, Kavanaugh, #metoo, migrant caravans, or any number of manufactured outrages since the 2016 presidential election. It will not be a referendum on foreign policy, the Federal Reserve, debt, spending entitlements, spying, civil liberties, or anything important with regard to state power. By any objective measure, the ideological and policy disagreements between the national Democrat and Republican parties are not significant. Both accept the central tenets of domestic and foreign interventionism, both accept the federal government as the chief organizing principle for American society, and both view politics simply as a fight for control of state apparatus. Similarly, differences between policies actually enacted by Mr. Trump and the existing Congress and those likely to have been enacted by Mrs. Clinton and the same Congress are fairly small. While Mr. Trump alarms the Left with his tone and tenor, his actual views on taxes, spending, debt, trade, guns, immigration (the "Muslim ban" was neither) and war (unfortunately his good campaign rhetoric is largely abandoned) plainly comport with the general thrust of Clinton's neo-liberalism. Today's ugly midterm elections are about style rather than substance, party rather than principle, and power rather than ideas. Americans do not much argue about whether we are governed by DC, and only slightly over how we are governed by DC. But we argue viciously about who governs us from DC. Voting is a tribal exercise, and how could it be otherwise in a country of 320 million people? It is important to understand the 2016 presidential election, which sent roughly 40% of Americans into a state of gloating or despair, was decided by a very small percentage of the US population. Donald Trump prevailed in six swing states won by Mr. Obama in 2012: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. Trump's swing votes were cast overwhelmingly by older Americans, many of whom had voted for Obama at least once. The vaunted "alt-Right," a barely-extant tiny group with a noisy social media presence, had little to do with Trump's election: he won because of economic insecurity among Rust Belt voters and Florida retirees, and because the ferocious culture wars being pushed by the Left alarmed more moderate and affluent voters. Still, he didn't win by much. Here are the margin numbers for those six states:
Fewer than 1 million voters, in a country of 320 million people, changed the narrative from: "It's Hillary's time, the progressive arc was inevitable, Americans were too smart to fall for a real estate huckster" to "Dangerous rightwing populism is on the rise, Trump and his Supreme Court are illegitimate, the Russians hacked the election." This is absurd.
In fact a mere 77,744 votes, in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, were enough to swing the difference to Trump. Why are so many Americans having collective mental breakdowns over such insignificant numbers of voters? Today's midterm election likewise will be decided by small margins. Assuming this Cook Political Report analysis is accurate, only about 75 "most competitive" US House races are truly in play to switch parties (the Senate appears likely to remain majority Republican). Although US congressional districts (on average) are home to 711,000 people, even in somewhat contested or hotly contested general elections — rare due to gerrymandering — fewer than 300,000 votes usually are cast. Assuming the competitive House races in the Cook Report end up with 2% margins between the winner and loser, only 6,000 votes will make the difference in each (assuming high turnouts with fully 300,000 people voting). 6,000 difference-making votes, multiplied across 75 (predicted) close US House elections, yields only 450,000 votes. So again, fewer than 1 million people in a country of 320 million will cause one of two breathless (and false) narratives to prevail. This is not a prescription for peace and flourishing. America is barely a country at this point, defined only by its federal state. It is not a nation, lacking cohesion or commonality: we fight over history, the Constitution, the Electoral College and other constitutional mechanisms, immigration and birthright citizenship, not to mention sex, race, class, and sexuality. This utter politicization of American society — a Progressive triumph — is unsustainable over time. In this environment, democratic voting and elections become an exercise of brute force — vanquishing the other side without resorting to outright violence and warfare. Voting doesn't heal divisions or produce compromise, witness the 2016 election. Politically vanquished people don't just go away; this is precisely why Progressives were blindsided by Brexit and Trump in the first place. There are more Deplorables than imagined, and they're stubbornly hanging around longer than expected. We should acknowledge this, sooner rather than later, to avoid a catastrophe. Federalism and subsidiarity, applied with increasing intensity, are the non-violent path forward. Insistence on universalism, decided by a slight majority and applied top-down from DC, will fail here at home in the same way — and for the same reason — nation-building fails abroad. Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute. He previously worked as chief of staff to Congressman Ron Paul, and as an attorney for private equity clients. Contact: email; twitter. |
Archives
April 2024
|