Category Archives: Essays

Alfred McCoy: It’s About Blackmail, Not National Security

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“For an imperial power losing its economic grip on the planet and heading into more austere times, the NSA’s latest technological breakthroughs look like a bargain basement deal when it comes to projecting power and keeping subordinate allies in line.  Even when disaster turned out to be attached to them, the NSA’s surveillance programs have come with such a discounted price tag that no Washington elite rejected them.  For well over a century, from the pacification of the Philippines in 1898 to trade negotiations with the European Union today, surveillance and its kissing cousins, scandal and scurrilous information, have been key weapons in Washington’s search for global dominion.”

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175795/tomgram:_alfred_mccoy,_it’s_about_blackmail,_not_national_security/

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China’s Great Inflation Helped Bring the Communists to Power

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“When combined with war, inflations tear apart the human community. One example is the Great Chinese Inflation of the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, the destruction of the Chinese monetary system during this period helped Mao Zedong’s communist movement to triumph on the Chinese mainland in 1949. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Imperial and then Republican China had no central bank. The monetary system was based on a diverse network of private banks operating in the various regions of the country. While copper was widely used in coins, the primary medium of exchange was silver, and the entire Chinese economy functioned on an informal silver standard.”

http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/34926/Richard-Ebeling-Chinas-Great-Inflation-Helped-Bring-the-Communists-to-Power/

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Creator of Netscape, Marc Andreessen: ‘Why Bitcoin Matters’

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“A mysterious new technology emerges, seemingly out of nowhere, but actually the result of two decades of intense research and development by nearly anonymous researchers. Political idealists project visions of liberation and revolution onto it; establishment elites heap contempt and scorn on it.  On the other hand, technologists – nerds – are transfixed by it.  Eventually mainstream products, companies and industries emerge to commercialize it; its effects become profound; and later, many people wonder why its powerful promise wasn’t more obvious. What technology am I talking about? Personal computers in 1975, the Internet in 1993, and – I believe – Bitcoin in 2014.”

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

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The Supreme Court Case That Handed America Over to the Bankers

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“The case was McCulloch v. Maryland (1819).  The legal issue: Could the state of Maryland tax the Second Bank of the United States? It was a private bank.  The issue, as stated by Chief Justice Marshall in a long, detailed decision, was this: Does the Constitution allow Congress to charter a bank? That was what Congress did in 1791: the [First] Bank of the United States. It was a central bank. Its charter lapsed in 1811.  The Second Bank of the United States was chartered by Congress in 1816.  In 1818, Maryland voted to tax the Bank. The Bank refused to pay. The Supreme Court decided in favor of McCulloch, an agent of the Bank.”

http://www.garynorth.com/public/12007.cfm

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Wendy McElroy: Don’t Like My Article? I Will Sue!

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“Some effects of America’s hyper-litigiousness are obvious. For example, when a corporation announces a change in its customer policies as a response to a substantial payout. Or when your neighbor declares bankruptcy because he cannot afford the damages from someone slipping on his icy driveway.  Less visible effects can be ‘chilling’ as well. A chilling effect occurs when people avoid the legitimate exercise of their rights because they fear repercussions. A common political example is a journalist who avoids criticizing the government because he fears reprisals, such as being audited by the IRS. An insidious aspect of chilling is that its consequences are often invisible.”

http://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2014/1/16/dont-like-my-article-i-will-sue.html

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Wendy McElroy: The Competitive Provision of Security

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“Because security is an essential ‘good’ for society, it was and is assumed that security must be handled by government through monopoly or collectivization, and not through the free market. But food is also an essential good. Shelter and energy for warmth are essential goods. Are food, housing and energy best provided by the state or by the free market?  What would a free-market security service look like? To begin with, it would focus entirely upon the protection of person and property. That is, it would protect the individual’s interest in safety from criminals and invaders rather than the interests of the state in preserving or extending its authority.”

http://www.thedailybell.com/editorials/34960/Wendy-McElroy-The-Competitive-Provision-of-Security/

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Lew Rockwell: American Fascism

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“We know about the transformation of the American police, with their paramilitary equipment, their SWAT team raids, and incentive to terrorize people over drug offenses rather than pursue crimes against person and property. We know about the National Security Agency, which can access every American’s e-mails, phone calls, or text messages. And yet too many average Americans have greeted all this with indifference. This indifference, I suggest, derives from the widespread public acceptance of the myth of the state that Americans are taught from the moment they step into a government classroom.”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/01/lew-rockwell/mussolinism-in-the-21st-century/

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America Is Plunging Into Kafka’s Nightmare

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“We look back at the tyrannies of the past, the monstrous governments, the devastating wars and the unimaginable crimes, and we wonder how it could have been possible. How could the people of that particular generation let such atrocities come to pass? Why didn’t they do something? Why didn’t they protest? Why didn’t they fight back?  We wonder all of this as we absorb the lists of dates, names and actions in books. We are taught to study and wonder without ever actually applying the lessons of the past to the developments of today, instead of placing ourselves in the shoes of our ancestors or recognizing that their struggles remain our struggles.”

http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1939-america-is-plunging-into-kafkas-nightmare

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Jacob Hornberger: Unlimited Government

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“How can this type of government — a government with the omnipotent power to kill people, incarcerate them in military installations, torture them, kidnap and rendition them, and spy,  monitor, and blackmail them — genuinely be considered ‘limited government’? Even if every other aspect of government has limited powers, it’s quite irrelevant. All that’s needed to make a government an unlimited one is one department or agency with unlimited powers.  It goes without saying that the federal government our ancestors called into existence had none of these totalitarian powers. Our ancestors were right to be concerned about the federal government they were calling into existence.”

http://fff.org/2014/01/21/unlimited-government/

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Martin Luther King, the White Rose, and the NSA

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“Why did German officials execute the Scholl siblings? They executed them because they considered them to be bad people — i.e., traitors.  The White Rose story is apropos today, the day that Americans have chosen to honor civil-rights leader Martin Luther King. After all, while he was alive U.S. officials considered King to be an enemy of the U.S. national security state, just as Nazi officials considered the Scholl siblings to be enemies of the Nazi state.  U.S. officials, especially J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI cohorts believed that King was a communist, one who was helping to spearhead a communist takeover of the United States.”

http://fff.org/2014/01/20/martin-luther-king-the-white-rose-and-the-nsa/

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