Quotes of the Week

Enlightened insights taken from the past week’s reading:

"From a narrative perspective, China is fighting this war against nCov2019 exactly like the US fought its war against North Vietnam. … They convince themselves that the people can’t handle the truth, particularly if the truth ain’t such good news. They convince themselves that they can buy enough time to win the real-world war by designing and employing a carefully constructed 'communication strategy' to win the narrative-world war. That strategy proved to be a social and political disaster for the United States, as the cartoon tail (gotta get more NV casualties for Cronkite to report) ended up wagging the policy dog (send out more counterproductive search-and-destroy missions). I think exactly the same thing is happening in China. And I think the social and political repercussions will be exactly as disastrous."
Karl Marlantes

"The reality is that the interventionist systems never defend the improvement of the environment, but aim to appropriate the climate banner to do the opposite and then blame the nearest external enemy. The politicization of climate action does not defend the environment, but whitewashes interventionism. Hence the silence on the environmental records of highly interventionist regimes like China and Iran.
The biggest subsidies to pollution are, surprise, all in countries with low economic freedom, governments with maximum control of the economy and with state-owned companies. Of the 147 countries that have ratified the latest environmental agreements, in more than 90%, the companies, and polluting sectors are 100% public (the producers of the petro-states, the largest coal plants, steelworks, etc)."
Daniel Lacalle

"There has always been pollution. When there are forest fires started by lightening, they put off CO2. Volcanoes put out CO2. Plants and trees need CO2 to survive. This is simply a divine mechanism of how the earth functions.
The entire climate change issue has become a covert means in this final confrontation between the left and the right. This is the very issue that will destroy the Western Society for it has been elevated to such heights and governments love it for all they see is more power and money. The activists behind the curtain are simply Marxists who are determined to make communism work one more time."
Martin Armstrong

"Any defense of rights is bound to involve not only guns proper but also argument. In fact a defense should foremost use argument and persuasion before resort to physical confrontations. The colonists engaged in lengthy argument, pamphlets, discussions, reading of political theory, petitions, debates, appeals and the like. We need to get gun rights right, that is, understand the position. And that position is to be found in the Declaration of Independence and other sources from our revolutionary era that argued for unalienable rights to life, liberty and property. And these are indissolubly connected to all men being created equal, which means that no one is born with or inherits a right to rule other people. There is no right to such monarchical rule.
But likewise, any right to rule by society or a government must derive from the people ruled, from their consent. There is no right to misrule on purpose. Derivative power of government is not and cannot be open-ended. Such power cannot contradict or go against the unalienable rights of each and every person. If it does, that is usurpation. That is subverting and blocking one’s exercise of proper rights by force. Usurpation is improper by negating the basis for proper use of powers that a people delegates to its agents. That basis is to defend the unalienable rights to life, liberty and property."
Michael Rozeff

"The idea of democracy is an anachronism, at best. The US has mutated into a domestic multicultural empire. The average person has been propagandized into believing that it’s patriotic to do as he’s told. 'We need libraries of regulations, and I’m happy to pay my taxes. It’s the price we pay for civilization.' No, that’s just the opposite of the fact. Those things are signs that civilization is degrading, that the members of society are becoming less individually responsible. And therefore that the country has to be held together by force.
It’s all about control. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The type of people that gravitate to government like to control other people. Contrary to what we’re told to think, that’s why the worst people – not the best – want to get into government."
Doug Casey

"Progressive movements, as the name suggests, used to be about pursuing progress, pushing mankind forwards, creating a better, wealthier world for all. Extinction Rebellion wants the precise opposite. It wants to propel us backwards, to the Stone Age. It wants to reverse the most important moment in human history – the Industrial Revolution. It wants to undo that revolution’s liberation of mankind from the brutishness and ignorance of life on the land and recreate that old, unforgiving world in which we all 'ate locally', never traveled, danced around maypoles for fun, and died of cholera when we were 38."
Brendan O’Neill

"Altruism is the very foundation of statist propaganda and power that the individual must place his interests, including his property, beneath the 'need' of the collective (state). In our time this is called 'in the public interest.'
The term 'public interest' translates into the government interest always. Therefore, the army of federal judges and politicians claim to act in the 'public interest,' and they would tell you in a minute that they do everything in the 'public interest.' This is a deception that few unravel mainly because of the self-deception of altruism. As long as an individual believes that he is obligated to share his property and produce for the 'common good,' he is in reality no longer an individual but a part of the collective slaves of the state. Altruism motivates people to self-sacrifice. This is why altruism is at the root of all governments. Governments must instill self-sacrifice to solidify political power."
Bob Livingston

"The Deep State on the other hand, is not comfortable with risk, does not 'enjoy the game,' and it does not play.  You cannot vote for it, nor can you assign values, weights, measures or limits to it, in any realistic way.  The Deep State doesn’t want your vote or your political support – it wants your money, your faith, and your obedience.  It is not interested in your opinion, as it is perfectly confident that it knows what is best. We don’t have time here to put the Deep State on a couch to seek clarity or find out why it turned out this way.  It’s running, and ruining, the lives of 330 million Americans, and conducting coups, wars – hot, cold, trade and propaganda – in real time, as it has for over 100 years, maybe more.  Increasingly, the weapons of these wars are aimed not abroad, but at the very citizens of the land of the free and the home of the brave."
Karen Kwiatkowski

"We do not live in a world of 100% private property – we have significant state property, we have significant regulation by the state on private property, and – of course – we have state borders.  Hence, every decision about immigration, movement, and access is a state decision – managed and controlled by the state.  There is no libertarian answer in a world of states.  Period.
But what of the government-controlled land: surely immigrants – or anyone – would be free under libertarian theory to move onto government-controlled land.  But this also represents an invalid assumption: while government might control the land, we must ask: who is the owner?
And the answer here is obviously simple: the taxpayers own it, as it is taxpayer funds that have been used to acquire, manage, secure, regulate, and improve such land.  In other words, there is no such thing as open, virgin, un-owned territory – at least not in the regions where virtually everyone would choose to live.
Like all state action, this topic is one that the state will always use to the advantage of the state – to change demographics and voting, to allow labor movement in support of state-favored industry, etc."
Bionic Mosquito

"Radical Left revolutionaries hate the fact that most people will not cast their ballots for an agenda that calls for them to surrender their money and freedom, which is why they consider violent revolution to be a viable option.  They realize that people don’t give up their freedom easily, so they believe it’s their moral duty to save people from their own bad judgment.
It’s also why, at a time when a majority of Americans have let it be known that they want to move away from government control, government regulations, and government theft, immature, low-information students, along with their low-information, even more immature college professors, are singing the praises of free … Free … FREE!  Not free as you and I understand the word, but free in the sense of having other people pay for the things you want.
No question about it, free will always be music to the ears of a significant percentage of the population, and freeloaders could care less who pays the bills.  These are the folks who are feelin’ the Bern and are euphoric about Sanders’ chances of winning the Democratic nomination and ascending to the White House."
Robert Ringer

"Democratic socialism is dangerous like other flavors of socialism and does not constitute a natural development of human society. On the contrary, it is an artificial construct that leads nations into an evolutionary dead end. All countries that practiced socialism of various flavors have never achieved economic equality but rather a sameness in their misery. The history of ex-Soviet republics shows that the only way out of poverty and moral decadence is embracing capitalism again."
Allen Gindler

"The MOVE, Waco and Ruby Ridge slaughters were primitive antecedents to the 'logic' of red flag laws visited on entire groups of humans predicated on flimsy pre-crime predictions of what could happen. The notion of red flags isn’t new. The legislation simply codifies more directly the historical government fear of armed tax helots. Keep in mind that not one initiative in any chamber of political remoras has suggested disarming the government. You will note that the oversized badged Orcs who come to seize weapons always bring their own firearms, ironically paid for by the very victim from whom they are seizing weapons."
Bill Buppert

"Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat’s dream. If you control carbon, you control life.
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.
What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison."
Richard Lindzen

"My position is to believe nothing and question everything. It is the only way to achieve sanity, to find the truth, and to see the evil that exists in this world. That evil is far more prevalent than can be readily imagined, and only truth can expose the risks we face. Beware of false flags. Beware of state and media lies. Beware of false prophets wearing the robes of kings, and beware of those that continue to paint a picture of terror in order to advance more war. We are in a time of great danger, and that danger is already upon us today."
Gary D. Barnett

"Not voting IS voting. It is making a statement that there is no one WORTH voting for."
Simon Black