Some Recent Tweets I Have Seen

The view of Massachusetts is best from a rear view mirror.

— The Free State 🦔 (@FreeStateNH) June 11, 2023

Lookey here at the credentials of @SenatorHassan's new press secretary. Be aware. Beware. pic.twitter.com/6saun1at2v

— Carla Gericke, Live Free And Thrive! (@CarlaGericke) June 11, 2023

This is the problem with #MMT: it's a description of government money, but they want to believe (and claim) that it therefore explains how the economy works. It doesn't.
Their assuming it does, based on wanting it to be true, is religion–not #economics. https://t.co/9k1uO8U7Oe pic.twitter.com/LgSBkrEgWd

— Per Bylund (@PerBylund) June 12, 2023

And,

Thousands of American soldiers have died for this flag.
Billions of American taxpayer dollars have been sent to the government of this flag.
Many anti first amendment laws have been passed in the name of this flag.

The ideological coup is complete. https://t.co/laU8kr7t0e pic.twitter.com/jGh7MFpVI2

— Reed Coverdale (@ReedCoverdale) June 13, 2023

More on 9/11, Afghanistan, “War on Terror”

Ron Paul: Twenty Years On, We’ve Learned Nothing From 9/11

Jacob Hornberger: An Evil Rationalization on Afghanistan

Whitney Webb: The Dancing Israelis: FBI Docs Shed Light on Apparent Mossad Foreknowledge of 9/11 Attacks

Brett Wilkins: CIA Torture Cover-Up Still Looms Over 9/11 Trials at Guantánamo

Daniel Larison: Shut Down the Drone War

James Bovard: 9/11 and the Mirage of American Democracy

And Ray McGovern: Plenty of Intelligence To Prevent 9/11

News and Commentary

Sharyl Attkisson: The Lori Loughlin Case Exposes the Justice System’s Double Standards.

Robert Wenzel: Let the COVID-19 Trials Begin!

John Whitehead: The Great Election Fraud: Will Our Freedoms Survive Another Election?

Patrick Armstrong: Americans, War – Slow Learners

Richard Ebeling: Biden’s “Passion and Purpose” is More Political Paternalism.

Ron Paul: Amid Pandemic, Freedoms Are Disappearing

Glenn Beck: “Brainwashed: How Black Lives Matter Hijacked Our Schools” (video).

Jon Miltimore: Google’s Plan to Disrupt the College Degree Is Exactly What the Higher Education Market Needs.

Barbara Boland: Jared Kushner’s Transactional Middle East Strategy is Already Showing Strain.

Jeff Deist: Getting Liberalism Wrong.

Charles Burris: Black Lives Matter and the Communist Pedigree of the Clenched-fist Salute

And Gareth Porter: After Beirut Blast, Israel Revives Tale of Hezbollah Ammonium Nitrate Terror Plots.

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.

Trump Signs Executive Order Pandering to Jewish Voters and Israel

So now we hear that Donald Trump has signed an executive order determining what “anti-Semitism” is, like including criticism of Israel or Judaism, and punishing such speech as thought crimes by denying federal funds to colleges and schools or other programs shown to allow or tolerate “anti-Semitism” on campus.

As Kelley Vlahos at The American Conservative writes,”What it really will do is put a chill on speech, as skittish administrations shut down protests, screen speakers, and monitor classrooms for unsanctioned criticisms against Israel.” Yep.

Alan Dershowitz, otherwise known as “Mr. Freedom of Speech” and “Mr. First Amendment,” supports this and was there at the Trump Order-signing ceremony. Oh well. There goes that one. So much for Alan Dershowitless. He used to say that a worse alternative to bad speech is no speech — but now, when it comes to Israel he is for silencing others with whom he disagrees. May we now call him “Mr. Censorship”?

But this should be a further example why we need to:

1. Abolish all government redistribution of wealth schemes altogether. No one should receive funds that were taken involuntarily from others. That’s stealing. (Abolish the income tax, too.)

2. Get the government out of education. Abolish the federal Department of Education. Total separation of education and State in a free society.

3. Repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and all its subsequent Amendments, or strike any parts that apply to privately owned property. Only the government may not “discriminate” against people based on religion, national origin, sex or race. It should not apply to people in their private associations or economic matters. Otherwise, it is a thought crimes act. This current executive order imposed by the orange fascist is based on Title VI of the Act.

Unfortunately, politicians pander to a very sensitive spot in American politics: support for Israel. Many politicians tremble at the thought of not being seen as a big supporter of Israel, so they overdo it. (See Rand Paul and his “Stand with Israel Act.” Pander, pander, pander, Rand.)

And then there are the True Believers, the zealous Christian Zionists like George W. Bush, Mike Pompeo, and our current vice president Mike Pence who support Israel and “the Jews” mainly because the zealots believe in “End Times,” and the “Great Tribulation,” the “Rapture,” and all that icky stuff. They only support “the Jews” because they are looking forward to those End Times when, in order for Jews to be saved they will convert to Christianity and become believers in Jesus Christ as The Savior. Or else, they won’t be saved.

But regarding Trump’s fascist threats against colleges and schools, academic institutions used to be places encouraging debates from all perspectives, the expression of any ideas, including uncommon, dissenting and even abhorrent ideas. But as we know now, the political correctness and intolerance give us silencing of uncommon, dissenting and supposedly abhorrent ideas. Apparently believing that there are only two genders is now an abhorrent idea. Some people including the moron President think that criticizing Israel is an abhorrent idea, no matter what its government does.

But if you criticize Israel now, you are an “anti-Semite” (or a “self-hating Jew” in my case). There are many sound reasons to criticize Israel, just as there are many sound reasons to criticize the United State of Amerika. I do the latter all the time here. Why is Israel so special? Why is Israel such a snowflake that it can’t endure some critical opinions?

I personally am not a Zionist, because I am not a collectivist and don’t believe in group identity politics. That is what Israel is all about. Zionism is a political movement for over 100 years encouraging the world’s Jews to move to that one location, based on the Bible and Biblical scriptures. It isn’t based on living a better life, because if it were then Jews should be encouraged to live in the United State of Amerika. Israel is a socialist nation based on government central planning, and a militarist police state, much more than the U.S. Imagine TSA and U.S. border control “your papers please” but not just in the airports or on the border, but throughout the whole country.

And why must there be a “Jewish State”? Should there be a Christian state? An Islamic state? Or an atheist state? Duh.

People should live where they want to live, where they feel most comfortable, where it’s economically or culturally best for them, and so on. If they want to live in some kind of neighborhood covenant based on Judaism, then do that. But to seize an entire territory, which is what the British Empire, the U.S. and other Western governments and their militaries did during the 20th Century, and have it be an artificial country based on a particular religion at the expense of people who hold different religious views, then we have not only a theocracy but an entire country that’s based on the negation of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

But we’re not allowed to say those things or give those opinions. People dare not consider those concepts or those ideas of dissent from the usual dogma they’ve been fed since their early childhoods.

So, unlike Israel where there is no Constitution or Bill of Rights or a First Amendment protecting freedom of speech, in the United State we DO have those things. And we can say whatever we want about the bureaucrats and criminals of the U.S. government (sorry for the redundancy), just as we can say what we want about Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and worse, the U.K.

Even here in Amerika, we can say what we want about religions. Including Judaism. That’s not “hate speech,” or “discrimination.” I can say that Judaism and Christianity are not my thing, even though I consider myself Jewish because I was raised in a Jewish family. But I don’t believe in a lot of the Biblical teachings. I think that Judaism is, like Christianity, a very authoritarian religion. But then, I can’t think of a religion that is not authoritarian. And I can criticize it for that reason if I want to.

Just like the conservatives and talk radio personalities we hear are constantly criticizing Islam, another extremely authoritarian religion. Right?

Speaking of authoritarians, the Orange One is extremely authoritarian in his imposing an executive order to stifle freedom of speech on college campuses in the name of pandering to Israel and Jewish voters.

Note to Israel (and the U.S.) From an Anguished Jewish American: Decentralize

April 21, 2010

Copyright 2010 LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

The issues that cause me anguish have been the continuing conflicts between Israeli Jews and Arabs, the threats of Israel or the U.S. initiating a preemptive strike on Iran or Iran attacking Israel, and the Israeli government’s controversial building of new Jewish housing in East Jerusalem. It is difficult to find objective sources of information on the Arab-Israeli conflicts and the territories, which have been homelands to Jews and Arabs for centuries. Further, accusations of anti-Semitism or of being a “threat to security” have been thrown at anyone who criticizes Israel or exposes corrupt Israeli officials, but I, an anguished Jewish American, attempt to analyze these issues objectively from afar.

In addition to the U.S. government’s expansionist policies abroad, the Israeli State’s ownership of lands and its compulsory and monopolistic control over peoples’ lives has been contributing to the Middle-East’s woes for many years. People become corrupt when they are given the power of State, the power of compulsion over others and a monopoly over territorial protection. The current conflicts occur because territories are governed by the compulsory State apparatus of the Israeli government, although the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are also compulsory territorial monopolists. The idea of an entire nation to be known as a “Jewish State” has been a drawback as well, along with dependence on the State’s central planners as “protectors” of the Jewish people. Centralized governments do nothing but intrude into the lives of populations and provoke hostility. The way to peace for Israel is through decentralization.

Some people fear that the East Jerusalem construction projects will harm the neighborhood’s Arab population and further harm relations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But who is the government, or the State, to be building homes for people, or decide which people can live in which neighborhoods? If the property in East Jerusalem were privatized, it would then be the owner(s) of the property who would decide what gets built and who lives there.

Private ownership of local property in each specific area gives the people who live there control over their neighborhoods, and control over their own lives, and thus would make them more likely to take responsibility for their lives and less likely to act aggressively against neighboring territories. For example, if the Israeli government didn’t interfere with the Gazans’ and others’ right to use their own natural resources, the Gazans could use the resources to support their daily living, or for exporting as a means of income.

A question that is perhaps taboo is whether there should even be a “Jewish State.” Or an “Islamic State,” or a “Christian State” or any territory devoted to people based on a religion. Some have argued that the Jewish people needed a homeland to protect them from persecution. During the mid-20thCentury, because of U.S. state-imposed immigration quotas (and other reasons), many Jews were prevented from entering the United States, and many fled to Israel as a “Jewish homeland.” American “immigration quotas” were state-imposed policies which violated the rights of Americans to freedom of association and contract, the right of families and property owners to accept Jewish immigrants without the State’s intrusions. Instead, a state-imposed “forced integration” brought many European Jews to Israel in the 1930s and ‘40s, eventually turning what had been an Arab majority into a Jewish majority in Israel.

What many people don’t realize is that persecutions have mainly been committed by States, or by people acting as agents of State. Throughout the later 19thCentury and 20thCentury, Jews had been fleeing Poland, Russia and Germany because of the “Pogroms” of the Russian Empire and from the German- and Nazi-initiated Holocaust.

More recently, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s forcing Israelis out of Gaza and parts of the West Bank in 2005, the “Disengagement Plan,” disrupted the lives of everyone in that territory, Jews and Arabs. It was no different from an “Apartheid Plan.” The state has no such moral authority, and has no moral claim on any land, just as it has no moral authority over any one individual’s life, and the State has no more right or moral authority to engage in “occupation” of certain territories than do private individuals have to trespass on others’ lands. But we should not blame the actions of the Israeli government on the Israeli people, who are not responsible for the actions of their government just as the Palestinian people are not responsible for the violent actions of Hamas.

My Grandma was lucky enough to leave Warsaw, Poland in 1912 at age 6 with her family, settling in a very welcoming and much freer New York City. Unfortunately, New York City is no longer that welcoming nor free, as the politicians’ taxaholism and regulatory nightmares have driven many people and businesses out of the city. Mayor Bloomberg reflects the mentality of politicians here and abroad for whom short-term fixes of confiscatory taxation and centralized bureaucratic and police control of the population is the way to solve problems. Centralized government is the real problem in New York, which needs to decentralize into separate, independent cities of Manhattan, Bronx, Queens, etc. Likewise, Israel’s centralized government has defeated the purpose of allowing Jews to have a “safe haven,” as the government’s oppressive policies not only restrict Israelis’ freedom of commerce, freedom of the press, freedom of movement and the right not to be forced to serve the state, but have also provoked Arab discontent and violence against the Israelis.

Rather than having a “Jewish State,” how about having a “free state,” or better, a “free country” of Israel (and the United States)? Follow Switzerland’s example, where much of the “public’s business” is handled at the local (as opposed to federal) level. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has written about the idea of decentralization of nation-states into many independent free cities, particularly in his book Democracy: The God That Failed, and his many articles at LewRockwell.com and The Mises Institute. In The Rise and Fall of the City, Hoppe goes even further than promoting the independence of individual cities, but individual households as well:

Households must be declared extraterritorial territory, like foreign embassies. Free association and spatial exclusion must be recognized as not bad but good things that facilitate peaceful cooperation between different ethnic and racial groups.

Such a change of decentralization, in addition to privatization and capitalization, is exactly what Israel needs, setting an example for the people of Iran, Iraq, and other countries (and the U.S.) to follow.

Decentralization also reduces the possibility that Israel could initiate a war with Iran. I am also anguished by the Big Government neoconservatives, whose suggestions of bombing Iran have been based on false propaganda. Short-term, present-oriented thinking is a common trait of the American neoconservatives, who have been supporting the U.S. government’s expansion into foreign lands to force transitions from theocracy to democracy among the Islamic states as though that will in some way protect Israel, despite many years of history to the contrary.

Unfortunately, the neoconservatives have a blind religious faith in the power and effectiveness of the State. In clinging to military industrial complex socialism and bureaucracy, the neocons support the U.S. government’s interventions and foreign entanglements with other governments, vicariously playing the role of “do-gooders” in a cops-and-robbers fantasy world in the name of protecting the U.S. and Israel. It is just as immoral to seize private wealth from American Muslims, Christians and Atheists for redistribution to Israel as it is immoral to seize private wealth from American Jews for redistribution to Muslim states such as Egypt, Jordan and Pakistan.

Like the left, the neocons have redefined “patriotism” as meaning not love of one’s country but love of the State, and that is also the prevailing attitude in mainstream Israel. It just seems that the neocons have an inability to engage in actual long-range planning that takes into account possible future consequences of the policies they support, and prefer to identify with that power of armed officialdom, force and monopoly. If one recognizes the neocons’ love of State for what it is, then one can see that they certainly seem to have more support for the Israeli government than for the Israeli people.

Just as the American Anti-Federalists have been the winners of the ideological and practical debate for over 200 years, if there ever were Anti-Federalists in Israel, they’d be right, too. Given that the main causes of civil strife have been centralized States, the real path to peace in Israel and the Middle-East (and the U.S.) is through privatization and decentralization.