Foreign jihadists who flocked to Syria now inhabit Idlib:

“Since 2015, Idlib has been home to a complex array of anti-regime forces: secular rebels, Islamists, Syrian jihadists with ties to al-Qaeda – and their foreign counterparts.

“The non-Syrians include fighters from Uzbekistan, Chechnya and China’s ethnic Uygur minority who cut their teeth in other wars but then swarmed to Syria to take up the cause.”

Terrorists in Idlib need only let loose a few tanks of chlorine, an essential element used to purify water, in order to provide the U.S., Britain and France an excuse to bomb Syria. Excuse it is, because far worse weapons uses and abuses occur across the planet.

Bolton’s threat against Assad’s offensive then becomes an Islamic Jihad Protection Act. The jihadists are useful in Idlib to prevent an even larger and obvious victory by Assad and his allies, especially Russia and Iran. Bolton is openly sidelining the objective of destroying jihadist terrorists, making it nominal.

If Assad takes Idlib, there is no doubt that he will then be in a position to expel American forces located in the east and south of Syria. Such a victory for Russia, Iran and Syria is anathema to the upholders of the U.S. empire. It puts the U.S. weakness on prominent display, undermining its efforts elsewhere as in Afghanistan.

You’ve probably never heard of Harrop Froma, but her acceptance and rationalizations of socialism in America probably mirror how a great many Americans think. Her views are worth examining for that reason.

She wrote an essay on socialism because socialism is coming out of the closet, and she thinks that American socialists are not genuine socialists.

Bernie Sanders got the ball rolling. Then socialists Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley won Democratic primary slots. Bill Maher says Americans are already socialists and the country is quasi-socialist. Comedian Jim Carrey has chipped in: “We have to say yes to socialism — to the word and everything. We have to stop apologizing.” Elizabeth Warren proposes to socialize corporate ownership, taking ownership away from stockholders.

Froma Harrop says that these self-proclaimed socialists are not genuine socialists and that America doesn’t have piece-meal socialism. For each piece of socialism that we indeed have, she offers a euphemism. Price controls are not socialism, she claims: “A mandated $15 minimum wage is not socialism. It’s a labor regulation.” Is Medicare socialism? She reassures us “Medicare is socialized insurance” but “Medicare is not socialized medicine”. What? Is a single basehit any less a hit because it’s not a home run?

Ms. Harrop doesn’t want us to think we have socialism, so she defines it away. “‘Spreading the wealth’ is not socialism” she affirms. Scandinavian countries are “not taking the means of production away from the private owners. They’re just taxing wealth and using the proceeds to fund their plush social safety nets.”

Just taxing wealth? Just spreading the wealth? Just regulating the price of labor? Just socializing insurance? These are all socialistic. They all are socialism.

Ms. Harrop overlooks a vital fact. People themselves as they offer labor are a means of production. As Ludwig von Mises writes “Labor is the most scarce of all primary means of production…because every variety of production requires the expenditure of labor.”

Taxation does take away means of production from private owners. Taxes on labor divert resources to government hands to spend as it sees fit. This is socialism.

Taxes on labor in America are the largest source of government income. One old estimate says 75%. Economists argue over the incidence of other taxes; some say that 50-100% of corporate taxes fall on labor. Whatever the numbers are, there is no denying that as cattle or sheep are to a rancher, we are to the government.

As everyone should know by now, thorough-going socialism involving nationalizations visibly destroys people, an economy, a country and its government. Not widely acknowledged enough is that piece-meal, creeping and sneaky socialism involving taxation, socialized money, regulations and controls just takes longer. Its harms are less visible and less easy to trace back to their socialist origin. That’s the only difference.

Calls it “oratory” but not truth or logic.

By Gary North.  “Government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.”

As ugly as NFL opening week…well, every NFL week! Sorry Tucker, objectivists are not libertarians and your opening straw man was as pathetic as it gets. Unfortunately, despite a golden opportunity, Peikoff wasn’t that impressive either. Being American doesn’t obligate anyone to celebrate anything, never mind Jeff Bezos.

Actually more than 10, but the rest seem to be follow-ups to the main 10. I particularly like 4, 7, 9:

4. If your ideas are so obviously true why does anyone who questions them need to be shamed, silenced, and fired?
7. After spending more than a trillion dollars and thousands of lives attacking Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, and getting nothing for it, why does it now make sense to start new wars in Syria and Iran?
9. How is it fair to use public resources to bail out reckless financial institutions that caused the last economic collapse?

Another nice example to send to your conservative friends who say, “Why do you fear the ‘good guys?’  If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”

Recently on LRC Pat Buchanan and Bill Sardi have outlined the ongoing efforts of the anti-Trump coup orchestrated by the deep state.  On October 4, 2015 I first raised the question of the relationship of presidential candidate Donald Trump and the deep state. I believed that this pivotal issue would become the central focus analysts should examine behind the superficial campaign rhetoric of the 2016  election.  How the establishment elites viewed the Trump candidacy would be the crucial subtext to note.  On the November election night in 2016 I issued this following prophetic warning of things to come. My dire prediction is still in the process of being fulfilled.

Steve Schmidt was a campaign strategist for Bush 2 and McCain. He has been a top-level Republican. In June of this year, he resigned from the Republican Party, citing the cowardice of its leaders who would not check Trump.

In June, Schmidt criticized Trump severely for 5 reasons; (1) Stirring up people with lies at rallies; (2) attacking minorities; (3) creating a sense of people being victimized; (4) alleging conspiracies, like the deep state; and (5) claiming to be above the law.

Three months later, Schmidt has radically altered his attack. He now says Trump is “psychologically unfit”. Even worse, he’s “mentally ill and mentally unfit”.

Why should anyone worry one whit about foreigners soiling the Snow White American electoral process when we have hundreds and thousands of Schmidts openly and anonymously trying to hound Trump from office?

Did Schmidt learn something between June and September that allowed him to conclude that Trump wasn’t just a racist, lying demagogue but indeed mentally ill and incapable of doing the job? Why hasn’t he told us what he saw? Why doesn’t he tell us how he missed such an important fact 3 months ago? He had plenty of time in the years preceding to see that Trump has some variety of mental illness. And what exactly is the illness he is suffering from? Couldn’t Schmidt fill us all in on that important detail? Is he paranoid? Is he schizophrenic? Is he depressed? Is he manic depressive? What is his disorder? Does he have delusions? Is he a megalomaniac? Is he taking medication for this illness? Has his doctor diagnosed this? Does Trump refuse his meds?

Schmidt and others who are making extreme statements like his have read the same tweets available to all. He has access to the same speeches and statements we all do. What can he point to that shows mental illness? The whole mental illness thing is as much a red herring as are such charges as misogyny, xenophobia, racism, consorting with the enemy and being a traitor. And we obviously cannot conclude madness in the White House from Bob Woodward’s gossip/hearsay or the babbling of Mr. Anonymous in his op-ed.

All the evidence points in one direction and one direction only. Large numbers of the Democratic-Republican Establishment intensely dislike Trump’s policies that threaten the empire, them and their positions. They are all trying to oust him from office without losing their own seats and positions. The attacks on Trump are inspired by political differences that impact upon the beliefs, the livelihoods and the positions of those who will lose out if Trump has a chance to follow his instincts and rein in the empire.

Schmidt’s charge of insanity like many statements about Trump are never proven or backed up by anything. There are incredibly baseless lies and false accusations like his constantly being floated by men and women inside Congress and out, which the brainless media do not dig into or question that could not stand up in court for 5 seconds.

If Mueller ever comes up with a report that suggests obstruction of justice, that will add to this travesty.

Obama has tossed in his entirely worthless two cents with his own version of these kinds of attacks on Trump. In a single speech, he manages to call Trump a Nazi or Nazi-sympathizer, an obstructor of justice, and a KGB asset who has left the American electorate open to attack. Obama manages to label Trump supporters as people who are fearful and resentful of people of color. Obama’s speech is truly ghastly politics. This is where this election stands this year. It is getting worse as the election approaches. Worse lies and false charges are ready to be sown in the near future. This spectacle is a truly nauseating example of democracy.

Journalist Mark Steyn has an advance copy of the new Bob Woodward book on the allegedly “crazy” Trump White House, the new theme of the deep state, which dreams of using the 25th Amendment to get rid of Trump and replace him with another Clinton/Bush/Obama-style puppet of theirs.  Appearing on FOX News last night, Steyn read a passage from Woodward’s book to illustrate the author’s “evidence” of Trump’s alleged mental imbalance.  In a meeting with all of his top military generals, Woodward writes, Trump walked in and said (paraphrasing):  “So, when are we going to start winning some of these wars we’re involved in.”

That’s the “evidence” that Bob Woodward, longtime employee of the CIA-front Washington Post, has of Trump’s alleged insanity: questioning the decades-long abysmal failures of the military/industrial/spying/deep state complex.  How is this different from how the Soviets accused critics of socialism of being mentally ill, and sending them off to “mental institutions”?

Trump is isolated and up against powerful forces that favor interventions. He is assisting them in some arenas, which weakens his attempts in other arenas. He hasn’t rallied the public consistently and strongly in favor of a neutrality policy. This, after all, would be a huge shift, as the resistance to Trump from the Establishment shows. Such a shift calls for a radical rethinking of U.N. doctrines too, doctrines that undermine neutrality and call for collective uses of force that widen wars.

The basic issue is Interventionism vs. Neutrality. But even more basic is that our form of government does not effectively restrain capture of foreign policy by interventionist interests.

George Washington advocated Neutrality, and rightly so. But the federal government has again and again departed from neutrality, to the detriment of the public.

Why has this occurred? There is no check and balance in the political system to prevent this, as special interests and other factors occur that make interventions irresistible. Being unstoppable, they happen time and again. No amount of rational appraisal of the (bad) results or moral hectoring can bring this to a halt.

Is Washington’s Farewell Address (1796) taught in our schools? Sometimes. Clearly, it isn’t widely absorbed as sound. If it is taught, is it taught as something that’s right? Or taught as something dated and impossible in this day and age? Perhaps it’s parodied as isolationist. The forces of intervention are strong enough to influence history and education in their favor; or to prevent Washington’s advice from being implemented.

Washington wrote “The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without anything more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.”

Washington saw neutral conduct to two opposing belligerents as a natural law, i.e., a condition conducing to peaceful relations with other nations. Why? With neutrality, one maintains peace with others, even if they conflict or fight one another. Consequently, one may learn their points of view, gather intelligence and influence them in peace. Once one takes sides, one enters a war. Given the many possible disputes, the country will be at war continually if it chooses sides between opposing sides. Choosing sides means an immediate escalation in threats to Americans and their interests, here and abroad. It means an immediate rise in costs that imperil our welfare. It means a loss in the possibilities of trade. It means destruction of American lives. It means developing long-term enmities. It means widening of conflicts, because other nations then may choose sides too. It means degrading the idea of self-defense by classifying aggression as a way to reduce phantom threats.

Washington’s Address provides many other perspectives on why neutrality is a policy calculated to assure peace for our nation, whereas intervention, which is non-neutrality, is not.

“The Quiet Resistance Inside the Trump Administration”, written anonymously and published by The New York Times, singles out Trump’s Russia policy for condemnation:

“On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.”

With these words, the writer calls for foreign policy as usual and not as Trump would have it:

“Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.”

Trump is right to attack American foreign policy of the past 50 years and more. It’s too bad that he isn’t more consistent at it and doesn’t articulate a return to American neutrality, but let’s take what we can get.

Once the government abandoned neutrality, foreign policy became more and more reckless, dangerous, and costly. It became less and less done on behalf of U.S. interests properly judged and became more and more a vehicle for interventionists, unilateralists, moralists, neocons, deep-staters, special business interests, special foreign interests, power-hungry politicians, and all the beneficiaries of a huge military-industrial complex.

These groups, whose interests are not the vital national interests of the American people, designate Russia as an enemy because they need enemies to sustain their power and money grabs. They made terrorism an enemy. They made the Taliban an enemy. They made Iraq an enemy. They have made Iran an enemy. They made Gaddafi an enemy. The more enemies they can create, the better it is for them. The worse it is for us.

Trump is right to attack sanctions on Russia and to want not to be boxed into an anti-Russia posture.

The op-ed writer supports the establishment foreign policy posture of the empire, which is interventionist. This is the posture that brought us wars in places of no vital interest to our nation: Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Serbia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen. This posture supports a military presence throughout Africa and further wars. It supports alliances that can bring on more wars.

What we should have as a foreign policy basis is NEUTRALITY. This is so far from the mind, the worldview, and the indoctrination of the op-ed writer that he considers Trump to be unfit for office. So strongly raised in the interventionist faith, the writer is unable to see the pervasive failures of U.S. foreign policy, decade after decade. He sees an anti-Russia posture as right, when it is could not be more wrong and dangerous.

The writer seeks Trump’s removal, accusing him of a long list of failings. These he sees as the source of Trump’s wrong attitude toward Russia and Putin. This Trump critic expresses absolutely no doubt that he’s right on Russia and that Trump’s wrong. He’s so sure of himself on this issue that he uses it as an example of how wrong Trump is, attributing it to Trump’s reckless instability or any number of his other alleged disorders. The writer has establishment blinders on. He literally cannot see the failures of U.S. interventionism when they are evident to millions and millions of Americans.

According to the op-ed writer, we are supposed to accept the hi-jacking of American neutrality by a foreign policy/national security/military/industrial establishment that has failed us time and again while enriching itself. He asks us to join him in his peculiar madness and incapacity to face the reality of the utter failure of interventionism, unilateralism and phony national security arguments as foreign policy principles.

It’s been two days since McCain was buried at the Training-Killers-for-the-State Academy in Annapolis, and still no resurrection!  I assume the network camera crews are all still there anxiously awaiting the Big Moment.

He now has to spend eternity with John McCain.

(An emailer writes:  Poor Megyn; she apparently inherited her father’s level of intelligence and his manners, such as thy were).

Recently I outlined what, after a lifetime of careful study and historical investigation, I believe to be the true face of the left. If one were to give a collective name for these barbarous thugs, predatory vandals, and destructive enemies of civilization, it would be Cultural Maoists. Here is an incisive article that further analyses these post-modern nihilists unleashed among us.

This outstanding piece on John McCain is perhaps the best I have encountered. It is must reading because of its comprehensive thoroughness and incisive depth and detail.

Are people invited and dis-invited to funerals.  Sick and demented.

A new type of superstition has got hold of peoples minds, the worship of the state. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion, of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend his knee to the fashionable idols! — Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, p. 11

Not every apparatus of compulsion and coercion is called a state. Only one which is powerful enough to maintain its existence, for some time at least, by its own force is commonly called a state. A gang of robbers, which because of the comparative weakness of its forces has no prospect of successfully resisting for any length of time the forces of another organization, is not entitled to be called a state. The state will either smash or tolerate a gang. In the first case the gang is not a state because its independence lasts for a short time only; in the second case it is not a state because it does not stand on its own might. — Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, p. 46

The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. — Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, p. 47

The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says state means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of the government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like. He who says: This law should be better enforced, means: the police should force people to obey this law. He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. — Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, p. 47

He who proclaims the godliness of the State and the infallibility of its priests, the bureaucrats, is considered as an impartial student of the social sciences. — Ludwig von Mises, Planned Chaos, p. 16

Statolatry has become the principal form of worship in contemporary America. People erroneously talk about “separation of Church and State” when “the State” has replaced “the Church” as the idolatrous venue for worship. As the Church had its calendar of Holy Days of Obligation and sacraments, so too the State has its own sacred holidays, icons, protocols and rituals.

Take a look at America’s most venerated monuments in the Nation’s Capital erected to this statolatry. You have a massive statue of the martyred Abraham Lincoln sitting in a temple of Zeus upon a throne replete with fasces (the symbols of imperium); the Jefferson Memorial consciously built as a modern Pantheon by the same eminent architect commissioned to design this other temple of worship in Washington, DC; or most telling, the apotheosis of George Washington in the dome of the rotunda of the US Capitol building, ascending into Heaven.

This is perhaps the most important topic those in the Liberty Resistance must address — that of statolatry — or worship of the State as a omnipotent and omniscient suprahuman entity preying parasitically on its faith community of acolytes and true believers.

Each day in rote, millions of captive children in government schools recite the Pledge of Allegiance, their solemn oath to this sacred creed, without giving it cursory reflection or thought.

Every day throughout the world, billions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims violate the First Commandment of God’s Holy Laws given to Moses on Mt. Sinai by their craven obeisance and worship of this bloody Moloch, with its graven idols and belligerent flags of war, symbolizing this predatory paganism.

Thus is born a new generation of blind worshipers at the Golden Calf of Statism.

Lindsey Graham will now be stuck playing the role of “Mini-Me” to John McCain’s “Dr. Evil.” O tempora o mores!

. . . by supporting the latest eco-commie fad of calling for the banning of plastic straws in restaurants.

Today is  Hans Hoppe’s birthday. He is an outstanding libertarian theorist, in the tradition of Murray Rothbard, and his strikingly original work ranges widely over philosophy, history, and economics. Among his many contributions are a defense of self-ownership and property rights through argumentation ethics and a trenchant criticism of democracy.  He is a scholar of the highest integrity and courage, and all lovers of liberty are in his debt.

The home of left civil libertarian Nat Hentoff for half a century shuts down a year after his death, facing a rapidly dwindling demand for its content. Nat would be an anomaly in today’s left that sees civil liberties as no longer convenient to its agenda.

Goes golfing, that is.  Once again President Trump dared to play golf while everyone else in Washington was still sobbing uncontrollably a week after McCain kicked the bucket.  A real president would have spent the entire weekend on his knees praying for McCain’s reincarnation.  I assume that’s what “President Hillary” has been doing with all her “Wicca” friends and supporters.  The (Dis) Associated Press, CBS News, etc., etc. is pretending to be oh, so upset about this.

Interesting BBC podcast not just for details on UK covert ops but also for discussion of the historiographical and investigative challenges in this area of research. Related books of interest: here, here, and here.

“American greatness” has passed, said Meghan McCain at a memorial service for her father, John McCain. Sounds more like American nonsense.

Here is the America of John McCain, according to his daughter:

The America of John McCain is, yes, the America of Vietnam, fighting the fight, even in the most grim circumstances, even in the most distant, hostile corner of the world, standing for the life and liberty of other peoples in other lands.

In other words, the America of John McCain is perpetual war, interventionism, military offense instead of defense, intervening in civil wars, bombing, maiming, killing, invading, and occupying. Too bad this nonsense won’t pass with McCain.

I heard some of the remarks that some members of Congress made when McCain’s body was lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda. More American nonsense.