Donald Trump and Regime Change in Venezuela

Jacob Hornberger has this very frank and honest post about the indifference toward the people of Venezuela shown by Donald Trump and his national security handlers. The one thing that Trump and John Bolton and Mike Pompeo really seem to care about is regime change, even if it means large numbers of civilian casualties throughout Venezuela.

Hornberger points out many of the past regime change ops imposed by U.S. bureaucrats, in Chile, Iraq, and Guatemala. U.S. President George H.W. Bush’s war on Iraq in 1991 and sanctions and no-fly zones led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq by the year 2000. And these U.S. bureaucrats didn’t even succeed in ousting Saddam Hussein from Iraq. So, there was no regime change, only the mass murders of innocent civilians. Then Bush’s son, George W. Bush started a new war on Iraq (that was really a continuation of the earlier war on Iraq), which caused the deaths of many hundreds of thousands more innocent civilians in Iraq.

And the bumbling Bushes actually did finally get their regime change in Iraq during the mid-2000s ousting Saddam Hussein. But they replaced the Iraqi regime with a new government that showed obedience to the U.S. government, albeit a sharia law theocracy that didn’t exist prior to the interventions.

Hornberger didn’t mention Iran in his post, although he has mentioned this aspect many times previously. The CIA initiated a coup on the leader of Iran in 1953, followed by the new Shah-led government in Iran that did what U.S. bureaucrats wanted them to do. Throughout the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the U.S. government and CIA continued to support the Shah’s totalitarian SAVAK police state, which led to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the taking of American hostages in Iran. The coup and the Shah/CIA’s police state contributed to the radicalization of Muslims and the rise of Islamic extremism in Iran.

And now in Venezuela we have almost civil war, because of mass starvation that Maduro’s government takeovers of industries have caused. Donald Trump and his minions might just impose a coup there or invade the country with the U.S. military. As with Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, and all those other countries, U.S. bureaucrats’ interventions and invasions will only cause more death and destruction. That is what government interventionism causes, as history tells us.

But, as Hornberger asserts, Trump and his neocon handlers and warmongers really just want regime change and a U.S.-loyal regime installed in Venezuela. The Trump people really couldn’t care less about the Venezuelan people. And as Hornberger points out at the end of his post, if they did care about the Venezuelan people, they would have them come to the U.S. where there is much more freedom, opportunity and much less starvation and chaos, and wouldn’t be trying to build a government wall to obstruct the foreigners’ way to a better life.

A Further Left Turn for Amerika?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says that an economic system that “allows billionaires” is “immoral.” Oh yeah? How about the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, raking in $1.4 billion, according to the Washington Post? Is that “immoral”? (Oh, it’s okay that government bureaucrats and politicians have as much money as they want, but not private citizens. How dare they.)

Robert Ringer writes about Ocasio-Cortez and the moron mob.

And Robert Wenzel says that Kamala Harris has a lot of charisma which could be dangerous, and seems to want to implement a tax system that combines Elizabeth Warren’s progressive tax with Ocasio-Cortez’s wealth tax. Not good.

***

In this next video, Kamala Harris says that “a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime.” What she really means is that it should be considered a crime to not coercively put children in government schools for the daily propaganda and indoctrination of State worship and obedience.

Here is Harris bragging and laughing about her policy of prosecuting parents for “truancy.” (I guess that means she’s against homeschooling? Yup, probably.)

In the video, she says her staff was very concerned about such a policy, not because it is immoral and in fact criminal to intrude herself into the schooling choices of private citizens and their kids, but a concern because she didn’t know at the time if she had an opponent in her reelection race! That is what politicians are concerned about. Their political career in harassing and threatening innocent, private citizens.

So, as part of the Melissa Harris-Perry ilk (Are they related?), Kamala Harris seems to think that the community or the State owns the children.

You see, she’s one of those True Believers in the authority of the State and its Bureaucracies and its Propaganda apparatus, the government schools. “You vill go to government school, and you vill enjoy it!”

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Ron Paul discusses Trump’s Venezuela fiasco. (Great line: “It’s ironic that a president who has spent the first two years in office fighting charges that a foreign country meddled in the US elections would turn around and not only meddle in foreign elections but actually demand the right to name a foreign country’s president!”)

Laurence Vance says that the drug war is a failure.

Law professor Eugene Volokh discusses libel law and the Covington boys.

And Patrick Cockburn on how we have failed to learn the lessons of the rise and fall of ISIS.

News and Commentary

Jacob Hornberger says, End all interventionism, not just in Venezuela.

Jeff Tucker on the humanitarian case for the freedom to associate.

Jeremy Hammond on why you can’t trust the CDC on vaccines.

And Gary Galles on Montesquieu and why trade and commerce create peace, prosperity and good will.

Pompeo and Trump Examples of Bureaucrat Devotion to the State, Not to Freedom And Free Markets

To show how devoted to non-interventionism Donald Trump is, he now wants the U.S. government under his leadership to impose a coup in Venezuela. Trump is also backing down on his promise to take troops out of Syria.

So Secretary of State Mike Pompeo now wants to throw his weight around with this interventionist coup in Venezuela. He has appointed Elliott Abrams to be a “special” envoy to Venezuela. I guess Pompeo is influenced by Abrams’s experience as a Bush-pardoned Iran-Contra criminal, as well as his general foreign interventionist mentality with Israel and Latin America, and being an advisor to Bush the Younger’s “Global Democracy Strategy.”

If you’re an opponent of free markets, individualism, private property and voluntary association then you probably love “Global Democracy.”

Talk about “birds of a feather.” Mike Pompeo and Elliot Abrams. They join fellow neocon interventionist John Bolton, who never met an intervention or a war he didn’t like.

Wait, did they really mean Elliott Abrams the AccuWeather meteorologist? We could only hope.

As a Reagan administration minion, Abrams (the neocon not the meteorologist) would cover up the war crimes committed by the Latin American regimes Reagan aided and abetted.

So, like Trump Pompeo is clueless as to the American founders’ foreign policy of non-interventionism. Trump, Pompeo and the neocons and liberals all seem to believe in myths about the U.S. government’s role in other countries’ affairs, even though just about all if not all of U.S. government’s past interventions have gone badly or have had worse long-term consequences, certainly worse than had these bureaucratic morons not imposed their fantasies on the rest of the world.

To show that these clowns are clueless about freedom and are really just concerned with further empowering the State and especially the U.S. government (and call it “democracy”), and clueless of the importance of free markets, Pompeo stated in an address to the UN Security Council, “We’re here to urge all nations to support the democratic aspirations of Venezuelan people as they try to free themselves from former President Maduro’s illegitimate mafia state.”

Pompeo seems to think that “freeing themselves” is by way of “democracy,” by way of elections, politics, government. Well, that sure isn’t helping us here in the U.S. For 200+ years the U.S. government has added more and more bureaucratic and police state intrusions into the lives and property of Americans. Income tax. New Deal. “Great Society.”

There are many brainwashed Americans who think that those intrusions are a good thing. And now we have delusional “Democratic Socialists” getting into power in Amerika, who want to steal even more from the American people and expand governmental powers even more over their lives. Thanks, “democracy.”

So Pompeo sees “democratic” aspirations as the priority, like “democracy” will cure the Venezuelans’ lack of food and their starvation and impoverishment.

And Pompeo went on, “Just this morning, we tried to find a way for this Council to speak in one voice in support of the Venezuelan people and democratic ideals through a presidential statement of this Council.”

“Democratic ideals.” No mention of “free market ideals.”

So Pompeo, just how will 51% of the people having power over the rest of the people via elections resolve their food and hunger issues? He doesn’t know. These statists have no clue about why the people are starving. He probably believes that the U.S.-backed “President” of Venezuela Pompeo now supports will come up with a better “plan” for the government to oversee food production and distribution, much like the Republicans in the U.S. Congress push their RepublicanCare, their own version of ObamaCare. No mention of freedom and free markets.

The statists’ priority is not freeing the people. No, it’s “democracy,” majority rules, elections, politics, government!

Venezuelan President Maduro and his military state have seized the means of production and distribution of food in Venezuela. When government bureaucrats and their enforcers take over industries, because they have no idea what they are doing (in Venezuela just like in the U.S.), those industries will have distortions, overstocks or shortages. In this case, shortages, empty store shelves, long lines, mass hunger, violence, chaos.

As I have mentioned before, here in America with private ownership of food production and distribution, we have fully-stocked store shelves, many varieties and choices as well, and not really very much long lines, and not the kind of starvation and chaos that we see in Venezuela.

The answer is to restore private ownership of the means of production. Restore freedom. The government has to let go of its power and control.

And it would be helpful if our representatives in Washington such as Pompeo would say these things explicitly! That is what we really need to hear from U.S. “leaders.”

But I don’t think Pompeo the statist understands, because all they seem to care about is government intervening and bureaucrats imposing their interventionist fantasies. And much of this power wielding is also based on EGO. Pompous Pompeo acts like his ego is as big as his weight. (He could lose a few pounds, really.) These government bureaucrats and interventionists love to impose their powers onto others!

And speaking of my reference to restoring free markets and private ownership of the means of production in Venezuela, the immigration issue is another example of how “conservatives” are against free markets and private property. These conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and nationalists like Trump want to arrest peaceful non-criminals who are traveling to find a better life. They would arrest private church officials for taking in immigrants, and they would arrest private businessmen for hiring those without government authorization to work and sell their labor or services to willing employers and consumers.

Anyway, with Syria and now Venezuela, because of Trump’s low-IQ and incoherence he is showing how malleable a puppet he is, of the national security state, and how easily psy-opped he is by the CIA racket.

Government Powers and Bureaucracies vs. the Economy and Freedom

Andy Duncan writes about the power of Mises’s The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality.

Murray Rothbard on how government spending hurts the economy.

And Gary Galles discusses how the government shutdown shows how unreliable and harmful government can really be.

Socialist Republic of Amerika

Former Nixon flunky and Trump advisor Roger Stone has been indicted for so-called process crimes, mainly lying to Congress and investigators, and I think some of the charges are related to an alleged connection to WikiLeaks.

The Mueller team has to indict Trump associates for process crimes or otherwise so-called crimes that are not relevant at all to allegations of “Trump-Russia collusions,” “hacking the election,” or tampering with votes in election 2016, because Mueller et al. knows they have no evidence to prove “Trump-Russia collusions,” “hacking the election,” or tampering with votes in election 2016.

So the taxes that are taken from you from your paychecks or otherwise stolen from you are to pay these clowns called “Special Counsel” who have had no case from the very beginning, and to pay for show trials and kangaroo indictments to make people believe the allegations of “Trump-Russia collusions,” “hacking the election,” or tampering with votes in election 2016.

And then there is this Trump Wall stuff and government shut-down showdown between Trump and Speaker Nancy. Trump and his nationalist followers really believe that a Government Wall will solve the immigration chaos that previous policies of government interventionism have caused. But the real solutions that these fascists don’t want to talk about include ending those other policies such as the drug war and the U.S. government’s interventions in Central America, and closing down the entire tyrannical police state and unconstitutional central planning bureaucracies including DHS, ICE, CIA, FBI, etc., etc. Restore freedom in America, and that will do it.

Meanwhile, this fraudster Elizabeth Warren wants to empower the gubmint to steal more and more from the people, via a “wealth tax,” in addition to all the other money, wealth and income the government steals from the people. These greedy shysters in government want to further expand government’s size, power and intrusiveness, and live high off the hog on the labor of the people. Their tax-thefts do nothing but impoverish the people while they in government get RICH! And the Soviet Mueller apparatchiks are right there with these communists like Warren, and now Bernie Sanders who is announcing another run for President at the age of 101!

More News and Commentary

Activist Post with an article on police using DHS machines to create private DNA databases of “suspicious” people (i.e. innocent people who are not suspects, but “suspicious” as viewed by U.S. gestapo bureaucrat scum).

Matt Agorist on Venezuela green lighting Russia to mine gold, days later U.S. gub planning overthrow — coincidence?

And Donald Boudreaux has these 8 questions we should be asking about economics.

Here We Go Again: Calls for Compulsory National “Service” (i.e. Slavery)

Well, they’re at it again. The authoritarian nationalists out there are bringing up “national service,” and a federal panel is wondering whether young people should be forced to “serve” (the gubmint).

I have already addressed this issue several times, so I would like to repost my post from September of 2013 on this subject:

More Calls for “National Service” as Americans Are Already Increasingly Enslaved by Government.

September 18, 2013

Jacob Hornberger and Sheldon Richman of the Future of Freedom Foundation had this discussion on the “Libertarian Angle,” regarding calls for “national service.” In this edition, they also discussed Syria and monetary policy.

As part of their discussion on “national service,” Sheldon Richman pointed out that many of those calls for “national service” are not particularly for people to serve other people or their neighbors or the community, but to serve the nation. The implication is that the inhabitants of the territory here owe something to the nation.

The truth is, many amongst the “national service” crowd really believe in the idea of sacrifice. They say you must sacrifice some of your time and labor to “serve” others. But, as Ayn Rand noted, they really mean sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice.

But really, to the nationalists we owe a sacrifice to the State. We have something, such as freedom and opportunity, for which we must show gratitude by being compelled to “serve,” something that the State has given to us or provides for us, and that we owe something in return. That is the underlying premise of the “national service” crowd.

Why there would be a resurgence in calls for “national service” at this time, after 12 long years of Afghanistan and Iraq, and now the tyrannical ObamaCare, is beyond me. You want us to serve THAT? That monstrous Leviathan?

I was very disappointed to read just recently from war and Big Government critic Andrew Bacevich that he supports some sort of “national service” program, or a “citizen soldiers” program. He was interviewed on NPR and stated:

My proposal, to be clear, is not to restore the draft, but to enact a program of national service. National service means all able-bodied young people owe a couple of years of service to the country. Some of them may choose to serve in the military. All the rest will serve in other capacities, you know, whether it’s a renewed equivalent of the Civilian Conservation Corps, or whatever.

And I was also reminded of the extreme disappointment I felt in the early ’90s when William F. Buckley, Jr. came out with his book, Gratitude.

Oh, we should be grateful that the government or the State provides for us our freedom and opportunities, even though it is those damn bureaucrats who are employed by the State who have done everything they can to demolish our opportunities and trample on our freedom!

“Grateful”? Sorry, I would be grateful if Americans decided to shut down the criminal institution that is the U.S. government and unshackle the chains and release its hold on our enslaved lives.

In 1990 the New York Times provided this quote from Buckley’s book:

The objective should be to enroll, by the turn of the century, more than 80 percent of Americans born in 1973 or later. . . . Yes, there needs to be a National Service Franchise Administration. Its primary function should be to gather information for use by the states and indeed by individuals seeking (for instance) a locality that sustains an NSFA program most congenial to their inclination. . . . But the NSFA, observing its mandate, should also recommend appropriate legislation to Congress, legislation having primarily to do with federal sanctions.

These are “freedom-loving conservatives”? (Humph. With “conservatives” like this, who needs communists?)

So the “national service” crowd seem to believe that we should be grateful for our enslavement. That is why so many of the nationalists, collectivists and statists are so resentful toward libertarians. We libertarians actually appreciate the idea of freedom of choice, freedom of movement, self-ownership, voluntary association and voluntary contract. You see, when you let people have their freedom, then the State has less control over your life, and the nationalists, collectivists and statists whose self-identity is closely linked to their love for the State also feel a loss of control.

But  in regards to this call that others serve the nation, to most people the “nation” or the State is really an abstract concept which is based on myths and a religious worship of this god the State.

Sheldon Richman and Jacob Hornberger in their discussion mentioned James Bovard who has written extensively on the sham that is AmeriCorps (a.k.a. ObamaCorps). Here is Bovard’s most recent piece on that.

The truth is, human beings own their own lives, they are not owned by the State, the “nation,” their neighbors, the community. It is not the State or the nation that provides your freedom. Your freedom is a natural thing that you have inherently.

But the only people to whom you “owe” anything are those with whom you have established actual contracts that would involve agreed-to transactions or trades.

In my 2009 response to Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy’s calls to revive Bill Clinton’s “AmeriCorps,” I wrote,

Here are some examples of how people serve others: steel workers and carpenters in the manufacturing sector serve the companies they work for, but are really serving the actual consumers who need the items they produce, such as computers, trucks and office buildings. There are people in the service sector who serve people who need groceries, get coffee at the local diner and clothes at the department store. And of course there are charities who serve the needs of those who can’t afford the daily necessities. And there are professionals such as doctors, lawyers and accountants who serve many people’s needs.The people in the “social services” sector such as nurses and nurses’ aides serve the needs of medical patients and teachers serve the needs  of children and young adults who need to be educated.

Now, the people in all these groups are not forced nor coerced to serve others; they do it voluntarily, and yes, most of them are paid for their work. They receive a financial compensation which is in their self-interest and they do a service to others, and their work is not planned or mandated by state authority with the armed force of legal compulsion. At the same time, there are many, many people throughout the population who do volunteer work, also in absence of government mandates or coercion–they do it out of their own genuine concern for others. People who lack that concern will probably not do volunteer work even if it’s mandated by government. You would have to have state-imposed conscription to force them to do such “involuntary servitude.” However, their sacrifice is not needed.

In fact, the “national service” people really don’t like that kind of voluntary trade and association. They seem to need some kind of sense of control over others in which “service” is valid when it is compelled and controlled by bureaucrats, based on some belief that we as individuals are owned by the State (or by the collective of the community). This has been the philosophy behind AmeriCorps, and other kinds of “national service,” as well as being the same kind of philosophy behind many government regulations and bureaucratic intrusions in our personal and economic lives.

“Green New Deal”: Destructive Government Central Planning, the Left’s Police State

Richard Ebeling has this very important article on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal.” He goes in depth on this proposal, which, if history proves correct, will be just another very destructive and tyrannical scheme of government central planning of every detail of everyday life.

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Tom Woods has this Covington school update, and on the Native American guy who “doesn’t know” if he agrees with black racists.

And Laurence Vance says that Kamala Harris must be a Republican.

Trump’s Socialist Government Wall vs. Private Property

Jacob Hornberger writes about the property-stealing aspect of Donald Trump’s beloved Government Wall on the border, and has a follow-up on that first post.

Racism on College Campuses All Across Amerika

Campus Reform has this article on a college writing professor who believes that grading based on quality is racist. So the professor is holding seminars with themes such as “Grading Ain’t Just Grading: Rethinking Writing Assessment Ecologies Towards Antiracist Ends.” (“Ecologies”?) And he wants to “dispense almost completely with judgments of quality when producing course grades.”

Then what’s the point of any grades? What’s the point of tests or term papers? They’re all racist! (And therefore, what’s the point of college, after all?!)

So this is typical of what I’ve been reading about that’s going on all across Amerika, in which the youngins are really being brainwashed from their earliest years to think that everything is racist, and that if some people achieve more or with better accomplishments (i.e. getting better grades based on better use of grammar and a better ability to communicate ideas, facts and study topics, and then their advancing more in society and earning more money, etc., etc.), therefore they are racists.

Well, I’m sure these dumb, irrational college professors are proud of themselves. Look who we have now in Washington as Rulers (and I need not name them here — you know who I’m talking about).

Unprofessional News Media, Hysterical Social Media, and False Narratives

You’ve probably heard about the viral video of the MAGA-hat-wearing Catholic school students supposedly taunting a Native American person at an event in Washington. The media, celebrities and social media were all condemning of the students, and their own school administrators also condemned them.

But it turned out, thanks to the posting of the full almost 2-hour video of the whole thing, that it was other people there who were taunting the students. The students had not done anything wrong. In fact, given that they in fact were the real targets of racist remarks and threats, they handled themselves well.

Tom Woods, who details the entire episode on his blog (so you don’t have to watch the video for nearly two hours), suggests that any parent whose kids find themselves in such a situation should get a lawyer, etc. I totally agree.

But we have the mainstream media who merely repeat propaganda based on a brief video excerpt and make accusations without any checking, without any further investigating.

Besides this episode and the viral nature of false accusations against and smearing of students merely wearing “MAGA” hats, more recently also was the BuzzFeed false accusation of Donald Trump allegedly directing Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.

Apparently the Mueller people publicly disputed BuzzFeed’s claim. But the media were all over the story, without any verification whatsoever.

And of course the recent New York Times story on the FBI’s viewing Trump as a “national security threat,” with the news media and social media eating all that up as well.

In the Times article, as Glenn Greenwald points out, it wasn’t until the ninth paragraph that it states, “No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials. An F.B.I. spokeswoman and a spokesman for the special counsel’s office both declined to comment.”

“No evidence has emerged…”! Hmmm.

But apparently we can’t expect the news media to read that far into an article, so it seems. We really need alternative media now, for “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

And regarding the Russia-collusions story and the Mueller investigation, I have tried to get the whole story out there, or, the story behind the story, as Larry Glick used to say.

Articles for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s anti-Vietnam War speech.

Franklin “Chuck” Spinney on Eisenhower’s nightmare: space wars edition.

Bill Sardi lists the biggest health care mistakes and misdirections. (I don’t endorse every suggestion on his list, but most of them.)

And Tom Knapp on Syria: top-tier in the history of bad excuses.