ללא מחבר No Author

“War is the Health of the State” wrote Randolph Bourne in 1918.  Ever wonder what it means?

Gary North wrote extensively about what he called the Great Default, a time when government could no longer kick the can on financing its wealth-depleting welfare/warfare state.  He cites a 1999 book by former CFR president Peter G. Peterson, Gray Dawn: How the coming age will transform America—and the world, in which Peterson writes:

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and federal civilian and military pensions — will exceed total federal revenues by the year 2030. This would leave zero tax revenue for any other purpose — not even for interest payments not for national defense nor for education nor for child health, nor for the federal payroll. Not a penny available for anything else.

Politicians have long ignored unavoidable doom because cutting benefits or raising taxes are politically toxic.  Yet the problems won’t go away.  What’s a scheming politician to do?

Cut the number of beneficiaries

In 2019 they came up with a plan, Event 201.  To this day most people either don’t know about it or consider it another conspiracy theory.  What if a bug, a virus, wiped out a significant number of old people?  Wouldn’t that ease the stress on the welfare state, at least delay its collapse?

Further, what if this bug really wasn’t terribly lethal — let’s not kill the “wrong” people, for God’s sake — but could be promoted as on a par with the Spanish Flu?  Surely that would scare the devil out of those who trust government pronouncements.  And to make it more lethal, what if the health care systems could be incentivized to deliver “solutions” that killed on their own?  (See here, too.). Let the treatments do the killing.

And what if authorities went further by banning or discouraging early treatments that might have precluded the need for a warp speed, poorly-tested vaccine?   Such early treatments to include not just hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, but supplements such as vitamins D, C, melatonin, and zinc?  (See here for D.) Further yet, what if major social media companies could be “persuaded” to censor distinguished medical researchers who tried to expose the fraud for what it was?

And what if the politicians got into the act by imposing restrictions on behavior as a means of fighting this terrible virus?  What if the restrictions included not only lockdowns, masks, and social distancing, but the closing of “non-essential” businesses, the determination of which would be left to their corrupt judgment and which would include gyms and churches?

What if, as the deaths and injuries piled up, public health reps and the media ignored or downplayed the incriminating statistics in public databases such as VAERS?

And what if, as the vaccines were rolled out prematurely, those who refused the vaccine were demonized as threats to the established order?  What if only the vaccinated were allowed the freedom to board airplanes or cross borders, or hold government jobs?  What if unvaccinated people, including health care workers who were on the front lines fighting the virus before vaccines were available, were condemned as “anti-vaxers” and fired from their jobs?

What if the vaccinated started to die suddenly, and the deaths from all causes far exceeded previous years?  Would people continue to believe the vaccines were “safe and effective”?  Would they continue to leave those beliefs unexamined and await further orders from the bureaucrats?

Yes, because major institutions they trust and dare not contradict, such as government schools, the FDA, CDC, AMA, even the NFL, et al would still be demanding obedience to the narrative.  Exercise due diligence?  What’s that?

All this and more is unthinkable among people who still regard reason as their means of survival.  But even irrationality sometimes has a decipherable logic, which in the case of the virus is: For each person who dies it is one less body off government’s back.  If enough die government might be fiscally solvent, assuming the survivors continue to pay taxes.  Biden’s new IRS army will help ensure they do.

Continue reading…

From LRC, here.

Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins – 0:35 UTC · Oct 7, 2022Wow. Biden at a Dem fundraiser tonight: “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis.” He says Putin is “not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical,” nuclear or biological weapons because his military is underperforming.

Biden continued with the blunt warnings: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily (use) a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.” (These 👀 quotes from pooler @tparti)

Biden going MUCH further than his officials have, from the National Security Council to the Pentagon. They have said they take Russia’s threats seriously, but haven’t seen any changes in its nuclear posture. Biden invokes Armageddon and says Putin should be taken seriously.

A copy of the pool report can be seen here. It quotes Biden as saying: “[Putin] is not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is you might say is significantly underperforming.”

Fact is that Putin has not talked about the “potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.” Not. At. All.

On September 21 Putin announced a partial mobilization of reservists. In his TV speech he mentioned nuclear weapons only with regards to  ‘Western’ threats of using them:

They have even resorted to the nuclear blackmail. I am referring not only to the Western-encouraged shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which poses a threat of a nuclear disaster, but also to the statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO countries on the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction – nuclear weapons – against Russia.I would like to remind those who make such statements regarding Russia that our country has different types of weapons as well, and some of them are more modern than the weapons NATO countries have. In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.

The citizens of Russia can rest assured that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be defended – I repeat – by all the systems available to us. Those who are using nuclear blackmail against us should know that the wind rose can turn around.

Note that Putin does not mention Russia’s nuclear weapons. He instead empathizes that Russia has new ‘different’ weapons that are ‘more modern’ than those of the ‘West’. He means hypersonic missiles which can avoid ‘western’ air defenses and hit decision centers in Brussels, London and Washington even without nuclear warheads.

Also for the record: Russia has signed and ratified the Biological Weapons Convention which prohibits the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological weapons. Russia has also signed and ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. In November 2017 it destroyed its last (Soviet) chemical weapons as mandated by the convention. It is the U.S. that still has not destroyed its chemicial weapons.

Continue reading…

From LRC, here.