Socialism vs. Freedom

Here is my latest article on Activist Post, Socialism vs. Freedom:

Bernie Sanders seems to be getting a lot of support from people who think they want “socialism” in America, especially the young people, many of whom know nothing about what socialism really is.

There is a lot of misinformation out there, including the assertion that Sweden and other Nordic countries are “socialist,” which they aren’t because of their protection of private property and the private ownership of the means of production. So, those countries are capitalist countries but with a large welfare state, just like the U.S.

But the truth is, actual socialism has a history of economic stagnation and impoverishment, tyranny, and political oppression. The “equality” that Bernie supporters are looking for does not exist in socialist societies.

In such socialist societies the political class are the elites who climb the ladder of success based on political favoritism and corruption, not based on abilities, talent, merit and risk. The political class are the rulers and the rest of the people are their servants, quite frankly.

No “equality” there.

So Bernie is running on a platform to “tax the billionaires” to pay for all the socialist programs he wants to impose.

But Bernie has also said he wants to eliminate the billionaires (until there are no more billionaires to tax, and thus no more wealth to fund his schemes!).

The truth is, these politicians, demagogues, and propagandists such as Bernie are really for government power and control, and they oppose freedom, even though it was freedom that most contributed to the biggest expansion in growth and progress in human history and the biggest rise in the standard of living of all (and not just the “1%” or the “rich” or billionaires, but everyone).

More than guided by motivations of charity, giving and compassion, the Bernie socialists seem guided by envy and covetousness in their expressed desire to take other people’s money and stuff away from them. Sadly, earlier misguided Americans began the process for them by imposing the income tax and empowering the IRS.

And the truth is, socialism is anything but “social.” It is in fact anti-social. Socialism is antithetical to peace, and has no place for the peacefulness of voluntary exchange. Socialists impose policies of coercion, compulsion, and government theft of private wealth, government exploitation of your labor.

Many people agree with the policies of aggression against peaceful people, from the antifa demonstrators who beat up MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporters to the police state enforcing immigration and drug laws.

And Project Veritas showed that some Bernie supporters are threatening to burn down Milwaukee and other cities if Bernie doesn’t get the Democrat nomination.

But these people merely reflect the actual government policies they support. Socialism requires a heavy dose of State power and aggression over the people and a powerful police state, goons with badges and guns, to enforce the bureaucrats’ iron fist.

The differences between socialism and freedom?

Unlike in the private sector in which all transactions, trades and associations must be voluntary, and the use of coercion with threats of force are considered criminal, under socialism the transactions between government and the workers are involuntary. You must obey the government’s demands for whatever it wants, or else.

And the U.S. quickly became this kind of society after the income tax was imposed in the early 20th Century. Which is what enabled the aforementioned enrichment of the ruling class in Washington. (Hence Bernie’s three homes and $2 million in wealth. But what has he actually produced and served consumers with in return? Nothing, quite frankly.)

And it is not just the “rich” who are robbed by the government, it is everyone. Either through direct taxation or indirectly via inflation and a central bank such as the Federal Reserve System.

So we have to decide whether we want to live in a free society, a society of peace and prosperity, or not.

The socialist society, or in the U.S. the “mixed economy” as it is sometimes called, requires the violation of the people’s freedom.

What exactly is freedom, as compared to the enslavement of the government-owned and controlled economy under socialism?

In freedom, you own your life and your body. Not the government. You own your labor and all the energy and effort you put into your productivity, until you voluntarily sell your labor to an employer, a client or customer. And you thus own the earnings or compensation that are paid to you voluntarily by such employers, clients or customers, which are based on mutually agreed-to voluntary contracts.

In the modern era, more freedom has led to the periods of the greatest growth and expansion, and raised the standard of living of all in society. Socialism and less freedom have a history of reducing the standard of living of the people.

For example, we still have generally a lot of freedom in the tech sector now, unlike the healthcare and some other sectors. The reason you have a very modern and convenient iPhone and other little gadgets is because of that freedom.

All the advances and inventions of modern tech, as well as inventions in other areas, came from that freedom and free markets. They did not come from socialism.

What inventions, exactly, came from the socialist Soviet Union? From Cuba, North Korea, or Iran?

And healthcare in the U.S., for example, right now is not nearly as free and affordable as it used to be.

What happened? The government came in during the 1960s and imposed Medicare and Medicaid. Those interventions, mandates and intrusions distorted the markets in healthcare and caused havoc, which led to the increase in costs in healthcare. Prior to those intrusions, if someone was unable to afford to go to a doctor or hospital, it was affordable for doctors to provide medical care for people for free, which many did.

There was much more freedom of healthcare in general in the old days, as well. Doctor-patient confidentiality was also more secure. Governmental intrusions have compromised that, too.

Another example of the destruction of socialism is Venezuela, which Bernie enthusiastically praises. In Venezuela the government seized the ownership of the means of production of food. Food production and distribution are under the ownership and control of the government. And what happened? The government distortions in those markets gave the Venezuelan people empty store shelves, long lines, mass starvation, violence, corruption, and death.

In contrast, look at all the store shelves in grocery stores in the U.S. Fully stocked, most of the time, with many, many choices, all as a result of private ownership of food production and distribution, and the freedom of the people running those industries to do what they think is right at whatever given time, not based on what a bureaucrat demands.

In socialism the government owns the means of production. And what is the most important means of production? The people, of course.

In socialist societies you do not own your own life and your labor’s earnings. The government is the initial, primary owner of your labor and the government gives to you whatever it thinks you deserve.

Meanwhile, when there’s more freedom, especially the freedom to keep more of what you earn, businesses expand more and the workers are getting better pay and benefits so they can afford that car, a new refrigerator, etc. A recent example: the tax cuts of December, 2017 in the U.S. that were followed by companies immediately announcing their workers’ raises and bonuses.

In a genuinely free society the companies are privately owned and the capital of the private manufacturers and investors is free from government theft. This leaves the people free to invest in and expand their businesses to produce better goods and services to better serve the consumers.

Freedom is one big reason why people in the society can afford to have an iPhone, a TV, a car, and air conditioning.

In contrast, when the State owns and runs production and industry, which is what Bernie Sanders wants (like in modern Cuba and the old Soviet Union), government bureaucrats decide what you will do with your life and career (tracking kids from kindergarten to college, etc.). That is because in such societies you have no freedom and your right to self-ownership is usurped away by the rulers, i.e. a slave of the State.

And in such socialist societies there is no political freedom including the right to “question authority” and challenge the State’s abuses. Given that the U.S. is very socialist in the kinds of powers and controls the federal government already has, it’s no wonder the regime in Washington railroads anyone who rocks the establishment boat, from Donald Trump to political prisoners Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.

In socialist societies that Amerika had become long ago but many people aren’t willing or able to acknowledge, you can see how political power over others and the political process is an obsession. Look how members of the political class are climbing and grasping for power with the current 2020 elections.

The two major parties, Republican and Democrat, a.k.a. Republicrat and Demopublican, are really a racket. They are really a branch of the government, federal, state and local. Just look how those two parties have legally restricted the right of third parties or independent candidates to get their names on ballots. And the media, by the way, are another branch of the government, as their propaganda mainly repeats the government’s word without question.

Anti-establishment media people are “heretics,” “unpatriotic,” “Russia puppets,” and censored by mainstream media, or “de-platformed” by the government’s social media minions.

And, while Donald Trump in many ways is also an authoritarian socialist, just see how the apparatchiks and propagandists of the permanent extra-constitutional national security state and bureaucratic state went after him, just because he said, “Drain the Swamp.” Just look how the State’s criminals of government made things up, like “golden showers” and concocted a Steele Dossier to falsely accuse and frame-up a duly elected U.S. president. And when that didn’t work, they then made up more “crimes” from a mere phone call toward an impeachment, and that didn’t work either.

And with the pathological political class the Republicans are just as bad as the “strategizing” Democrats. Some of the conservative talk radio hosts and their ditto-head callers are saying they will vote in Democrat primaries for Bernie. But how did Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” work out? (It gave us Obama!)

You see, this is how things are when everything in life is politicized in a socialist society.

The conservatives, by the way, love socialism when it comes to the immigration issue. They love the idea of the central planners in Washington attempting to control the movements of millions of people, which is impossible.

The Rush Limbaugh crowd loves having the government restrict the rights and freedom of foreigners entering “our” country, entering the socialized and “publicly-owned” territory of Amerika and imposing a police state on everyone at or near the border.

In that kind of socialism that conservatives love, you have to get the government’s permission to get a job somewhere or to hire someone.

In contrast, in a free society people come and go as they please, they go to where a job is available and they buy or rent a home where they want to live, and employers just hire the best person for the job. No permission from a parasite bureaucrat in Washington needed.

In a free society, you do what you want to do with your own life, your labor and property, as long as you are peaceful and don’t violate the persons or property of others. Not complicated.

And in a free society, there is no government “war on drugs.” You own your own body and consume whatever you decide, and you’re responsible for your own decisions and actions. But when life is socialized, the government is empowered to own and control everything, including you.

Currently in Amerika, the government owns your body and bureaucrats decide what you may or may not put into “your” body.

In a free society, if you want to use, buy or sell a plastic bag, then you use, buy or sell a plastic bag. As long as you don’t litter. People littering is the real problem as far as environmental issues are concerned, not plastics per se.

In a free society no one may go to government bureaucrats to ban plastic, or ban anything for that matter. No banning drugs by law, no banning sugary drinks or salt, no banning guns, no bans on otherwise peaceful activities.

So a free society is a “leave people the hell alone” society. Whether the Bernie, Bloomberg or Trump socialists and fascists like it or not!

And in a free society, you educate your children however you want. And when there is freedom, there would be many more schools and choices, and the government doesn’t run the schools. No federal Department of Education, no local school committees. And it’s all voluntary. No compulsory education.

In a free society, if your child wants to have a lemonade stand, she has a lemonade stand. Nothing a local official or neighbor can do about it, as long as it’s on your own private property. If you want to drive a cab and offer people rides, you put “TAXI” on top and drive your cab and offer people rides. You don’t get a bureaucrat’s permission. You don’t pay the government a fee. You just do it.

And in a free society there is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, freedom of self-defense, and due process.

Sadly, there is no room for any of those things in a socialist society.

Activist Post – ALTERNATIVE INDEPENDENT NEWS – Creative Commons 2020

Justina Pelletier Lawsuit Jury: The Government Owns Your Children

Justina Pelletier was the teenage girl who has suffered from Mitochondrial Disease and after having been treated in Connecticut and at Tufts Medical Center for several years, she was taken to Boston Children’s Hospital at which time the doctors declared that her entire medical issues really weren’t medical but psychological.

Justina was then put into the care of psychiatrists against the parents’ wishes, placed into a psychiatric institution where she was abused, and her physical conditioned had deteriorated extensively. Additionally, at the beginning of this terrible ordeal, the hospital and doctors accused the Pelletiers of “child medical abuse” and called in CPS to take custody away from the parents.

The psychiatrists had also claimed Justina to be a “ward of the state” as aided and abetted by CPS, and used “ward of the state” as their excuse to legally engage in human experimentation for the hospital’s government-grant-funded research.

Most recently, when the Pelletiers’ lawsuit trial began in January, I wrote a summary of the whole case and reposted several posts I had written previously to give people an idea of what really went on in Justina’s and the Pelletiers’ ordeal that goes back 7 or 8 years now. I recommend that recent post which gives quite a lot of detail in the whole case.

As I wrote in the older posts, the psychiatrists have this ideology of “behavior modification,” to the point of being a religiously fanatical ideology, in which they are taking a medical patient and attempting to fit a square peg into a round hole as they ritualistically impose their personally indoctrinated psychological ideology onto an innocent human being.

Destroying her life physically and mentally doesn’t matter to the zealots. And they are zealots, believe me. I have met people like this.

Justina has had to be in a wheelchair, whereas prior to the hospital and CPS’s seizure of Justina she was able to stand and walk and do figure skating. She is now 21.

Jury Verdict at Pelletier Family Lawsuit Trial of Boston Children’s Hospital

So the jury deliberated for about 6 hours after about a 5-week trial, with many witnesses and documents presented as evidence, and the jury found the hospital as not negligent in Justina’s decline of health. This sheeple jury is all in on Establishment Medicine Worship, believe me.

When reading a Boston Globe article about the jury’s verdict (which I will not link to), it seems to be, with jurors’ statements after the trial, a totally different scenario than everything I have heard or read about over these past 6 years now. That included interviews of Mr. Pelletier describing the ordeal (as shown in my earlier post linked above), rallies held on Justina’s behalf that included people such as Rev. Patrick Mahoney pleading in person with then-Gov. Deval Patrick to get the Massachusetts CPS to free Justina and let her return to her family. It is as though the Pelletier family didn’t get adequate witnesses, and/or the jury just obediently bought everything said by the doctors and hospital witnesses.

In my view, the family should have sought criminal charges as soon as the “doctors” called in CPS and attempted to have Mr. Pelletier arrested for resisting in his daughter being kidnapped and taken away. Charges of kidnapping and child abduction, wrongful imprisonment, torture, false accusation, child endangerment, and child abuse for starters. But, it appears the family didn’t try to do that, or their attorneys advised them to go just for a financial lawsuit. Those doctors are criminals, in my view.

But what the jury is telling us is that we may not question the authority of government-approved doctors. The sheeple jury comes to their defense no matter how bad, no matter how corrupt and greedy, no matter how ignorant and incompetent the “doctors” are who committed such criminal acts against a teenage girl.

So here, in my view, is a rough translation of what the jury was really telling us in its defense of the doctors and the hospital and psychiatrists who screwed up a child’s life:

“We the sheeple of the jury think it’s okay for doctors and hospital staff to forcibly seize a child and take custody away from her parents. We must always trust the judgment of establishment medical professionals above whatever judgment parents might have.

“We also think it’s okay for CPS to put a medical patient into a juvenile detention center, a place for troubled teens even though she had no history of being a troubled teen. We think it’s okay for CPS to get a judge to impose a gag order on the parents and order them not to talk to the media about what the hospital is doing to their daughter. It’s for her own good!

“We must always trust the judgment of the government, CPS and government-approved doctors who know what’s best for us.

“They know what’s best for us regardless of the fact that medical errors are still the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer. This includes side effects of prescription drugs, unnecessary surgeries, medication errors in hospitals, hospital-acquired infections, diagnostic errors, and hospitals failing to follow guidelines. According to the Journal of Patient Safety, 210,000 to 440,000 hospital patients die each year because of preventable harm at the hospital. So we must — MUST — trust the judgment of doctors, hospitals and hospital administrators. (After all, those government research grants are very important…)

Okay, thank you, sheeple jurors. And we should definitely trust the judgment of crackpot psychiatrists, who take a psychologically normal teenage girl but who has serious medical issues, and suddenly remove her from the treatments she was used to having (without considering the possible harm such sudden removal could cause) and instead say her problem is “all in her head,” and put her into a psychiatric ward (and, I assume, give her those poisonous psychiatric drugs!), all in the name of using her as a guinea pig for government-funded research, and all in the name of a “behavior modification” ideology.

Yes, we should trust the judgment of sick psychiatrists in USSA Amerika. Just look at this blog by a psychiatrist at the 2019 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. Look at all the advertisements for antidepressants all over the premises, terrible drugs that in many cases make people more depressed or suicidal! And these psychiatrists at that convention seem more concerned about “wokeness,” about “social justice,” with their obsession with race, gender and LGBT, just like on the college campuses.

No, today’s psychiatrists are not rational people, in my view. They should NOT be trusted!

I can just imagine some poor psychiatric patient in the office who might have uttered an SJW-deemed faux pas. That professional practitioner will make sure to remind that patient of his error, no doubt about that. Today’s psychiatrists and psychologists will probably label such a patient with some disorder, like “Oppositional Defiant,” or “Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder,” or some such thing. (You see what I mean? They’re the nutsos, these psychiatric practitioner professional people! Yep.)

And while the MD psychiatrists are loony-tunes and brainwashed zombies, the PhD psychologists are just as bad. And speaking of the torture that Justina Pelletier endured after the “doctors” confiscated her from her family, we have other psychologists who have engaged in torture, in cahoots with deranged CIA thugs at Gitmo, and with the approval of the American Psychological Association. (Hmm, with “psychologists” like these, who needs monsters?)

So we have a biased jury who are brainwashed to obediently trust the judgment and authority of today’s government-approved “doctors,” government-approved hospitals and government-licensed psychiatrists, who thought that Justina Pelletier’s parents were the problem and were uncooperative. Meanwhile, the jury excused the doctor who wrote an email calling the family “evil.”

And this Soviet-like crap is what we are going to deal with in the future, especially if the government takes over the health care system.

Some Rational, Non-Hysterical, Non-Propaganda Information Regarding Coronavirus

Brandon Smith says that global centralization is the cause of crisis, not the cure. If there were ever a reason to decentralize, what we are seeing in China is it. I am afraid that the centralization-obsessed criminals in Washington want to use China as a model to follow.

Daisy Luther asks, Did the Diamond Princess cruise ship “quarantine” just infect more people with Covid-19 and spread it further?

Bill Sardi has more rational information on the forced quarantine centers that will be based on ignorance and hysteria. Vitamin D is more important than vaccines. Those who are in high-risk populations will be more vulnerable to the coronavirus, including tobacco smokers, alcoholics, diabetics, obese, elderly, and very small children. So, it is helpful to avoid smoking, drinking booze, overeating and/or eating bad foods, and drugs. Those activities compromise your immune system. Taking extra vitamin D and zinc (and vitamin C, of course) will protect you more than vaccines which could actually cause disease. I’m actually more afraid of the quarantine/vaccine police state and government goons coming to my home and abducting me and hauling me off to some Katrina-like stadium, than I’m concerned about getting sick from a virus. Just keep yourselves in good health, everybody, keep your immune systems strong.

News and Commentary

Jacob Hornberger: Drug war obtuseness.

John Whitehead on the fascist Trump administration’s plans to further militarize the government schools and further strengthen the educational police state.

Matt Agorist with more examples from Amerika’s police state in the schools: 6-year-old girl taken from school without parents’ consent, held in facility for 48 hours for tantrum.

Chris Hedges: What is happening to Julian Assange will happen to the rest of us.

Natasha Lennard: The law says Chelsea Manning must be freed from prison.

New York Post with an article on why South Bend residents are warning America about Pete Buttigieg (another fascist).

Ryan McMaken on why governments hate secession. (The above articles give us good reasons for secession!)

Robert Murphy on the green fatal conceit: why physical science can’t tell us proper policy goals.

Richard Ebeling: Happy 90th birthday, Professor Israel Kirzner!

Allan Stevo: The vile Weinstein deserves a fair trial.

And Patrick Lawrence: Mike Pompeo’s latest delusion.

Doh! Conservatives Reject Free Market Capitalism and LOVE Government Central Planning!

Especially in the immigration issue.

I was listening to one of the conservative/ultra-nationalist talk radio ditto-heads this morning, and he was once again foaming at the mouth over the immigration issue. The talk host was in full support of Donald Trump’s stepping up the nazi-like immigration police state, in which ICE and “Border Patrol Tactical Unit” storm troopers will take their S.W.A.T. goons into “sanctuary cities” to harass, terrorize, arrest or assault innocent people who have exercised their unalienable rights to freedom of movement and their right to find a better life for themselves and their families.

Regarding government-operated or funded “sanctuary cities,” they shouldn’t exist, because their operation is funded by taxpayers, i.e. involuntarily.

Instead, there should be freedom, in which volunteer organizations, charities, churches, businesses and residents should have the freedom to take people in if they want to. And they would be expected to take responsibility for their refugees, new workers, guests, etc. As long as people are peaceful. As long as no one is violating the persons or property of others, and that’s it.

When there is freedom, such sponsors, employers or benefactors would not be required to ask the government for permission, and their workers or refugees are not required to get government authorization to go to where they want to go. That is what socialist societies (such as Amerika) do. Alas, that is what “conservatives” want.

The police-state supporting conservatives are concerned about immigrants getting on government welfare. But, a society of freedom and free markets would have no government-imposed redistribution-of-wealth schemes. So the newcomers would not get on welfare, because there would be no government welfare redistribution schemes or handouts!

But most conservatives seem to be socialists, and love income taxation and redistribution just as much as liberals and progressives.

And they seem to love government central planning when it comes to labor and employment. In the immigration issue, conservatives are opposed to free markets, and love the idea of the central planners in Washington attempting to control who works where, and who may not work in Amerika or where they may not work, and whom employers may employ and may not employ.

So conservatives, at least the ones I hear on ditto-head radio, love the idea of government central planners in Washington attempting to control the movements of millions of people. Which is impossible. As Perry Como might say, it’s just impossible.

For them, foreign people have to get government authorization to enter “our” country. But that’s socialism, not freedom.

Only in a socialist society are people required to get government authorization to live their lives, have a business and employ anyone they want to employ, or to move somewhere or to work somewhere.

Contrary to what the socialist conservatives want, in a free society you just do what you want and you live wherever you want, and you buy or sell property, rent a home or work at a place of employment, as long as you are peaceful. Just don’t trespass onto the private property of others.

But conservatives say that immigrants are “breaking into our country,” and compare the whole territory to a parcel of private property. Someone coming into “our” country without government authorization is “trespassing.”

But the territory as a whole is not a parcel of private property. No one owns the territory.

However, some people say that “we” the “citizens” are the owners. No, such an assertion is a myth and just not true. if someone owns the territory, then where is the deed with our names on it? Where in the Constitution or any law is it written that “citizens” are the owners of the territory as a whole?

And who would be the actual owners? Just taxpayers? Well, what about people who work but don’t make enough to be required to pay income taxes? What about foreign non-citizens who are here and who work but do pay income taxes? Do they share in such “ownership”?

The problem with such an assertion of this communistic territorial ownership by the “citizens” (or by the government on their behalf) is that, if it really were the case, then that would negate the principle of private property. You do not really own your private property if it exists on territory that is owned by a larger population. The parcels of property are no longer individual parcels of private property, and you the “owner” have to obey the orders of the larger community as far as what you may or may not do with or on “your” property.

Therefore, the anti-immigration conservatives are big on government central planning, some kind of communal ownership of property and the police state to enforce it, and not big at all on individualism, private property rights, free markets and voluntary exchange.

So what should conservatives really support in order to extract their irrationality from their hypocritical old noggins?

If the anti-foreigner nationalist conservatives are really concerned about “illegals” getting into “our” country, or criminal gangs such as MS-13, then first get rid of all foreign aid. No more federal tax-funded aid to any other countries or governments. That means no more U.S. funding of terrorist-sympathizing or drug lord-cahooting governments in Central or South America, from which many immigrants are fleeing.

And second, end the drug war. Drug prohibition causes the black market which incentivizes low-lifes to try to get people addicted to drugs and incentivizes such low-lifes to become drug pushers and drug traffickers, and the prohibition is what creates the drug lords, the cartels, the turf wars and gangs and violence that are driving innocent people and victims in those areas to flee to the U.S. Ending the war on drugs puts all that to a stop. No more drug pushers, drug traffickers, drug lords, cartels, turf wars and gangs.

And no more drug war police state, no more immigration police state, and no more Constitution-free borders.

I wish that conservatives would get with it as far as the freedom thing goes. Re-read the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. And maybe some other points I made in this post might help them. But, their support of the police state and socialist government central planning and their opposition to and contempt for freedom is really something we can do without.

News and Commentary

Richard Ebeling looks back at the last 30 years in Amerika.

Joshua Cho: No. 1 sponsor of terrorism? U.S. media name Iran, but overlook a candidate closer to home.

Matthew Ehret: Neo-McCarthyite witch hunters hypocritically mourn the death of Kirk Douglas.

Caitlin Johnstone: Trump supporters are George W. Bush supporters LARPing as Ron Paul supporters.

Becky Akers on the government Thieves and Sexual Assailants.

John Whitehead: How young girls are being groomed by sexual predators.

Jacob Hornberger: Socialism in education.

Dr. Joseph Mercola asks, Will Google’s social credit system determine your future?

Aaron Kesel on India and U.K. laws ordering social media companies to disclose user identities.

Jacob Sullum: FBI agents put innocent men on “No Fly List” to punish them for not being informants.

Jon Rappoport: CDC begins testing Americans for the Coronavirus — but how?

Dmitry Orlov: A most convenient virus.

Sheldon Richman: Anti-BDS laws violate our freedom.

The Rutherford Institute fights against a law criminalizing speech that “encourages” immigrants to remain in the country, saying the law is so broad that it could be used to punish anti-government speech.

Jonathan Turley: Juror 1261 in Roger Stone’s case: was justice undone?

Ron Paul: Democrats ignore Trump’s real violations.

Aaron Maté: New leaks shatter OPCW’s attacks on Douma whistleblowers.

Ray McGovern: German TV exposes the lies that entrapped Julian Assange.

Zero Hedge asks, Why did Twitter just “lockdown” WikiLeaks account?

Laurence Vance on Citizens United revisited, and free expression and property rights.

Robert Murphy: The theory and brief history of money and banking.

Kelley Vlahos: West Point prof pens blistering takedown of U.S. military academies.

Pat Buchanan: If Duterte wants us out, let’s go.

Tom Engelhardt: War Addicts, Inc.

Gary Barnett: Conscription is slavery: I know because I was drafted.

Michael Rozeff on the corrupt Andrew McCabe.

Dom Armentano asks, Are rising ocean levels an existential threat?

And Paul Craig Roberts: PBS assaults white Americans.

What’s the Story Behind the Story with Coronavirus in China?

Mac Slavo of “SHTF Plan” posts that authoritarian communist China is now censoring critics of coronavirus propaganda in the U.S., or those in the U.S. trying to tell family members still in China about what’s going on.

VICE News spoke to dozens of WeChat users in the U.S. and Canada, as well as some users in the U.K., France, Spain, Australia, Germany, and Malaysia, who reported identical problems with their accounts as they tried to share information with their family and friends in China.

The restrictions will prevent international users from sending any information to contacts in China.  In some cases, they have also had their accounts suspended or blocked completely and accused of “spreading malicious rumors.” In many cases, the censorship means their only communication link to people inside China has been cut off completely, according to a report by VICE News.

…

If someone attempts to get information that is not approved by the Chinese government to people living under the tyranny there, they will likely be silenced, if not punished.

WeChat is a unit of Tencent, one of China’s largest tech companies, which also happens to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Now users in the U.S. are calling for Congress to intervene to preserve their freedom of speech, however, free speech is all but dead in the U.S. too.  And the politicians claiming authority over the rest of us are unlikely to do much if anything about it.

“Tencent is the evil helper of a totalitarian government that suppresses freedom of speech and democracy,” one WeChat user who lives in Philadelphia and wanted to remain anonymous due to fears of retribution, told VICE News.“They delete or block your posts if they think it promotes democracy and challenges the government. It violates my civil rights as a U.S. citizen. I came to the U.S. for freedom. I thought I escaped from the threat of the Communist Party. But I’m wrong, I still live in terror because Tencent is monitoring my WeChat and may report me to the Chinese authorities.”

Things aren’t much better in the U.S. where companies like Facebook, Google, and YouTube delete or censor information that isn’t government-approved. In fact, the World Health Organization and Google have been working together to censor coronavirus information.

…

As I noted yesterday, the liberty-hating Chinese rulers are stepping up their numbers of “confirmed” coronavirus cases by using CT scans to find signs of pneumonia, regardless of whether such patients tested positive for coronavirus. As Jon Rappoport has pointed out which I linked to yesterday, China has a huge air pollution problem, which compromises the respiratory systems of the people there (as well as their immune systems). That would probably make people more vulnerable to pneumonia. So it seems that the Chinese rulers are assuming that people showing signs of pneumonia (through CT scans) therefore have the coronavirus. (No, that doesn’t “confirm” anything! People who actually have pneumonia do not necessarily have it via coronavirus.)

Now I see an article on a Hong Kong news website that the horrible, anti-liberty authoritarian Chinese rulers are confiscating “private” property in the name of attempting to prevent spread of the coronavirus. So, given that there is reason to be skeptical of the occurrence of coronavirus that they claim is in the tens of thousands like “44,000 confirmed cases,” but only 1,177 deaths (compare to the millions of cases of the flu and hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide each year), it could be that the whole coronavirus scare is for China to regress back to their good old days of no private property, no private ownership and full communism. We know they want it, because the Chinese rulers love power and control, just like the rulers in the U.S. and their rulers-wannabe such as commies Bernie and Liawatha.

However, I could be wrong, given that China’s economic activity is nearly ground to a halt. They’re not THAT extreme now, are they? (Wait, they’re communists!)

By the way, I found those articles on Wendy McElroy’s blog, which I highly recommend.

UPDATE: Additionally, the authoritarian Chinese central planners now want to take much of their existing paper cash out of circulation, and either disinfect it or replace it. So, they could be exploiting this epidemic to try to get rid of cash altogether, which many freedom-hating authoritarians in Amerika also want to do.

Higher Number of Coronavirus Cases in China?

The big increase recently in coronavirus cases in China is now due to their now testing by giving people a CT scan, and the government and medical bureaucrats are diagnosing people as having pneumonia, even though the patients haven’t actually tested positive (or been tested at all) for coronavirus! So they are finding cases of patients with pneumonia (or signs of pneumonia as seen with CT scan), but calling those cases “coronavirus” even though they aren’t necessarily cases of coronavirus! As Jon Rappoport writes, it’s absurd. It’s nuts. But, why are the Chinese rulers doing this? And will the U.S. rulers start doing this as well in the U.S.?

News and Commentary

Jon Rappoport has some good news on the mandatory vaccine issue in South Dakota.

Doug Casey with advice on how to survive the “deep state.”

Daniel McAdams says the Koch-Soros Quincy Project is a train wreck of neocon and “humanitarian” interventionists.

Sam Jacobs asks, How did Pete Buttigieg end up in the military without going through basic training?

Judge Napolitano with a primer on domestic spying.

And Martin Capages says that climate change is not a problem, unless we make it one.

Do Politicians’ Policies of Aggression Reflect Private Behaviors?

What is it with these politicians and candidates who promote mainly policies of aggression, interventionism, and government theft of private wealth and property? We had the Bushes starting wars of aggression against countries that didn’t attack us and invasive police-state policies, and Obama and Trump who continue the policies.

There do not seem to be any candidates, Democrat or Republican, who want to liberate the American people, make the government stop stealing from the people, and end the invasions, bombings, and occupations overseas that do nothing but provoke foreigners.

But now that I am reading more about the current bunch of morons running for President (to replace the incumbent moron), I am seeing how these people behave in their private lives or behind the scenes, and how some of them are abusive.

But not all of them treat others badly, of course. For instance, so far we haven’t heard about Pete Buttigieg being abusive or acting like a criminal, but we have heard that his campaign is filled with nutty loony-tunes, like their attempting to expose “microaggressions” within the campaign. (Some black campaign workers report being interrupted in conversation  — Ooooh! — and being called the name of another staffer of the same race.) So, the nutsos try to go the opposite of being “abusive.”

But some of these politicians, especially those who advocate more interventions, more aggressions, more tax-thefts, and so on, seem to be treating others pretty badly.

A few days ago I asked if this Amy Klobuchar person might be the worst of the worst, because she combines the DC swampy interventionist foreign policy and warmongering with the leftist climate fanaticism and ObamaCare intrusions. She’s the worst of everything, a statist if there ever was one. And I wrote that she’s turning out to be a lot like Hillary, in those aforementioned ways. Here is what I wrote about that:

Robert Wenzel has this summary of Amy Klobuchar’s views and legislation she supports. She’s big on U.S. government interventionism around the world, loves the UN and NATO, supports NSA collection of private data without reasonable suspicion and votes in favor of FISA warrantless surveillance (i.e.. contempt for the 4th Amendment – Oh, that old thing?), wants the government to have authority over Facebook, Google and Amazon and other tech companies (anti-First Amendment, fascist), supports trade tariffs (against free trade and free markets), says regime change ops are on the table especially Venezuela, supports eco-fascism in climate change legislation and “Green New Deal” (i.e. crony Green Wheeling and Dealing). Thus, she combines the worst of warmongering, foreign interventionism, fascist anti-civil liberties and government spying on innocent people, with socialist tax-thefts in the name of irrational fanatical crusades. Very much like Hillary, in other words.

Yes, very much like Hillary Clinton, loving foreign interventionism and warmongering, and at the same time advocating far-left intrusions in the economy. The Democrats may nominate Klobuchar for President, and they may even have a brokered convention and insert Hillary to lose a second time.

And to remind us how Hillary Clinton has been over the years, Gary Byrne, a former Secret Service officer assigned to President Bubba Clinton during the 1990s, wrote about the Clintons’ behavior in the White House, Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate, and the book included parts about Hillary’s tirades.

According to Page Six from a 2016 article, Byrne’s book “claims she repeatedly screamed obscenities at her husband, Secret Service personnel and White House staffers — all of whom lived in terror of her next tirade.”

Page Six quotes from the book: “From the bottom of my soul I know this to be true. And with Hillary’s latest rise, I realize that her own leadership style — volcanic, impulsive, enabled by sycophants, and disdainful of the rules set for everyone else — hasn’t changed a bit.”

And also from the Page Six article,

Byrne describes arriving for work one day in 1995 following a loud fight between the Clintons the night before.

The dust-up, he says, left a light blue vase “smashed to bits” and Bill sporting a “real, live, put-a-steak-on-it black eye.”

And more recently in 2016, during the year that Democrat Presidential nominee Hillary who was supposed to “break the glass ceiling” but didn’t, Hillary and Bubba had a “screaming match only days before her election loss,” according to WND.

But now we are hearing that Amy Klobuchar is like Hillary not only in their statist policies but in other ways, mainly the bad temper and treating staff with abuse. For instance, according to Vanity Fair,

Klobuchar’s alleged temper was not unknown in Washington. Last year, The New York Times noted that, “On Capitol Hill, Ms. Klobuchar’s reputation is not all sweetness and light.” A March 2018 article in Politico described Klobuchar as among the “worst bosses in Congress,” with the highest office turnover rate in the Senate. But the new details reported by BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post, if true, are particularly damning. BuzzFeed reviewed e-mails, often sent between 1 and 4 in the morning, in which Klobuchar “regularly berated employees, often in all capital letters, over minor mistakes, misunderstandings, and misplaced commas. Klobuchar, in the e-mails, which were mostly sent over the past few years, referred to her staff’s work as ‘the worst in . . . years,’ and ‘the worst in my life.’”

…

…multiple sources alleged that Klobuchar’s mistreatment of office staff began more than a decade ago, and that in 2015, then Senate minority leader Harry Reid told her privately that she had to change her behavior.

And there’s this New York Post article, Amy Klobuchar reportedly threw office supplies at employees during outbursts.

Okay, that’s enough.

So it seems that Klobuchar really is a lot like Hillary.

Now, what is it with these politicians? Do the more power hungry ones, like Amy and Hillary, just have psychopathic personalities?

If for some reason the Democrats make Amy Klawbutcher their nominee, when she loses to The Donald will we see if she goes crazy like the angry Hitlery?

And I don’t see why anyone would vote for Democrats or Republicans anymore, when those two statist parties are what caused the country’s mess in the first place. More and more government stealing from the people, draconian laws and police state with the drug war and failed attempts to address immigration and “terrorism” issues.

What we really need is someone who proposes to liberate the people of America, by dismantling all those terrible laws and policies and dismantling the national security state and foreign military bases, ending the drug war and stop stealing from the American people. (For example, Jacob Hornberger who is a Libertarian Party candidate for President. I’m sure he doesn’t lose his temper and throw things at people like those other politicians do.)

Another Scheme to Oust Trump: Roger Stone Exaggerated Prison Sentence

I’m not a big fan of Roger Stone, but once again, we see that a Trump flunky is being used to manipulate and set up Donald Trump toward another investigation fiasco or impeachment farce. The prosecutors who have railroaded Stone on process crimes, just like with the other Trump flunkies, are recommending that Stone be given 7 to 9 years in prison. For lying to Congress.

But they won’t charge others for lying to Congress, such as James Comey, John Brennan or James Clapper, and obviously for political reasons. Those were on the Hillary-Obama team! DC swamp creatures get away with murder, as well as “process” crimes!

So, the requested sentence for Stone of 7-9 years in prison is deliberately so extreme, they must be doing it as a means to elicit a reaction from Trump, which they have gotten, and using the extreme sentence as a way to get the attorney general to want to reduce the sentence, which is how William Barr has reacted. (And the ultra-biased jury foreman was probably helpful to them as well, no?)

And I believe it’s all planned and on purpose. WHY would 4 prosecutors react so strongly to Barr’s disagreeing with their request of 7 to 9 years that those prosecutors would actually resign? Just because one of their victims might get a reduced sentence? The prosecutors are THAT serious with process crimes? Doh!

So it sounds like a pre-planned scheme, and just part 3 of the many-parts plan of the Warshington Swamp and Democrats to try to get rid of Trump, the first part being the whole Russia-collusions fiasco, and the second part being the impeachment farce. Those two parts of the plan didn’t work, obviously. So now they’re trying to get Trump with the Roger Stone case.

And already Nancy Lugosi and others have called on Trump and the DOJ to be investigated for wanting to see Stone’s sentence of 7-9 years reduced. And people are talking about bringing another case of impeachment against Trump based on this now (even though their guy Obama did the same thing, many times!). The impeachment shenanigans will obviously continue for the next 5 years.

And this means that if a candidate is elected President that the other party doesn’t like, rather than wait until the next election they will use the impeachment process to try to get rid of him. As I wrote recently, they are the Undemocratic Party.

But they don’t care about impeaching someone for the right reasons, such as the drone strikes that kill mainly innocent civilians that their buddy Obama continued and escalated after Bush, and that Trump has escalated even more, killing even more civilians overseas. And Trump’s assassinations without due process. All war crimes, or … “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The reason that “Democrats” won’t go after Trump for those actual crimes is because their guy Obama did the same thing, and because they agree with due process-free drone strikes and assassinations!

Those DOJ prosecutors who resigned and the FBI “dirty cops” and the Undemocrats in CONgress who have been trying to take down Trump with made-up “crimes” that weren’t crimes or with taking things out of context, are doing so because they just HATE Trump! And that’s IT!

Who Is Responsible for America’s Culture of Violence? Democrats and Republicans

Jacob Hornberger, the winner of the 2020 Iowa Libertarian Party caucuses, writes that Democrats and Republicans are responsible for America’s culture of violence. They have imposed the war on drugs, foreign interventionism and foreign wars and bombing other countries for no good reason. And it needs to stop.

Amy Klobuchar: Worst of the Worst?

Robert Wenzel has this summary of Amy Klobuchar’s views and legislation she supports. She’s big on U.S. government interventionism around the world, loves the UN and NATO, supports NSA collection of private data without reasonable suspicion and votes in favor of FISA warrantless surveillance (i.e.. contempt for the 4th Amendment – Oh, that old thing?), wants the government to have authority over Facebook, Google and Amazon and other tech companies (anti-First Amendment, fascist), supports trade tariffs (against free trade and free markets), says regime change ops are on the table especially Venezuela, supports eco-fascism in climate change legislation and “Green New Deal” (i.e. crony Green Wheeling and Dealing). Thus, she combines the worst of warmongering, foreign interventionism, fascist anti-civil liberties and government spying on innocent people, with socialist tax-thefts in the name of irrational fanatical crusades. Very much like Hillary, in other words.

Who Would Want to Sabotage the 2020 U.S. Elections?

Certainly not Israel. Whitney Webb has a very lengthy article on the U.S. intelligence agencies and U.S. government foreign policy apparatchiks giving dire warnings about how vulnerable this year’s elections are with no evidence, with such warnings unthinkingly parroted by the mainstream news media. However, at the same time Israel has a lot of connections to hacking and vulnerabilities, and for some reason intelligence (sic) hooligans seem to want to cause chaos in our elections in the name of further building up totalitarian government impositions.

Best Analysis Regarding U.S. Foreign Policy

Laurence Vance has a terrific article about how the Trump impeachment hearings inadvertently show the insidious nature of U.S. foreign policy.