As if there needs to be further evidence that the current occupant of St. Peter’s Chair in Rome is a Marxist, the announcement of an upcoming conference at Assisi entitled the “Economy of Francesco” should convince any skeptic otherwise.
In his invitation letter to “young economists and entrepreneurs worldwide,” Bergoglio sets the agenda for the Leftist confab quite clearly which is virulently anti-market, a call for massive redistribution of wealth, and a reordering of the current economic systems of the world with a healthy dose of climate change nonesense:
…a different kind of economy: one that brings life not death, one that is inclusive and not exclusive, humane and not dehumanizing, one that cares for the environment and does not despoil it.
While Bergoglio’s Marxist credentials have been firmly established, his blasphemous actions and words has a growing number outside of “sedevacantist circles” calling him a heretic. The legitimacy of “Pope Francis,” however, is more fundamental than him being a manifest heretic, but his standing as a legitimate pope is invalid since his ordination as a priest and his consecration as a bishop came under the new rites of Holy Orders instituted in the wake of the Second Vatican anti-Council (1962-1965).
The mastermind behind Bergoglio’s summit is professor Luigino Bruni and from his comments he sounds more radical than the Argentine Apostate, if that is possible. Professor Bruni wants to use taxation as a weapon to “redistribute income and wealth from the rich to the poor.”
Bruni, a professor of political economy at the Italian University, LUMSA, and the author of a number of books, basis his advocacy for redistribution of wealth on the Scriptures:
[T]he Bible has many words to offer our economic life and ideas [with] the transformation of wealth into well-being.
It appears that the good professor’s Bible is missing the Seventh Commandment of the Decalogue which solemnly states: THOU SHALL NOT STEAL! In no legitimate commentary ever written on this Commandment is there an exception made for the confiscation of wealth from the well-to-do to be given to the poor. Probably just an oversight on the Professor’s part.
Because they are blinded by socialistic ideology, Bruni, Bergoglio, and the likes of Bernie Sanders cannot see that the growing wealth inequality which they complain about is not the result of “capitalism,” but is the outcome of the monetary policy of the world’s central banks. This, along with tax policies which hamper innovation and shield the entrenched financial class from competition, is why financial elites are able to maintain and increase their power.
Central bank policy of suppressing interest rates and of money printing allow banks and financial institutions to receive “free money” which they can invest and speculate with at zero cost. The boom (actually a bubble) in asset prices on Wall Street is a demonstration of how wealth disparity takes place.
If Bergoglio really meant to reform the present system, he would call for the abolition of central banking and a return to “hard money.” Under such an order, banks and financial institutions become wealthy on their ability to make prudent investment decisions subjected to profit and loss. A free market in banking is the antithesis of the current system of credit expansion and money printing.
Not only have Bergoglio and his cohorts abandoned the Faith, but they have also overturned the Church’s long-held condemnation of socialism and have ignored many of its own outstanding thinkers on financial matters. From the Scholastics to the School of Salamanca through the Jesuits and the great Cardinal Cajetan, who finally taught the proper doctrine on interest rates, the Church has produced scores of eminent economic thinkers in its long history.
School of Salamanca
Ever since socialism reared its ugly head as a social system of thought, the Church has warned of its dangers even its more milder forms as Pope Pius XII wrote, “No Catholic could subscribe even to moderate socialism.”
Since Vatican II and especially under Bergoglio’s regime, however, Leftist ideas of all sorts have been warmly embraced.
At the heart of socialism, be it Marxism or its equally pernicious variants, lies envy which became a part of the human condition with the fall of man. While once condemned, envy has been turned into a virtue by the likes of Bergoglio.
While such ideas may sound appealing to human sensibilities, they will not pass the Divine Judge who knows the thoughts and souls of all His creatures even those of supposed popes.
“Was that wrong?” George Costanza asks in a 1991 episode of Seinfeld after his boss confronts him with a report that “you and the cleaning woman have engaged in sexual intercourse on the desk in your office.” George says he has to “plead ignorance,” because no one “said anything to me at all when I first started here” suggesting “that sort of thing was frowned upon.”
Donald Trump’s legal team is trying out a version of the Costanza defense, arguing that the articles of impeachment against him are constitutionally deficient because they do not allege any violations of the law. That claim is so dubious that even Trump’s lawyers don’t believe it.
The president is accused of abusing his power for personal gain by pressuring the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation of a political rival. The scheme allegedly included temporarily blocking $391 million in congressionally approved military aid.
The Government Accountability Office recently concluded that Trump’s hold on that money violated the Impoundment Control Act. But the articles of impeachment do not mention that law or any other statute that Trump is accused of violating.
Is that a fatal flaw, as Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone insist? Not according to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, the sole Republican witness at the House Judiciary Committee’s December 4 impeachment hearing.
Turley, who harshly criticized the impeachment process as rushed and incomplete, warned that abuse-of-power allegations can be dangerously amorphous when detached from the elements required to prove a crime. He nevertheless conceded that “the use of military aid for a quid pro quo to investigate one’s political opponent, if proven, can be an impeachable offense.”
Turley emphasized that “high crimes and misdemeanors” are not limited to statutory violations. The phrase “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” he observed, “reflects an obvious intent to convey that the impeachable acts other than bribery and treason were meant to reach a similar level of gravity and seriousness (even if they are not technically criminal acts).”
Turley noted that James Madison, although he opposed including “maladministration” as grounds for impeachment, said the process was meant to address “the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate.” Alexander Hamilton likewise said impeachment was aimed at “those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump’s legal team, now takes what he concedes is the minority position, arguing that an impeachable offense has to be a crime. But he was singing a different tune during Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.
“It certainly doesn’t have to be a crime,” Dershowitz said on CNN. “If you have somebody who completely corrupts the office of president, and who abuses trust, and who poses great danger to our liberty, you don’t need a technical crime.”
Another Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, claims the articles of impeachment are unconstitutional because “abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are not crimes of any kind.” But during a 2018 discussion of Independent Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Giuliani declared that a pre-emptive presidential self-pardon, while legal, “would just be unthinkable” and “would lead to probably an immediate impeachment.”
In other words, a self-pardon would not be a crime, but it would still be an impeachable offense. Similarly, a president who used his authority over the Justice Department to quash investigations of his friends and launch investigations of his enemies would be violating the public trust in a way that could justify impeachment, even if everything he did was technically legal.
Without a statutory basis, Sekulow and Cipollone argue, abuse-of-power charges effectively allow legislators to impeach the president because of policy disputes or partisan animus. But there is also a danger in letting a president off the hook because no one ever explicitly said his particular brand of misconduct was frowned upon.
“Was that wrong?” George Costanza asks in a 1991 episode of Seinfeld after his boss confronts him with a report that “you and the cleaning woman have engaged in sexual intercourse on the desk in your office.” George says he has to “plead ignorance,” because no one “said anything to me at all when I first started here” suggesting “that sort of thing was frowned upon.”
Donald Trump’s legal team is trying out a version of the Costanza defense, arguing that the articles of impeachment against him are constitutionally deficient because they do not allege any violations of the law. That claim is so dubious that even Trump’s lawyers don’t believe it.
The president is accused of abusing his power for personal gain by pressuring the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation of a political rival. The scheme allegedly included temporarily blocking $391 million in congressionally approved military aid.
The Government Accountability Office recently concluded that Trump’s hold on that money violated the Impoundment Control Act. But the articles of impeachment do not mention that law or any other statute that Trump is accused of violating.
Is that a fatal flaw, as Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone insist? Not according to George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, the sole Republican witness at the House Judiciary Committee’s December 4 impeachment hearing.
Turley, who harshly criticized the impeachment process as rushed and incomplete, warned that abuse-of-power allegations can be dangerously amorphous when detached from the elements required to prove a crime. He nevertheless conceded that “the use of military aid for a quid pro quo to investigate one’s political opponent, if proven, can be an impeachable offense.”
Turley emphasized that “high crimes and misdemeanors” are not limited to statutory violations. The phrase “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” he observed, “reflects an obvious intent to convey that the impeachable acts other than bribery and treason were meant to reach a similar level of gravity and seriousness (even if they are not technically criminal acts).”
Turley noted that James Madison, although he opposed including “maladministration” as grounds for impeachment, said the process was meant to address “the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate.” Alexander Hamilton likewise said impeachment was aimed at “those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump’s legal team, now takes what he concedes is the minority position, arguing that an impeachable offense has to be a crime. But he was singing a different tune during Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998.
“It certainly doesn’t have to be a crime,” Dershowitz said on CNN. “If you have somebody who completely corrupts the office of president, and who abuses trust, and who poses great danger to our liberty, you don’t need a technical crime.”
Another Trump lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, claims the articles of impeachment are unconstitutional because “abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are not crimes of any kind.” But during a 2018 discussion of Independent Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Giuliani declared that a pre-emptive presidential self-pardon, while legal, “would just be unthinkable” and “would lead to probably an immediate impeachment.”
In other words, a self-pardon would not be a crime, but it would still be an impeachable offense. Similarly, a president who used his authority over the Justice Department to quash investigations of his friends and launch investigations of his enemies would be violating the public trust in a way that could justify impeachment, even if everything he did was technically legal.
Without a statutory basis, Sekulow and Cipollone argue, abuse-of-power charges effectively allow legislators to impeach the president because of policy disputes or partisan animus. But there is also a danger in letting a president off the hook because no one ever explicitly said his particular brand of misconduct was frowned upon.
Reporters complain about business. We overlook the constant improvements in our lives made possible by greedy businesses competing for your money. Think about how our access to entertainment has improved.
“When I was a kid,” says Sean Malone in a new video for the Foundation for Economic Education, “my TV broadcast options were PBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, and CBS. Depending on the weather, it was hit or miss whether or not they were even watchable.”
1977 brought the first video rental store. “We literally had to rent a VCR along with two or three movies we could get on VHS from Blockbuster,” Malone reminds us, pointing out how much changed. “Now just about anything I’ve ever wanted to watch is available at the click of a button.”
Here’s a short version I released this week of the FEE video. It wasn’t government or big movie studios that made the amazing array of new options available. They dragged their feet. Malone points out that “the astounding wealth of home entertainment options we have today are the result of entrepreneurial start-ups, like Blockbuster.”
Blockbuster letting people watch movies whenever we wanted was a big improvement. But people are ingrates about the things capitalism makes possible. In the 1990s, people complained that Blockbuster’s chokehold on video entertainment was so strong that the company would be able to censor anything it didn’t like.
Special sanitized versions of movies were distributed through Blockbuster. How would we ever get to see the movies as they were originally intended? Clearly, Blockbuster was a monopoly. Government should regulate “Big Videotape” and break up the Blockbuster monopoly!
Government didn’t. Yet Blockbuster is now bankrupt. Its competitors offered so many better things.
That’s something to think about now when people call Facebook and Google monopolies. A few years ago, people claimed Netflix had a monopoly.
But without government suppressing competition, Netflix had no way to maintain its temporary hold on the streaming market. Other companies caught up fast. Customers decide which businesses succeed and which ones fail.
This is why centrally planning an economy doesn’t work. “Politicians and bureaucrats don’t know what people are going to value,” explains Malone. “They pick winners and losers based on what they want or what they think is going to earn them the most important allies.”
Blockbuster’s demise began when it charged a man named Reed Hastings $40 in late fees. That annoyed him so much, he started a subscription-based, mail-order movie rental company he called Netflix.
Then, Netflix made movies available online.
Now we have instant access to more entertainment than ever through Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc., all for a fraction of the cost of the original Netflix.
Still, we complain. That’s how it is with capitalism, and it’s a wonderful thing. While we complain, entrepreneurs like Hastings invent faster, easier ways to get us what we want. Many offer us options we never knew we wanted, putting old giants out of business.
There is an economics lesson in that. When entrepreneurs face competition, they often lose, but the fights make life better for us consumers.
This process of old things being replaced by new and better ones was dubbed “creative destruction” by economist Joseph Schumpeter. We see creative destruction in every industry.
The first flip phone cost $1,000 and couldn’t do the things we expect phones to do today. Competition drove further innovation. We got the Blackberry, and then the iPhone.
What amazing things will businesses come up with next?
Malone’s video points out that the best way to find out is to keep government and central planning out of the mix.
Once government wades in with regulations, it tends to freeze the current model in place, assuming it’s the best way to do things.
But the best way to do things is one that we haven’t even thought of yet, produced by the endless creative process called competition.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
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Reporters complain about business. We overlook the constant improvements in our lives made possible by greedy businesses competing for your money. Think about how our access to entertainment has improved.
“When I was a kid,” says Sean Malone in a new video for the Foundation for Economic Education, “my TV broadcast options were PBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, and CBS. Depending on the weather, it was hit or miss whether or not they were even watchable.”
1977 brought the first video rental store. “We literally had to rent a VCR along with two or three movies we could get on VHS from Blockbuster,” Malone reminds us, pointing out how much changed. “Now just about anything I’ve ever wanted to watch is available at the click of a button.”
Here’s a short version I released this week of the FEE video. It wasn’t government or big movie studios that made the amazing array of new options available. They dragged their feet. Malone points out that “the astounding wealth of home entertainment options we have today are the result of entrepreneurial start-ups, like Blockbuster.”
Blockbuster letting people watch movies whenever we wanted was a big improvement. But people are ingrates about the things capitalism makes possible. In the 1990s, people complained that Blockbuster’s chokehold on video entertainment was so strong that the company would be able to censor anything it didn’t like.
Special sanitized versions of movies were distributed through Blockbuster. How would we ever get to see the movies as they were originally intended? Clearly, Blockbuster was a monopoly. Government should regulate “Big Videotape” and break up the Blockbuster monopoly!
Government didn’t. Yet Blockbuster is now bankrupt. Its competitors offered so many better things.
That’s something to think about now when people call Facebook and Google monopolies. A few years ago, people claimed Netflix had a monopoly.
But without government suppressing competition, Netflix had no way to maintain its temporary hold on the streaming market. Other companies caught up fast. Customers decide which businesses succeed and which ones fail.
This is why centrally planning an economy doesn’t work. “Politicians and bureaucrats don’t know what people are going to value,” explains Malone. “They pick winners and losers based on what they want or what they think is going to earn them the most important allies.”
Blockbuster’s demise began when it charged a man named Reed Hastings $40 in late fees. That annoyed him so much, he started a subscription-based, mail-order movie rental company he called Netflix.
Then, Netflix made movies available online.
Now we have instant access to more entertainment than ever through Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc., all for a fraction of the cost of the original Netflix.
Still, we complain. That’s how it is with capitalism, and it’s a wonderful thing. While we complain, entrepreneurs like Hastings invent faster, easier ways to get us what we want. Many offer us options we never knew we wanted, putting old giants out of business.
There is an economics lesson in that. When entrepreneurs face competition, they often lose, but the fights make life better for us consumers.
This process of old things being replaced by new and better ones was dubbed “creative destruction” by economist Joseph Schumpeter. We see creative destruction in every industry.
The first flip phone cost $1,000 and couldn’t do the things we expect phones to do today. Competition drove further innovation. We got the Blackberry, and then the iPhone.
What amazing things will businesses come up with next?
Malone’s video points out that the best way to find out is to keep government and central planning out of the mix.
Once government wades in with regulations, it tends to freeze the current model in place, assuming it’s the best way to do things.
But the best way to do things is one that we haven’t even thought of yet, produced by the endless creative process called competition.
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2tEOFOL
via IFTTT
A high-profile Google whistleblower who back in July testified before Congress that the search engine meddled in the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Hillary Clinton is now suggesting that the fatal car crash that killed his wife last month may not have been an accident.
Did Google assassinate whistleblower’s wife who exposed the search engine?
Google Whistleblower Dr. Robert Epstein
Robert Epstein is an American psychologist, professor, author, and journalist. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University in 1981, was editor in chief of Psychology Today, a visiting scholar at the University of California, San Diego, and the founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies in Concord, MA.
Criticism of Google
In 2013, Epstein wrote in Time magazine that Google had “a fundamentally deceptive business model”. In 2015, he said that Google could rig the 2016 US presidential election and that search engine manipulation was “a serious threat to the democratic system of government”.
According to Epstein, “Perhaps the most effective way to wield political influence in today’s high-tech world is to donate money to a candidate and then to use technology to make sure he or she wins. The technology guarantees the win, and the donation guarantees allegiance, which Google has certainly tapped in recent years with the Obama administration.”
In a 2017 article, Epstein criticized efforts by companies such as Google and Facebook to suppress fake news through algorithms, noting “the dangers in allowing big technology companies to decide which news stories are legitimate”.
Other journalists and researchers have expressed concerns similar to Epstein’s. Safiya Noble cited Epstein’s research about search engine bias in her 2018 book Algorithms of Oppression, although she has expressed doubt that search engines ought to counter-balance the content of large, well-resourced and highly trained newsrooms with what she called “disinformation sites” and “propaganda outlets”.
Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor of information studies at UCLA focusing on “the relationships between technology and politics”, agreed with Epstein that “the larger issue” of how search engines can shape users’ views is “extremely important”, but questioned how many undecided voters are using Google to them help decide who to vote for.
Senate Judiciary Committee
In July 2019, Epstein presented his research to the Senate Judiciary Committee, claiming that Google could manipulate “upwards of 15 million votes” in 2020 and recommending that Google’s search index be made public.
In a clarification to a question asked by Ted Cruz he also said that “2.6 million is a rock bottom minimum” for how many votes Google might have swung towards Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election, and that “the range is between 2.6 million and up to 10.4 million votes”.
Google dismissed Epstein’s research as “nothing more than a poorly constructed conspiracy theory”.
Death of Misti Epstein
In December, Epstein, 66, announced that his wife – 29-year-old Misti Vaughn – was killed when her car spun out of control in inclement weather in Escondido, Calif., located in San Diego County. The California Highway Patrol said Vaughn lost control of her Ford Ranger in the rain and careened into oncoming traffic, crashing into a big rig and an SUV, San Diego’s KNSD reported.
Epstein also shared an image of the badly damaged vehicle his wife was driving at the time of the wreck. “#Misti’s awesome Ford Ranger was broadsided by a Freightliner semi towing 2 loads of cement. I had my ear to her heart for most of the last 100 minutes of her life. I heard her take her last breath, & heard the last beat of her heart. Mine is broken,” he tweeted on Jan. 11.
#Misti‘s awesome Ford Ranger was broadsided by a Freightliner semi towing 2 loads of cement. I had my ear to her heart for most of the last 100 minutes of her life. I heard her take her last breath, & heard the last beat of her heart. Mine is broken. https://t.co/D2lw4dQfr8pic.twitter.com/d0RqnkR2y8
Dr. Robert Epstein in a sensational tweet last Sunday suggested that the fatal car crash that killed his wife last month may not have been an accident. He said, “Last year, after I briefed a group of state AGs about #Google’s power to rig elections, one of them said, “I think you’re going to die in an accident in a few months,” he tweeted. “A few months later, my beautiful wife #Misti died a violent death. Makes you wonder.”
Last year, after I briefed a group of state AGs about #Google‘s power to rig elections, one of them said, “I think you’re going to die in an accident in a few months.”
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has launched a probe against Google for leveraging its dominant market position. If found guilty Google might be looking at a fine that could exceed Rs 136 crore (almost 10 million dollars).
Google also had a role to play in 2008 Mumbai Attacks. One of the terrorist involved in Mumbai attacks closely monitored by British GCHQ was technology chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba Zarrar Shah. Top Secret US NSA document on Mumbai Attacks show that Mr. Shah, the technology chief of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terror group, and fellow conspirators used Google Earth to show militants the routes to their targets in the city. He set up an Internet phone system to disguise his location by routing his calls through New Jersey.
This should be framed & hanged on the entrance & classrooms of each & every IIT IIM in the country including the Dean and managements offices. We have a detailed chapter on how these CEOs are done directly by CIA in our book India in Cognitive Dissonance. https://t.co/TQfnGH5k1Vpic.twitter.com/zqvzCn1Rf0
It is no secret that technology giants Google, Microsoft and the likes works for the US military. Under the provisions of the USA Patriot Act, 2001 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 1978 the US Government and Intelligence Agencies can legally require a US based corporation to handover information that it either owns or has access to.
And recently the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai personally assured the US President Donald Trump about “Google’s commitment to the US military”. In the words of Snowden, “the rebranding of Surveillance as Social Media is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of Defense.”
Housing Affordability Crisis Sparks “Rise Of The Pod People” Across America
The U.S. is facing an affordable housing crisis as the Federal Reserve continues to inflate home prices with easy money that is far outpacing wages.
Homes in 74% of the country, mostly the large metro areas, are unaffordable for the average worker. At least three-quarters of millennials will never own home as they’re drowning in student debt, auto loans, and credit card debt.
Renting has also become too costly for many in large metro areas like San Francisco. Millennials have already moved into campers and tent cities to escape rising rents, but there could be a new solution called “pod living.”
For about $1,000 to $1,375, a millennial could rent a 50 sq. Ft. pod per month in downtown San Francisco’s Mission District, reported SFGate.
As of right now, developer Chris Elsey of Elsey Partners in Manhattan, Kansas, is planning to build two apartment buildings in the Mission District that will house tiny apartments and 88 pods.
“The contentious part is these below-grade sleeping pods,” said Elsey. “When you’re building something, the plans have to be approved by the Planning Department and the Building Department. These below-grade sleeping pods meet the building codes, but there’s this perception from the Planning Department that it’s not something any human being should be exposed to or allowed to do.”
SFGate reached out to San Francisco’s Department of Building about the project, who responded by saying: “At this point, we have not received any permit applications for the project. Until a developer applies for a building permit and submits building plans for DBI review, we are not in a position to say whether the proposed project will comply with San Francisco’s Building Code.”
Elsey’s plan is to transform 401 S. Van Ness and 1500 15th St. into an eight-floor building with 161 200 sq. Ft. units. Then in the basement area, 88 pods will be housed, stacked up like a college dormitory.
Elsey said pod life would have strict rules, including no pod sex and or pod parties.
He said the purpose of the pods are too give millennials a chance to live in a hip part of town for an affordable price, even if that means a 50 sq. Ft. space for about $1,000 per month.
“We’re trying to build the most affordable market-rate living arrangement,” said Elsey. “That’s been our main objective.”
He added: “We’re trying to utilize this below-grade space that has traditionally been used for accessory uses such as bike parking. What’s more important, beds or bikes? I guess it’s up to everybody’s opinion, but my opinion is there’s an incredible housing shortage in San Francisco.”
Elsey is not the first to develop pods for broke millennials – we noted last summer that PodShare had bunk beds for rent in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
On the East Coast, we noted that “capsule living” has become a popular trend among millennials as 350 sq. Ft. studios in NYC cost upwards of $645,000.
The fascination of tiny homes among millennials is the result of failed policies via the Fed and the government, who’ve allowed home prices to hyperinflate out of the reach of millennials.
The pod life trend is increasing on both coasts – the American Dream is quickly reversing – a sign that wealth inequality in the “greatest economy ever” continues to soar.
Starting from the presidency of George W. Bush to that of Trump, the U.S. has made some missteps that not only reduce its influence in strategic regions of the world but also its ability to project power and thus impose its will on those unwilling to genuflect appropriately.
Some examples from the recent past will suffice to show how a series of strategic errors have only accelerated the U.S.’s hegemonic decline.
ABM + INF = Hypersonic Supremacy
The decision to invade Afghanistan following the events of September 11, 2001, while declaring an “axis of evil” to be confronted that included nuclear-armed North Korea and budding regional hegemon Iran, can be said to be the reason for many of the most significant strategic problems besetting the U.S..
The U.S. often prefers to disguise its medium- to long-term objectives by focusing on supposedly more immediate and short-term threats. Thus, the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) and its deployment of the Aegis Combat System (both sea- and land-based) as part of the NATO missile defense system, was explained as being for the purposes of defending European allies from the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles. This argument held little water as the Iranians had neither the capability nor intent to launch such missiles.
As was immediately clear to most independent analysts as well as to President Putin, the deployment of such offensive systems are only for the purposes of nullifying the Russian Federation’s nuclear-deterrence capability. Obama and Trump faithfully followed in the steps of George W. Bush in placing ABM systems on Russia’s borders, including in Romania and Poland.
Following from Trump’s momentous decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), it is also likely that the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) will also be abandoned, creating more global insecurity with regard to nuclear proliferation.
Moscow was forced to pull out all stops to develop new weapons that would restore the strategic balance, Putin revealing to the world in a speech in 2018 the introduction of hypersonic weapons and other technological breakthroughs that would serve to disabuse Washington of its first-strike fantasies.
Even as Washington’s propaganda refuses to acknowledge the tectonic shifts on the global chessboard occasioned by these technological breakthroughs, sober military assessments acknowledge that the game has fundamentally changed.
There is no defense against such Russian systems as the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, which serves to restore the deterrence doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which in turn serves to ensure that nuclear weapons can never be employed so long as this “balance of terror” exists. Moscow is thus able to ensure peace through strength by showing that it is capable of inflicting a devastating second strike with regard regard for Washington’s vaunted ABM systems.
In addition to ensuring its nuclear second-strike capability, Russia has been forced to develop the most advanced ABM system in the world to fend off Washington’s aggression. This ABM system is integrated into a defensive network that includes the Pantsir, Tor, Buk, S-400 and shortly the devastating S-500 and A-235 missile systems. This combined system is designed to intercept ICBMs as well as any future U.S. hypersonic weapons
The wars of aggression prosecuted by George W. Bush, Obama and Trump have only ended up leaving the U.S. in a position of nuclear inferiority vis-a-vis Russia and China. Moscow has obviously shared some of its technological innovations with its strategic partner, allowing Beijing to also have hypersonic weapons together with ABM systems like the Russian S-400.
No JCPOA? Here Comes Nuclear Iran
In addition to the continued economic and military pressure placed on Iran, one of the most immediate consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, better known as the Iran nuclear deal) has been Tehran being forced to examine all options. Although the country’s leaders and political figures have always claimed that they do not want to develop a nuclear weapon, stating that it is prohibited by Islamic law, I should think that their best course of action would be to follow Pyongyang’s example and acquire a nuclear deterrent to protect themselves from U.S. aggression.
While this suggestion of mine may not correspond with the intentions of leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the protection North Korea enjoys from U.S. aggression as a result of its deterrence capacity may oblige the Iranian leadership to carefully consider the pros and cons of following suit, perhaps choosing to adopt the Israeli stance of nuclear ambiguity or nuclear opacity, where the possession of nuclear weapons is neither confirmed nor denied. While a world free of nuclear weapons would be ideal, their deterrence value cannot be denied, as North Korea’s experience attests.
While Iran does not want war, any pursuit of a nuclear arsenal may guarantee a conflagration in the Middle East. But I have long maintained that the risk of a nuclear war (once nuclear weapons have been acquired) does not exist, with them having a stabilizing rather than destabilizing effect, particularly in a multipolar environment.
Once again, Washington has ended up shooting itself in the foot by inadvertently encouraging one of its geopolitical opponents to behave in the opposite manner intended. Instead of stopping nuclear proliferation in the region, the U.S., by scuppering of the JCPOA, has only encouraged the prospect of nuclear proliferation.
Trump’s short-sightedness in withdrawing from the JCPOA is reminiscent of George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. By triggering necessary responses from Moscow and Tehran, Washington’s actions have only ended up leaving it at a disadvantage in certain critical areas relative to its competitors.
The death of Soleimani punctures the myth of the U.S. invincibility
I wrote a couple of articles in the wake of General Soleimani’s death that examined the incident and then considered the profound ramifications of the event in the region.
What seems evident is that Washington appears incapable of appreciating the consequences of its reckless actions. Killing Soleimani was bound to invite an Iranian response; and even if we assume that Trump was not looking for war (I explained why some months ago), it was obvious to any observer that there would be a response from Iran to the U.S.’s terrorist actions.
The response came a few nights later where, for the first time since the Second World War, a U.S. military base was subjected to a rain of missiles (22 missiles each with a 700kg payload). Tehran thereby showed that it possessed the necessary technical, operational and strategic means to obliterate thousands of U.S. and allied personnel within the space of a few minutes if it so wished, with the U.S. would be powerless to stop it.
U.S. Patriot air-defense systems yet again failed to do their job, reprising their failure to defend Saudi oil and gas facilities against a missile attack conducted by Houthis a few months ago.
We thus have confirmation, within the space of a few months, of the inability of the U.S. to protect its troops or allies from Houthi, Hezbollah and Iranian missiles. Trump and his generals would have been reluctant to respond to the Iranian missile attack knowing that any Iranian response would bring about uncontrollable regional conflagration that would devastate U.S. bases as well as oil infrastructure and such cities of U.S. allies as Tel Aviv, Haifa and Dubai.
After demonstrating to the world that U.S. allies in the region are defenseless against missile attacks from even the likes of the Houthis, Iran drove home the point by conducting surgical strikes on two U.S. bases that only highlights the disconnect between the perception of U.S. military invincibility and the reality that would come in the form of a multilayered missile conflict.
Conclusion
Washington’s diplomatic and military decisions in recent years have only brought about a world world that is more hostile to Washington and less inclined to accept its diktats, often being driven instead to acquire the military means to counter Washington’s bullying. Even as the U.S. remains the paramount military power, its ineptitude has resulted in Russia and China surpassing it in some critical areas, such that the U.S. has no chance of defending itself against a nuclear second strike, with even Iran having the means to successfully retaliate against the U.S. in the region.
As I continue to say, Washington’s power largely rests on perception management helped by the make-believe world of Hollywood. The recent missile attacks by Houthis on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities and the Iranian missile attack a few days ago on U.S. military bases in Iraq (none of which were intercepted) are like Toto drawing back the curtain to reveal Washington’s military vulnerability. No amount of entreaties by Washington to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain will help.
The more aggressive the U.S. becomes, the more it reveals its tactical, operational and strategic limits, which in turn only serves to accelerate its loss of hegemony.
If the U.S. could deliver a nuclear first strike without having to worry about a retaliatory second strike thanks to its ABM systems, then its quest for perpetual unipolarity could possibly be realistic. But Washington’s peer competitors have shown that they have the means to defend themselves against a nuclear first strike by being able to deliver an unstoppable second strike, thereby communicating that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) is here to stay. With that, Washington’s efforts to maintain its status as uncontested global hegemon are futile.
In a region vital to U.S. interests, Washington does not have the operational capacity to stand in the way of Syria’s liberation. When it has attempted to directly impose its will militarily, it has seen as many as 80% of its cruise missiles knocked down or deflected, once again highlighting the divergence between Washington’s Hollywood propaganda and the harsh military reality.
The actions of George W. Bush, Obama and Trump have only served to inadvertently accelerate the world’s transition away from a unipolar world to a multipolar one. As Trump follows in the steps of his predecessors by being aggressive towards Iran, he only serves to weaken the U.S. global position and strengthen that of his opponents.
Cross-Country Storm To Dump Snow And Rain From West To Plains, Midwest And Northeast This Weekend
The next big storm is expected to develop on the West Coast early this week with lower-elevation rain and mountain snow. The storm will then move across the West to the Plains, Midwest, and Northeast by the weekend, reported The Weather Channel.
The storm will begin to develop in the West on Tuesday, dumping rain on lower-elevations and unleashing accumulating mountain snow in the Pacific Northwest, Northern California, and the Four Corners.
Crossing the Central Plains and Midwest by Wednesday, the storm will bring snow, a wintery mix, and or rain across eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas. Rain in the South is guaranteed.
The Central Plains, upper Mississippi Valley, and western Great Lakes could see accumulating snow on Thursday.
The storm will track northeastward on Friday and into the weekend. Accumulating snow is expected through the upper and mid-Mississippi valleys to the northern and western Great Lakes. Mostly rain in the Southeast and a mix of wintery precipitation for Ohio Valley and the central Appalachians.
Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states could see snowfall in the interior while coastal regions get a wintery mix to rain. Snow or rain will continue into Sunday, and it’s still too early to predict snowfall totals or where the 32-degree line will reside.
Last week Vladimir Putin delivered his annual address before the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, and since then I have received a flurry of emails and comments from people asking me to explain what he meant. I don’t want to make assumptions about the depth of your interest in Russian affairs, and so, to save you time, let me start by providing a very short executive summary:
Putin will step down as president after his current term, which will end in 2024 unless an early election is held, but the system he has put in place will stay in place.
Essentially, life after Putin will be more Putin under a different name. If that’s all you care about, you can stop reading now.
To delve deeper, we need to draw a distinction between Putin the man and the system of governance he has built over the past 20 years. There is always plenty to complain about, but overall it has been quite effective. During Putin’s period in power, Russia has solved the problems of separatism and domestic terrorism, reigned in the predatory oligarchy, paid off virtually all of its foreign debts including ones it inherited from the USSR, grew its economy by a factor of six (vs. China’s five and USA’s one), regained Crimea (which had been part of Russia since 1783), rebuilt its armed forces to a point where international security is no longer a major concern, and achieved an overall level of societal well-being that is unparalleled in all of Russian history.
The system of governance he has built has worked well with him as the head of government, but it will require some adjustments in order to work well under future presidents, who may not be equally gifted. Recognizing this fact, on Wednesday Putin has launched a limited overhaul of the Russian Constitution. In addition to an entire raft of minor tweaks that will limit the powers of the President and give more powers to the Parliament, to provide for better checks and balances and a more democratically responsive system, there are a few proposed changes that stand out:
The word “consecutive” is going to be struck from Article 81.3: “The same person may not be elected President of the Russian Federation for more than two consecutive terms.” This wording created a loophole, which Putin duly exploited: after serving two terms, he sat out a term and then got elected for two more. This loophole will now be closed.
Article 14.4 is a rather curious one. It reads, in part: “If an international treaty or agreement of the Russian Federation imposes rules that are contrary to [Russian] law, the international rules shall be applied.” This creates a hole in Russian sovereignty which allows foreign bodies to overrule Russian law. This hole will now be closed.
Dual citizens and holders of foreign residency permits will now be barred from holding official positions within the Russian Federation. In addition, 25 years of Russian residency will be required of anyone running for President instead of the current 10. This may seem like a minor change, but it is causing Russia’s fifth-columnists and members of the liberal opposition to tear their hair out while gnashing their teeth because most of the current ones will be automatically disqualified from holding office while any future ones will be forced to choose between serving Russia and having a bug-out plan. More specifically, given their new outsider status, their Western masters will consider them useless and will no longer funnel funds to them or offer them free regime change training. This approach is sure to be more effective than the current, more labor-intensive one of playing whack-a-mole with foreign-financed NGOs and foreign agents attempting to infiltrate Russia’s government. Personally, I’ll miss having some of these miscreants around. They have provided quite a bit of entertainment, adding an element of stark raving lunacy to what is otherwise a rather stolid and detail-oriented political process.
The State Council, which until now has been an extraconstitutional advisory body, will now be written into the Constitution and endowed with certain constitutional prerogatives. Perhaps that is where Putin will move to once his current term as President expires, there to serve as an elder statesman and an arbiter between various levels and branches of government. The State Council could plug a major gap that currently exists between the federal and the regional levels. There are numerous problems that cannot be addressed effectively at the regional level but, given the vastness of the land, cannot be addressed effectively at the federal level either. It may also provide for a smoother transition to life after Putin, similar to what Kazakhstan has recently achieved, with Nursultan Nazarbayev stepping down as president and moving to the Security Council.
Other bits and pieces to be written into the Russian Constitution have to do with fleshing out the definition of the Russian Federation as a “social state.” Russia, as a sovereign entity, has a specific purpose: to serve and insure the welfare of its citizens, as already enshrined in Article 7: “1. The Russian Federation is a social state whose policy is aimed at creating conditions for a worthy life and the free development of the population. 2. The labor and health of population shall be protected, guaranteed minimum wages and salaries shall be established, state support ensured to the family, maternity, paternity and childhood, to disabled persons and the elderly, a system of social services developed, and state pensions, allowances and other social security guarantees shall be established.”
So far so good, but a bit vague.
Proposed changes will insure that incomes and pensions are such that everybody has decent living conditions. There are also proposed legislative changes to what’s called “maternal capital” to make having more than two children financially attractive. The demographic situation in Russia is not as dire as it was in the 1990s, and certainly a lot less dire than in Western Europe whose native populations are rapidly going extinct, but the fact remains that to achieve its stated goals Russia is going to need a lot more Russians. The Russian government has the money to spend on these initiatives, and getting the job done is largely a matter of lighting a fire under the federal and regional bureaucracies. Spelling out the social guarantees right in the Constitution is a good way to make that happen.
Putin proposed that the constitutional changes be voted for in a referendum. Beyond the procedural nicety and the legitimizing effect of this exercise, it is sure to stimulate a lot more public interest and civic participation, making it more likely that the ever foot-dragging Russian bureaucrats (in the more remote regions especially) will be prevailed upon to act swiftly to enact the changes.
This is all quite positive, yet, as you might have suspected, there is still something left for me to criticize.
There are three elements which I believe are missing from the proposed constitutional changes:
titular nation status for Russians,
their right of return,
and right of self-determination for long-term de facto independent regions.
First, Russians are a nation without a homeland. If this sounds bizarre, that’s because it is. Within the Russian Constitution, there are just two uses of the word “Russian”: “Russian Federation” (which is defined as a “multinational state,” and “Russian language,” which is its official language alongside numerous others, but there is no mention of “Russian people.” Ethnic Russians make up roughly two-thirds of the population, yet no part of the Russian Federation, nor the entirety of it, is properly theirs.
Compare that to the Jews: not only do they have the State of Israel, which is defined as a “Jewish state,” but they also have the Jewish Autonomous Region within the Russian Federation to return to if the Israeli experiment doesn’t work out (again). Birobidzhan (the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Region) is a whole lot nicer than Babylon, and its ruler, Alexander Levintal, an economics professor and a native son, is a whole lot nicer than King Nebuchadnezzar was.
Part of this dismissive attitude toward Russians is a legacy of the Russian Revolution. The communist revolutionaries, Lenin and Trotsky especially, saw the Russian people as a pile of kindling to throw under the bonfire of world revolution, were biased in favor of various other ethnic groups and battled against “Russian chauvinism.” Stalin swiftly fell off the world revolution bandwagon, but then Bolshevist Russophobia raised its ugly head again under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Since a lot of the Russian leadership from the 1990s, when the current constitution was drafted, got their start in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, this same attitude prevailed.
Another aspect that influenced the decision to exclude all mention of Russians from the Russian Constitution has to do with well-founded fear of Russian ethnic nationalism. Nationalism is indeed an ugly and fantastically destructive phenomenon, as evidenced by the extreme nationalistic chauvinism currently on display in a number of former East Block countries, including the Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The Ukraine, with its Nazi parades, is beyond horrible, but even Belarus, whose population is pretty much just plain Russian, has its lunatic fringe of nationalist extremists doing their best to muddy the waters. Within the Russian Federation there was once a nationalist movement, but it was quashed. Last I checked, some of its more radicalized members were still serving out long prison sentences for extremist activities.
With the communist internationalist ideology dead as a doornail, and the nationalist threat within Russia now very much under control, it is perhaps time to address the bizarre problem of Russians being a nation without a homeland—by writing the Russians as the titular nation of the entire Russian Federation into the Russian Constitution. Some mention of Russian culture would be helpful as well. Russian is recognized as the common, official language, but without being informed by Russian culture, developed over a thousand years, it is bound to become just a bunch of Cyrillic characters, and the resulting level of common discourse is going to be rather low.
With that done, the next natural step is to recognize, directly within the Russian Constitution, the right of return, which is a principle recognized in international law and enshrined in international conventions. Within Russian law it is currently provided for in an ad hoc manner by a combination of administrative laws and direct presidential orders—for instance, granting special privileges to Russians within the Ukraine or Belarus while denying those same rights to Russians living elsewhere. Sure enough, half a million people from these two countries have received Russian passports since these privileges were enacted.
This ad hoc approach is warranted given the dire situation of Russians in Eastern Ukraine, but in general the right of return should be granted based on who people are, not on where they happen to reside. Granting this right to the entirety of the huge Russian diaspora, which was partly created when the USSR broke up, stranding many Russians on the wrong side of some entirely artificial Soviet administrative boundary that instantly became an international border, and partly as a result of a huge outflow of emigrants during the economically and socially disastrous 1990s, would help solve Russia’s demographic deficit.
The last, and perhaps the most controversial suggestion I would like to make is to consider defining lawful, constitutional procedures for political self-determination, which is likewise an internationally recognized legal principle. The borders of the Russian Federation are, in some cases, the end product of a series of errors made during the Soviet era. During the post-Soviet era some of these have been remedied, after a fashion, and the regions in question have become de facto independent: Transnistria split off from Moldova and has been de facto independent for 28 years; Abkhazia from Georgia for 26 years; South Ossetia from Georgia for 12; Donetsk and Lugansk from the Ukraine for six. In many ways they have already been functioning as parts of the Russian Federation. But there is no constitutional mechanism for resolving this situation de jure by allowing them to determine their status in accordance with international law and to petition the Russian Federation for incorporation.
When it comes to questions of self-determination, double standards abound. When Kosovo seceded from Serbia, no specific democratic procedures were followed, yet no questions were asked or even allowed. But when Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from the Ukraine and rejoin Russia, this was considered to be illegal and resulted in international sanctions that are in place to this day. Given the extreme level of rancor on this issue internationally, this may be an extreme stretch goal, but at some point a solution will have to be arrived at for adjudicating the status of territories that have been de facto independent for decades, and for their subsequent entirely voluntary inclusion in the Russian Federation.
