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Don’t Reform the Fed, Fed-Exit!

Sunday July 17, 2016

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Opponents of a central bank should take advantage of the post-Brexit vote revival of secessionist sentiments to promote a secession from central banking, or “Fed-exit.” Ending the Federal Reserve's monopoly on money is the key to restoring and maintaining our liberty and prosperity.

By manipulating the money supply to fix interest rates, the Federal Reserve engages in price fixing. After all, interest rates are nothing more than the price of money. Like all prices, they communicate information about economic conditions to market actors. Federal Reserve attempts to override the market rate of interest with a Fed-favored rate distort the price signals sent to businesses, investors, and consumers. The result of this distortion is a Fed-created boom, followed by a Fed-created bust.
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Great News: Turks Closed US Incirlik Base

Saturday July 16, 2016

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In the aftermath of the suspiciously ill-planned and ill-executed coup attempt in Turkey, the government of President Erdogan has shut down the US military base in Incirlik. According to Stars and Stripes, the Turkish government, after putting down the partial military revolt, has closed the airspace over the US base at Incirlik and has even turned off the power to the base. In response, the US has placed troops on base at the "highest force protection level."

The Turkish government has said that normal operations at Incirlik will resume once the "anti-coup operations end." Part of those "anti-coup operations," however, include a demand that the US turn over exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, currently living in Pennsylvania...
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The Counter-Coup Begins: Erdogan Purges 2,745 Judges, Prosecutors; Arrests Hundreds

Saturday July 16, 2016

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When we described the aftermath of Turkey's failed, and painfully disorganized military coup attempt, we asked rhetorically, "Who wins?" To which we answered: "Why Erdogan of course. As he said during a press conference upon his arrival back in Istanbul in the early Saturday morning hours, the coup is an opportunity to "to purge the military." Erdogan also vowed to exact "the highest price" from the perpetrators. Or, to summarize, the military said Erdogan's power consolidation justifies the attempted coup; Erdogan said the coup justifies further consolidation of power."

Overnight, when analyzing the market's take of the coup, Renaissance Capital's Michael Harris said that "for markets to respond positively, we think Erdogan must go the reconciliation route, pledging not to hold elections for the coming year and committing to a consensus approach to constitutional change. More likely, though, Erdogan will seek to leverage this into a constitutional super-majority via a snap election."

Their conclusion: "A military coup has failed, but if Erdogan responds to this historic moment the wrong way, a democratic coup could be the result."

Not surprisingly, as of this morning, Erdogan is indeed responding to this historic moment the "wrong way." But before we get to that point, there are questions whether this coup was even that.
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Dear France: Necessary Step Towards Stopping This Insanity

Friday July 15, 2016

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Less than 24 hours before a man mowed down people with a truck in Nice, France, French President Hollande had confirmed that the state of emergency declared in the wake of the Nov. 2015 Paris attacks was going to expire on July 26, without renewal. During his traditional Bastille Day television interview, Hollande said, “We had to prolong the state of emergency until we could be sure that the law gives us the means to counter the terrorist threat effectively.”

Last May, France passed a comprehensive law that Hollande said “will give us the tools which, while not comparable with the state of emergency, give us the means to keep tabs on certain individuals administratively.” He added: “We can’t prolong the state of emergency forever. That would make no sense, it would mean that we were no longer a republic with laws which can apply in all circumstances.”

The state of emergency will now remain in effect.

French authorities claim the driver was not on a “radicalized” watch list. They claim he probably was inspired by online messaging from the Islamic State, and even more draconian crackdowns on the internet are coming as a result.
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The Horror in Nice

Friday July 15, 2016

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The French have a saying, "un malheur n’arrive jamais seul." That translates into "when it rains, it pours." This week, the heavens opened and poured on the nation’s national fete, Bastille Day.

The day began with highly embarrassing revelations by a French satirical newspaper that the unpopular president, Francois Hollande, had a staff hairdresser making $11,000 a month at a time of national austerity. This was a genuine "let them eat cake" moment.

That same evening, a frightful attack occurred in Nice. A demented 31-year old man of Tunisian origin, Mohammed Bouhel, who had just lost his job and then his family through divorce, turned his truck into a mass murder weapon.

Bouhel sent his large truck down Nice’s famed seaside Promenade des Anglais, mowing down people celebrating Bastille Day. As of this writing, 86 victims died and scores are gravely injured, including many children. France reeled in horror.
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After Nice Attack - Round Up Usual Suspects?

Friday July 15, 2016

Who benefits from attacks like we saw in Nice, France yesterday? The authoritarians never waste a minute exploiting these events to call for more restrictions on our liberties. Take away guns, monitor our phone calls, restrict our movement, censor the Internet. But the one thing they will never do is look at our foreign policy, to look at our unfair central banking system, to consider the damage of the drug war. Whether on the Right or the Left, authoritarians are hammers and all they see are nails. We are the nails. More on Nice attack and its aftermath in today's Liberty Report...
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The Risky Business of Being a US Ally

Thursday July 14, 2016

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It’s hardly a secret that the hardships of common people are getting worse by the year. Due to continuous attempts by Washington to redraw the map of the world, in many countries, American intelligence agencies have been particularly active in launching so-called “color revolutions” and staging military conflicts, bringing bitter hunger and poverty upon the heads of millions of people in the Middle East and other regions of the world. Consequently those events have triggered a massive and uncontrolled wave of migration to Europe.

The “War on Terror” that the White House declared has in fact resulted in the US military establishment, American intelligence agencies and a number of other states obtaining huge financial support in return for a brutal assault on the fundamental human rights as embodied in the adoption of the so-called USA PATRIOT Act and similar laws in a number of states.

In the constant pursuit of huge profits, political and military circles in the US are coming up with new “military threats” in a bid to push their allies into greater spending on NATO, the purchases of additional weapons, which in turn undermines the living conditions of the common people in the United States and its satellite states.

However, despite the so-called strengthening of these global security measures the  actual security situation has not improved. There’s an ever increasing number of terrorist attacks carried out every year, while terrorist threats persist. Moreover, various terrorist organizations across the globe are receiving direct support from the White House itself, which drives a wedge between the US and its allies, especially in Europe.
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Lena Dunham Encourages People To Tear Apart The Movie Posters Of Other Artists

Thursday July 14, 2016

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Fresh from declaring her support of Oberlin students in claiming the serving of sushi is cultural appropriation, actress Lena Dunham (creator of HBO’s “Girls”), is supporting producer Tami Sagher’s effort to get people to deface the posters for the Jason Bourne movie. The objection is to the inclusion of a gun. So Dunham and Sagher are calling for the work of other artists to be defaced because they disagree with the content. They are doing so without a hint of recognized hypocrisy. Despite the attack on free speech, the response has been muted from HBO and Hollywood figures to an actress and a producer calling for the vandalization of the work of other artists.

There has been a long complaint that advocates on the left appear to discard free speech values when they disagree with the content of speech, as we have seen on college campuses in recent years. That growing concern is evident in the call of producer Tami Sagher who posted a photo of the gun image ripped out of the Jason Bourne New York subway ad with the caption, “Hey New Yorkers, what if we do some peeling & get rid of the guns in the Jason Bourne subway ads. So tired of guns.”

Ok, you are tired of guns, but what you are really saying is that you reserve the right to prevent others from seeing images if you are “tired” of seeing them. To make matters worse, you want others to tear apart the images of other film artists because you are tired of them. Nevertheless, Dunham loved the idea of vandalizing images that she does not want to see. She reposted Sagher’s juvenile message and added “Good idea @tulipbone! Let’s go!”
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How Disinformation Feeds The War Machine

Thursday July 14, 2016

According to recent polls by both Pew and Gallup, when Americans understand the actual level of US military spending they by a large margin back a decrease. That is why we hear the constant refrain of politicians screeching about the need to "rebuild" the military and to spend a trillion dollars updating our nuclear weapons program. The media plays its part as well, broadcasting endless segments meant to ratchet up the fear factor. The "think tanks" funded by the military-industrial complex come out with papers laying out the case for US global domination. The US national security state is maintained through fear and propaganda, just like in the Soviet Union. Are we headed for a similar collapse? More today in the Liberty Report...
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Time to Talk to Syria

Wednesday July 13, 2016

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As the horrific carnage in Syria continues, a depressingly familiar chorus is rising from Washington. The new consensus is the same as it was in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Bombing isn’t working, so let’s bomb more. A familiar coalition — generals, defense contractors, and politicians, along with think tanks and much of the press — is demanding escalation of our military campaign in Syria. There may be a limit to how many unwinnable wars the United States wants to wage in the Middle East, but it evidently has not yet been reached.

Refusing to pursue a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Syria is nothing new for the Obama administration. In 2012, the United Nations and the Arab League launched a peace process and named former UN secretary general Kofi Annan to direct it. Annan’s first proposal was that all parties to the conflict meet for discussions. The United States flatly refused. Our policy then was to reject all contact with the Syrian government or any faction that did not announce in advance that it supported the overthrow of President Bashar Assad. Making that political point was considered more important than stopping the killing. Annan recognized that the US position doomed his mission, so he abandoned it. If the United States had placed peace ahead of misguided principle in 2012, much of Syria’s agony might have been avoided.

This callous disregard for the destruction of a nation and the suffering of its people has remained central to US policy toward Syria. Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state delivered the message to Annan that the United States would not join his peace effort, is among those calling for escalation. In one of her e-mails as secretary of state, Clinton asserted that deposing Assad would be “a massive boon to Israel’s security” and that “only the threat or use of force will change the dictator Bashar Assad’s mind.”
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