In September 26, 2022, seven months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saboteurs destroyed the Nordstream pipeline which was a major conduit of natural gas to Germany and western Europe.

At the time, NATO personnel, the US regime, and the Ukraine regime all denied involvement, and all even implied that the Russians themselves had somehow been involved. The US media dutifully repeated Washington’s party line, repeatedly hinting that Putin had ordered the destruction of the pipeline for some never-explained reason.

This paragraph from Vox is representative of the common narrative at the time:

[U]nofficially, many in Europe are accusing Russia of the sabotage, given the EU believes the Kremlin has a track record of trying to weaponize energy. Moscow likely has the capability and equipment to carry out such an operation, and an incentive to keep putting pressure on Europe as Vladimir Putin escalates his war effort.

Several German politicians publicly accused Moscow, and perennial warmonger and former CIA director John Brennan said Russia was the most-likely suspect.

Those who inhabit the real world, however, knew that there was no reason at all for the Russians to sabotage the pipeline and that the real most-likely suspects have always been the Americans, the Ukrainians, and perhaps the Poles.

Nearly two years later, only the most crazed Russophobes think—or at least claim to think—that Moscow bombed the pipeline.

As early as Summer 2023, reports began to surface that Ukrainian agents based in Poland had carried out the attack on the pipeline. The primary question was how much the US was involved, and whether or not Ukraine’s head of state, Volodymyr Zelensky, knew about it.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal—a publication that’s hardly pro-Moscow or anti-NATO—reported that both the CIA and Zelensky knew about a plot organized by Zelensky’s commander in chief, Valeriy Zaluzhniy. Indeed, according to the Journal, Zelensky “initially approved the plan.”

In other words, the CIA and the Ukrainian regime have been lying all along. They knew exactly who destroyed the pipeline but continued to fuel speculation that the Russians did it. The Poles also knew.

Some aspects of the Journal‘s report remain quite suspect, however. The claim that the CIA is innocent of any involvement is rather unbelievable, especially given the implausibility of the claims that mission was pulled off by half a dozen men on a rented sailboat. The whole story feels like Washington knew it wasn’t going to be able to claim Ukrainian innocence much longer. So, the US regime has helped craft a convenient story in which the CIA tried to prevent it.

Chay Bowes get to the heart of the matter:

Anyone that believes the client media peddled fantasy that 3 drunk Ukrainians, in a small sail boat, with no engineering or deep sea capabilities blew up a Deepsea pipeline, in one of the most surveilled areas of water in the world,

Is mentally ill. pic.twitter.com/yEuhtkQReC

— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) August 15, 2024

More on the true likely extent of the CIA’s involvement can be found here. The entire top echelon of the Ukraine military is CIA territory.

Of course, if the Journal‘s story is all true, or if the CIA was involved, it all makes the Germans looks very ridiculous indeed. The fact that the Ukrainians were involved at every level means the German regime has been falling all over itself to fund and protect a regime that deliberately attacked Germany. The cost of energy has skyrocketed in Germany for average people, and the energy-hungry manufacturing sector of the German economy has “been showing a worrying downward trend for years.” German workers and consumers have been impoverished Berlin funds Ukraine’s war with a country that poses no risk to Germany at all.

We might also note that an attack by Ukraine on German infrastructure is a matter of a non-NATO country attacking a NATO country. Yet NATO has not invoked Article 5 calling for war against Ukraine. Instead, we’re told that NATO member must fight Russia, a country that has attacked zero NATO countries.

Meanwhile, in the United States, after years of lying about the pipeline to the taxpayers, the US regime shamelessly demands the American taxpayer continues to be fleeced so the Congress can send more than a hundred billion dollars to the oligarchs of Ukraine.

Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

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The Kamala Harris campaign announced today that it will present a plan to ban “price gouging” by food suppliers. In other words, the Harris campaign plans to mandate price controls.

Get ready for rising prices and shortages in meat and other groceries, because that’s where laws against “price gouging”—which are price controls—lead.

According to UPI: 

Vice President Kamala Harris will propose a federal ban on corporate food and groceries price gouging when she lays out her policies in a North Carolina campaign speech Friday.

According to the campaign, the proposal against price gouging is part of the larger Harris economic policy platform she plans to roll out publicly at a Friday campaign rally in Raleigh.

“There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign said in a statement. “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.”

Directly addressing soaring meat prices, Harris will focus on corporate consolidation in that market as one reason meat prices are so high.

One doesn’t need to know the arcane intricacies of economic theory to understand the effects of price controls. We know what happens in the wake of price controls because it’s happened before in the United States.

In the 1970s, thanks to years of big-time federal spending on wars and welfare programs, the US abandoned its gold obligations under the Bretton Woods system, and Nixon closed the gold window. Knowing that this would cause prices to rapidly rise, the Nixon administration also implemented a number of wage and price controls as part of a “temporary” 90-day freeze on wages, prices, and rents. These were the first peacetime price controls in US history. As you might guess, however, price controls did not end after 90 days. Only the “freeze” lasted 90 days. After that, prices would be governed by a “Price Commission” and “Pay Board” that would only slowly abolish price controls—but not until after the 1972 election, of course.

By early 1973, many producers had endured price controls for 18 months. US Senate report then concluded that price controls had caused a breakdown in energy production and distribution. Fuel shortages were “far more extensive than anticipated.”

A freeze on prices meant it was no longer profitable for many producers to bring products to markets. The supply of goods and services fell while prices rose. Prices accelerated into 1972 when the CPI rose 3.8 percent, followed by a CPI increase of 8.8 percent in 1973 and 12.2 percent in 1974.

Price controls on food led to predictably disastrous results. Under Nixon’s price controls, farmers couldn’t sell chicken products at prices high enough to justify the cost of feeding the chickens. In the early 1970s, farmers killed over a million baby chicks. Similar problems occurred in the beef and pork industries with farmers sending pregnant sows to the slaughterhouse while dairy cows were butchered.

With prices already being forced upward by the inflationary pressure of Nixon’s runaway government spending and abandonment of the dollar’s last link to gold, price controls pushed prices even higher. Price controls were a key factor in the 1970s economy, now notable for stagflation and crippling cost-of-living increases.

Politically, however, Nixon’s price control scheme was a big success. Following the administration’s announcement on price controls, the Dow went up nearly 33 points, the largest one-day increase up to that time. Naturally, The New York Times showered praise on Nixon’s plan. Moreover, Nixon and his surrogates claimed that Nixon was “doing something” about rising prices. The public loved this “activist” president who was intervening to stop the fat cats from profiting off rising prices. When Nixon was finally forced out of office by the FBI’s orchestrated Watergate scheme, his plummeting popularity had nothing at all to do with the runaway inflation he caused. From the political side of things, experience suggests that price controls worked very well. They helped Nixon win re-election.

Indeed, to this day, when critics of the bad old days of the 1970s talk about the stagflation and economic malaise of that era, the critics usually only mention Jimmy Carter, who was saddled with the effects of Nixon’s experiment. Nixon—who crippled the 1970s economy with his monetary inflation and price controls—gets a free pass.

So, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Harris campaign is planning to enthusiastically announce its plans for price controls. The Harris people can claim she is “doing something” about the economy. This will all be couched in terms of “greedflation” and corporate windfalls and other economic myths used to claim that today’s rising prices—fueled by monetary inflation, massive deficit spending, and a runaway regulatory state—are actually the fault of “too much capitalism.”

Put another way, the price-control plan is nothing more than a cynical ploy to get Harris elected and to scapegoat farmers, ranchers, and other food producers.

I say “cynical” because, at this point, it is beyond naive to think that the Harris campaign is only pushing for price controls because Harris and her advisors have “good intentions,” but are “economically illiterate” and just don’t understand the “unintended consequences” of this policy.  It is absurd in the year 2024 to think that no one in the White House or Harris campaign is aware of the effects of price controls.

They know. They just don’t care. Price controls are a political policy. The impoverishing economic effects are just “collateral damage” that are an easy price to pay for the ruling class that will have no problem paying its grocery bills. It is likely that Nixon knew what would happen also, and he didn’t care. What mattered was the 1972 election.

The problem isn’t that Harris’s policy advisors don’t know things about price controls. Politicians push these policies because the public doesn’t understand how price controls work. Outside of organizations like the Mises Institute, where would they learn such things? The economic “experts” in the legacy media never mention the historical realities of price controls.  Certainly, few Americans were ever taught in their government-funded schools about the Nixon Shock or what happens when governments plan the economy.

For those who bother, however, to learn about economics and economic history is to understand how the regime is ripping us off. Without this knowledge—and without some understanding of the benefits of private property and free markets—it’s easy for politicians to simply assert that their latest tax or regulation will make everyone better off. Trump does it when he calls for higher taxes in the form of tariffs. A lot of people believe it. Harris is now doing the same thing with price controls. Many will believe her and happily support the latest government policy that will further crush them under a rising cost of living.

Image source: Office of the Vice President via Wikimedia. 

Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

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As I argued in October of 2022, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (now X) would represent an important test case for the freedom of speech on social media against the globalist, woke, and totalitarian agenda for the censorship of “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and “disinformation.” In that essay, I also predicted that one of the main obstacles for free speech on X would be the Digital Services Act (DSA) of the European Union (EU), as administered by the European Commission (EC):

But the Digital Services Act threatens to universalize content moderation by social media and search engines, subjecting them to the EU’s stringent and anti-free-speech laws against “disinformation” and “hate speech,” which are not (yet) recognized legal categories in the United States. Given that Twitter [now X] will be forced to abide by EU-enforced content moderation for its EU users, it is possible that it will simply apply the Digital Services Act’s rules to all content…

Sure enough, Musk’s X has been threatened with fines of up to 6% of global revenue by the EC’s Thierry Breton for failure to comply with the EC’s DSA. And now Breton is attempting to bring down the hammer on X for its failure to comply with DSA imperatives, especially in connection with a prospective interview of Trump and revolts underway in the UK over immigration and immigrant violence.

In an X post on August 12, 2024, Breton publicized a letter he sent to Musk and X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, the weakest link in X’s free-speech chain. The letter lays out the extent to which the EC aims to go and the powers that it arrogates to itself to curtail free speech:

As the individual entity ultimately controlling a platform with over 300 million users worldwide, of which one third in the EU (sic), that has been designated as a Very Large Online Platform, you have the legal obligation to ensure X’s compliance with EU law and in particular the DSA in the EU. (emphasis mine)

Thus, we see that the imperative to control speech on all “Very Large Online Platforms,” including search engines and social media sites, is globalist in character. The EC has no intention of abiding by the constitutional provisions that supposedly protect the speech of individuals or platform owners in any sovereign nation states. No matter the origin of the speech in question, the EC claims the right to regulate it.

In prose rife with the kind of doublespeak and gaslighting that we should expect from the globalists in the EC, the United Nations (UN), and the World Economic Forum (WEF), Breton continues:

This notably means ensuring, on one hand, that freedom of expression and of information, including media freedom and pluralism, are effectively protected and, on the other hand, that all proportionate and effective mitigation measures are put in place regarding the amplification of harmful content in connection with relevant events, including live streaming, which, if unaddressed, might increase the risk profile of X and generate detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security. This is important against the background of recent examples of public unrest brought about by the amplification of content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation. (emphasis mine)

On the one hand, the EC’s Breton is ordering X to ensure “freedom of expression and of information, including media freedom and pluralism,” and on the other, the platform must mitigate (censor) “the amplification of harmful content in connection with relevant events.”

Of course, the EC will decide what constitutes “harmful content,” and the harmfulness of said content will be determined based on the EU’s dicta as to what harms its own (globalist) agenda. Never mind whether the content may advocate the reduction or elimination of harm to those subjects it deems to have no right to freedom of expression, like the native Britons revolting against the UK’s immigration policies, aligned as the latter policies are with the EU’s own immigration policies. The EC will decide what speech it condones, what freedom of expression is allowed, and what expression will be disallowed. The EC will decide what are the “relevant events,” “public unrest,” and thus what speech is permissible and what is not.

Redoubling its claims to authority over speech on X, Breton reminded Musk of ongoing proceedings against the platform:

As you know, formal proceedings are already ongoing against X under the DSA, notably in areas linked to the dissemination of illegal content and the effectiveness of the measures taken to combat disinformation. (emphasis mine)

This warning is given in connection of ongoing speech of which Breton and the EC/EU does not sanction, including speech exhibiting “hate and racism” and “debates and interviews in the context of elections,” the treatment of which could have, Breton warns, an impact on proceedings already underway against X:

As the relevant content is accessible to EU users and being amplified also in our jurisdiction, we cannot exclude potential spillovers in the EU. Therefore, we are monitoring the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hate and racism in conjunction with major political – or societal – events around the world, including debates and interviews in the context of elections.

Let me clarify that any negative effect of illegal content on X in the EU, which could be attributed to the ineffectiveness of the way in which X applies the relevant provisions of the DSA, may be relevant in the context of the ongoing proceedings and of the overall assessment of X’s compliance with EU law. This is in line with what has already been done in the recent past, for example in relation to the repercussions and amplification of terrorist content or content that incites violence, hate and racism in the EU, such as in the context of the recent riots in the United Kingdom.

l therefore urge you to promptly ensure the effectiveness of your systems and to report measures taken to my team. (emphasis mine)

Thus, the supposed “richest man in the world” is to report on his censorship mitigation efforts regarding permissible free expression to the Breton’s EU “team.” Musk’s X is likewise vulnerable to punishment by this supra-statist regime.

The arrogance of the supra-statist, globalist, and woke regime apparently knows no bounds. As if in the U.S., national efforts to curtail and control speech were not already draconian enough, the EC/EU is upping the ante on censorship. These efforts will have dramatic effects on the future of free speech, including speech regarding pandemics, the integrity of elections, “antisemitism,” the institution of freedom-crushing “climate change” mitigation efforts, civil unrest in response to all the above, and more.

Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

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Originally published at LewRockwell.com.

Kamala Harris is bad enough, but stress on her manifest deficiencies should not make us lose sight of the problems with her running-mate, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, who would become president if Kamala were elected and something happened to her.

Walz is a “progressive” of the worst sort, close to being an outright communist. During the notorious Geroge Floyd riots after BLM (Black Lives Matter [but White Lives Don’t] nearly destroyed Minneapolis and St. Paul, Walz allowed the BLM to run rampant and refused to send in state police and the state national guard to protect white lives and property. As an account in Politico put it, “A report by Minnesota Senate Republicans three weeks before the election argues that DFL Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey failed to do enough to quell the days of looting and arson that followed the police killing of George Floyd.

The 61-page report, compiled after a series of summer hearings on the topic, blames what Republicans have long argued was an apparent lack of understanding of the quickly escalating situation and a hesitation to deploy additional law enforcement to end the violence and destruction in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

The report follows months of criticism by President Donald Trump and state Republicans, who have turned the civil unrest that followed Floyd’s death into a campaign theme emphasizing law and order and support for police.

Floyd’s May 25 death in Minneapolis sparked widespread protests against police brutality and racism across the globe. In the Twin Cities, more than 1,500 properties, including the Third Precinct police building in south Minneapolis, were damaged or destroyed over several days. Some were looted on multiple nights.

‘One central theme emerged fairly quickly during our hours of testimony: the governor’s slow decision-making caused the riots to be far, far worse than they should have been,’ said Sen. Scott Newman, R-Hutchinson, Transportation Committee chairman, who co-authored the report.”

In acting in this way, Walz was in lockstep with Kamala Harris, who supported a fund to bail the rioters out of jail: “Former President Donald Trump’s campaign pummeled Vice President Kamala Harris for promoting a bail fund during the Black Lives Matter protests that ultimately helped free people accused of murder, sex assault and other violent crimes.

Harris, 59, had amplified a fundraiser for the Minnesota Freedom Fund in 2020 during the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that popped up in Minnesota and other parts of the country following the death of George Floyd.”

Far from stopping the rioters, Walz wants to take people’s guns away, so that they would have no way of defending themselves from the black marauders. In taking this stance, Walz is acting with utter cynicism. He owns a gun himself and was once a supporter of gun rights. But not anymore. According to a story in the New York Times, “Early in his political career, when he represented a largely rural district in Congress, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was a darling of the National Rifle Association.

The powerful group endorsed him, donated to his campaigns and once gave him an A rating. In 2016, Guns & Ammo magazine included him on its list of top 20 politicians for gun owners. Mr. Walz, after all, was an Army veteran and the rare gun-owning Democrat who spoke of his love for hunting.

But during his first campaign for governor in 2018, Mr. Walz began supporting tighter firearm restrictions. Shortly after a teenage gunman opened fire at a Florida high school in February 2018, Mr. Walz spoke out in favor of an assault weapons ban.

During that campaign, Mr. Walz celebrated that the N.R.A. had downgraded him to an “F” rating. And as governor, he has signed into law a handful of gun control measures, including one that went into effect on Thursday increasing penalties for acquiring a weapon on behalf of someone who is not eligible to own a firearm.

In 2023, Mr. Walz signed legislation giving law enforcement officials broader tools to remove weapons from people who are deemed to pose a risk to themselves and others. The law also expanded background checks for weapon sales.”

One of the absolutely worst programs of the lunatic left is mutilating young people to in fake gender-alteration surgery. The program includes both surgical interventions and so-called “puberty blockers.” Parents aren’t allowed to intervene. Here is a description of this vile program: “Walz, 60, a former high school teacher, signed the so-called “Trans Refuge” bill into law in April 2023, prohibiting the enforcement of out-of-state subpoenas, arrest warrants and extradition requests for people who travel to the North Star State from other states for gender-affirming care.

A month earlier, the Democrat signed an executive order protecting gender-affirming care in Minnesota, including puberty blockers, surgeries and hormone therapy.

The move came after a slew of red states had imposed a series of restrictions on those interventions.

‘In this state, hate has no home,’ Walz said during a signing ceremony. ‘In this state, love and acceptance is what we preach.’

The governor signed that order next to a 12-year-old trans girl, Hildie Edwards.

Last year, Walz also signed an education finance bill that featured language stipulating that all public and charter schools in the state ‘must provide students with access to menstrual products at no charge’ for grades 4 to 12 and that they “must be available to all menstruating students.”

Those products included “pads, tampons, or other similar products used in connection with the menstrual cycle”.

It isn’t enough that the leftwing “progressives want to destroy the distinction between men and women. They are radical “environmentalists,” who would destroy the American economy in order to “green” it. They promulgate the phony “climate change” agenda as a reason to do this. According to the pro-green “Inside Climate News,” “Tuesday’s announcement prompted high praise from climate advocates, including major national groups like the Sunrise Movement and Sierra Club, all of whom pointed to Walz’s robust environmental record.

“Walz is a climate champion moving Minnesota toward 100 percent clean energy,” Gina McCarthy, Biden’s former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, said in a statement. “He gets that climate action isn’t about politics, it’s about protecting our small towns and cities. It’s about creating safer and healthier communities for our kids and grandkids to grow up in.”

Among his most notable accomplishments as governor, Walz helped pass legislation requiring Minnesota to transition to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040, his administration adopted stricter vehicle emissions standards for the state and he signed into law several permitting reform provisions that supporters say will allow the state to build out clean energy far more quickly.

As a Congressman, Walz voted against two resolutions aimed at blocking then-President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a rule aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s power plants.

Walz is also a radical on immigration. He wants to reward illegal immigrants by giving them a ‘path to citizenship’ and to provide costly aid programs for legal immigrants: ‘As Minnesota’s governor, he signed bills that provided health insurance coverage regardless of immigration status and made undocumented immigrants eligible for state driver’s licenses. He also signed a bill that allowed the state’s nearly 81,000 undocumented immigrants to receive free tuition at a state university.

In 2021 he urged Democratic leaders in Congress to prioritize creating a pathway to citizenship for some undocumented immigrants, including ‘Dreamers’ brought to the U.S. as children, essential workers, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders, and their families.”

Let’s do everything we can to expose Tim Walz’s record.

Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

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