Vietnam, Afghanistan, Ukraine… Seeing a Pattern Yet?

The Evil Strategy of “Degrading” Russia

By 

The Future of Freedom Foundation

January 7, 2023

 

One of the fascinating aspects of the war in Ukraine has been the extreme reluctance of the mainstream press and Pentagon-CIA supporters to acknowledge, much less condemn, the Pentagon for its role in bringing about this war. After all, the two concepts — the Pentagon’s bringing about the crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — are not mutually exclusive. You can have both things happening — the Pentagon gins up the crisis with the aim of “degrading” Russia and then Russia falls into the trap by getting mired down in a deadly and destructive war against Ukraine.

But when one raises the first part of this equation — that is, the Pentagon’s role in ginning up the crisis — the mainstream press and Pentagon-CIA supporters go ballistic. For them, it’s heresy to point out what the Pentagon did to gin up the crisis. For them, the Pentagon and the CIA are innocent, virtuous babes in the woods that would never do such a thing. For them, the Pentagon and the CIA are nothing but a “force for good” in the world. 

But we know that the Pentagon and the CIA do engage in these types of evil machinations. In fact, they did the same thing to Russia in 1979. They lured the Russians into invading Afghanistan, with the same goal they had with their Ukraine machinations — to give the Russians their own “Vietnam,” which meant “degrading” Russia through the killing of massive numbers of Russian soldiers. 

“Conspiracy theory”? Well, not exactly. That’s because National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, in a remarkable degree of candor, admitted that they had knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally done it. He was proud of it. He was bragging about how they had gotten the Russians to fall into their trap. The entire national-security establishment loved the fact that tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were being killed in the process. The more soldiers being killed, the more Russia was being “degraded.”

Continue reading…

From LRC, here.

Woe to Those Who Call Evil ‘Good’ and Good ‘Evil’…!

The Torah on Word Games and Reality

It’s nauseating that the subject matter in this article is contested and needs to be discussed in seriousness, let alone within Israel and among “educated” Jews. Our society has sunk to such a low spiritual and intellectual state that the most basic and self-evident truths are denied in favor of fantasy and science fiction, all in the name of progress.

So be it. If society is on the 49th level of impurity, here’s a booster shot of Torah truth to raise it back up a notch or two.

The Mishna in Shevuos 29A teaches about shevuas shav, an oath made in vain, which, of course, is a serious transgression. It begins as follows:

איזו היא שבועת שוא נשבע לשנות את הידוע לאדם אמר על העמוד של אבן שהוא של זהב ועל האיש שהוא אשה ועל האשה שהיא איש

What is an oath made in vain? If one swears about something that is contrary to what is known to man; he says about a pillar of stone that it is gold, about a man that he is a woman, or about a woman that she is a man…

This is codified in Jewish law without controversy (Rambam Hilchos Shevuos 5:22, Shulchan Aruch Yoreh De’ah 236:4, etc.). It’s as basic as it gets.

Chazal offered examples of statements that are so absurd, such obvious distortions of that which is self-evident, that one who takes an oath to that effect transgresses the prohibition of taking an oath in vain. According to the Torah, one who swears that a man is a woman, or a woman is a man, is not taken seriously. He is flogged for swearing in vain.

Even if he brings a peer-reviewed “scientific” study.

There are those today, faux intellectuals, who claim there is Torah support for gender-bending madness, as they do for every perverse notion that emerges from the spiritual sewage of the Western world. It is not enough for them to be perverts and idolaters; they have to claim they are righteous followers of the Torah, in fact the most righteous of all.

When they go on their inevitable hunt for Torah sources to cherry-pick, take out of context, and distort beyond recognition, you can be sure this one won’t make it into their little basket.

Nedarim 24B is another illuminating source for dark times such as these. The Gemara discusses the legal consequences of foolish oaths and vows. For example, someone swears that he saw “like those who went up from Egypt on the road”. This is an impossible exaggeration – surely he did not see millions of people in one place – and therefore it is a foolish vow.

But is it? The Gemara continues:

Ravina said to Rav Ashi, maybe this man saw a nest of ants and called them by the name “those who went up from Egypt”, and hence he swore appropriately!

He said to him, when one swears, he swears according to our minds [according to the understanding of the average person], and we don’t refer to ants in this way.

It’s standard practice for Amalekite institutions to play word games and change the definition of common words to trick people and promote a nefarious agenda – all while “technically” telling the truth.

The Torah doesn’t accept such chicanery. If, for example, you want to advertise a pharmaceutical product as being “safe and effective”, the definitions of “safe” and “effective” have to align with what the average person understands them to be, not technical jargon (see here) that obfuscates how unsafe and ineffective many such products actually are.

The same is true with all the other word games that the snakes play to avoid giving straight answers to questions, avoid legal trouble, and, most of all, mislead unsuspecting people down a harmful path.

It doesn’t matter what they call something. It matters what normal people understand it to be.

This is supported by sources in Tanach as well. When Yaacov agreed to work for Lavan for seven years in exchange for the right to marry Rachel, he stipulated “for Rachel, your youngest daughter” (Bereishis 29:18). Why all the details? Everyone already knew that Rachel was his youngest daughter.

Rashi cites the Midrash, as follows: Because he knew that [Lavan] was a swindler. [Therefore Yaacov] said to him, I will work for Rachel. And lest you say [we agreed upon] a different Rachel from the market, therefore it says “your daughter”. And lest you say “I will switch Leah’s name and call her Rachel,” therefore it says “your youngest”. Even so, it didn’t help, for he tricked him.

They didn’t just come up with this game yesterday.

As Yeshaya 20:5 warns:

הוי האמרים לרע טוב ולטוב רע שמים חשך לאור ואור לחשך שמים מר למתוק ומתוק למר

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who profess darkness to be light and light to be darkness, bitter to be sweet and sweet to be bitter.

I wonder if this phenomenon has ever been so literally true.

__________________________

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קול החינוך גליון 161#

יו”ל ע”י ‘ועד הורים’ – בהכוונת גדולי התורה שליט”א

[קול החינוך עוסק במלחמת מדינת ישראל בחינוך יהודי עצמאי.]

* למסירת מידע ומשלוח מסמכים בס”ד 03-691-5752, טלפקס: 6915752@okmail.co.il

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Reprinted with permission.

SHORT AND SWEET: Walter Block Illuminates So-Called ‘Pay Gap’

Can Wage Transparency Fix the Pay Gap?

By Walter E. Block

The Libertarian Institute

January 6, 2023

 

Will wage transparency reduce or eliminate the pay gap between men and women?

Yes and no.

Let’s take the no side first. Wage transparency will not reduce or eliminate this pay gap because it emanates from real differences in productivity (actually discounted marginal revenue productivity, but we’re going to keep it simple, here). That is to say, there is an economic law that maintains that wages tend to reflect productivity. What is productivity? That is the amount by which you increase your employer’s bottom line for every hour you are on the assembly line, or shop floor, or driving a truck or pecking away at a computer at your desk.

Suppose that your productivity is $20 per hour. Any other wage apart from that is unsustainable, at least in the long run. If you are being paid $30 hourly, your employer is losing $10 per hour by hiring you. If this practice of his is widespread, he will tend to go bankrupt. If your pay is $15, he is profiting from your labor to the tune of $5 per hour. This, too, will not and cannot last. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, the economy abjures a profit: some other employer will offer you $16, since he can then earn a $4 profit from your work, another will up this to $17, with the intention of “exploiting” you at the rate of $3 per hour. Where will this process end? It can only culminate at equilibrium, assuming nothing else changes, at $20 per hour.

Why do women earn less than men? It is simple: they bring lower productivity levels to the market than men, on average. A century or two ago this was easy to see. Most jobs required upper body strength, and males, on average, are stronger than females. This of course applies to a far less degree in the modern era. How, then, to explain the gap that remains even to this day? The best theory out there is the marital asymmetry hypothesis: married women do the lion’s share of housework, child care, cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc. Whenever you do anything, you do it at the cost of doing something else less well. Their focus is more on the home, not the business world. Hence, lower productivity in the latter realm.

There are two bits of evidence that support this contention. One, there is a wage gap between all men and all women, but when broken down by marriage status, this divergence between never married males and females virtually disappears into thin air. Two, if women of equal productivity were really paid less than men, greater profits could be earned in industries that hire more females, and this is just plain silly: profits tend to equalize, given risk, in all areas of the economy. Any divergences are met with investment reallocations, toward high profit areas, reducing profits, and away from low profit industries, raising them there.

Here is the yes side. Greater wage transparency will make it unavoidably clear that there are indeed sexual wage gaps. Given the economic illiteracy of not only the general public but also on the part of most of the political leadership of this country, stringent laws will be enacted requiring equal pay. They will not mandate that male wages be reduced; rather that female compensation be raised. This will increase unemployment for the latter group. Returning to one of our earlier examples, if employers are compelled to pay $30 per hour to females with a productivity level of $20 per hour, they just will not be hired at all in the first place, and, if already on the job, will be fired.

A similar occurrence takes place at present with the minimum wage law. If it is set at $7 per hour, then all those with productivities less than that amount are unemployable. If it is set at $10 per hour, then all those with productivities less than that amount are unemployable. If it is set at $15 per hour, then all those with productivities less than that amount are unemployable.

I have no problem with employers and employees sharing information about salaries. It is a free country. But it is not a free country when the government compels either to do so. Will this narrow the pay gap? Of course not. Wages are dependent upon productivity. Women earn less than males because their productivity, on average, is lower. Publicizing statistics about wages will not change productivity by one iota. Therefore, it will not alter wages. Ergo, this pay gap will remain.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

From LRC, here.