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We’re All Lab Rats In The Largest-Ever Monetary Experiment In Human History

Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,

…and how do things usually work out for the rat?

There are ample warning signs that another serious financial crisis is on the way.

These warning signs are being soundly ignored by the majority, though. Perhaps understandably so.

After 10 years of near-constant central bank interventions to prop up markets and make stocks, bonds and real estate rise in price — while also simultaneously hammering commodities to mask the inflationary impact of their money printing from the masses — it’s difficult to imagine that “they” will allow markets to ever fall again.

This is known as the “central bank put”: whenever the markets begin to teeter, the central banks will step in to prop/nudge/cajole the markets back towards the “correct” direction, which is always: Up!

It’s easy in retrospect to see how the central banks have become caught in this trap of their own making, where they’re now responsible for supporting all the markets all the time.

The 2008 crisis really spooked them. Hence their massive money printing spree to “rescue” the system.

But instead of admitting that Great Financial Crisis was the logical result of flawed policies implemented after the 2000 Dot-Com crash (which, in turn, was the result of flawed policies pursued in the 1990’s), the central banks decided after 2008 to double down on their bets — implementing even worse policies.

The Largest-Ever Monetary Experiment In Human History

It’s not hyperbole to say that the monetary experiment conducted over the past ten years by the world’s leading central banks (and its resulting social and political ramifications) is the largest-ever in human history:

(Source)

This global flood of freshly-printed ‘thin air’ money has no parallel in the historical records. All around the world, each of us is part of a grand experiment being conducted without the benefits of either prior experience or controls. Its outcome will be binary: either super-great or spectacularly awful.

If the former, then no worries. We’ll just continue to borrow and spend in ever-greater amounts — forever. Perpetual prosperity for everyone!

But if things hit a breaking point, then you had better be prepared for some truly bad times.

Excessive money printing leads to the destruction of currency. Fiat money (like the US dollar, the Euro, the Yen, and every other world currency) is a social contract and has an associated set of related agreements. When that contract and those agreements are broken by reckless expansion of the currency base, things fall apart fast. We need look no further than current-day Venezuela to understand that.

It’s important to remember that money — whether physical cash or in digital form, stocks, or bonds — is just a claim on real wealth. Real wealth is land, clothes, food, oil…you know, real things.

We expect that our cash will be able to buy us the real things we want when we want them. We trust that our stocks give us an ownership stake in a real company producing real things for real profits. We rely on our bonds being re-paid in the future along with interest; but if not, we expect that our bond becomes a claim on valuable collateral.

Ideally, the money supply and the amount of real wealth should exist in balance. As money is a claim on “stuff”, as economic output (i.e. “stuff”) increases, than so should the claims. And vice-versa during periods of economic contraction.

But what happens when the claims start to far outweigh the real “stuff”? That’s when things get precarious.

Note how dramatically the claims represented by just the S&P 500 index alone have quadrupaled since the start of 2009, driven by the central banks’ quantitative easing programs:

(Source)

The flood of money unleashed by QE didn’t result in vast amounts of new actual wealth being created (i.e. greater productive output per capita). But it did result in grotesquely-inflated financial asset prices that have helped to create the most profound wealth and income inequality seen in our lifetime (perhaps ever).

The Many Sins Of The Central Banks

The list of central bank-induced injustices is long. It reads like the rap sheet of a virulent psychopath: $trillions looted from savers and handed to the big banks and leveraged speculators, ruined pensions, shattered retirement dreams for millions, record amounts of debt in every corner of the global economy, and an increasingly unaffordable cost of living for everyone but the elite 1%.

“But we had to save the system!” cry the central bankers in their defense.

Even if that were the case (and I dispute whether the world is really better off for having saved Citibank et al.), that rescue should have ended back in mid-2009, at the latest.

But instead, the central banks ramped up their wanton ways in the years since the GFC. Did you know that their largest-ever printing spree happened over the past two years? (2016 to 2017):

The bigger the printing spree the bigger the fundamental distortions. In such a world, up becomes down, black becomes white, and right becomes wrong.

All of which means that fundamental analysis, has been all but useless as a predictor of prices. All that has mattered is the answer to the question: “How much will the central banks print next?”

In such an environment, there’s no room for investors. It forces all of us to become speculators, trying to predict what a small cabal of bankers are thinking.

But among their very worst offenses has been the manipulation of sentiment. The prices of financial assets and commodities have become political and propaganda tools, which means that nothing can be left to chance. All prices have to send the “right” signals at all times, in the same way that certain news outlets pump a point of view endlessly. Repetition creates its own reality.

Because of the increasingly frequent (probably daily), interventions by central banks and their proxies, the financial markets have become ““markets””. They no provide us with any useful signals about the future or about the current health of the economy.

Instead, they only tell us what the authorities want us to hear.

To them, all that matters is strength and stability. As long as those conditions contine to be met for stocks, bonds and real estate prices, most people are content to let things ride and not probe too deeply.

But when this scam comes to its inevitable end, the crash will be spectacular when it arrives.

This reckoning is already way overdue.  At this point, we find ourselves in the odd positin of rooting for it to happen soon, as the potential energy in the system builds with every passing day. Our worry is that if the crash is delayed for much longer, its resulting carnage will be so large that it will be unsurvivable.

And while we mean that in the figurative sense for people’s portfolios, it’s possible that the crash could become literally unsurvivable if the political “solution” to deflect blame away from the the central banks and their DC partners-in-crime is a kinetic war.

When viewed in that light, America’s histrionic attempts to demonize Russia over the past few years begin to make frighteningly more sense.

It’s Time To Talk Turkey

We’ve been vocal of late about the numerous signs that another great financial crisis is building. The gut-punch Turkey hit global markets with this week is just one example.

Yes, it will be painful to crash from here. But once the needed correction is underway, we’ll have the opportunity to make the best of it.

We can pick up the pieces and begin building towards a future we can all believe in.

Yes, there’s no avoiding the pain of taking our lumps for the the past mistakes we’ve made. But we don’t have to compound our misery by continuing to do more of exactly what got us into this mess in the first place. We simply need the courage to face the psychological burden of admitting to our prior failings.

That’s doable.

It all starts with being honest with ourselves.

Look, we all know the world is finite. Infinite economic growth on a finite planet is an impossibility. We have all the data we need to make that conclusion. Every passing day where we pretend that’s somehow untrue or avoidable makes the eventual adjustment that much more wrenching.

It’s an intellectually simple exercise to conduct. But an emotionally impossible task for those whose internal belief systems would be hopelessly compromised by allowing that logic to penetrate their world view.

And so the future will be represented by two sorts of people: those able to face what’s coming head on and prepare accordingly, and those who can’t.

I sincerely hope that you’re not among those deterred from preparing by the last gleaming of today’s glittering stock prices. We’re going to need as many prepared people as possible in the coming future.

And we may need them soon. The severe recent deterioration in the Emerging Markets threatens a contagion that could well start the next crisis.

Turkey is currently in a major currency crisis threatening to metastisize into a full-blown sovereign debt crisis. Defaults there will spill over into Europe’s banking system (which has made loads of shaky loans to Turkey), and from there cause domino effects throughout the rest of the world.

But Turkey isn’t the weakest or the most worrying country faltering: Italy is stumbling, as is Brazil, and even China. But Asia ex-China is the real powderkeg. Their unserviceable debts dwarf everybody else.

In Part 2: The Emerging Market Threat, we detail out the specific concerns to watch for in the fast-unfolding Emerging Markets drama. Which countries pose the greatest threat? And how bad could things get if the contagion indeed spreads?

For years we have predicted that the next crisis will progress “from the outside in” as the weaker players succumb first. That appears to be what we are seeing now, and it’s causing me to advance my own personal preparations.

I recommend you do the same.

Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

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Could The Genoa Disaster Happen In The US?

After the catastrophic bridge collapse in Genoa earlier this week, fears are mounting that the U.S. could experience a similar event.

The American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) listed 54,259 bridges that were deemed “structurally deficient” in 2017 and it would take an estimated 37 years to repair all of them.

Additionally, as Statista’ Niall McCarthy notes, the data also listed the 10 most-traveled structurally deficient bridges in America.

Infographic: Could The Genoa Disaster Happen In The U.S.? | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

All of them are in either California or Missouri with US Route 101 over Kester Avenue having the highest volume – 289,000 daily crossing.

In total, American drivers cross structurally deficient bridges 174 million times every day.

 

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Rounding Up the Science Behind the Monsanto Glyphosate Ruling: New at Reason

Last week, a California state court handed down a $289-million verdict against Monsanto, the St. Louis-based agribusiness titan. The massive jury award to plaintiff Dewayne Johnson, a former school groundskeeper, comes after Johnson and his attorneys argued successfully that his repeated on-the-job use of Monsanto pesticides caused him to develop a terminal case of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer.

Monsanto, now part of Bayer after a recent merger, has vowed to appeal the ruling. “Today’s decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews—and conclusions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and regulatory authorities around the world—support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson’s cancer,” said Monsanto vice president Scott Partridge in a statement issued after last week’s ruling that also expressed sympathy for Johnson.

The mountains of studies Partridge cites, writes Baylen Linnekin, place the scientific consensus about the lack of a link between glyphosate and cancer on par with the vast evidence demonstrating the safety of GMOs generally and with the overwhelming consensus that manmade factors cause climate change.

View this article.

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Trump: “Social Media Is Totally Discriminating Against Conservative Voices”

Following the latest crackdown against Alex Jones and various other pundits on Twitter and other social media outlets, on Saturday morning President Trump joined the debate and accused social media of “totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices”, claiming that the Trump administration “won’t let that happen”, and arguing that the platforms should allow both “good and bad” content online amid an escalating debate over social media’s growing censorship and role in policing content online.

“Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices,” Trump tweeted. “Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won’t let that happen. They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others.”

Trump’s tweet follows just hours after prominent anti-war activist Caitlin Johnstone became the latest voice to be temporarily suspended on Twitter without an explanation for what triggered the ban except to note that she violated our rules against abusive behavior”:

Hello Caitlin Johnstone,

Your account, caitoz has been suspended for violating the Twitter Rules.

Specifically, for:

Violating our rules against abusive behavior.

You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice.

Note that if you attempt to evade a permanent suspension by creating new accounts, we will suspend your new accounts. If you wish to appeal this suspension, please contact our support team.

It also follows growing allegations by Republicans that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are biased against them, and GOP lawmakers have held multiple congressional hearings on the subject. The two platforms, along with Apple and Spotify, were recently scrutinized over the decision to suspend Alex Jones, a controversial right-wing host, over “hate speech.”

After initially siding against censorship, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defended the decision to suspend the accounts of Alex Jones and Infowars, saying that Jones was posting content that broke the platform’s terms of service and needed a “pause” to reconsider his behavior.

Fast forward to today when Trump, who appeared on Jones’ show in 2015, blasted “censorship” and added that he has not called for CNN and MSNBC to be “removed” despite their “fake news” broadcasts although one can imagine the media fallout from such a call. Trump frequently blasts content critical toward his administration as “fake news,” with CNN and NBC News his most frequent targets.

“Censorship is a very dangerous thing & absolutely impossible to police,” he continued. “If you are weeding out Fake News, there is nothing so Fake as CNN & MSNBC, & yet I do not ask that their sick behavior be removed. I get used to it and watch with a grain of salt, or don’t watch at all.”

Trump also suggested that the so-called “fact-checkers” and other people “making the choices” on limiting content online cannot be trusted. Trump’s solution: “Let everybody participate, good & bad, and we will all just have to figure it out!”

Previously, Trump warned that his administration would “look into” alleged “shadowbanning” of conservatives on the platform, although there has yet to be any concrete steps taken in that regard even though Twitter has admitted that a new policy to suppress hate speech “unintentionally” reduced the search results for some Republican lawmakers.

In response, Facebook launched a review of policies possibly impacting conservative voices and other communities in May.

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Skeptical of the ‘Common Good’? Don’t Be!

This article originally appeared in the August 6 edition of America: The Jesuit Review.

School children in AfricaI was sitting in a nondescript hotel ballroom, press credential strung around my neck, listening to the opening remarks at a conference in Washington, D.C. On stage, the cartoonishly villainous-sounding Wolf von Laer, the executive director of the group Students for Liberty, leaned into his microphone and announced something he knew would come as no surprise to the audience: Recently, for the first time, extreme poverty had fallen below 10 percent of the global population.

He was hoping to pump up the crowd, and he succeeded. Around me, people erupted into cheers.

A thousand or so college kids and recent grads had gathered for 2017’s iteration of the largest meetup for young libertarians in the world. They would spend the next 48 hours socializing with fellow attendees, scouting job opportunities in the “liberty movement” and watching panel discussions with titles like “Got a Permit for That Bouquet? Why Occupational Licensing Laws Restrict Opportunity” and “How to Defund the Government and Help Your Community: The Arizona Model.” Later, the libertarian activist Matt Kibbe would declare that “changing the world is not only possible, it’s inevitable, if we all do this together.”

One of the widespread misconceptions about libertarianism is that it denies the importance of community—assuming, in the words of the Notre Dame political scientist Patrick Deneen, that “the individual lives, or could live, in splendid isolation” from others. Another is that it preaches a selfish unconcern for the plight of one’s fellow humans, especially the least among us. If these portrayals were correct, the libertarian philosophy would indisputably not be compatible with the Catholic Church’s social doctrine—in particular with its teaching on the common good. But sneaking a peek into that Students for Liberty conference (or, for that matter, reading Reason) should make clear that, in fact, neither of those positions is integral to the libertarian worldview.

One way to think about libertarianism is that it is a political philosophy that prefers voluntary, nonviolent human interactions over coercion. Because government dictates are by nature coercive—we do not get to choose whether to pay taxes or comply with zoning restrictions—libertarians advocate relying on private solutions to problems whenever possible. Civil society institutions—family units and neighborhood groups, labor unions and trade associations, churches and charities—must do the heavy lifting. State interference in people’s lives should be a last resort and then undertaken only for grave reasons.

Consistently applied, this idea has radical implications. As David Boaz of the Cato Institute has put it, libertarians generally believe “the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have not themselves used force—actions like murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and fraud.” Everything else people should be free to work out organically, through trial and error, give and take, pressure and persuasion.

Treating People as Ends, Not Means

Ask a libertarian why we believe what we do and the answer may be rooted in abstract moral principles: We think people deserve to be treated as ends, not means—which is to say we think their autonomy should be respected as long as they are not infringing the rights of others. But very often, the explanation you get will be pragmatic. An honest assessment of reality tells us that maximizing the scope of freedom from government coercion creates the conditions for material progress and human flourishing.

That is not limited to progress and flourishing for a select few. Good-faith skeptics might be surprised to learn how active libertarians have been in the fight to end mass incarceration and advance criminal justice reform in the United States, for example, or how many libertarian groups filed amicus briefs siding with the Little Sisters of the Poor during their showdown over the Obamacare contraception mandate. When on a randomly chosen Saturday in June I visited the homepage of HumanProgress.org, a project of the Cato Institute, three of the featured stories were “Charitable Giving in U.S. tops $400 Billion for First Time,” “Paraguay Declared Free of Malaria by World Health Organization,” and “Zero Carbon Natural Gas: Is This the Solution We Have Been Searching For?”

I came to identify as a libertarian after studying economics in college. I was moved by the realization that market capitalism is the most efficient engine of economic growth the world has ever known. Both theory and empirical observation told me that government regulation is more likely to interfere with this process than it is to correct flaws in the system.

That reality is of great importance to libertarians, who are wont to share a graph depicting global per-capita gross domestic product over time. The curve looks like a hockey stick: It is nearly flat for centuries and then turns skyward suddenly around the time of the Industrial Revolution. As restrictions on trade among countries are loosened following World War II, the trend picks up speed.

When capitalism spreads to new corners of the world—especially as it begins to reach the 7.2 billion residents of India and China—it brings enormous prosperity along with it. In 2016, the World Bank reported that nearly 1.1 billion people moved out of extreme poverty between 1990 and 2013, and that the overall rate of poverty fell by half. As a result, we are living through a decline in global inequality. “This is the best story in the world today,” the World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in 2015. And it comes as middle-class citizens of more affluent countries are also gaining access to an ever-wider array of foods, medicines, communication technologies, and more.

Though libertarians do not usually speak in theological terms, this surely contributes to the common good—what the Church defines as “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”

A key aspect of the common good is that “it’s there for us all if it’s there at all,” says David Hollenbach, a professor in the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University who has written widely about this aspect of Catholic social teaching. “You can’t take it and divide it up and give everybody a private piece of it—it’s inherently shared.”

Material well-being is part but not all of the story: “An increase in the gross national product is valuable for everybody,” Fr. Hollenbach explains. “But it can get divided up into very definite pieces that some people get part of and some people get none of…. It’s not enough to say the G.D.P. grew and therefore the common good went up if half of the population is starving to death. So there’s a distributive element as well.”

But where are people actually more likely to starve to death, choke on pollution, contract malaria or go without education—in industrialized countries with relatively unencumbered markets or in places that globalization has yet to reach?

“The proof of the pudding is always in the eating,” says Robert Whaples, an economist at Wake Forest University and editor of Pope Francis and the Caring Society (Independent Books). “In the systems where there are more economic freedoms, you see much more rapid economic growth. And if you don’t think economic growth is important, you see a much more rapid drop-off in absolute poverty—and who’s going to argue about that?”

‘The Right Ordering of Economic Life’

All well and good, you may think—but man cannot live by bread alone. Papal teachings are rife with warnings about inequality (“the riches which are so abundantly produced…are not rightly distributed and equitably made available to the various classes of the people”) and the rise of consumerism (we are “slaves of possessions” in a “throw-away culture“). As the Catholic writer Thomas Storck put it at The Destributist Review, “Do we recognize that the fall of our first parents has affected our appetites for external goods just as much as our appetite for sexual pleasure, and that a free-market…is much like free sex or free love, in that both regard the appetites of fallen mankind as fundamental axioms of human behavior”?

For more than a century, the church has held that “the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces.” Are good Catholics not required, then, to accept government wealth redistribution and other economic regulations—that is, to reject fundamental tenets of libertarianism?

I do not believe we are. The particular program of aggressive public intervention favored by many on the left is not the only answer to social ills. Individuals working creatively through private institutions provide an alternative, and people exercising their values in the market can also be a check on the market.

In the first great social encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” in 1891, Pope Leo XIII taught that men and women can solve most problems by forming “associations and organizations” and working together in goodwill. Public authorities should step in when suffering “can in no other way be met or prevented,” but they “must not undertake more, nor proceed further, than is required for the remedy of the evil.” Even almsgiving “is a duty, not of justice (save in extreme cases), but of Christian charity—a duty not enforced by human law.”

It is true that the church sees state intervention as at least occasionally necessary. Many libertarians also think government has a (small) legitimate role to play—making sure contracts are enforced and assaults are punished, for example. But more to the point, the church has never tried to enumerate the precise conditions under which government institutions should take over. Official teachings are intentionally vague on this question, calling for “a wise provision on the part of public authority” (without fleshing out what would make an intervention unwise) and “a just and rational co-ordination of public and private initiative” (while leaving lay Christians to make prudential judgments about what such a system might actually look like).

In “Octagesima Adveniens,” in 1971, Pope Paul VI wrote explicitly that “in concrete situations…one must recognize a legitimate variety of possible options. The same Christian faith can lead to different commitments.” Or as Michael Novak and Paul Adams put it in Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is (Encounter Books), Christians are impelled to give “a central place” to concern for the poor, but we do not have “a moral mandate to support any particular policy or party line on how best to help the poor.”

While the church’s authority on moral questions is the bedrock, it seems clear that some additional political theory is needed to help us know when government can, should or must leave private individuals and groups to figure things out on their own. Libertarianism is such a theory—one that gives a presumption of liberty to virtually all peaceful behaviors.

The Moral Imperatives of Freedom

To be free is not necessarily to be consumed with oneself. On the contrary, libertarians understand that freedom can be morally, not just materially, empowering. A robust state makes complacency easy: Some far-away institution with billions of dollars at its disposal is responsible for solving that problem, not me. If instead we have a shared expectation that civil society is on the frontlines and that our choices have meaningful consequences, each of us is challenged to step up.

As I was researching this article, a controversy ignited within American politics: News broke that the Trump administration had begun separating immigrant children from parents caught entering the country in unauthorized places, sometimes holding them in detention centers thousands of miles apart. The ostensible purpose was to keep minors from getting caught up in prosecutions, which are being carried out under a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal entrants. But some Trump officials have acknowledged the real goal was to deter future crossings.

This development was a gut punch to me as a Catholic but also as a libertarian. Allowing goods and people to move freely is fundamental to my political worldview. The reasons for that are practical (trade and immigration allow resources of all kinds, from chewing gum to computer programming talent, to move to where they can be most productive) as well as philosophical (because I value liberty, I do not think the government should be able to prevent me from hiring, sharing my home with, buying things from or selling things to another person just because he or she was born in a different country). I doubly oppose such restrictions when they impose human costs on an already suffering population—and if refugees fleeing humanitarian disasters do not qualify, it is hard to imagine who does. Yet the most powerful entity in the world was using force of arms in my name to tear foreigners’ children away from them.

Until someone did something about it. “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news,” Mr. Rogers famously said, “my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.'” In this case, help came from Charlotte and Dave Willner and over 500,000 of their closest friends. That is the number of people who have donated to a fundraiser the couple set up on Facebook to support the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES). They hoped to crowdfund $1,500, the minimum needed to post bail for someone detained at the border. To that end, the name of the page was “Reunite an immigrant parent with their child.”

Eight days later, the couple had raised more than $20 million. By the time you read this article, the total will likely be much higher.

I tried to get in touch both with the Willners and with RAICES, but understandably—since it takes time and energy to process an outpouring on such a scale—I did not get a response. When the page had been active for less than 72 hours, however, the legal aid group posted an emotional message of gratitude: “We’ve been occasionally crying around the office all day when we check the fundraising totals,” it read. “This is such a profound rejection of the cruel policies of this administration.”

The incredible show of solidarity did more than provide money for a worthy nonprofit. With his executive order on June 20, President Trump partially backtracked on family separation. Parents are still being prosecuted, but they will now be held together with their children if possible. Though far from perfect, it is a start.

People often stare, eyebrows cocked skeptically, when libertarians say individual initiative and private generosity can be better than government largesse at solving collective problems. The doubters exhibit too little faith in the human capacity for miracles of caritas. Acts of kindness, small and large, are happening all the time for those with eyes to see. And they would happen more and perhaps in even grander ways if people were not frequently desensitized to injustice by the presumption that whatever can be done is already being done by the state.

‘A Society of Liberty Under Law’

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Every human person, created in the image of God, has the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being. All owe to each other this duty of respect. The right to the exercise of freedom, especially in moral and religious matters, is an inalienable requirement of the dignity of the human person. This right must be recognized and protected by civil authority within the limits of the common good and public order.”

Compare that to the following from the Cato Institute’s Boaz: “Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility….It is not a claim that ‘people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything.’ Rather, libertarianism proposes a society of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others.”

In fact, there is significant overlap between what the church proclaims and what libertarians believe—which is startling, given that only about one in 10 libertarians identifies as Catholic.

Richard D. Mohr, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, once wrote in Reason that “we believe that government exists for the sake of the individual, rather than that the individual is to be viewed as a resource for society.” Is that really so different from Pope John XXIII’s “one basic principle” articulated in “Mater et Magistra,” that “the individual is prior to society and society must be ordered to the good of the individual”?

To be clear, I am not saying libertarianism provides a complete and accurate picture of human anthropology. As I define it, libertarianism is merely a philosophy of government. It tells us about the proper role of the state, that entity Max Weber defined as holding a monopoly on violence. It cannot answer the far more numerous and consequential questions about how to “live well” in the private sphere.

There are, admittedly, disagreements among libertarians on a number of important questions. Some think we should not just limit the size and scope of government but abolish it altogether. They are called “anarcho-capitalists.” A few believe people are never morally obligated to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others. They are called “Objectivists.” And so on. But these are all strains within a larger philosophical tradition. The common ground is a commitment to maximizing freedom from government coercion.

Critics sometimes aver that libertarians think interpersonal bonds “have to be cut” because they “limit freedom,” to borrow Pope Francis’ words. They think we deny that humans are social creatures who need each other in manifold ways. After nearly a decade in the liberty movement, I can say that this is simply not an accurate description. As Virginia Postrel, a former editor in chief of Reason, has put it: “The market is liberating. But it is not, as its critics charge, ‘atomistic,’ except in the sense that atoms have a tendency to form molecules, which in turn create larger structures.”

Libertarians extol capitalism because it provides a framework for people to interact peacefully and achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. (Have you ever noticed that after a commercial exchange, each party instinctively thanks the other?) As proud globalists, we want people who are struggling to escape desperate, backbreaking poverty to get the same material opportunities we are lucky enough to have. There is a thoroughly moral dimension to our worldview that is hard to miss when observed with an open mind.

In the final analysis, libertarians see the human person as worthy of respect. For the most part, they do not recognize the deeper truth: that this is so because we are made by God in His image and are incomparably valuable to Him. But in a real sense, without meaning to, libertarianism takes that idea more seriously than most other political philosophies.

In 1981, the free-market economist Julian Simon published The Ultimate Resource. His book challenged the notion, advanced over centuries by people like Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich, that overpopulation would eventually deplete the planet and lead to mass starvation. Simon took a radically different view, writing that “population growth is likely to have a long-run beneficial impact on the natural-resource situation.”

Though he was not Catholic, his reasoning has a remarkably Catholic quality to it. Simon believed in the immense potential of human ingenuity to address social problems. The bigger the challenge, the greater the incentive to find a creative solution. It follows that government attempts to curb fertility are deeply misguided if not immoral in themselves, the product of a “complete lack of imagination” on the part of lawmakers—because more people means more brains working away at making the world a better place.

“Our capacity to provide the good things of life for an ever-larger population is increasing as never before. Yet the conventional outlook—perhaps because of a similar lack of imagination—points in exactly the opposite direction,” he wrote. The doomsayers “do not imagine the adjustments that individuals and communities,” left to themselves, can make.

Libertarians believe that a program of freedom redounds to the benefit of us all. It fosters peace and prosperity while creating vast space for intellectual and moral pursuits. One might even say, in the words of the catechism, that it helps produce the “conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”

Listen to me discuss this story on the Cato Daily Podcast yesterday and Sirius XM’s Catholic Channel on Wednesday of this week.

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Russia Offers 2.5 Million Acres Of Farmland To China, Amid Worsening Trade War

China and Russia recently announced a new age of diplomacy between the two countries, at a time when President Trump is targeting both with precision-guided economic warfare.

China finds itself reeling under trade disputes with the US, as the next round of tariffs on $16 billion worth of Chinese goods is expected to start on August 23.

Earlier this week, Russia offered to bail out China from the trade war with Washington. Moscow offered 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of arable land available to Chinese farmers to meet its large-scale demand for soybeans — and of course, prevent a massive soybean shortage that would lead to political/social upheavals across the country.

Maybe, the US trade war on China should be interpreted as a piece in a much larger chessboard: A war on Eurasia integration,or the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative.

Nevertheless, some analyst and experts are skeptical about the quality of the plots available. As reported by South China Morning Post, several Chinese investment firms have shown a keen interest in solidifying an agreement with Moscow.

Valery Dubrovskiy, director of investment for the Far East Investment and Export Agency, a non-profit organization, said on Tuesday that Chinese, Russian, and other surrounding countries have already expressed tremendous interest in the farmland. “We expect most of the investment to come from China,” he said. “We expect 50 percent from China, 25 percent from Russia and 25 percent from other countries, like Japan and Korea.”

Dubrovskiy said that all of the 3 million hectares of farmland in Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District is now available to farmers, adding that the region could become a hotspot for dairy farming or the growing of crops, such as soybeans, wheat, and potatoes.

Inadvertently, Trump’s trade war with China could be a game-changer for Moscow, as it expects foreign investment to flood the region.

The South China Morning Post notes that residents have already acquired premium farmlands, so Chinese farmers might have to settle for inferior and low productivity lands in remote areas.

Dmitri Rylko, general director of the Russian consultancy Institute for Agricultural Market Studies, explained a majority of the fertile land in the Far East region had already been acquired, though Chinese businesses have been rushing to sign leases and other temporary agreements.

“[The] best lands are occupied and have been heavily exploited by domestic farmers, so if they want more, it will be predominately in remote and low productivity areas,” he said.

After President Trump unleashed several rounds of tariffs on China, as a part of the retaliatory measures, China then imposed 25 percent tariffs on soybeans.

China has an enormous appetite for soybeans, as it has just accepted the tariff by allowing an American vessel to dock. The move marks the first shipment of US soybeans to be accepted with a 25 percent tariff stemming from the trade war.

It seems like China is willing to accept higher soybean prices in the short-term, but the long-term plan is clear: cheap arable land in Russia’s Far East could be China’s next source of soybeans, thus bypassing US farmers.

US Trade and agriculture experts have warned that President Trump’s tariffs on China could deliver a devastating blow to rural America.

The administration has already prepared a $12 billion farm bailout to cushion farmers. However, rural America faces the risk of losing lucrative export markets into Asia that have been established for decades. It seems as this reality is now starting to be realized:

“Beijing has already significantly reduced its soybean purchases from the US, and as a result bought a record 850,000 tonnes of them from Russia between July 2017 and the end of May, according to figures from the Russian agriculture agency Rosselkhoznadzor. But that represents only a fraction of the 800 million tonnes of soybeans China has imported so far this year, according to the latest figures from its customs agency. The agriculture ministry in Beijing said earlier that it had ramped up domestic soybean production “significantly” to deal with the threat of shortages, and would make a further 1 million hectares of land available for growing the crop over the next two year,” said the South China Morning Post.

Zhang Xin, a Russian expert at East China Normal University in Shanghai, said that a smooth transition of supply from the US to Russia is unlikely, as he said the deal still had obstacles to overcome.

“In the Far East, in particular, there has been political resistance, including from residents, to Chinese companies renting land for agricultural production,” he said.

“[Their] concerns regard the large influx of Chinese workers and a dissatisfaction with Chinese farming methods … like using too many pesticides and fertilizers.”

As the quality of Russian farmland remains questionable for Chinese farmers, China’s trade dispute with the US does not seem to be waning anytime soon.

That is why China has now made a move into Russia, as a long-term hedge away from the US. The shift is likely to be a devastating blow to rural America as decades-old export markets into China shun Western products.

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Looks Like Italian Default Is Back On The Menu

Authored by Tom Luongo,

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini was right to call out the EU over the failure of the bridge in Genoa this week.  It was an act of cheap political grandstanding but one that ultimately rings very true.

It’s a perfect moment to shake people out of their complacency as to the real costs of giving up one’s financial sovereignty to someone else, in this case the Troika – European Commission, ECB and IMF.

Italy is slowly strangling to death thanks to the euro.  There is no other way to describe what is happening.  It’s populist coalition government understands the fundamental problems but, politically, is hamstrung to address them head on.

The political will simply isn’t there to make the break needed to put Italy truly back on the right path, i.e. leave the euro.  But, as the government is set to clash with Brussels over their proposed budget the issues with the euro may come into sharper focus.

Looking at the budget it is two or three steps in the right direction — lower, flat income tax rate, not raising the VAT — but also a step or two in the wrong direction — universal income.

Opening up Italy’s markets and lowering taxpayers’ burdens is the path to sustainable, organic growth, but that is not the purpose of IMF-style austerity.  It’s purpose is to do exactly what it is doing, strangling Italy to death and extracting the wealth and spirit out of the local population, c.f. Greece and before that Russia in the 1990’s.

So, looking at the situation today as the spat between Turkey and the U.S. escalates, it is obvious that Italy is in the crosshairs of any contagion effects into Europe’s banking system.

As Martin Armstrong points out European banks, especially Spanish, Italian and Portuguese banks, loaded up on Turkish corporate debt paying insane coupons because of the financial repression occurring within the euro-zone.

As central banks pumped money into the system over the past decade, nations like Turkey and other emerging market economies used the opportunity to raise more and more “cheap” debt to boost their productivity. Turkey has attracted capital from Europe seeking higher yields because of the negative interest rates policy of the ECB. Now we have a crisis in Turkey that is also the result of Draghi’s Quantitative Easing that drove capital to Turkey and FAILED to revived the European economy.

How big is the problem?

Well, (H/T to TraderStef for the link) according to Morningstar:

The European Central Bank is reportedly concerned over the health of southern European banks, which have lent large amounts of money to Turkey. According to the Bank of International Settlement, Spanish banks hold $83.3 billion of Turkish debt, French banks hold $38.4 billion and Italian banks hold $17 billion.

That’s more than enough to become a real concern for everyone especially since ECB President and VP of Propaganda, Mario Draghi, keeps telling everyone he’s going to stop buying EU sovereign debt before the end of the year.

But, we all know that the ECB has been the only marginal buyer of Italian sovereign debt for months.  Moreover, as Zerohedge points out Italian banks have begun buying Italian sovereign debt in what is known as the Debt Doom Loop —

This vicious circle of Country X banks (in this case Italy) buying Country X bonds during times of stress – with the backstop of the ECB – has for years been Europe’s dreaded sovereign bank doom loop. And, as Italy clearly demonstrated, repeated and aggressive attempts by European regulators and policymakers to finally break the doom loop, most recently with the introduction of the 2014 BRRD directive, which sought which sought to remove the need for and possibility of bank bailouts, and instead ushered in bail ins, have been an abject failure.

It is also a major problem.

Ya think?

So, amidst insane levels of bond market intervention by regulators of all stripes, a geopolitical spat between Turkey and the U.S. over Turkey’s obvious desire to leave the strictures of the West behind is blowing back hard on Europe as dollar liquidity gets scarce.

Is it any wonder that the sell off in Italian debt which the ECB got under control in the early weeks of the new Italian government, began again, the minute Italy’s budget plan was revealed.

And now that sell off is accelerating again as funding pressures on Italian banks has likely curtailed their buying Italy’s sovereign debt.

The middle of Italy’s yield curve is moving the fastest, with the 5 year note up nearly a full point in just 4 weeks.  3 month yields are creeping back up towards positive, against the ECB’s wishes.

Moreover, this weakness has spread to the euro, which has broken down below strong support at $1.15 and is now looking at $1.10 or lower.

Neither Turkey nor the U.S. seem capable of backing down at this point.  And that spells real trouble for Europe and, in particular, Italy.

The U.S. just announced another round of sanctions as the Treasury department and the Office of Foreign Asset Control uses the only tool it has, a hammer.

And anyone getting off the IMF-debt slavery cycle looks like a nail.

I discussed this in my last blog post.

Erdogan, for his part, has all but accused the U.S. of having staged the 2016 coup attempt against him.  His lawyers are pressing for a questioning U.S. military personnel stationed at Incerlik.

If the next step in the financial war is to threaten Turkey with SWIFT expulsion over doing business with Iran, then Turkey’s next move could be to raid Incerlik and extract those Erdogan believes to be guilty of organizing the coup.

Both of these are nuclear options, and if one is on the table, then the other is as well.

And that’s when the chest thumping ends and someone gets his nose bloodied.

The U.S. just said that even if Pastor Brunson is returned, the sanctions will stay in place.  So, what would be Erdogan’s incentive here to give in, exactly?

So, remember the situation, Turkey has leverage over Europe because of the debt load while the U.S. has leverage via the currency the debt is denominated in.

But, ultimately, once rates start to rise in Europe, we’re going to find out that Draghi at the ECB has no other choice but to keep buying debt or allow rates to explode to the upside.

This is why this situation is so important and the stalemate between the U.S. and Turkey so potentially explosive.  This is especially true if Russia and China stand ready to assist Turkey in debt swaps while leaving EU banks exposed.

So, for Italy, the same thing applies.  They have leverage in their upcoming wrangling with the EU over its budget.  The Genoa bridge collapse is an emotional event that can easily be used by Salvini and company to push Germany, in particular, over structural reforms which loosen the Troika’s control over EU-member states.

And if the EU doesn’t budge, then it will be a much easier sell to say ciao.  Because once this turns into a chaotic rout all bets are off.  And Salvini can sell independence from the EU as a matter of national pride.

*  *  *

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5 Articles Show How TPTB “Fix” You Like Staked Goats

Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces ) via SHTFplan.,com,

Five recent articles exemplify the ever-increasing surveillance by TPTB (The Powers That Be) to “fix” you and I… in the manner of goats staked out to lure in the lion. In this case, the lion is a ravening wolf, performing his own staking in the guise of a sheep. The articles will be listed in chronological order. Ironically, the level of alarm should increase with that order, as well.

The reason I’m writing about this is that it is important to cite the things that generally do not receive the greatest amount of interest by the public overall. Some of them are obscure and do not really “jump” out at you until you examine them and see them not merely as they are presented… but the underlying significance to it all. Then it materializes into a puzzle piece.

When the pieces are matched with others in the jigsaw picture? To paraphrase O’Brien in Orwell’s “1984,” you will then see the true portrait of the world they are creating.

1. July 24th, 2018 “What is 5G and what will it mean for you?” by Matthew Wall. 

This explains the 5G system that will be emplaced by many nations by 2020, according to the article. Here are some excerpted passages, compressed together to save time:

“What is 5G exactly?  It’s the next-fifth generation of mobile Internet connectivity promising much faster data download and upload speeds, wider coverage, and more stable connections. What will it enable us to do?  “Whatever we do now with our smartphones we’ll be able to do faster and better,” says Ian Fogg from OpenSignal, a mobile data analytics company. “Think of smart glasses featuring augmented reality, mobile virtual reality, much higher quality video, the Internet of things making cities smarter. But what’s really exciting is all the new services that will be built that we can’t foresee…driverless cars will be able to “talk” to each other and traffic management systems…swarms of drones co-operating to carry out search and rescue missions, fire assessments and traffic monitoring, all communicating wirelessly with each other and ground base stations over 5G networks…mobile videos should be near instantaneous and glitch-free….wearable fitness devices could monitor your health in real time, alerting doctors as soon as any emergency arises.”

Ian Fogg goes on to write that “…China is experimenting with ultra high definition live drone broadcasts using 5G,” and then adds “Meanwhile, regulators around the world have been busy auctioning off spectrum to telecom companies, who’ve been experimenting with mobile phone makers on new services.”

I like the manner in which that last sentence was presented. Preceding it, Wall mentions “friendly” China, the “lab experiment” for the rest of the world…testing out new gear on their subjects that will be implemented here in Oceania and Eurasia. Then, as if Wall is writing a story for starry-eyed high-school students: “Meanwhile, regulators…”  interchangeable with “Meanwhile, your friendly, honest, elected rulers/lawmakers”… Let’s translate the whole last sentence:  Meanwhile, politicians and lobbyists have been steering the contracts off to those telecoms already in their back pockets, as Edward Snowden revealed in his expose “Citizen Four” a few years ago, to put you completely under their thumb and surveilled…you, the citizen paying for the surveillance placed upon you.

Remember the line I just paraphrased from “1984”?  Can you see what they’re creating? A world where your refrigerator will be able to tell the authorities how much Absolut you have, and how much you’ve consumed. A world where everything…everything, people, and everyone…will be monitored. Swarms of drones on “search and rescue missions?” Or will they be search and destroy operations? Traffic management systems, traffic monitoring, regulators…all of this they want to bring in.

Funny, though: with all of this, they don’t seem to want it when it is placed upon themselves, as you’ll see in the 3rd article cited. First this:

2. July 31st,  2018 “Senate Democrats are Circulating Plans for Government Takeover of the Internet: Reason Roundup,” by Elizabeth Nolan Brown.

The Democrats are using the Russians as the “bogeyman/Emmanuel Goldstein” to push forward measures that are totalitarian. A leaked memo by Senator Mark Warner is entitled “Potential Policy Proposals for Regulation of Social Media and Technology Firms,” with the created threat in this instance being listed as “Russian disinformation techniques.”

Really, Warner? To address him as “Senator” would be an insult to the few remaining who truly are. How about the American disinformation techniques by the MSM (Mainstream Media) such as CNN, NBC, CBS, and all of the other quacking, lying, Associated Press (AP) sanctioned scriptwriters who have lied to us over the decades?

Here is what Warner and the other communists (Democrats) want, regarding the Internet and Social Media in the U.S., individuals and companies alike:

  1. Mandatory location verification – on all user accounts and posts

  2. Mandatory identity verification – authentication by companies and forced compliance of those companies by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and the FTC (Federal Trade Commission)

  3. Bot Labeling – companies to label bots or be penalized

  4. Define popular tech as “essential facilities” – THIS, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IS THE KEY TO THE WHOLE THING…to force regulation in the “interests of national security for critical infrastructure,” and “to protect the public good.” That is the vehicle…for your own good do they subjugate you

  5. More disclosure requirements for online political speech – simply put, to know who is going against the establishment…identify all of them

  6. Countering Cybersecurity Threats – i.e., creating the eternal threat/bad guy for justification for protection of the public and the nation, yada yada.

  7. More funding for the FTC – Of course! What better way to prompt a bureaucracy to regulate the people…than to pay them more money?  Especially as the money is coming from the people, via taxes!

  8. Requirements for social media and Internet firms’ algorithms to be audited by the feds – undoubtedly requiring a whole new bureaucratic arm to be created and funded

  9. [This one I’ll quote directly]: “The paper also suggests making as a rule that tech platforms above a certain size must turn over internal data and processes to “independent public interest researchers” so they can identify potential “public health/addiction effects, anticompetitive behavior, radicalization, scams, user propagated misinformation, and harassment – data that could be used to inform actions by regulators or Congress” Sounds great!  Nebulous and open to selective interpretation.

Regarding “item 9” above, I wrote a piece for SHTF that was released July 16, 2018, entitled “A Micro Example of the Increasing U.S. Totalitarianism” that completely ties in with Warner’s memo. Please read it to see what they suggest here in “item 9”…an “outside” firm that is non-governmental set up to be an “authority and regulator” but with government approval and support. It’s a new paradigm: hire a “patsy” to do the dirty work with your authority that can be shut down and take a fall at any time. With the citizens, that’s called a “shell company,” but the government calls them “independent public interest researchers.”

3. August 6th, 2018 “Pentagon Prohibits Personnel From Using GPS Services in All ‘Operational’ Areas,” by Jack Corrigan of Nextgov.

[As mentioned, this one ties in to #1…how the government will not allow any restrictions upon themselves] 

Here is a short excerpt:

“The Defense Department on Monday issued an order barring all personnel from using geolocation services on their personal and government-issued devices in all operational areas. The policy, which applies to smartphones, tablets, fitness trackers, smartwatches and all other applications with geolocation features, goes into effect immediately.”

The article goes on to say that the government can exempt personnel from this (termed “make exceptions”) when they want to. Naturally, the measure is to protect government workers, soldiers, operatives, etc., from being compromised when their little clicking toys and devices reveal their locations.

But of course, we common folk are permitted to stroll around the kingdom, shop, talk, twitter, tweet, etc., with all of our locations known, monitored, and recorded. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

4. August 8th, 2018 “Homeless people wearing barcodes to accept cashless payments,” by Camilla Turner of The Telegraph. 

This is in England, as a part of an Oxford University-based initiative superficially appearing to “aid the homeless,” but in reality, it is a purely totalitarian construct. You need to read this article.  The homeless individual carries a card that is matched to an account that is managed by a caseworker…to assure that the donation goes toward a rental payment or an identification card. The “donor” can even make the “donation” with their happy cell phone! Yay! And they can see a “profile” on the homeless individual that gives their circumstances, etc. Isn’t that wonderful?

So, they can actually verify the miserable cause of the person’s misery, and make a miserly donation that will be accounted for by a miserable case worker with their miserable computer…ensuring the miserly money goes toward a miserable, approved payment of some kind. Eliminate the cash, and control all of the serfs.

5. August 9th, 2018 “MLB and NFL fans submit their faces and fingerprints to buy food, beer, and tickets,” out of massprivatei.blogspot.com. 

This piece details how citizen-serfs can line up for their sporting events and scan their fingerprints for CLEAR’s TSA checkpoints and even to purchase food and alcohol. Complete, of course, with biometric-gathering photo and camera devices. The photo shows a guy who could be quarterback Tom Brady’s brother scanning his fingerprint at the counter while a smiling puppet-person-employee lovingly watches.

Read the article. They’re collecting the data in the easiest manner: passively, and all the while conditioning the people to submit to such actions. What could be the purpose? That is a question you should have answered already. I’ll give it to you, in case you missed it.

They want to monitor, control, and enslave every person on the globe, and kill any who resist or will not serve of use to them.

That is it, plain and simple.

Five different articles from different sources. Look at them as jigsaw puzzle pieces, and see them for their underlying significance. 5G technology interconnecting everything, the Internet and social media completely regulated with no privacy, government maintaining privacy and secrecy for itself, every segment of society including the homeless being controlled and “managed,” and biometric collection on people proceeding without halt.

It’s just an article, I know. The problem lies with the fact that we’ve all been so conditioned as to just accept what is done to us as a whole. Acceptance and complacence are interchangeable in this instance, as either translates into doing nothing to stem the flow toward tyranny. The first step to resisting that tyranny is to be aware, and to sift what is truly relevant from what does not appear to be important at first glance. If you can visualize how the cage is being constructed, you can complete the puzzle, and just maybe the door to the cage will not close with you in it.

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Death Of A Nation: Drug Overdose Deaths Jump To Record 72,000 Last Year

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates drug overdose deaths based on a current flow of mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System has just reached a record of 71,568 Americans in 2017. That is a 6.6 percent jump in overdose deaths over 2016 and represents a rapid deterioration of America’s inner core: The middle class.

More than 40,000 Americans died from opioid-related overdoses last year, and around 30,000 people died from overdoses of synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, said The Hill.

The overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids increased sharply from 2016, while deaths from heroin, prescription opioids, and methadone dropped.

Last month, in a separate CDC’s Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report, we explained: The third wave of the opioid epidemic is here, as new synthetics [fentanyl analogs] that are 10,000 times as potent as morphine and used to tranquilize elephants are attributing to the latest surge in deaths.

Watch: First responders revive women with Narcan after an opioid overdose

For context, drug overdoses killed more Americans last year (71,568) than the Vietnam War (58,220 U.S. military fatal casualties).

Overdoses outpaced fatalities from suicide, or from influenza, and pneumonia, which claimed about 44,000 and 57,000 lives, respectively, in 2016. Drug overdoses almost rivaled the 79,500 people who die from diabetes each year in the U.S., which is the 7th leading cause of death.

But there is no comparison to the 150,000 Americans that die each year from automobile crashes.

The biggest spike in drug overdoses occurred in Nebraska, North Carolina, New Jersey, Indiana, and West Virginia (33.3 percent, 22.5 percent, 21.1 percent, 15.1 percent, and 11.2 percent increases, respectively).

Infographic: Overdose Deaths Hit 72,000 As Numbers Still Come In | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

On a lighter note, the report mentioned areas like Wyoming, Utah, and Oklahoma experienced fewer deaths.

Regions like Mississippi and, notably, Massachusetts, saw modest declines in overdoses, said the report. New England, the South, and the Rust Belt have been particularly hard-hit by the opioid epidemic, as their local economies continue to deteriorate.

The Department of Health and Human Services recently declared the opioid outbreak a public health emergency. States are using grant money, which was signed into law in 2016, to counter the funding stress as the crisis continues to spread.

Earlier this summer, House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill in June aimed at curbing the out of control overdoses. Some Democrats voted for the legislation; others opposed it for not going far enough and for not containing guaranteed funding.

The drug epidemic is so concerning that opioid-related deaths have shifted the overall life expectancy rate for the U.S. lower for the second consecutive year. The last time this occurred, it was the early 1960s when the stock market raced to new highs, but then, shortly after that, experienced a sizeable market correction.

America is in decline. Drug overdoses are at record levels. So…what now?

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This Week Showed Internet Censorship Is As Much A Threat To The Left As The Right

Authored by Danielle Ryan via RT.com,

The banning of right wing controversialist Alex Jones from multiple social media platforms last week was a cause of celebration for many liberals, but should those on the left really be so complacent about creeping censorship?

So far, the evidence suggest that there is indeed plenty for the left to worry about when it comes to corporations like Facebook and Twitter and their alliances with government censors.

1. Facebook censorship of Venezuelan news

In May, Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council in an effort to weed out “inauthentic content” on the platform. This organization is funded by various NATO governments and a slew of arms manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Its board includes names like Henry Kissinger and former CIA director Michael Hayden — and it has consistently lobbied for regime change in Syria and, you guessed it, Venezuela, where it has funnelled large amounts of money into pro-opposition groups for years.

So, it’s no surprise that weeks after Facebook partnered up with this less-than-objective group, it deleted from its platform the page belonging to top English-language, left-leaning Latin American news outlet Telesur without any explanation at all. The page was restored two days later, with Facebook citing vague “instability on the platform” as the cause of the block.

Telesur just so happens to be one of the only major outlets reporting on events in Venezuela in a manner that goes against the US government position and US mainstream media perspective — so obviously, out with Alex Jones it must go.

It wasn’t just Telesur, though. Facebook deleted the pages belonging to independent grassroots Venezuela Analysis and Haiti Analysis, which are also leftist websites highly critical of US foreign policy in Latin America and the Caribbean region.

2. Facebook complying with Israeli deletion orders

Last year, journalist Glenn Greenwald reported that Facebook met with Israeli government officials to determine which Palestinian activists should have their accounts deleted. The Israeli government threatened to enact laws forcing Facebook to comply with its deletion orders if it did not do so voluntarily.

Of course, Facebook capitulated immediately and set about deleting accounts owned by Palestinian activists. Of some 158 requests submitted (over just four months) by Tel Aviv to Facebook asking for the removal of Palestinian content, 95 percent of them were granted. According to the same Intercept report,  Facebook hasn’t been overly concerned about what Israelis themselves are saying on Facebook and even calls for murder can be ignored by the social media giant.

3. Google and Facebook censorship of left/socialist websites

The World Socialist Web Site reported last year that changes to Google’s algorithms had seriously negatively impacted left-wing socialist and anti-war websites. An analysis by WSWS found that 13 such websites had seen their traffic plunge by a whopping 55 percent in the six months since Google had changed its algorithms. WSWS itself experienced a 74 percent drop in traffic between April and July last year. The changes also affected sites like Alternet, which saw its traffic plunge by 71 percent between April and September, Democracy Now (50 percent drop) and Truth-out.org (49 percent drop).

Similarly, Police the Police (a page dedicated to exposing US police brutality) and the Free Thought Project (which focuses on government transparency) also saw their Facebook page traffic tank in 2018 after Facebook made changes to its newsfeed and search algorithms in an effort to combat “fake news”. PTP traffic dropped from between 12-15 million people per week to about 4 million — and the website had to fire its writing staff as a result. “The left is cheering this on, when historically the left is usually the side cheering for free speech,” PTP founder Jason Bassler told Mic.

Amidst all of the celebration over the banning of Jones, some on the left cautioned that in fact, the left may indeed be the“real target” in all of this — and that those celebrating while people like Jones are banned are in fact being “conditioned”into accepting further censorship down the road.

4. Legitimate left-wing protests targeted?

A particularly strange example of Facebook’s commitment to banning “fake news” and promoting a nice, cozy atmosphere for everyone online is its decision to delete event pages for anti-racist and anti-fascist protests happening in Washington D.C.

The “No Unite the Right 2-DC” event (a counter-rally against a previous white nationalist event in the city) was taken down after Facebook decided it displayed some “coordinated inauthentic behavior” (the kind of random phrase that can no doubt be arbitrarily applied to anything without explanation).

The event organizer said in a statement: “This is a real protest in Washington, D.C. It is not George Soros. It is not Russia. It is just us.”

5. Twitter suspending and banning anti-war activists

Twitter has come under fire recently for “shadowbanning” conservative accounts, making them harder to find on the platform and having their tweets appear less prominently in people’s feeds in an effort to limit their audience. But again, it’s not just the right.

Twitter recently suspended the accounts of Daniel McAdams, the executive director of the libertarian and antiwar Ron Paul Institute and Scott Horton, the editor of the AntiWar.com website. Explaining what happened, McAdams said that he and Horton were suspended after defending former US diplomat Peter Van Buren who had just been banned permanently from Twitter after heated exchanges with journalist Jonathan M. Katz over what Van Buren said was his “unwillingness to challenge government lies”. In one of his tweets to Katz, Buren sarcastically commented: “I hope a MAGA guy eats your face”. Katz reported him for “promoting violence” and Twitter later caved and removed Buren’s account.

In explaining his suspension, Twitter told McAdams that he could not “promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease” — none of which he accepts that he did.

*  *  *

Perhaps the really amazing thing about all of this is that it is happening in front of our eyes and the powers that be are not even bothering to lie about it. Elected US officials are openly promoting this kind of censorship as a way to prevent the“sowing of discord” among populations. At a Senate Judiciary Committee last year about “Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online,” Democratic Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono called on social media platforms to prove their commitment to preventing “the fomenting of discord” online.

Working hand-in-glove with governments, corporations like Facebook have been handed enormous power to decide what constitutes free speech and which opinions are worthy of being heard. How long will it be before people realize banning Alex Jones wasn’t really a victory at all?

Danielle Ryan

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