In case you didn't know...

The US government and corporations manipulate scientists to support policies and protect profits

by: J. D. Heyes

A new book by a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientist asserts that the federal government primarily only hires and retains scientists whose "work" supports preconceived conclusions, especially on politically polarized topics such as climate change/global warming.

Dr. David Lewis writes in his book, Science for Sale: How the U.S. Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits, that the "government hires scientists to support its policies; industry hires them to support its business; and universities hire them to bring in grants that are handed out to support government policies and industry practices."


'You know you're going to be fired, right?'
He further asserts that organizations that deal with scientific integrity are really just designed to only weed out those who commit fraud behind the backs of the institutions where they are employed.

"The greatest threat of all," says a description of the book, "is the purposeful corruption of the scientific enterprise by the institutions themselves. The science they create is often only an illusion, designed to deceive; and the scientists they destroy to protect that illusion are often our best."

When Speaker Newt Gingrich greeted Lewis in his office overlooking the National Mall some years ago,, he looked at him and said: "You know you're going to be fired for this, don't you?"

"I know," Lewis replied, "I just hope to stay out of prison."

Gingrich had just read Lewis's commentary in the journal Nature, titled, "EPA Science: Casualty of Election Politics."

Three years later, and 30 years after Lewis began working at EPA, he was back in Washington to receive a Science Achievement Award from Administrator Carol Browner for his second article in Nature. By then, the agency had transferred Lewis to the University of Georgia to await termination, though he was the EPA's only scientist to ever be lead author on papers published in Nature and Lancet.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053457_EPA_fraudulent_science_corporate_profits.html#ixzz44Hvy47zu

No Matter How You Vote, The Insiders Decide...

The low-information voter...

Capitalism or Communism? What Difference Does It Make?

By Robert Ringer

Quite the comedian, that Barackus fellow. What a knee-slapper it was in Argentina when he told a group of young Argentinians (as always, with a straight face) that there was no great difference between communism and capitalism and that they should just “choose from what works.”

He then went on to say, “So often in the past there has been a division between left and right, between capitalists and communists or socialists, and especially in the Americas, that’s been a big debate.” Gosh, I didn’t know there was a division between capitalists and communists. Now why in the world would that be?

Finally, the Marxmeister said, “Those are interesting intellectual arguments, but I think for your generation, you should be practical and just choose what works. You don’t have to worry about whether it really fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory. You should just decide what works,” he added. If a person didn’t understand BHO’s very well planned-out agenda, he might be inclined to think he’s a bit confused … or knowledge challenged … or simply not too bright.

Yep, kids “should be practical and just choose from what works.” The question he didn’t challenge them to think about is, works for whom? I have news for you: Everything works, no matter how heinous, how destructive, or how malevolent it may be.

And communism is certainly no exception. Communism works — for those who hold the reins of power. In fact, it has worked incredibly well in Cuba for nearly sixty years — i.e., for BHO’s pals Fidel, Raul, and their Che-worshipping cronies. But for the general populace, no so much.

So don’t be anal and worry your little head off about whether something “fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory.” Just fly by the seat of your pants and do what sounds good to you at any given moment. In fact, if you listen to Uncle Bernie long enough, you might just end up getting all kinds of attention on “Watters’ World.”

Sorry, Barackus, but communism and capitalism are at opposite ends of the liberty-tyranny spectrum. Communism is literal slavery for the masses and thus specifically prevents people from bettering their lives. Capitalism, on the other hand, is the epitome of freedom and provides unlimited opportunity for all. Other than this minor distinction, you don’t have to worry about whether something fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory.

What people do with capitalism’s unlimited opportunity is an entirely different subject, and is the source of great confusion for those who have tapioca between their ears. Rather than looking in the mirror for the cause of their problems, they play the victimization card and blame their troubles on capitalism — the very system that offers a way out and a way up for them.

The modern term for this is “low-information voter,” and it, not global warming or any other form of witchcraft, is the biggest danger to our planet. Please quote me on that.

Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/03/robert-ringer/capitalism-communism/

"Whether you are in the military or not, don’t be a military idolater..."

Is Joining the Military the Right Thing to Do?

By Laurence M. Vance

I was surprised at the number of responses I received from active-duty military personnel after my recent article about military idolaters. All but one e-mail I received from them was positive. And every one of the positive responses I received said they answered “no” to all of the questions in my military idolater quiz. Some said that joining the military turned out to be a huge mistake. Most indicated that they were getting out as soon as they could. All said they despised being thanked for their service.

But then there was the note from the sailor.

He says he is active-duty Navy. But even before he was, he said that he “would have answered yes to almost all” of my questions about being a military idolater. But, he was careful to say, “That does not mean that I idolize the military.” He was raised to “respect the military,” and “would like to see everyone do the same.” You see, “we do need to have a standing Army, Navy, Airforce, and Marine Corps to dissuade other countries who have such forces from attempting to take us over.” The troops “live and die to make this country safe.” This sailor makes it clear that he didn’t join the military for “glory and praise,” but because he “felt that it was the right thing to do.”

Since this sailor didn’t tell me to F off, drop dead, or move to Cuba (those are the nice things that people have said to me), but was “just wondering” as to what my “intentions were” in writing the article and my “thoughts on the place of the military,” I thought I would take the time to respond to his e-mail, and especially to his statement about joining the military being the right thing to do.

First of all, I am glad that this sailor was reading LRC and “stumbled upon” my article. Many current and former members of the military read LRC on a regular basis. I hope this sailor becomes a regular reader. Where else is he going to read the truth about the military? The military recruiters aren’t going to tell the truth about the military. Most pastors aren’t going to tell the truth about the military. The Democratic and Republican Parties aren’t going to tell the truth about the military. Conservative think tanks aren’t going to tell the truth about the military. No member of Congress from either party is going to tell the truth about the military. President Obama isn’t going to tell the truth about the military over which he is the commander in chief. Former president George W. Bush isn’t going to tell the truth about the military that he used to destroy Iraq and Afghanistan. The Joint Chiefs aren’t going to tell the truth about the military. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders aren’t going to tell the truth about the military. The DNC and RNC aren’t going to tell the truth about the military. Fox News isn’t going to tell the truth about the military. And Donald Trump isn’t going to tell the truth about the military either. Although he has said some good things about U.S. foreign policy, he wants to build up the military—which already sucks a trillion dollars out of the pockets of U.S. taxpayers. You can count on writers for LRC to tell the truth about the military.

Second, I don’t respect the military, and would like to see everyone do the same. But this doesn’t mean that I hate the military.

Third, the generation of the Founders was averse to a standing army.

Fourth, Japan and Germany weren’t even attempting to take us over during World War II. The United States has a natural national defense that is better than its military.

Fifth, the troops don’t live and die to make this country safe. They live for their pay and benefits like workers at any other job. When they die, they die in vain and for a lie fighting wars that they shouldn’t be fighting in places where they have no business going.

Sixth, joining the military is not the right thing to do. Consider the following—

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military is used more for offense than defense?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military acts as the president’s personal attack force?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military fights unnecessary wars?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military regularly kills innocent civilians?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military carries out an aggressive and reckless U.S. foreign policy?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military is what keeps in operation overseas brothels?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military marches while singing vile cadences about rape and killing?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military is a global force for evil?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military creates terrorists and insurgents because of its interventions?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military fights unjust wars?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military when it has made hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military invades and occupies countries that are no threat to the United States?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military carries out drone strikes that regularly miss their targets?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military bombs, maims and kills on command for the government?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military fights wars that are not constitutionally declared?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military makes us less safe because of its interventions?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military doesn’t defend our freedoms?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military dismisses the killing of civilians as collateral damage?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military fights immoral wars?

Is joining the military the right thing to do when the military doesn’t secure American borders, guard American shores, patrol American coasts, and enforce no-fly zones over American skies—although it does these things in other countries?

I didn’t think so.

So why did this sailor enlist? He said in his e-mail that he did “not agree with the current war.” Either he enlisted after Bush launched his “defensive” wars of aggression or he enlisted before then and stayed in the military during those wars when he could have gotten out. (I suspect the former.) How could joining the military be the right thing to do if someone disagrees with the current war? Any member of the military could be sent to fight in Iraq, Afghanistan, or some other place in the world where the United States has created terrorists and insurgents.

Whether you are in the military or not, don’t be a military idolater. If you haven’t yet taken the military idolater quiz, please do so. And here is another quiz to determine whether you are a Christian warmonger.

Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/03/laurence-m-vance/joining-military/

"There is only one solution to the problem of terrorism and it doesn’t involve going abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

Lessons of Brussels

By Justin Raimondo

AntiWar.com

The vicious attack on the Brussels airport and metro underscores the futility of focusing on the Syrian “Caliphate” as the epicenter of terrorism: as I’ve been saying in this space since 2001, the snake has no head. Both al-Qaeda and now ISIS are protean entities with a vast geographical spread, and what the Brussels attack – and, before it, the Paris attack – show is that they have successfully colonized Europe.

If the “Islamic State” proclaimed by ISIS was defeated and eliminated tomorrow, the terrorist and criminal networks that pulled off the Brussels attacks would still exist.

The population of Brussels is nearly 25 percent immigrants from Muslim countries, primarily Morocco and Algeria. And as it turns out the two brothers who were the core of the ISIS cell were habitués of the now notorious Molenbeek neighborhood, which consists primarily of the descendants of immigrants who settled there decades ago. Poor, and beset by petty crime, it is a pool in which terrorist recruiters fish with much success. The Syrian civil war has become a cause that attracts young toughs with no prospects, who are looking for some sense of meaning – and a way to express their alienation from the larger society in which they live. Molenbeek was also the base for those who planned and carried out the Paris attacks – it is, in effect, a general headquarters for ISIS to carry out its European operations. Salah Abdeslam, the chief planner of the Paris attacks, fled there and found sanctuary for four months before being caught.

In short, the problem of terrorism in Europe is an internal phenomenon, not something that comes from the outside. The Europeans imported it – and, as Germany’s welcoming of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war-torn Middle East dramatizes, they are continuing to import it. Now they are living with the consequences.

In response, various right-wing populist parties have emerged in Europe that focus on stopping immigration from Muslim countries: in France, Britain, and Germany the rise of the anti-immigration movement has liberal elites in a panic. And yet these movements are for the most part exercises in futility, because that horse is already out of the barn. France, for example, is not going to deport the millions of North African Muslims who have lived in the country for a generation and more: they are French citizens. The same goes for Britain and all the former empires of Europe whose colonial adventures brought in large numbers of the colonized. Now they are learning – too late – that colonialism is a two-way street.

What Brussels also showed is that the universal surveillance championed by the War Party as a necessary corollary of the “war on terrorism” would not have stopped the attacks: the ISIS cell consisted of two brothers, which not only ensured against infiltration but also made it next to impossible for any but the most intrusive surveillance to have had any effect. Indeed, the key to stopping the attacks was intelligence – which the Belgian authorities ignored. It turns out that Brahim el-Bakraoui had been deported from Turkey and the Belgians had been warned he was dangerous. They ignored the warning.

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz claims that the Belgian authorities had “advance and precise intelligence warnings” about the attack on the airport and the subway but failed to take sufficient action to prevent them. This highlights another lesson of the Brussels attacks: the European authorities are utterly incompetent and unprepared for the challenge they face.

Beyond that, however, is a larger problem: the ISIS phenomenon is largely a creation of the Western powers and its allies in the Gulf. The Saudis, the Qataris, and the Kuwaitis have long been funding Wahabist extremism, and they are the real progenitors of the ideology that inspired the creation of al-Qaeda and ISIS. Furthermore, regime change in Syria has long been on the American-European agenda, with funding for ‘moderate” Islamist head-choppers flowing from the US Treasury directly into the pockets of extremist gangs in the region. The same enabling action took place in Libya, where – led by Hillary Clinton – the Obama administration sided with “pro-democracy” rebels who turned out to be terrorists.

With the Syrian civil war as their training ground, the ISIS recruits of Molenbeek and other similar ghettos underwent the transformation from petty criminals to battle-hardened jihadists. And now they are swarming all over Europe, with reportedly thousands of them traveling back to Belgium, France, Britain, and elsewhere to wreak havoc in the name of their newfound cause.

For us here in America, the lessons of the European tragedy are there to be learned. There is only one solution to the problem of terrorism and it doesn’t involve going abroad in search of monsters to destroy. The point is to make sure those monsters never reach our shores.

Furthermore, we must withdraw from the Middle East – a possibility that doesn’t bear the economic consequences it once did, given the creation of new technologies that make domestic oil production far easier.

We are spending billions defending and sustaining the Saudi monarchy and the Gulf states – some of the most repressive regimes in the world. And for what? The interventionists declare that America’s role as a “global leader” represents the defense of our values. But does a regime that beheads “infidels” represent American values? Indeed, there is no operative difference between the internal rule of the ISIS “caliphate” and the Saudi Kingdom. Yet we are obsessed with destroying the former and cuddling up to the latter.

It’s too late for the Europeans, who are now forced to sleep in the bed they so assiduously made. It isn’t too late for America: we can learn the lesson of Brussels if only we have the will to do so.

Link:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/03/27/lessons-of-brussels/

Got Splenda???

Seriously, get Splenda OUT of your diet if you haven't done so already

by: J. D. Heyes

It's official: Splenda is definitely bad for you.

If you've already begun to avoid most or all processed foods, choose kale instead of cake, and have even flirted with ditching all dairy products, then you're already well on your way to becoming healthier and better nourished than practically anyone else you know.

But perhaps you've not yet managed to put down all sugary drinks, enjoying a soda once in a while as a sweet "sin," and every now and then indulging in an artificial sweetener, like, say, Splenda, in your morning latte.

While these habits might seem to be fairly harmless, especially since you're only engaging in them moderately, they really aren't.

It really is time to get rid of that artificial sweetener once and for all.

As noted by Well and Good, a health and nutrition site:

"New research suggested that Splenda (which, yes, is hidden inside that bottle of Diet Pepsi) may cause serious health problems, including cancer, Eat Clean reports. A study published in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health found that mice who were fed sucralose (the main ingredient in Splenda) daily throughout their lives eventually developed leukemia and other blood cancers."

"These findings do not support previous data that sucralose is biologically inert. More studies are necessary to show the safety of sucralose, including new and more adequate carcinogenic bioassay on rats. Considering that millions of people are likely exposed, follow-up studies are urgent," researchers concluded.

These results prompted the Center for Science in the Public Interest to formally recommend that consumers avoid the artificial sweetener, though it should be noted that, until 2013, the organization still said Splenda was safe to consume.

'Not safe'

"The Center for Science in the Public Interest is downgrading sucralose, the artificial sweetener better known by the brand name Splenda, in its Chemical Cuisine guide to food additives," the center said in a press release. "The nonprofit food safety watchdog group had long rated sucralose as 'safe,' but is now placing it in the 'caution' category pending a review of an unpublished study by an independent Italian laboratory that found that the sweetener caused leukemia in mice."

"Sucralose may prove to be safer than saccharin, aspartame, and acesulfame potassium, but the forthcoming Italian study warrants careful scrutiny before we can be confident that the sweetener is safe for use in food," said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson.

Okay, so now you know that you need to shun the fake sugars, but you still don't relish the thought of having to drink your coffee bitter. Never fear – there are a host of natural sweeteners that you can use instead of the chemical laden substitutes.

As noted by NaturalNews editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, stevia is a natural sweetener that was suppressed for decades by the FDA, but which finally went mainstream in 2008.

In addition, reported Adams, a food research scientist, head of CWC Labs and author of the upcoming book, Food Forensics, stevia has also been found to be high in antioxidants that prevent the DNA damage that leads to cancer.

He also noted:

"Stevia rebaudiana is a South American shrub that grows in semi-arid areas of Brazil and Paraguay. The leaves of the plant have been used for generations as a sweetener, originally by the Guarani people and more recently throughout South America and Asia."

Pass the agave

Added Danna Norek for NaturalNews in 2010: "Stevia has no blood sugar impact, and it is virtually calorie free. The leaves of the stevia rebaudiana plant, which is the sweet variety of this plant family, are about 15 times as sweet as sugar."

Besides stevia, agave nectar is also a great natural sweetener substitute, a sweet syrup derived from the blue agave plant.

Originally, Norek reported, agave was used to make tequila and was found to also make a sweet syrup when heated for several hours.

"An important distinction between agave nectar and stevia is that agave does have an impact on the blood sugar. This impact, when compared to real sugar however, is negligible. It therefore has become a healthier sugar substitute for the health conscious," Norek reported.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053441_Splenda_artificial_sweeteners_natural_substitutes.html#ixzz44CADsQ7R

Got vaccines???

Vaccines contain DNA fragments from aborted human fetal cells and viruses that could cause both autism and cancer

by: Ethan A. Huff

The genetic material from which many viral vaccines are produced appears to be a trigger of both autism and cancer, according to shocking research compiled by a renowned molecular and cellular physiologist from Stanford University in California.

Dr. Theresa Deisher, Ph.D., who was the first person to discover adult cardiac-derived stem cells, found that residual cellular DNA from aborted babies demonstrates both oncogenic and infectious characteristics in vaccines.

Aborted human fetal tissue, it turns out, has long been used in the production of vaccines, despite the fact that traces of DNA from this tissue can persist in the final product. The consequences of this, says Dr. Deisher, can include both genetic damage and markers of autism.

"It is possible that these contaminating fragments could be incorporated into a child's genome and disrupt normal gene function, leading to autistic phenotypes," wrote Dr. Deisher in a paper titled "Spontaneous Integration of Human DNA Fragments into Host Genome."

You can access Dr. Deisher's full study here:
http://soundchoice.org [PDF].

Vaccines made from aborted fetal cells also linked to cancer

With over 19 years of experience in biotechnology and vaccine development, Dr. Deisher knows what she's talking about when it comes to vaccine science.

She's anything but the mindless anti-vaccine caricature so often mocked by the skeptics crowd, in other words, which is obsessed with disparaging anyone who questions the official religion of vaccines, a primary tenet of which says that vaccines are perfectly safe.

Dr. Deisher's extensive research into the matter clearly proves otherwise, showing that aborted human fetal cells are highly problematic both in terms of brain development and normal cellular function. Not only do vaccines made from these cell lines pose an autism risk, but they also increase one's risk of cancer.

Specifically with regard to MMR (measles, mumps, rubella), varicella (chickenpox) and hepatitis A vaccines, a statistical analysis compiled by Dr. Deisher reveals that vaccines made from human fetal cell lines, which may contain retroviral contaminants, are associated with an increased risk of both autism and cancer.

"Not only are the human fetal contaminated vaccines associated with autistic disorder throughout the world, but also with epidemic childhood leukemia and lymphomas," she added.

FDA turns blind eye to aborted human fetal cell DNA in vaccines at 200 times legal limit

Not surprisingly, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has known for decades that aborted human fetal cell DNA causes genetic mutations in humans when injected via vaccines. But the agency, which is supposed to be looking out for human health, has done nothing to withdraw these deadly jabs from the market.

In fact, when the agency came to the realization that such DNA is deadly to humans, it decided to regulate it rather than ban it. Legally speaking, the maximum amount of residual fetal cell fragments allowed in vaccines is 10 nanograms, according to the FDA, and the agency admits that even this amount is harmful.

"DNA is a biologically active molecule whose activities pose a significant risk to vaccinees," explains an FDA report on the issue. "[T]hus, the amount of DNA needs to be limited and its activities reduced."

Dr. Deisher's research, however, revealed that some vaccines currently on the market contain much more than this. She wrote that fetal DNA levels ranged from 142 ng to upwards of 2,000 ng per dose, or as much as 200 times the legal limit!

"The MMR II and chickenpox vaccines and indeed all vaccines that were propagated or manufactured using the fetal cell line WI-38 are contaminated with [HERV, or human endogenous retrovirus]," wrote Dr. Deisher, noting that this retrovirus is associated with causing childhood lymphoma.

"[B]oth parents and physicians have a right to know this."

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053455_vaccines_DNA_fragments_aborted_fetal_cells.html#ixzz44C9Szmmg

"I guess people are not supposed to notice that every terrorist attack represents a major government failure and that rewarding failure with more of the same policies only invites more failure."

A European PATRIOT Act Will Not Keep People Safe
Ron Paul

It was not long after last week’s horrifying bombings in Brussels that the so-called security experts were out warning that Europeans must give up more of their liberty so government can keep them secure from terrorism. I guess people are not supposed to notice that every terrorist attack represents a major government failure and that rewarding failure with more of the same policies only invites more failure.

I am sure a frightened population will find government promises of perfect security attractive and may be willing to allow more surveillance of their personal lives. They should pause a little beforehand and consider what their governments have done so far to keep them “safe.”

The government of France, for example, has been particularly aggressive in its Middle East policy. Then-French President Sarkozy was among the most determined proponents of “regime change” in Libya. That operation has left the country in chaos, with much of the territory controlled by an ISIS and al-Qaeda that were not there before the “liberation.” As we learned last week from Hillary Clinton’s emails, Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron were much more concerned with getting their hands on Libya’s oil after the overthrow of Gaddafi. The creation of a hotbed of terrorism that could easily make its way to Europe was not important. They wanted to secure enormously profitable deals for well-connected French and English energy companies.

Likewise, European governments have been very active in the five-year, US-led effort to overthrow the Assad government in Syria. This foolish move has boosted both ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria to the point where they nearly over-ran the country late last year. It has also led millions to flee their war-torn country for a Europe that has opened its doors with the promise of generous benefits to anyone who can make it there. Is it any surprise that so many hundreds of thousands took them up on the offer? Is it any surprise that in this incredible flood of people there may be more than a few who are interested in more than just free housing and a welfare check?

Europeans should be demanding to know why their governments provoke people in the Middle East with aggressive foreign policies, and then open the door to millions of them. Do their leaders just lack basic common sense?

Usually the so-called security experts who advise more government surveillance after a terrorist attack have a conflict of interest. They often benefit when the security state is given a bigger budget. Insecurity is the bread-and-butter of the security “experts.” But why is it that after a terrorist attack, governments are rewarded with bigger budgets and more power over people? Shouldn’t failure be punished instead of rewarded?

As in the United States, the security crisis in Europe is directly tied to bad policy. Until bad policy is changed, no amount of surveillance, racial profiling, and police harassment can make the population safer. Europeans already seem to understand this, and as we have seen in recent German elections they are abandoning the parties that promise that the same old bad policies will this time produce different results. Hopefully Americans will also stand up and demand a change in our foreign policy before bad policy leads to more terrorist violence on our shores.

Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/a-european-patriot-act-will-not-keep-people-safe.html

"...the oil markets are still wildly volatile."

What are rising gas prices really telling us?

by GS Early

While gas prices continue to rise, and the markets follow suit, there still remain some serious issues regarding oil prices. And if the markets are following oil prices, there may be a rude awakening in the near future.

The biggest headline statistic for U.S. production came out recently and noted that the U.S. rig count is the lowest it has been since 1949. That’s a stunning number.

Now some say it’s a good thing that the U.S. isn’t pumping its reserves since we’ll have them for later. Might as well use up all the Saudi oil first.

Another line of reasoning goes that shutting down U.S. supply helps raise the price of oil since there’s less oil to buy. The problem is, it’s not like turning off a spigot. Each rig has workers and each company has bank notes and lines of credit because oil exploration and production is very cash intensive. And prices are still so low that it’s not even cost-effective for most E&P firms to pump oil or prospect for oil.

It’s like preparing a barbecue for 100 people and only 30 show up. Sure, you have plenty of food for leftovers, but given the time and expense of making the food, losing 70 percent of your guests is not a good thing.

That’s what is happening now. The Saudis are pumping like crazy to keep oil cheap so that their regional nemesis Iran can’t get a decent price for its oil and Iraqi oil also has a hard time being profitable. It also is trying to shut down the U.S. energy patch. And its strategy is working.

There’s no way to put lipstick on this pig. Even if prices rise another 20 percent from here, it’s not going to do any good for U.S. production or anyone else. And the other more disturbing reality is, demand for oil isn’t growing fast enough anywhere in the world to keep prices rising.

And it’s not just the U.S. energy industry that’s having troubles. Akers is a Norwegian firm that drills in the Brent North Sea as well as other places around the globe. It has cut 20 percent of its sub-sea division (basically its offshore operations) in the past year.

The mainstream media will tell you that Russia is playing nice in Syria, but the truth is Russia has pulled its troops out of Syria for the most part because it can’t afford the war. Commodity prices are just too low.

And in the U.S., one of the U.S. oil patch’s top E&P companies is teetering on filing Chapter 11. Linn Energy (LINE) was a domestic energy darling just three years ago, trading around $40 a share. Now, it’s trading at 57 cents a share.

As an MLP, LINE was throwing off a great dividend as well. That left a long time ago.

There is also another story about four firms that were drilling in the Permian Basin that owe their workers $1.6 million in back pay.

And there have been plenty of analysts that predict 30 percent to 50 percent of the current E&P companies won’t be around in two years – and that’s not because of mergers. It’s because of bankruptcies.

The point is, the oil markets are still wildly volatile.

There’s talk now that OPEC may freeze production in April, which will help rally oil and the markets. But don’t believe it.

There are plenty of emerging opportunities in the energy patch, but right now it’s like trying to catch a falling knife. Don’t do it. There will be plenty of time to take advantage of oil’s rise, so trying to time it is going to get you trouble.

For now, keep your powder dry and wait for a real opportunity to move in once the sector has washed out the weak and the strong begin rising.

Link:
http://personalliberty.com/what-are-rising-gas-prices-really-telling-us/

Let's hope so...

The End of America’s Two-Party System May Be upon Us

By Chris “Kilila” Perrin

There’s a reason most parliamentary and presidential democracies have more than two political parties, and both Trump and Sanders are examples of why. Both nominee-hopefuls have increasingly come to represent polar opposites of the singular problem that the American two-party political system is suffering from Stagnation.

With only two parties, what this presidential race is showing is that there has been a tendency for those parties to become static and unbending in their policy, stance, and platform. Historically, one or both of the parties must then break, either because the progressive edges within the party force it apart, or voters start to see the party as inflexible and obsolete. It has happened before in the U.S., and it looks like it is happening again. The recent increase in voters registering as independent, as well as the parallel growth of independent candidates, is a good example of the level of dissatisfaction people and politicians now have with the GOP and Democratic Party. It is also an indication that American democracy is changing. Again.

The inclusion of Sanders in the Democratic Party, Trump in the Republican, and the cataclysmic portrayal of them both in the media, has only confused the issue. This is particularly noticeable as Trump is often blamed for the imminent demise of the GOP as a relevant institution. With both candidates running for the nomination of their respective parties, the GOP and the Democratic Party appear internally fractured, split on major issues and confused as to their directions. This can only be the case in a two-party system.

As a country with a long history of a two-party system, these internal party divisions can feel like a breakdown of sorts. In a multi-party system, however, the issue would not be so destabilizing. Although a multi-party democracy does have the down side of sometimes appearing to have too many parties and politicians to choose from, space exists within the system to have the centre-left (Democratic Party) and centre-right (GOP) represented while far-left and -right candidates don’t tear the centrist parties apart from within.

Whatever the new face of democracy in America, and whatever the future implications of the 2016 election, what is clear is that Americans are no longer content to be represented by parties too close together at the center of the political spectrum. At the very least, the fact that Trump and Sanders have gained so much traction throughout their respective nomination bids is a clear indication that the U.S. will not become a single-party state any time soon. That is, at least, something to be happy about.

Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/03/no_author/end-americas-2-party-system/

"By any historical definition, the United States today is a tyranny."

Does The United States Still Exist?

An address delivered to the Libertarian Party of Florida on March 23, 2016 in Destin, Florida

By Paul Craig Roberts

To answer the question that is the title, we have to know of what the US consists. Is it an ethnic group, a collection of buildings and resources, a land mass with boundaries, or is it the Constitution. Clearly what differentiates the US from other countries is the US Constitution. The Constitution defines us as a people. Without the Constitution, we would be a different country. Therefore, to lose the Constitution is to lose the country.

Does the Constitution still exist? Let us examine the document and come to a conclusion.

The Constitution consists of a description of a republic with three independent branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, each with its own powers, and the Bill of Rights incorporated as constitutional amendments. The Bill of Rights describes the civil liberties of citizens that cannot be violated by the government.

Article I of the Constitution describes legislative powers. Article II describes executive powers, and Article III describes the power of the judiciary. For example, Article I, Section 1 gives all legislative powers to Congress. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress the power to declare war.

The Bill of Rights protects citizens from the government by making the law a shield of the people rather than a weapon in the hands of the government.

The First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, the press, and assembly or public protest.

The Second Amendment gives the people the right “to keep and bear arms.”

The Third Amendment has to do with the quartering of soldiers on civilians, a large complaint against King George III, but not a practice of present-day armies.

The Fourth Amendment grants “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” and prevents the issue of warrants except “upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” The Fourth Amendment prevents police and prosecutors from going on “fishing expeditions” in an effort to find some offense with which to charge a targeted individual.

The Fifth Amendment prohibits double jeopardy, self-incrimination, the taking of life, liberty, or property without due process and the prohibition of seizing property without just compensation.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees speedy and public trial requires that a defendant be informed of the charge against him and to be confronted with the witnesses, to present witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of an attorney.

The Seventh Amendment gives the right to trial by jury to civil suits.

The Eighth Amendment prevents excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments.

The Ninth Amendment says that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution does not deny or disparage others retained by the people. In other words, people have rights in addition to the those listed in the proscriptions against the government’s use of abusive power.

The Tenth Amendment reserves the rights not delegated to the federal government to the states.

The Tenth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. The Third Amendment protects against an abandoned abusive practice of government. The Seventh Amendment is still relevant as it allows damages in civil suits to be determined by a jury, once a protection against unfairness and today not always the case.

The other seven amendments comprise the major protections of civil liberty. I will examine them in turn, but first let’s look at Section 1 and Section 8 of Article I. These two articles describe the major powers of Congress, and both articles have been breached. The Constitution’s grant of “all legislative powers” to Congress has been overturned by executive orders and signing statements. The president can use executive orders to legislate, and he can use signing statements to render sections of laws passed by Congress and signed by the president into non-enforced status. Legislative authority has also been lost by delegating to executive branch officials the power to write the regulations that implement the laws that are passed. The right that Section 8 gives to Congress to declare war has been usurped by the executive branch. Thus, major powers given to Congress have been lost to the executive branch.

The First Amendment has been compromised by executive branch claims of “national security” and by extensive classification. Whistleblowers are relentlessly prosecuted despite federal laws protecting them. The right of assembly and public protest are overturned by arrests, tear gas, clubs, rubber bullets, water cannons, and jail terms. Free speech is also limited by political correctness and taboo topics. Dissent shows signs of gradually becoming criminalized.

The Fourth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. In its place, we have warrantless searches, SWAT team home invasions, strip and cavity searches, warrantless seizures of computers and cell phones, and the loss of all privacy to warrantless universal spying.

The Fifth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. The criminal justice system relies on self-incrimination as plea bargains are self-incrimination produced by psychological torture, and plea bargains are the basis of conviction in 97% of all felony cases. Moreover, physical torture is a feature of the “war on terror” despite its illegality under both US statute and international law and is also experienced by inmates in the US prison system.

The Fifth Amendment’s protection against deprivation of life, liberty, and property without due process of law has been lost to indefinite detention, executive assassination, and property takings without compensation. The Racketer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) passed in 1970. The act permits asset freezes, which are takings. The Comprehensive Forfeiture Act passed in 1984 and permits police to confiscate property on “probable cause,” which often means merely the presence of cash.

The Sixth Amendment is a dead letter amendment. Prosecutors routinely withhold exculpatory evidence, and judges at prosecutors’ requests have limited attorneys’ ability to defend clients.The “war on terror” has introduced secret evidence and secret witnesses, making it impossible for a defendant and his attorney to defend against the evidence.

The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of excessive bail and torture are routinely violated. It is another dead letter amendment.

It is paradoxical that every civil liberty in the Bill of Rights has been lost to a police state except for the Second Amendment, the gun rights of citizens. An armed citizenry is inconsistent with a police state, which the US now is.

Other aspects of our legal protections have been overturned, such as the long-standing rule that crime requires intent. William Blackstone wrote: “An unwarrantable act without a vicious will is no crime at all.” But today we have crimes without intent. You can commit a crime and not even know it. See for example, Harvey Silverglate, Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.

Attorney-client privilege has been lost. The indictment, prosecution, and imprisonment of defense attorney Lynne Stewart is a good example. The DOJ prevailed on her to defend a blind Muslim regarded by the DOJ as a “terrorist.” She was informed that “special administrative measures” had been applied to her client. She received a letter from the federal prosecutor informing her that she and her client would not be permitted attorney-client privilege and that she was required to permit the government to listen to her conversations with her client. She was told that she could not carry any communications from her client to the outside world. She regarded all this as illegal nonsense and proceeded to defend her client in accordance with attorney-client privilege. Lynne Stewart was convicted of violating a letter written by a prosecutor as if the prosecutor’s letter were a law passed by Congress and present in the US code. Based on a prosecutor’s letter, Lynne Stewart was sentenced to prison. No law exists that upholds her imprisonment.

Our civil liberties are often said to be “natural rights” to which we are entitled. However, in historical fact civil liberty is a human achievement that required centuries of struggle. The long struggle for an accountable law that culminated in the Glorious Revolution in England in the late 17th century can be traced back to Alfred the Great’s codification of English common law in the 9th century and to the Magna Carta in the early 13th century. Instead of issuing kingly edicts, Alfred based law on the traditional customs and behavior of the people. The Glorious Revolution established the supremacy of the people over the law and held the king and government accountable to the law. The United States and other former British colonies inherited this accomplishment, an accomplishment that makes the law a shield of the people and not a weapon in the hands of the state.

Today law as a shield of the people has been lost. The loss was gradual over time and culminated in the George W. Bush and Obama regime assaults on habeas corpus and due process. Lawrence Stratton and I explain how the law was lost in our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions. Beginning with Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century, liberals saw the protective shield of law as a constraint on the government’s ability to do good. Bentham redefined liberty as the freedom of government from restraint, not the freedom of people from government. Bentham’s influence grew over time until in our own day, to use the words of Sir Thomas More in A man for All Seasons, the law was cut down so as to better chase after devils.

We cut down the law so that we could better chase after the Mafia.

We cut down the law so that we could better chase after drug users.

We cut down the law so that we could better chase after child abusers.

We cut down the law so that we could better chase after “terrorists.”

We cut down the law so that we could better chase after whistleblowers.

We cut down the law so that we could better cover up the government’s crimes.

Today the law is cut down. Any one of us can be arrested on bogus charges and be helpless to do anything about it.

There is very little concern in legal circles about this. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) does attempt to defend civil liberty. However, just as often the ACLU is not defending the civil liberties in the Bill of Rights that protect us from the abuse of government power, but newly invented “civil rights” that are not in the Constitution, such as “abortion rights,” the right to homosexual marriage, and rights to preferential treatment for preferred minorities.

An attack on abortion rights, for example, produces a far greater outcry and resistance than the successful attack on habeas corpus and due process. President Obama was able to declare his power to execute citizens by executive branch decision alone without due process and conviction in court, and it produced barely audible protest.

Historically, a government that can, without due process, throw a citizen into a dungeon or summarily execute him is considered to be a tyranny, not a democracy. By any historical definition, the United States today is a tyranny.

Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/03/paul-craig-roberts/united-states-still-exist/

"The lack of peace that the world has seen since 1945 can be laid at the feet of the militarization of the United States."

By Their Fruits You Will Know Them

By Bionic Mosquito

Matthew 7: 15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.”

It is generally accepted by historians that the Paris treaties at the end of the Great War – and especially the Versailles (so-called) Treaty imposed upon Germany – directly contributed to the Second World War. The treaties further earn criticism for events of calamity even today.

These treaties certainly deserve criticism. I do not intend to provide even a sample list. I only suggest juxtaposing the resultant “peace” after the Great War with that created after the inevitable World War II that followed twenty years later. Further, I intend to consider the process by which peace was made in each case.

At Versailles, three relatively great powers (Britain, France, and the United States) were in control, more or less, of the process. That there were three necessitated many compromises amongst them – where would lines be drawn on maps, where would elections be held to determine government power, which factions from which regions would have a seat at the table, which of the numerous and conflicting promises made during the war would now be respected?

The answers were derived via these compromises. No one government was in charge, no single entity could control or dictate the outcomes. One could (if feeling overly generous) suggest that this necessity of compromise contributed to the disasters that followed. Whatever blame there was to come out of these treaties was (and is) to be apportioned. Who to blame? It is all gray.

There is nothing gray about who imposed the “peace” after World War II. As described by Ted Grimsrud in The Good War That Wasn’t – and Why it Matters:

When the Japanese gave up the fight in August 1945, the United States stood as the world’s one great global power.

Grimsrud looks also at the Soviet Union, left standing at the time. In the Soviet Union, he sees a country that has lost tens of millions in the war with industrial production significantly harmed; the United States lost relatively few men in the war and came out of the war with industrial production completely intact – a uniquely powerful position among virtually all industrialized countries around the world.

The Soviet Union was also basically a land army, confined to the geographic regions which it had occupied during the war. In the meantime, the US had those land forces surrounded – east, west, north, and south – with strategic naval and air force capacity sufficient to encompass the globe.

So the answer to the world’s main question – what kind of peace will follow this terrible war? – lay largely in America’s hands.

Of all of the powers in the war, the world had reason to hope due to the fact that it was America in this position – far better than the Soviets, Nazis, or Japanese. The world had in mind the statements in the Atlantic Charter, as just one example, of the moral high ground that America seemingly stood upon.

The Charter stated the ideal goals of the war: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people, self-determination; restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, as well as disarmament of aggressor nations.

The world saw sheep’s clothing. Yet, was there something underneath? Wolf or sheep, how does one know? By their fruits.

What “fruits” were born from this tree?

The Pentagon

Groundbreaking was on September 11, 1941 (a coincidence worth pursuing at another time, perhaps). As an aside, it should be obvious that this was three months before Pearl Harbor. Leslie Groves led the project for the army – if you don’t recognize his name from one of his other pursuits, just wait a few paragraphs and I will come to this.

Intended to be temporary – during the duration of the war – it became a permanent military fixture of the type unknown in America’s history. Symbolically (or maybe not) it was placed across the river and away from the civilian powers of government.

At the end of earlier wars, America significantly demobilized – not to the pre-war condition, but still meaningfully. Perhaps more important than the physical demobilization after World War One was the psychological demobilization – during much of the 1920s and 1930s, the peace and non-interventionist movements in the United States were quite pronounced.

Not so after World War Two. In 1947, the National Security Act formalized the country’s commitment to an unprecedented level of military presence. The Department of War – “war” suggesting a temporary condition – became the Department of Defense. Who could argue with the ongoing and perpetual need for “defense,” after all? All branches of the military now came under this one umbrella.

And the umbrella now had a permanent station on the other side of the Potomac River.

The Nuclear Weapons Program

The Manhattan Project was launched on October 9, 1941 – yes, two months prior to Pearl Harbor. The aforementioned Leslie Groves led this project once his work constructing the Pentagon was complete. While the project was kept secret from the American people, Stalin was well-apprised of the situation given the level of infiltration by Soviet spies.

The regular threat of the use of such weapons is one of the further legacies of the War. Grimsrud offers that the direction taken globally toward greatly furthering nuclear weapons development after the war was well within the US power to influence. The US chose massive nuclear armament.

That the Americans had the weapon, used the weapon when it was not necessary (or even contrary) to any military purpose, and built hundreds more before the Soviets had more than a handful offered enough reason for the Soviets to greatly expand their program and for other countries to wish to be so armed.

Citing Joseph Gerson, Grimsrud offers:

On at least 30 occasions since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, every US president has prepared and/or threatened to initiate nuclear war during international crisis, confrontations, and wars – primarily in the third world. And while insisting that all other nations fulfill their Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations (India being one exception, and Israel, which has not signed the NPT, falling into a category of its own), the US government has never been serious about its Article VI obligation to engage in “good faith” negotiations for the complete elimination of nuclear programs.

Disarmament being one of the commitments made in the Atlantic Charter…

Everything about the nuclear weapons program was done in secret – at least for the American people. There have been untold and numerous “secret” military and weapons programs since this first major secret program was launched – secrecy making a mockery of meaningful democracy.

Central Intelligence Agency

The child of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), itself born during the war, the CIA was given permanence in the aforementioned National Security Act of 1947.

The OSS was more or less (really mostly more) a failure in its efforts during the war. Roosevelt commissioned a report to understand the effectiveness of this entity:

The report concluded that the OSS had done “serious harm to the citizens, business interests, and national interests of the United States.” It could not find any examples of how the OSS had contributed to winning the war, only examples of failure.

Grimsrud offers several examples of failures during the war, including infiltration of the organization by German spies. Apparently Truman was set to disband the OSS, deciding this on September 20, 1945. Of course, the agency didn’t go down without a fight.

Due to the increase of advocates for a confrontation with the Soviet Union (the Pentagon, after all, required a mission), Truman quickly changed his tune and appointed a “director of central intelligence” in January 1946. It was a short jump from there to permanence in 1947.

The CIA basically failed every step of the way: it had no idea about the Soviet atomic bomb until it was actually tested; it offered little insight into the conflict that became the Korean War; several months after the war began, it concluded that the Chinese had not gathered in force, preparing to chase MacArthur almost completely off of the peninsula; even two days before the Chinese attacked, the CIA said such an attack was unlikely.

Eisenhower, given much too much credit for his warnings upon leaving the office of the military-industrial complex, gave the CIA wings. Overthrowing the government of Iran then of Guatemala; the attempted overthrow of the government in Indonesia; the covert self-destructive engagement in Vietnam during the 1950s.

The CIA claimed that the Soviets would have 500 ICBMs ready to strike by 1961. In fact, Moscow had…four. But such “analysis” gave further fuel to both the Pentagon and the nuclear weapons program.

The Cold War Takes Flight

In a speech on March 12, 1947, President Truman announced that the United States would offer military assistance to interests in Turkey and Greece that were struggling with forces aligned with the Communist Party.

Communism was to be the enemy, always and everywhere; military support would be offered to fight this enemy; most importantly, the US was demonstrably taking over the role previously played by the British as the main global empire.

Shortly thereafter (in 1949), NATO was born. Since the end of the cold war, “terrorism” has taken the place of “communism” as the global enemy.

Perpetual War

Since 1945, the United States has been almost continuously at war – Wikipedia identifies 145 separate entries for the US during this time period. Some of the lowlights include: Korea (1950 – 1953); Vietnam (1955 – 1975, inclusive of all years with advisors); Bay of Pigs, Cuba (1961); Laos (1962 – 1975); Dominican Republic (1965); Iraq (1991 – present); Former Yugoslavia (1992 – 1996); Afghanistan (2001 – present); Yemen (2010 – present); Libya (2011); Syria (2014 – present).

This says nothing of other CIA- and NGO-driven activities.

Conclusion

After two great wars, it is fair to suggest that much of the industrialized world had grown tired of this method of solving disagreements; this is evidenced in the creation of regional and global bodies designed (however poorly) to maintain peace and improve trade.

Instead of utilizing the possibilities offered by this reality, the United States government has either utilized these bodies to further war or ignored these bodies if they stood in the way of war. In almost every situation, the United States government took specific steps to increase tension and confrontation.

The lack of peace that the world has seen since 1945 can be laid at the feet of the militarization of the United States.

Matthew 7:20 “Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/03/bionic-mosquito/fruits-will-know/

Social media and Orwellian society...

The New Big Brother:How Social Media isCreating an 'Orwellian'Society

Social media platforms such as Facebook are having a "chilling effect" on the everyday behavior of young people, who are increasingly altering their actions amid concerns they are under constant surveillance from online friends, researchers have told Sputnik.

Joint research conducted by academics from the University of Edinburgh Business School, the University of Bath and the University of Birmingham have uncovered previously held concerns about how social media is affecting the lives of young, impressionable users.

Following in-depth interviews with a number of 19-22-year-old Britons, the study found that many Facebook users were self-censoring their day-to-day lives, known as a "chilling effect" to avoid disapproval from online friends.

"The vast majority of the ones that participated in the study had been, to an extent, chilling their behavior, due to the fear of what would go online," Dr Ben Marder, researcher from the University of Edinburgh Business School, told Sputnik...

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/society/20160323/1036833387/big-brother-social-media.html#ixzz43omc85V8

The real culprits...

Terror victims’ blood on the hands of Obama, Hillary, the neocon war machine and its proxies

by Bob Livingston

The U.S. along with NATO and Israel and Arab partners Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE, created ISIS and provided it with funding, training and materiel. This was done to facilitate the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya and Bashar Assad in Syria.

ISIS was given a base of operations in Iraq and Libya from which to spawn after the U.S. and NATO took out the leaders of those countries, creating a vacuum of destruction, death and chaos. This policy was heartily endorsed by not just the neocon war machine, but also President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

ISIS took credit for Tuesday’s terror attack in Brussels. The governments of Belgium, France and the U.S. all blamed ISIS for the attacks.

The suspects in the Belgium attacks were know to European counterterrorism officials beforehand. The suspected bomb maker was one of two men in a car found to be carrying fake passports after a stop by Hungarian police last September. The other man in the car was a terror suspect killed in a raid in Brussels last week.

NATO and the aforementioned Arab nations are itching for a full-scale war to overthrow Assad. The Brussels attack may or may not have been a false flag to use to agitate for stepped up attacks on Syria. But some regimes are already using it as a clarion call for more hostile action against ISIS in Syria, which would lead to attacks on Syrian forces.

Regardless, the blood of those killed and wounded in Brussels — and everywhere else ISIS-inspired terror attacks have taken place or soon will – is on the hands of Obama, the witch from Chappaqua, the neocon war machine and its European and Arab proxies.

Authorities seeking suspects should be looking first in the capitals of those nations.

Link:
http://personalliberty.com/terror-victims-blood-on-the-hands-of-obama-hillary-the-neocon-war-machine-and-its-proxies/

Dispelling the trade deficit myth...

Trade Deficit Angst

By Walter E. Williams

Let’s look at the political angst over trade deficits. A trade deficit is when people in one country buy more from another country than the other country’s people buy from them. There cannot be a trade deficit in a true economic sense. Let’s examine this.

I buy more from my grocer than he buys from me. That means I have a trade deficit with my grocer. My grocer buys more from his wholesaler than his wholesaler buys from him. But there is really no trade imbalance, whether my grocer is down the street, in Canada or, God forbid, in China.

Here is what happens: When I purchase $100 worth of groceries, my goods account (groceries) rises, but my capital account (money) falls by $100. For my grocer, it is the opposite. His goods account falls by $100, but his capital account rises by $100. Looking at only the goods account, we would see trade deficits, but if we included the capital accounts, we would see a trade balance. That is true whether we are talking about domestic trade or we are talking about foreign trade.

The uninformed buys into the mercantilist creed that trade deficits are bad and trade surpluses are good. My George Mason University colleague Donald Boudreaux wrote a blog post titled “If Trade Surpluses are So Great, the 1930s Should Have Been a Booming Decade” (http://tinyurl.com/zh559n8). The U.S. had a current account trade surplus in nine of the 10 years of the Great Depression, with 1936 being the lone exception. The fact of the matter is that our nation has registered current account deficits throughout most of our history, from 1790 right up to our modern period (http://tinyurl.com/jczqrhu). Over that interval, we went from being a poor, relatively weak nation to the richest and most powerful nation in the history of mankind. So if, as our fearmongers would have it, current account deficits are so harmful, how did we accomplish that feat? Economies are far too complex to draw simple-minded causal connections between trade deficits and surpluses and economic welfare and growth.

International trade operates under the same general principles as domestic trade. When we, as consumers, purchase goods from China and the Chinese do not spend a like amount for goods from us, there is a current account deficit. In 2015, Americans purchased $482 billion worth of goods from China. The Chinese purchased only $116 billion worth of goods from us, producing a current account deficit with China of $366 billion.

Now, here is my question to you: Do you think the Chinese are so charmed with green slips of paper with pictures of Benjamin Franklin that they just hoard them? No way. Instead of purchasing tangible goods, the Chinese purchase capital goods — such as corporate stocks, bonds and U.S. Treasury debt instruments. The Chinese purchase more capital goods from us than we purchase of the same from them. That means the deficit on our current account is matched by the surplus on our capital account.

A large portion of the surplus in our capital account consists of U.S. Treasury debt instruments held by foreigners. As of the first quarter of 2015, the Chinese held nearly $1.2 trillion in U.S. Treasurys. Japan’s holdings were slightly higher. European countries combined held over $1.5 trillion. Some politicians gripe about all the U.S. debt held by foreigners. Only a politician can have that kind of impudence. Guess who is creating the debt instruments that the Chinese and other foreigners hold. If you said it is our profligate Congress, go to the head of the class. If foreigners did not purchase so much of our debt, we would be worse off because the Federal Reserve Bank and the Treasury would create an inflation and there would be higher interest rates.

I fear that the angst over trade deficits is simply a front for being against peaceful, voluntary trade among people of different nations.

Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/03/walter-e-williams/trade-deficit-doesnt-matter/

"As we have seen time and time again, the U.S. government’s crusade against evil regimes only produces more death, suffering, destruction, and loss of liberty for everyone."

Do They Hate Belgium for Its Freedom and Values?
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Repeating myself sometimes gets tired and tiresome, but when it comes to the endless stream of innocent people who continue to be killed in terrorist attacks, it’s important to do so. Until enough people realize the root cause of the ongoing and never-ending death and destruction and decide to do something about it, the death and destruction will continue indefinitely into the future.

As I have written so many times in the past, especially since the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. national-security state has been the greatest terrorist producing machine in history. It is impossible to come up with a bigger one, no matter how far you go back into history.

When the Cold War was going on, Americans weren’t concerned about terrorism. Oh sure, there might have been domestic terrorism inside certain countries, especially ones in which there were tyrannical regimes or internal grievances, but there certainly wasn’t the international, cross-border terrorism that we see today.

That’s because the national-security state had a different official enemy — communism and the Soviet Union. Every American — indeed, every citizen of every Western country — was exhorted to be afraid that communism and the Soviets were coming to get them. Everyone’s mindset was expected to orient itself toward the anti-communist crusade.

So, not surprisingly, the Pentagon’s budget soared. So did the CIA’s. They were the only things standing, we were told, between freedom and a communist takeover of the United States. That’s how tens of thousands of Americans ended up dying in Korea and Vietnam. That’s how we ended up with a U.S. sponsored invasion, embargo, assassination, terrorism, and sabotage against Cuba. That’s how we ended up with coups and other regime-change operations in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Indonesia, Congo, and many others.

The communists. The communists. The communists. That’s what gripped the hearts and minds of the American people for 45 years.

At no time during this entire process were Americans scared of terrorism and Muslims. They were scared only of communists, the official enemy of the U.S. national-security state, which is a type of governmental apparatus that is inherent to totalitarian, dictatorial regimes.

How did Americans end up with a national-security state? They were told that it was necessary for America to embrace this totalitarian structure — on a “temporary” basis only, of course — in order to defeat the national-security state totalitarian structure of the Soviet Union.

In fact, when the U.S. national-security state partnered with extremist Muslims in Afghanistan during the Cold War, when it was the Soviet Union doing the occupying of Afghanistan, Americans cheered. They liked that. There was certainly no fear of Osama bin Laden and others of his ilk at that time. He was on our side.

It was only after the Cold War suddenly and unexpectedly ended that the Pentagon and the CIA were forced with the challenge of finding a new official enemy. With no official enemy, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to explain why the entire national-security establishment was needed. After all, don’t forget: this totalitarian apparatus came into existence after World War II, with the Cold War as its sole justification. No more Cold War naturally meant no more national-security establishment.

At first the Pentagon and the CIA said: Please leave us be. We can fight the drug war. We can fight for American business interests overseas. We’re still important even with no Cold War.

But they knew that wasn’t enough. After 45 years of ever-increasing military spending (and taxation), too many people were talking about a “peace dividend.”

So, in a brilliant ploy, the national-security state went into the Middle East and began killing people. And continued killing people. It turned into one of the most massive killing sprees in history. We don’t know the exact number of people they’ve killed but it’s got to range well over a million.

There were the thousands of Iraqis killed in the Persian Gulf War. There were the hundreds of thousands of children — yes, children! — killed by the brutal U.S. sanctions against Iraq. There were the countless Iraqis killed in the enforcement of the no-fly zones over Iraq.

On top of those deaths were the stationing of troops near Islamic holy lands, the partnerships with brutal and oppressive Middle East dictatorships, and the unconditional financial and military support given the Israeli government.

U.S. officials had to know that all of this was going to produce blowback. In fact, Blowback was the title of the pre-9/11 book by Chalmers Johnson, the former consultant for the CIA. He said that if the U.S. government did not stop its death machine in the Middle East, there would ultimately be terrorist attacks on American soil.

Johnson wasn’t the only one. Here at FFF, we were publishing articles before 9/11 saying the same thing.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. There had already been terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, on the USS Cole, and on the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. When Ramzi Yousef, one of the WTC terrorists in 1993 was arrested and brought to the United States, he angrily cited the U.S. government’s death machine as the motivating factor in his act of terrorism.

It has been no different with all the other anti-American terrorist attacks — 9/11, Fort Hood, Detroit, and all the rest. The terrorists all consistently cite the U.S. death machine in the Middle East as the motivating factor.

So, what do U.S. officials do after 9/11? They do more of the same! They go on an even bigger killing spree! They invade Iraq, a country that never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. They torture and abuse people who did nothing against the United States. They kill people for more than 10 years. They destroy their country. And they don’t even keep count of the dead.

The same for Afghanistan. They kill wedding parties. They drop bombs everywhere. They kill and kill and kill. Ninety nine percent of the people they’ve killed had nothing to do with 9/11.

Throughout the death and destruction, whenever someone retaliated with terrorism, the response has always been the same: “They just hate us for our freedom and values. This has nothing to do with our 25-year killing spree in the Middle East and Afghanistan.”

And they’ve then used the terrorist attacks to justify an expansion of the killing spree, which then brings more acts of terrorism, which brings a greater expansion of the killing spree, which then brings more acts of terrorism.

It’s the greatest racket in history. It guarantees ever-growing budgets for the military and the CIA. It guarantees a perpetual cycle of killing and terrorism. It is much better than the Cold War, which the Pentagon and the CIA have, interestingly enough, now succeeded in reviving with their provocations in Ukraine, the South China Sea, and Korea.

Notice how the racket works: They effect a regime change in Iraq, which kills untold numbers of people. That incites a civil war involving ISIS, which is composed largely of former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the regime that an outside imperialist power ousted in an invasion against a country that never attacked the United States.

ISIS now becomes a new official enemy, replacing al Qaeda, the organization consisting of former extremist Muslims who the U.S. national-security state was partnering with in Afghanistan when it was the Soviets doing the occupying of that country.

We’re now told that ISIS is the greatest threat to “national security” ever. If the U.S. doesn’t kill ISIS, it will come to the United States and take over the federal government and the IRS. It’s a bigger threat than communism, we’re told.

So, they keep killing and killing and killing, this time in the name of killing ISIS, the latest new official enemy.

ISIS then responds with a terrorist attack on people in France, another colonialist power who won’t leave people in the Middle East alone, especially in the former French colony of Syria.

Belgium arrests one of the terrorists who committed the attacks in France.

ISIS bombs innocent people in Belgium.

Belgian, French, and U.S. officials exclaim, “They just hate us all for our freedom and values,” acting as though the ongoing U.S. death machine in the Middle East has nothing to do with this never-ending, perpetual cycle of death and destruction.

Meanwhile, we have the predictable response: Destroy the civil liberties of the citizenry. Use the terrorist attacks as the excuse for more oppression at home. Assassination. Torture. Secret Surveillance. Indefinite incarceration. Secret prison camps. Rendition. The U.S. has led the way in the destruction of civil liberties and personal and financial privacy. All to keep us “safe” from the enemies its death machine has produced.

I repeat what I have stated for 25 years: If Americans want to restore a peaceful, harmonious, and prosperous society to our land, there is but one solution: Stop the death machine. Stop it and dismantle it.

“But Jacob, what about ISIS? What if it takes over Iraq or Syria?”

So what? Is one more regime that hates the U.S. government going to mean an invasion and conquest of the United States? North Korea’s government hates the U.S government. Does that mean it’s going to invade and conquer the United States? So does Venezuela’s government. And Bolivia’s government. And many others. It doesn’t mean anything insofar as the existence of the United States is concerned.

Sure, those tyrannical regimes are not good for the people who live under them, but that’s no business of the U.S. government. That’s the business of people who live in those countries. As we have seen time and time again, the U.S. government’s crusade against evil regimes only produces more death, suffering, destruction, and loss of liberty for everyone.

After all, just look at what their crusade against Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein has produced. What better evidence than that?

The U.S. government’s death machine caused enough death, damage, and destruction. When does it stop? It stops when the U.S. government stops killing people in the Middle East. It stops when it brings its troops home and discharges them. It stops when enough Americans demand that it stop.

Link:
http://fff.org/2016/03/23/hate-belgium-freedom-values/

Follow the money...

Hillary embraces Obama’s green agenda

by John Myers

“There is no way that we can predict the weather six months ahead beyond giving the seasonal average.” ― Stephen Hawking, “Black Holes and Baby Universes.”

Never mind that 18 months ago prominent American leaders were saying that ISIS was the greatest threat to Western civilization.

So certain is President Barack Obama of the climate change threat that his administration made a first installment on a $3 billion climate change pledge on March 8. The remaining $2.5 billion promised will be paid by the Obama administration at a later date.

The $500 million payment to the Green Climate Fund was seen as critical to re-establishing international confidence that President Barack Obama could deliver on climate change promises. The President’s ability to meet his pledges made at the United Nations’ climate change conference in Paris in late 2015, where almost all of his emphasis was climate change and not the then-still-fresh Paris massacre at the hands of ISIS that had occurred a few streets away.

Obama has spent weeks discussing climate initiatives. Some were nixed by the Supreme Court which placed a stay last month on the centerpiece of Obama’s climate plan to cut emissions from power plants until circuit court reviews and Supreme Court appeals are exhausted.

Obama couldn’t care less what the high court says if it opposes his policies. Obama’s priority is his future legacy which he hopes will match his achievements to those of men like Martin Luther King Jr.

Democrats and hypocrites

For its April 2016 issue, The Atlantic has a cover with a photo of Obama on it. It mostly discusses his foreign and military policy actions of 2014 as if he were the military master. Also in The Atlantic article is an admission from two years ago that Obama was reluctant to use the military in Syria and that reluctance earned him the ire of the Pentagon.

For some foreign-policy experts, even within his own administration, Obama’s about-face on enforcing the Syrian red line on chemical weapons was a dispiriting moment in which he displayed irresolution and naïveté, and did lasting damage to America’s standing in the world.

“Once the commander in chief draws that red line,” Leon Panetta, who served as CIA director and then as secretary of defense in Obama’s first term, told The Atlantic, “then I think the credibility of the commander in chief and this nation is at stake if he doesn’t enforce it.” Right after Obama’s reversal, Hillary Clinton said privately, “If you say you’re going to strike, you have to strike. There’s no choice.”

Ah, yes, Hillary could easily be as bad as or even a worse than Obama. She and her egotistical husband have an abysmal economic plan, a dreadful energy play and a costly and dreadful environmental scheme. And Clinton is being driven to the left by a serious challenge from a democratic socialist in Bernie Sanders.

There is no better evidence of Clinton’s lurch to the left and unflappable support for the “green” agenda than her own campaign website. There her stated goals are “designed to deliver on the pledge President Obama made at the Paris climate conference last December — without relying on climate deniers in Congress to pass new legislation” and to create an ultra-green planet. In many ways Hillary is loyal to the leadership not of husband Bill, but instead to Obama and his green agenda, where over-the-top funding is doled out for technologies like life-time batteries and solar energy which currently are far from feasible.

Clinton brags at her current site that she will:
•Create good-paying jobs by making the United States the clean energy superpower of the 21st century.
•Set national goals to have 500 million solar panels installed; generate enough renewable energy to power every home in America; cut energy waste in homes, schools, and hospitals by a third; and reduce American oil consumption by a third.
•Lead the world in the fight against climate change by bringing greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below what they were in 2005 within the next decade—and keep going.”

In November Clinton summed up her goal for a cleaner world:

Climate change is an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time — and Hillary Clinton has a plan to tackle it by making America the world’s clean energy superpower, taking bold steps to slash carbon pollution at home and around the world, and ensuring no Americans are left out or left behind as we rapidly build a clean energy economy.

Tops the list

Please forgive me, but of all I’ve seen from those pushing a green agenda, this is the most shocking. It is from March 15, 2016, Washington Times titled: Skewed justice – Obama lawyers would deny free speech to climate skeptics.

The Times writes:

Scientists don’t use the term “consensus,” despite the regular use of the term by politicians who promote government-mandated action to stop alleged human-caused climate change. The scientific method has little space for opinion, and no room at all for the democratic process. Yet it’s that “consensus” that has U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch investigating whether the Justice Department can and should sue scientists and others who question the human-caused climate change assumptions. Last week, Ms. Lynch testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that she has discussed the potential for bringing civil action against those who question human-caused climate change science, who include esteemed scientists — Nobel laureates among them.

My wife would probably tell you I’m a short ways from normal but we are all in a lot of trouble when it’s the president and his top law enforcement official determining that global warming is a fact and any with dissenting opinions are subject to incarceration. I’m not 100 percent sold on Trump, but I can see Clinton locking people up before Trump does.

Link:
http://personalliberty.com/hillary-embraces-obamas-green-agenda/

WTF!!!

Marines headed for mandatory sensitivity training

by Sam Rolley

As barbaric terrorists continue to rape and murder their way across the world, the Obama administration is working to create a kinder, gentler Marine Corps via “unconscious bias” training.

All Marines will soon undergo mandatory training to make sure that the nation’s toughest fighting force is sensitive to the differences between male soldiers and the female recruits who will soon begin arriving at boot camp.

Proponents of the sensitivity training argue that military studies like a recent Center for Naval Analysis report showing a “significant majority” of male Marines still opposing female combat troops merit the training.

In addition to making sure male soldiers are welcoming to new female recruits, the training will focus on making sure Marines are sensitive to racial differences.

Via Military.com:

Mobile training teams will be dispatched to installations across the Corps throughout May and June to offer a two-day seminar to majors and lieutenant colonels, Col. Anne Weinberg, deputy director of the Marine Corps Force Innovation Office, told reporters Thursday. Those officers will then train the Marines under them.

Topics include unconscious bias, which focuses on how people prejudge others based on factors such as race and gender, and principles of institutional change. The seminar will also walk officers through the elements of the Corps’ plan for opening ground combat jobs to women and include vignettes featuring challenges units might encounter.

Col. Anne Weinberg, deputy director of the Marine Corps Force Innovation Office, gave an example of how soldiers might have to think differently about lodging in combat and noncombat situations in the future.

“You’re in the field, you only have this certain amount of space for billeting and you’ve got three women and six guys. How are you going to billet?” Weinberg said. “Just some of these common sense things that these units probably haven’t had to deal with so that ground combat units haven’t had to deal with, but we’ve been dealing with in the rest of the Marine Corps for generations.”

Critics of the sensitivity training have called the Obama initiatives “social engineering” and raised questions about how much time the training is taking away from actual combat readiness.

“If I could make one change to improve our combat effectiveness in the military – it would be turning all those equal opportunity and sensitivity trainers and counselors into combat rifleman,” said Fox News military analyst Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (Ret.). “We need more rifles. We don’t need any more sensitivity.”

Link:
http://personalliberty.com/marines-headed-for-mandatory-sensitivity-training/

Claudio Grass: Fractional Reserve Banking is a Fraud...

“That government is best which governs least.”

Is Self-Government the Solution?

By Robert Ringer

Now that the Republican debates are mercifully behind us, the media has their work cut out for them. They’re going to have to work doubly hard at their specialty — creating news out of thin air. There’s no question that they are very good at their craft, but it’s going to be an increasingly difficult job for them.

One of the things that dragged out the suspense and excitement of the debates so long was the fact that there were originally seventeen candidates in the Republicanfield. One wonders if it was arrogance or simply ignorance (Or perhaps arrogance of the ignorant?) that prompted guys like Ron Pataki, Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, and Rick Santorum to have the chutzpah to throw their hats in the ring in the first place. And, to boot, they also did their best to pretend as though they seriously believed they could win.

Yep, every one of these characters staunchly stated, right up to the moment they dropped out of the race, that everywhere they went, people were excited about their candidacies, that they were going to surprise the world in whatever primary was next on the docket, and that they felt confident they would end up being the nominee. Self-delusion is such a blissful state of mind, is it not?

As time went on, the same routine was followed by the likes of Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina, and Jeb Bush, to name but a few of the more high-profile casualties along the way. Bush was the second most embarrassing dropout case, insisting, after yet another last-place finish, that “we like where we’re sitting.” Sure, Jeb. It was one of the great comedic lines of the campaign, especially when Bush shortly thereafter dropped out of the race.

I said Bush was the second most embarrassing example of self-delusion because first prize has to go to the biggest fraud in the Republican field, Robo Rubio. Robo is perhaps the nastiest chameleon to be groomed by the establishment in decades. His boast — no more than a couple of hours before the polls closed in Florida — that he was going to win the state, that he was going to go on to Utah the next day, and that he was going all the way to the convention was beyond embarrassing.

Why would Robo choose to embarrass himself again after his failed attempt at standup comedy against the Trump Train failed so miserably? Perhaps he believed that the big-money guys would not dare to take away his credit card. Oops! Sorry about that Robo. But, hey — when your donor masters tell you to jump, the only question is how high. Unfortunately for Robo, it turned out to be a fall in the toilet instead of a jump.

Hmm … now that I think about it, and with all due respect to Robo and his mentor, Jeb, John Kasich’s victory speech after winning his first and only state — the state in which he is governor — might have been the most embarrassing speech of all. His self-aggrandizing, self-righteous tone almost made me lose my dinner.

The self-professed “adult in the room” has been mouthing off about its being a whole new ball game ever since his victory in Ohio. What he really means, of course, is that he’s going to go the convention in August, regardless of how badly he does, in the hopes of sneaking in as the establishment choice for either the presidential or vice presidential slot. Of course, immediately after boasting about being “the adult in the room” and droning on endlessly about taking the high road, he began running vicious attack ads against Trump.

All this by way of saying that because of the way our political system operates, it makes it a certainty that the scum will always rise to the top. And why not? Getting into politics is the easiest and quickest way known to mankind to become rich and powerful. How can a larcenous person resist such an opportunity?

As early as the mid-nineteenth century, the great individual anarchist Lysander Spooner put it simply when he explained that when someone says that a certain type of government is best, that does not mean it’s a good government. It simply means that it’s the least bad of all other forms of government.

The challenge, then, is to find a way to educate the public so it understands that government, by its very nature, is inherently evil. Generations from now, if the United States starts to rise from the ashes of its criminally controlled bread-and-circus existence, perhaps some social genius who is a firm believer in liberty can come up with a much better system of government than a “republic” or democracy.

Whenever some slick-tongued politician says something “patriotic” like, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” it takes an enlightened mind to understand the truth in Samuel Johnson’s observation, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Which means that virtually all presidential candidates, this year or any other, are scoundrels.

No system will ever be perfect (even the Founding Fathers failed at that), but the only hope for a morally based society is one that is rooted in Thomas Jefferson’s words that “That government is best which governs least.”

If ever a majority of citizens come to believe this, we may finally find a way to invent a government that governs so little that it becomes almost invisible. The fact is that criminal politicians have no qualifications to govern you. As you labor through the next seven-plus months of political theater, always keep that in mind and remember that the person who is best qualified to govern you is you.

Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/03/robert-ringer/medias-real-job-just-became-harder/

Homeschooling...

Homeschooling, Socialization, and the New Groupthink

The Not-So-Hidden Agenda of Public Education

B.K. Marcus

“But what about socialization?”

We who educate our children outside the school system confront an exhausting array of accusations posing as concerns, but the most puzzling — and the most persistent — is the socialization question. For years, I’ve taken it at face value: How, the skeptic seems to be asking, will your kids ever learn to be sociable if you keep them locked up at home all day?

That very few homeschooled kids lead the lives of sheltered isolation implied by this question does not seem to assuage the questioner. There’s something kids are assumed to receive from the process of group schooling — especially from large, government-funded schools — that helps them fit in better with society at large.

Learning to Be a Cog

I recently talked to a mom who wants to homeschool her daughter. The girl’s dad objects to the idea because, he insists, home education will fail to prepare her for “the real world.” I find it significant that this man is career military. The real world, as he knows it, is regimented, tightly controlled, and bureaucratized into stasis — at least compared with the very different real world of voluntary exchange and spontaneous order.

If your goal for your children is a lifetime of government work, then by all means send them to public school: the bigger, the better. But if, by “socialization,” you mean ensuring that a child becomes sociable, that he or she develops the intelligence and social reflexes that promote peaceful and pleasurable interactions with larger groups of friends and strangers, then the irony of the what-about-socialization question is that it gets the situation precisely backwards. It is schooled kids, segregated by age and habituated to the static and artificial restrictions of the schooling environment, who demonstrate more behavioral problems while in school and greater difficulty adjusting to the post-school world.

Does “Socialization” Mean Peer Pressure?

While homeschooled kids learn to interact daily with people of all ages, schools teach their students to think of adults primarily in terms of avoiding trouble (or sometimes seeking it). That leaves the social lessons to their peers, narrowly defined as schoolmates roughly their own age.

Thomas Smedley, who prepared a master’s thesis for Radford University of Virginia on “The Socialization of Homeschool Children,” put it this way:

In the public school system, children are socialized horizontally, and temporarily, into conformity with their immediate peers. Home educators seek to socialize their children vertically, toward responsibility, service, and adulthood, with an eye on eternity.

As a result, most homeschooled kids grow into well-adjusted, flexible, and emotionally mature adults, open to a diversity of peers and social contexts.

Psychology professor Richard G. Medlin wrote in “Homeschooling and the Question of Socialization Revisited,”

Homeschooling parents expect their children to respect and get along with people of diverse backgrounds.… Compared to children attending conventional schools … research suggest that they have higher quality friendships and better relationships with their parents and other adults.

Furthermore, says Medlin, “They are happy, optimistic, and satisfied with their lives.” How often do you hear those words applied to any other group of children?

Meanwhile, “there seems to be an overwhelming amount of evidence,” according to researcher Michael Brady, “that children socialized in a peer-dominant environment are at higher risk for developing social maladjustment issues than those that are socialized in a parent-monitored environment.”

The Persistence of the Socialization Myth

The contention that kids kept out of large group schools will somehow suffer in their social development never made any sense to begin with. (In fact, large group schools may hurt social development.) Did no one enjoy any social skills before the era of mass education?

Decades of research now support the common-sense conclusion: the artificially hierarchical and age-segregated structure of modern schooling produces a warped form of socialization with unhealthy attitudes toward both authority and peers.

The students who escape this fate are those with strong parental and other adult role models and active engagement with a diverse community outside school. Homeschooling holds no monopoly on engaged parents or robust communities, but those advantages are an almost automatic part of home education.

So why does the socialization myth refuse to die?

Perhaps we have been misunderstanding the critics all along. Homeschoolers think of socialization as the development of an autonomous individual’s social skills for healthy interactions within a larger community. But maybe what we consider healthy isn’t at all what the critics have in mind.

Reprogramming the Quiet Child

Susan Cain’s 2012 book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, does not specifically address homeschooling, but Cain does talk about the history of education and the evolution of what she calls the “Extrovert Ideal — the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight.”

Starting in the 1920s, Cain tells us,

The experts advised parents to socialize their children well and schools to change their emphasis from book-learning to “assisting and guiding the developing personality.” Educators took up this mantle enthusiastically.…

Well-meaning parents of the midcentury sent their kids to school at increasingly young ages, where the main assignment was learning to socialize. (emphasis added)

In the 19th century, education was still understood to mean the development of an individual’s character, intellect, and knowledge. By the mid-20th century, education reformers had shifted the emphasis away from preparing the individual student for his or her future and toward integrating individuals into a larger group and a larger vision of a reformed society.

The New Groupthink

We 21st-century Americans may think of ourselves as “unlike the starched-shirted conformists of the 1950s,” to use Cain’s phrase, but she sees the extrovert ideal asserting itself once again in what she calls “the New Groupthink,” which, she explains, “elevates teamwork above all else.”

In ever more schools, this teamwork is promoted “via an increasingly popular method of instruction called ‘cooperative’ or ‘small group’ learning.” This “cooperative” approach, whatever the intentions behind it, actually hurts students — introverts and extroverts alike — both academically and intellectually. To explain why, Cain cites the work of Dr. K. Anders Ericsson, a Swedish psychologist and one of the world’s leading researchers on expertise.

Occasional solitude, it turns out, is essential to mastery in any discipline.

It’s only when you’re alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which [Ericsson] has identified as the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful — they’re counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them.

Cain and Ericsson offer several reasons why deliberate practice is best conducted alone, “but most important,” writes Cain, “it involves working on the task that’s most challenging to you personally.”

Co-ops, study groups, playgroups, and à la carte classes mean that a homeschooled student spends plenty of time with other kids, including conventionally schooled kids. But homeschooling also allows children more alone time for the kind of learning Ericsson describes.

This is not what most schools offer; neither is it compatible with the emphasis on cooperative learning.

The Homeschooled Self

“The structure and reality of traditional schools,” writes Rebecca Kochenderfer for Homeschool.com, teach kids “to be passive and compliant, which can follow the children throughout life. Children can learn to take abuse, to ignore miserable bosses or abusive spouses later on.”

“In a traditional school,” Kochenderfer adds, “someone else usurps authority.”

Kids from homeschooling families learn a very different lesson about authority and responsibility.

Researcher John Wesley Taylor used the Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale to evaluate 224 homeschooled children for self-esteem. “On the global scale,” writes Taylor, “half of the homeschoolers scored at or above the 91st percentile. This condition may be due to higher achievement and mastery levels, independent study characteristics, or one-on-one tutoring situations in the homeschool environment.”

A strong “self-concept ” doesn’t mean that homeschooled kids are self-centered. “Their moral reasoning is at least as advanced as that of other children,” according to Richard G. Medlin’s research, cited earlier, “and they may be more likely to act unselfishly.” What it does mean, however, is that children educated at home are less likely to grow up to be followers.

In 1993, J. Gary Knowles, then a professor of education at the University of Michigan, surveyed 53 adults who had been taught at home by their parents. He found that nearly two-thirds were self-employed. That’s more than twice the global average and about 10 times the current national average. “That so many of those surveyed were self-employed,” said Knowles, “supports the contention that home schooling tends to enhance a person’s self-reliance and independence.”

That independence may be the real source of critics’ concerns.

“Public school educators and other critics,” Knowles commented, “question whether home-educated children will be able to become productive, participating members of a diverse and democratic society.”

But with so much evidence for the superior results achieved by homeschooling — both academically and socially — we have to question the critics’ goals. Is their concern really for the welfare of those educated outside the schools? Or is it rather, as so much of their language suggests, for the success of a particular vision of society — a vision that they fear the independently educated may not readily accommodate?

Link:
http://fee.org/articles/homeschooling-socialization-and-the-new-groupthink/