STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC

h/t The Burning Platform

In the 1930s, a sizable portion of elite opinion was four-square behind fascism. From Jeffrey A. Tucker at brownstone.org:

Fascism became a swear word in the US and UK during the Second World War. It has been ever since, to the point that the content of the term has been drained away completely. It is not a system of political economy but an insult. 

If we go back a decade before the war, you find a completely different situation. Read any writings from polite society from 1932 to 1940 or so, and you find a consensus that freedom and democracy, along with Enlightenment-style liberalism of the 18th century, were completely doomed. They should be replaced by some version of what was called the planned society, of which fascism was one option. 

A book by that name appeared in 1937 as published by the prestigious Prentice-Hall, and it included contributions by top academics and high-profile influencers. It was highly praised by all respectable outlets at the time. 

Everyone in the book was explaining how the future would be constructed by the finest minds who would manage whole economies and societies, the best and the brightest with full power. All housing should be provided by government, for example, and food too, but with the cooperation of private corporations. That seems to be the consensus in the book. Fascism was treated as a legitimate path. Even the word totalitarianism was invoked without opprobrium but rather with respect. 

The book has been memory-holed of course. 

Continue reading

Is an Argentinian libertarian Renaissance in the offing? From Joel Bowman at joelbowman.substack.com:

Plus unpopular western values, radical rationalism and a bet on the End of the World…

“Argentina has all the conditions to be the new mecca of the West.”
~ Javier Milei, May 2024

Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World: Port Campbell, Australia…

Don’t look now, dear and patient reader, but the world is slowly turning downside-up… where first shall be last, and the last shall be first. 

That is to say, the Greatest Political Experiment of Our Age is proceeding apace. 

Addressing the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in Los Angeles yesterday, the president of a third world “sh!thole” told investors in the Land of the Free that the time had come to bet on the End of the World (geographically speaking, of course). Declared Argentina’s self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” president, Javier Milei:

“Today, for the first time in 150 years, and against the backdrop of an increasingly less free world, Argentina is becoming a freer country day-by-day.”

Continue reading

You’ll no doubt be surprised to learn that the “real reason” revolves around Macron’s ego. From Martin Jay at strategic-culture.su:

Like Trump, Macron seems to want to do and say anything – no matter how absurd – to keep him on the front pages.

Emmanuel Macron is in the news again with his repeated suggestion that French troops could be sent to Ukraine to fight in the war there against Russian forces. This time it is in the supposedly prestigious British highbrow Economist, which is happy to repeat this empty mantra over and over again, largely, one supposes, as it supports a broader narrative of the EU which it is a servant of in Brussels. There is no relationship more unhealthy and repugnant than that of The Economist and the European Union with the former happy to play the role of free propagandist and PR enactor for the latter.

How Macron can keep repeating this entirely empty threat, which even he himself has admitted to a French magazine won’t happen, is astounding. Did someone ask him to do this once again and arrange it in The Economist? Perhaps at a high level in Brussels?

How else to explain this latest ejaculation of utter nonsense?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto condemned the latest remarks and has warned such a move could ultimately spark an all-out nuclear war.

Speaking to French broadcaster LCI, Szijjarto strongly condemned the idea, saying that the French leader’s comments themselves have contributed to escalating the situation.

“If a NATO member commits ground troops, it will be a direct NATO-Russia confrontation and it will then be World War Three,” Szijjarto told the broadcaster.

Macron himself has moved on though since his original comments to the Parisienne magazine which kicked it all off a few weeks ago. The more recent interview with The Economist clearly shows that he has even reflected on his own rambling and looked deeper at how he could refine the narrative, presumably to get more attention on the issue. However, it’s an act of a desperate politician, which analysts interpret one of two ways; it is either a cry of help directed towards the Biden administration to do the very act themselves and send American troops there; or it is simply a PR stunt to keep him in the international press, a zone which is like a crack addiction. Like Trump, Macron seems to want to do and say anything – no matter how absurd – to keep him on the front pages, so to speak.

Continue reading

It’s worrisome for parents who worry that their kids pediatricians only concern in with their kids’ health, but rest assured, they have big Pharma’s financial health in mind, too. From John-Michael Dumais at childrenshealthdefense.org:

In an interview on Children’s Health Defense’s “Vax-Unvax” bus, Dr. Paul Thomas exposed the financial incentives pediatricians receive for administering vaccines, including kickbacks of up to $240 per visit.

Can pediatricians afford to run their medical practices without the generous kickbacks they receive for vaccinating every child?

Dr. Paul Thomas, a Dartmouth-trained pediatrician, discussed this dilemma during an April 16 interview with Polly Tommey on Children’s Health Defense’s “Vax-Unvax: The People’s Study” bus tour.

“You cannot stay in business if you’re not giving pretty close to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] [childhood vaccine] schedule,” said Thomas, who ran a general pediatrics practice with 15,000 patients and 33 staff members.

Thomas also addressed the risks and harms of vaccines — including COVID-19 mRNA vaccines — and the importance of boosting our immune systems naturally.

‘We were losing … over a million dollars’

Thomas, author of “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul’s Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health-from Pregnancy Through Your Child’s Teen Year,” gave parents in his practice a choice: vaccinate their children on the CDC schedule, vaccinate more slowly by waiting for the child’s immune system to develop or not vaccinate at all.

As more patients refused vaccines, Thomas began to notice the financial impact on his practice.

He and his staff conducted a thorough analysis of their billing records, examining the income generated from vaccine administration fees, markups and quality bonuses tied to vaccination rates.

Continue reading

Ah, what does Buffett know? From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

When the Oracle of Omaha gets dark-ish on stocks at these prices, he isn’t taken seriously, suddenly. It’s only when he hypes stocks that everyone jumps in behind him.

Treasury bills are now all the rage at Berkshire Hathaway. They have been earning between 5.0% and 5.5% since mid-2023, and Warren Buffett decided they’re a great deal, rather than stocks at current prices, and loaded up on them.

At the end of March, the huge conglomerate held $153 billion in T-bills, up by $24 billion from three months earlier, and up by nearly $50 billion from March 2023, and up by $86 billion from March 2022 ($67 billion), according to BRK’s 10-Q filings. The year 2022 was when T-bills began paying a noticeable interest once again.

If BRK earns an average of 5.3% on its T-bills in the current quarter, that would be about $2.4 billion in interest income with zero risk. By comparison, it reported $15.7 billion in total pre-tax income for Q1. So the income from T-bills matters.

Total T-bills, cash, and cash equivalent jumped to $189 billion, up by $21 billion in three months, and up by $59 billion year-over-year ($130 billion in Q1 2023).

Continue reading

Censorship bespeaks weakness, not strength. From Alastair Crook at strategic-culture.su:

The police repression of student protests exposes sheer intolerance towards those voicing condemnation against the violence in Gaza.

The Transformation is accelerating. The harsh, often violent, police repression of student protests across the U.S. and Europe, in wake of the continuing Palestinian massacres, exposes sheer intolerance towards those voicing condemnation against the violence in Gaza.

The category of ‘hate speech’ enacted into law has become so ubiquitous and fluid that criticism of the conduct of Israel’s behaviour in Gaza and the West Bank is now treated as a category of extremism and as a threat to the state. Confronted by criticism of Israel, the ruling élites respond by angrily lashing out.

Is there a boundary (still) between criticism and anti-semitism? In the West the two increasingly are being made to cohere.

Today’s stifling of any criticism of Israel’s conduct – in blatant contradiction with any western claim to a values-based order – reflects desperation and a touch of panic. Those who still occupy the leadership slots of Institutional Power in the U.S. and Europe are compelled by the logic of those structures to pursue courses of action that are leading to ‘system’ breakdown, both domestically – and concomitantly – provoking the dramatic intensification of international tensions, too.

Mistakes flow from the underlying ideological rigidities in which the ruling strata are trapped: The embrace of a transformed Biblical Israel that long ago separated from today’s U.S. Democratic Party zeitgeist; the inability to accept reality in Ukraine; and the notion that U.S. political coercion alone can revive paradigms in Israel and the Middle East that are long gone.

The notion that a new Israeli Nakba of Palestinians can be forced down the throats of the western and the global public are both delusional and reek of centuries of old Orientalism.

Continue reading

Lost in all the brouhaha about college protests, Israel has decided it’s time to roll into Rafah, the southern Gazan city into which Israel herded Palestinians, promising it was a safe haven. The casualties could go up multiples of what they are now. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

What’s happening in Gaza should radicalize you. It absolutely should.

Right now, even as its own criminality hits fever pitch, the western political-media class is fretting with increasing shrillness about young people getting “radicalized” and turned against their government by the spread of information and ideas at campus demonstrations and on TikTok. 

But young people should be radicalizing right now. Everyone should.

When you see Israel rejecting a Hamas ceasefire and beginning its long-threatened assault on Rafah (the last so-called “safe zone” in Gaza), that should radicalize you.

When you see US senators assist this horrifying onslaught by publicly threatening the International Criminal Court if they dare to indict Israeli officials for war crimes, that should radicalize you.

When you see Israel shutting down Al Jazeera to quash news reporting about its criminality immediately before launching this mass atrocity, that should radicalize you.

When you see The New York Times receiving a Pulitzer Prize for its scandalously discredited, notoriously biased and widely–mocked Gaza coverage, that should radicalize you.

Continue reading

Just a reminder about what all those college kids are demonstrating against. From Ghassen Abu-Sitta at aljazeera.com:

Despite being thousands of miles away, I constantly think of my patients in Gaza, and wonder: Did they make it? Are they still alive?

I arrived in Rafah in the early hours of October 9 and made my way to my family home in Gaza City amid intense Israeli air strikes. The next day, I walked with my cousin to al-Shifa Hospital to begin work, not realising this would be the beginning of a 43-day nightmare.

During those 43 days, I moved between hospitals, including to al-Ahli (Baptist) Hospital. Founded in 1882, this is one of the oldest hospitals in Gaza and is managed by the Anglican Church.

Israel threatened to target the facility, but doctors and other medical staff decided early on that we would not evacuate and abandon our patients.

On October 17, I was in between surgeries when I heard the screeching of an approaching missile followed by the loud, cacophonous sound of impact.

As I stepped into the corridor, I saw the hospital courtyard lit up in an inferno; ambulances and cars were on fire. One man was bleeding profusely from his neck, and I had to apply pressure until the ambulance arrived to take us to al-Shifa. Later, as we walked through the courtyard, I saw bodies and body parts everywhere including a small arm, which clearly belonged to a child.

Despite its connection to Britain and reassurances from the bishop in England that it would be spared from destruction, al-Ahli Hospital was hit.

Continue reading

All the U.S. government can do is throw good money after bad. From Ted Snider at antiwar.com:

American foreign policy seems only to have two gears: ensuring everything pours in through military aid or ensuring nothing gets in through sanctions. Neither works, and sanctions have no more weakened Russia than military aid has helped Ukraine.

On April 20, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the long-delayed $61 billion aid package for Ukraine. On April 23, it easily passed the Senate, and the next day, President Biden signed it into law.

Biden said that, though “it was a difficult path… we got it done.” He said the package of lethal aid is “going to make America safer. It’s going to make the world safer.” The American media told a tale of the aid package permitting Ukraine to go back on the offensive in 2025. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “I think this support will really strengthen the armed forces, I pray, and we will have a chance at victory.”

But what Ukrainian officials and military analysts were saying was more sobering. According to a senior Ukrainian official, the American aid package “will help to slow down the Russian advance, but not stop it.” It “does not,” he said, “contain a silver bullet.” A Ukrainian military analyst told the Financial Times only that “The aid provided by the US buys us and the European Union time.” Another military analyst pointed out that, even with the new aid package, “Russia will still have an artillery advantage, it just won’t be as great.”

Continue reading