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הזמר יוסי מור .
January 29, 2019
Last week President Trump announced that the United States would no longer recognize Nicholas Maduro as president of Venezuela and would recognize the head of its national assembly, Jose Guaido, as president instead. US thus openly backs regime change. But what has long been a dream of the neocons may well turn out to be a nightmare for President Trump.
Why did Trump declare that the Venezuelan president was no longer the president? According to the State Department, the Administration was acting to help enforce the Venezuelan constitution. If only they were so eager to enforce our own Constitution!
It’s ironic that a president who has spent the first two years in office fighting charges that a foreign country meddled in the US elections would turn around and not only meddle in foreign elections but actually demand the right to name a foreign country’s president! How would we react if the Chinese and Russians decided that President Trump was not upholding the US Constitution and recognized Speaker Nancy Pelosi as US president instead?
Even those who would like to see a change of government in Venezuela should reject any notion that the change must be “helped” by the United States. According to press reports, Vice President Mike Pence was so involved in internal Venezuelan affairs that he actually urged Guaido to name himself president and promised US support. This is not only foolish, it is very dangerous. A Venezuelan civil war would result in mass death and even more economic misery!
Regime change has long been US policy for Venezuela. The US has been conducting economic warfare practically since Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, was first elected in 1998. The goal of US sanctions and other economic measures against Venezuela (and other countries in Washington’s crosshairs) is to make life so miserable for average citizens that they rise up and overthrow their leaders. But of course, once they do so they must replace those leaders with someone approved by Washington. Remember after the “Arab Spring” in Egypt when the people did rise up and overthrow their leader, but they then elected the “wrong” candidate. The army moved in and deposed the elected president and replaced him with a Washington-approved politician. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry called it “restoring democracy.”
It is tragically comical that President Trump has named convicted criminal Elliot Abrams as his point person to “restore democracy” in Venezuela. Abrams played a key role in the Iran-Contra affair and went on to be one of the chief architects of the disastrous US invasion of Iraq in 2003. His role in helping promote the horrible violence in Latin America in the 1980s should disqualify him from ever holding public office again.
Instead of this ham-fisted coup d’etat, a better policy for Venezuela these past 20 years would have been engagement and trade. If we truly believe in the superiority of a free market system we must also believe that we can only lead by example, not by forcing our system on others.
Just four months ago President Trump said at the UN: “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.” Sadly it seems that these were merely empty words. We know from Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc. that this will not end well for President Trump. Or for the United States. We must leave Venezuela alone!
From Lewrockwell.com, here.
January 28, 2019
The enemies of your enemies may also be your enemies.
Just because someone joins you in opposing some government policy or political movement is no guarantee that this person shares anything more than your opposition. He may, in fact, be a lot more dangerous to you than the opposition.
Anarchists prior to the Russian Revolution were allies with the Bolsheviks in their attempt to overthrow the czar. After the revolution, when Lenin came to power, he made sure that the anarchists were shipped to Siberia or were executed. They would have been wiser to put up with the czar.
For approximately 60 years, I have been aware of the Left-wing movement that has systematically infiltrated the Right. I first became aware of this in 1958. My father was an FBI agent. It was his job to monitor a Marxist organization known as the Socialist Workers Party. He also occasionally monitored the Communists. One of his informants was a conservative. Anyway, he called himself a conservative. After he had ceased being an informant, my father occasionally invited him to our home.
The ex-informant was an affable fellow. In a discussion with me, he saw that I had conservative leanings. At a later meeting, he handed me a paperback book, Money Made Mysterious. I had been reading The Freeman for a few months by then. I was getting to know something about free-market economics. I was aware of arguments in favor of the gold standard. Those arguments persuaded me. As I began to read this book, I was presented a different line of reasoning. It was a defense of unbacked paper money — fiat money. The book was a compilation of articles from the far-Right magazine, The American Mercury. The book is still being sold. If you should ever want to read it, The Unz Review website has published the original articles for free. They are here. (Amazingly, the author, Paul Stephens, switched sides. He became a strong supporter of the gold standard. I started writing for The Freeman in 1967. In 1973, he started writing for it. These articles also appear on Unz’s site. They are worth reading.)
That was my first encounter with the Greenback movement. It would not be my last.
THE GREENBACKERS
The movement was born in the aftermath of the Civil War. The war had been partially funded in the North by the issue of fiat money, known as greenbacks. The South had financed far more of the war by the issue of similar paper currency. This led to hyperinflation in the South. It did not in the North, which had not issued as much fiat money.
Greenbackers were (and are) populists who favor an expanding federal government that is funded solely by the issue of paper money. They insist that this will cost taxpayers nothing. They insist that this will strengthen the economy. The money should be issued by Congress. They trust Congress.
The Greenback movement was part of the left-wing reform movements after the Civil War. They became part of the populist movement. They even had a political party. It merged with the Populist party in 1892.
These people became prominent during the battles against the establishment of the Federal Reserve System. They hated banking because banking charged interest. They wanted debt-free paper money. They hated the banks. Opponents of the Federal Reserve who were in favor of the gold coin standard found themselves in an alliance with people who were far more hostile to the gold standard than the Federal Reserve’s founders were in 1913.
There was another attempt of these leftists to capture the conservative movement during the late 1930s. The most prominent greenback or, father Charles Coughlin, became an opponent of Roosevelt. He originally had supported Roosevelt. His influence became considerable. He was an opponent of bankers. Verbally, so was Roosevelt, although he had been a corporate bond salesman prior to his election as governor of New York in 1928. Conservative opponents of Roosevelt’s unilateral destruction of the American gold coin standard at 1 AM on the Monday morning after his Saturday inaugural address found enemies in their camp.
This infiltration has gone on for over a century. It is still going on.
From Lewrockwell.com, here.
מצות חצוצרות בעת צרה ויותר בעת מלחמה, וחיזוק לניצוח במלחמה נגד האויבים (PDF)
כתוב בתורה (במדבר י’ ח’) ובני אהרן הכהנים יתקעו בחצצרות והיו לכם לחקת עולם לדרתיכם. וכי תבאו מלחמה בארצכם על הצר הצרר אתכם והרעתם בחצצרת. ונזכרתם לפני ה’ א-לקיכם ונושעתם מאיביכם. וביום שמחתכם ובמועדיכם ובראשי חדשכם ותקעתם בחצצרת על עלתיכם ועל זבחי שלמיכם והיו לכם לזכרון לפני א-לקיכם אני ה’ א-לקיכם.
וז”ל הספרי וכי תבאו מלחמה בארצכם בין שאתם יוצאים עליהם ובין שהם יוצאים עליכם על הצר הצורר במלחמת גוג ומגוג הכתוב מדבר אתה אומר במלחמת גוג ומגוג הכתוב מדבר או בכל המלחמות שבתורה. ת”ל ונושעתם מאויביכם אמרת צא וראה איזה היא מלחמה שישראל נושעים בה ואין אחריה שעבוד אין אתה מוצא אלא מלחמת גוג ומגוג וכן הוא אומר ויצא ה’ ונלחם בגוים ההם מהו אומר והיה ה’ למלך על כל הארץ, ר’ עקיבא אומר אין לי אלא במלחמה. שדפון וירקון ואשה מקשה לילד וספינה המטורפת בים מנין ת”ל על הצר הצורר אתכם על כל צרה וצרה שלא תבא על הצבור. (ע’ מלבי”ם שאין מלחוקת ביניהם רק כונת הת”ק שגם במלחמת גוג צריך לתקוע, וכן כתבו הרמב”ם והרמב”ן ושאר ראשונים שבכל מלחמה יש חיוב.)
מאתר בריתי יצחק – הרב ברנד שליט”א, כאן.