Eclipsing Current Events
I had great plans to try some eclipse photography today. It was not to be. Up here in the Inland Northwest, we were expecting about 75% of the solar eclipse. Instead, we got 100% cloud cover. Boo! So I'm gonna offer some unpopular opinions about current events instead.
Biden and his challengers are all eager to leap on the bandwagon to support Israel as tensions between that country and Hamas exploded into open war a few days ago. The situation is complex, and to a certain extent, I am unqualified to discuss it, but that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone else, either.
Never mind how the Palestinians are also a Semitic people, any criticism of Israel is immediately framed as anti-Semitic racism if not overt Nazism. To hell with that. No nation-state is beyond critique, and no government should be considered truly representative of the people they rule no matter how "democratic" their system may be. Not even ethnostates selling nationality and ethnicity as being intertwined.
Israel is a de facto apartheid state occupying lands that are not its property and treating the former denizens as second-class citizens for generations. The Gaza Strip is effectively a concentration camp with extra steps. Explanations are not justifications, and I don't intend to offer an apology for terrorism. None of this justifies killing Israeli citizens. They are not co-conspirators sharing some kind of genetic guilt by default. That said, pretending the Palestinians are just mindless savages avoids discussing the deeper problems while sounding sanctimonious.
I would like to step beyond the usual debate and offer a real solution. Republican candidates, if you want to protect Israel, here is how you do it:
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
—Article IV, section 3, clause 1, United States Constitution
See? Simple as that. I put on my minarchist dunce cap to meet you half way and offer a plan of action. If Israelis want taxpayer money, they can vote to become taxpayers, too. If they want US military aid, they can join the US and serve in the military themselves. Same for Ukraine, Taiwan, South Korea, and anywhere else the US government wants to meddle.
I know this will infuriate a lot of Christians who have dedicated themselves to their own peculiar forms of Zionism. I just challenge you to reexamine the Bible. Our Kingdom is not of this world, and we have a new covenant. None of these wars and governments exhibit the Fruit of the Spirit or the Seven Virtues, and instead embody the Seven Deadly Sins. We serve the Prince of Peace, not Mars. This latest wave of death and destruction is not resolved by taking sides and funding more of the same injustices and abuses which triggered this violent response.
There ya go, and off-the-cuff hot take. Agree? Disagree? Wanna call me names because I don't fall in lockstep with the current thing? Please comment and vote as you see fit.
No eclipse but it did get pretty dark. Your opinion is not unpopular, just not popular with the establishment and the MIC. We should all be on the side of humanity.
I agree. Pointless wars are something that only the political class approves of. Being anti-war is something that unites even anti-racists and white supremists... not even joking, check this out.
We all have children and people we love. Now if we could just come to understand our connection, we might be able to make this planet a rather amazing place to live for just about everyone.
"War is the health of the State" - Randolph Bourne
I don't believe I ever mentioned this on Hive, I've mentioned it elsewhere, and I especially avoid doing so on BitChute for obvious reasons, but I'm Jewish (secular, obviously) and I've had a seething hatred of the Israeli government since long before I became a libertarian, so allow me to provide some additional insight.
Orthodox Jews can explain far better than I can precisely why the very existence of the modern nation of Israel defies not only New Testament prophecy, but Old Testament prophecy as well. The gist is that the land was supposed to be given back to the Jews, not taken by force. The interference of western powers in the affairs of middle eastern nations, dating all the way back to the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916, guarantee forever wars in the region. The Ottoman Empire, for all its faults, actually managed to keep the peace.
Second, the Israeli government is only stoking yet more antisemitism. Back in the sixties and seventies, when tensions blew up into the Arab-Israeli Wars (as a reminder, Hamas's latest attack took place on the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Yom Kippur War), it was yet another proxy conflict between the USA and USSR. The Soviets backed the Arab states not just because the Americans backed Israel, but also because Marxism is inherently anti-Semitic. The Soviet Union, contrary to what neo-Nazis on BitChute will tell you, was not remotely friendly to Jews. It should therefore come as no surprise that the radical left beats the war drums for Hamas and tries to either deny or worse justify their war crimes.
The radical left already tries to deny or justify the Holodomor. I expect to see a rise in Holocaust denial as well for the same reason. "Kulaks bad, therefore they were never massacred, Stalin did nothing wrong" will be replaced with "Jews bad, therefore they were never massacred, Hitler did nothing wrong," mark my words.
BTW, on a totally unrelated note, I found another statist blog to milk for content. On it is an absolutely hilarious strawman of libertarianism. I'll let you take this one, since I'm working on other things at the moment.
Check out the October 8th episode of Part of the Problem
I enjoyed the line "I am American first and Jewish second."
On the same token, I am Russian first, an American citizen second, and Jewish third.
I liked that Dave and Rob mentioned that America is playing both sides. However, it may interest you to know that China is also playing both sides. The current proxy conflict is exponentially more convoluted and insidious than the one during the Cold War. Honestly, the more I learn about the Chinese Communist Party, the more the Soviet Union looks like an ancap paradise and a picture of sanity by comparison... and we all know how I fond I am of Soviet Communism.
But yes, Israel is one of those sacred cows that will have even RFK beating the drums of war. SMH. This is why I generally don't trust anti-war pundits and I never trust anti-war politicians.
I think your hot take regarding US military aid is a little simplistic.
Geopolitics and foreign policy are obviously super complex with trade agreements, intelligence-sharing, etc all part of give-and-take ledger between countries. I think something like 20+ countries sent troops to Afghanistan to help the US in its extremely unpopular war there, with many more countries allowing US military bases to be set up to assist in the logistics of those efforts.
It's all way too complicated for me to understand, but if Republicans find your post and all manage to agree on basing their policy on it then good luck to them.
It doesn't need to be complex. Lots of governments going to war based on messy histories of treaties and agreements gets innocent people killed, creates new animosity, and solves nothing. What happened in Afghanistan? Billions spent, thousands dead, and the Taliban is back in charge 20 years later with zero evidence any of it was ever connected to 9/11. That isn't nuanced geopolitics, that's a clusterfuck of death and destruction enriching the political class.
Absolutely... but my point is that military aid is tied up with trade agreements, visa agreements, intelligence-sharing, foreign policy and a lot more. I'm not saying that I want it to be complicated, and I'm not defending that complexity, I'm just pointing out that if the USA just stopped providing military aid it would affect the country in so many different ways.
Maybe it would be worth it in the long run, I have no idea, I'm sure there are way more factors involved than I'm aware of.
Not contributing directly to death and destruction or enabling conflicts to grind populations down would be immediately worthwhile and beneficial in the long term. Any economic losses would be worth it compared to the cost in lives, and I suspect the alleged losses would be more than counterbalanced by restoring wealth to the populace instead of leaving it in the hands of politicians.
Totally agree about the cost of lives, but I'm not following about the counterbalance of restoring wealth to the populace. If visa agreements and trade agreements with the US were disrupted, how would US citizens paying more for imported goods, US farms and manufacturers having tariffs placed on exported goods and US companies no longer able to hire the world's best and brightest transfer wealth from the politicians to the people?
Why would not bombing people drive up the cost of trade? If it does, that seems to imply we have a bigger problem with state control of trade, which does not in any way violate my anarchist preconceptions.
Because military allies are more likely to trade with each other.
For example, USA and South Korea have a Mutual Defense treaty, they have a free trade agreement, they also have a tax treaty. There might be a bunch of stuff I don't know about. If the US threw away its Mutual Defense treaty with South Korea like you're suggesting, maybe the other treaties and agreements with Korea don't change... or maybe they do, I'm honestly not sure.
The free market loves Just In Time logistics, because it saves money on storage, but the downside is a lack of resiliency, so whenever there has been supply chain shipping disruptions, US companies, especially the auto manufacturers, struggle without micro processors from Taiwan. This is exactly why the CHIPS act was passed, to encourage microchips to be made in the US to decrease the corporate dependency on Taiwan... but it'll take a few years to really come into play.
Intelligence-sharing really helps US companies. Corporate cybersecurity teams interact with US intelligence agencies to both alert them and be alerted on cybersecurity threats and fixes. Some US companies are attacked 100s of millions of times every second. I don't know for sure, but I imagine the US intelligence agencies are also interacting with the intelligence agencies of its military allies to help all allied companies. I'm sure you know that the North Korean state and Russian private hacker groups attack outside companies relentlessly.
I think America has something defense treaties with something like 50 other countries. If it declared all those treaties null and void then I'd say that's likely to have unintended consequences regarding trade, etc.
Is the US the world's richest country that chooses to spend a huge budget on its military, or is the US so wealthy because it has the world's strongest military? No idea myself, but I'm sure valid arguments could be made for both sides.
Why do you believe military allies are more likely to trade with each other? Neutral countries are open to trade with everyone, and there is no direct link between trade and military alliances. Correlation of trade and defense agreements is not evidence of a causal relationship. However, military agreements do directly result in embargoes and blockades of nations, which is antithetical to free trade.
The free market does not "love" any particular business model or supply chain by default. It just means various individuals and voluntary associations are free to find what works and change as needed without political intervention.
Regional specialization and trade are beneficial to everyone. Imagine of Canada mandated only Canadian-grown citrus fruit could be sold in Canada for an extreme example of why economic nationalism is dumb. Yes, most of the world's chips are made in Taiwan, but you may want to look at the many anti-market factors which also pushed manufacturing overseas. Taxes and regulatory pressures played a major role in making domestic manufacturing untenable in the US, and new subsidy schemes or mandates do not restore sustainability, they add chaos.
The US became wealthy through freer markets and freer trade, and only this wealth created by market action made the Leviathan State parasite possible. It is now killing its host, and military expansion with pointless wars is one of the key indicators of a dying empire.
Military allies provide a sense of stability.
Trade Agreements usually have processes to resolve international company disputes and dealings with companies in countries without an agreement can be a costly legal exercise.
It's not just trade, this stability offers US companies opportunities to partner with international companies on specific ventures which obviously requires a lot of trust since billions of dollars are often at stake.
I don't know if the USA develops military alliances specifically for trade or if its developed alliances with major trading partners but a huge number of its top 30 trading partners are also military allies.
Again, I'm not saying that I agree or disagree whether this is all the right way or best way to operate. I'm just saying that I have no idea what the cost to US companies and citizens would be if the US were to drop all its military alliances.
Unsupported assertion. The past several decades of pointless war empirically suggest otherwise. Hell, WW1 exploded from a minor incident to continent-plus conflict because of alliances and treaties.
That's just an appeal to the status quo. Meanwhile, in the real world, merchants created solutions and processes to resolve such disputes centuries ago. Innumerable disputes are resolved globally even today by arbitration. There is nothing about dispute resolution which requires territorial monopolies in violence, a.k.a governments.
The US trades globally and meddles globally. Correlation is not causation either way. The US traded globally before NATO and even before WW1 when neutrality was at least nominally the usual policy, notwithstanding the anti-market and anti-human gunboat diplomacy or Banana Wars.
I don't think it's an unsupported assumption, there are a lot less wars between countries now than there was 250-100 years ago, and I think that's due to networks of military alliances and trading partner agreements... I do still think if the US dropped its military alliances there would be unintended consequences and negative effects on US citizens and you remain convinced it would be positive.
It's an interesting thought experiment and I appreciate the time you've taken to explain your position and thought processes. I hope you enjoy the remainder of your weekend.
Again, you are relying on a correlation/causation fallacy. Trade reduces the likelihood of conflict. One of the saving graces in the American saber-rattling against China preventing the hawks from doing something violent and stupid is the trade connections between their respective populations. They don't really care if war kills the people, but if war kills their tax revenue, they have a real problem. And again, WW1 blew up because of old military alliances and treaties. Military alliances increase the likelihood of conflict. Did you not see how the mere possibility of Ukraine cozying up to NATO helped spark open war again a year and a half ago? And all these "allies" are pumping weapons into the warzone while Ukranians die.
I really don't think that military alliances increase the likelihood of conflict because within a military alliance network, you don't attack the ally of one of your allies. The number of international wars has dramatically decreased in the last 70 years.
My guess would be that China likely hasn't attacked Taiwan, Korea, Japan, etc because they have strong military allies, not because its trading a lot with them.
I don't truly believe that NATO was the reason Putin invaded Ukraine.
If that was the reason, it has backfired spectacularly, now that Finland and Sweden have joined and Putin has lost half his army. He can stop killing Ukrainians and stop sending Russians to die at any moment... but he's unlikely to, I think. I really don't understand how he can claim any sort of victory at this point.
We might not ever know exactly why Putin decided to invade Russia, I think it was either to reestablish the Soviet Union or to grab Ukraine's resources like natural gas and lithium. Without ally support, many more Ukrainians, particularly non-combatants, would have been murdered by Russian soldiers.
Dear god, where do I even start? Everything you just said is laughably wrong.
First, if you think military alliances prevent wars, I suggest reviewing World War I history. Also, I have no idea where you've gotten this idea that the world is more peaceful now than it was 70 years ago. Do you have any idea how many armed conflicts the US alone is involved in? The US has taken over meddling in the affairs of African countries now that the Soviet Union isn't around to do it anymore. Neither is justified...
...and I'm tired of tankies pretending that it is.
Next, no, NATO expansion was definitely the provocation. The democratically-elected government of Ukraine (which was allied with Russia) was overthrown by a NATO-backed coup in 2014. The oblasts of Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea refused to accept this, and seceded. Putin ordered the occupation of Crimea, but Ukraine invaded Donetsk and Lugansk.
Pro-NATO shills in Ukraine call this the "Euromaidan revolution," but everyone else calls it the "Euromaidan coup." Does it justify Putin's actions? No, absolutely not, two wrongs don't make a right. But my question to you is this: why does Ukraine deserve self-determination, but Donetsk and Lugansk don't?
Also, Russia hasn't lost half its army (just half its tanks), and Ukraine isn't winning. Ukrainians don't even want to fight anymore, and NATO is calling them cowards for it.
Putin doesn't even want more territory. It's an administrative nightmare to expand Russia, and Russia has plenty of natural resources, just not a whole lot of high-tech manufacturing, hence the need for trade, which segues perfectly to my next point. Putin only wants a direct land connection to Crimea because without it, Russia has no ice-free deepwater ports. This wasn't an issue when Ukraine and Russia were allies, but as you can see, alliances aren't forever, thus nations need to be as self-sufficient as possible. Putin knows this, I know this, but the oligarchs don't care, and thanks to systemic apathy brought on by corruption and government red tape, change is going to have to come from the top. We can't rely on West Taiwan forever.
I'm saying that the number of international wars has decreased, ie, the number of times one country has attacked another country is less in the last 70 years than, say, from 1800 to 1950. I think this is due to increased military ally networks in the world since WWI.
Ukraine is winning for as long as Putin doesn't succeed. As long as Putin doesn't forcibly take over the government of Ukraine, they are winning. If they're able to limit the number of towns the Russian army will bomb to the ground and civilians they murder, they're winning. Again, the Russian army can stop their invasion at any time to save both the lives of Ukrainians and Russians.
I honestly don't know much about this region, but the people of Donetsk and Lugansk want to succeed from Ukraine then I would support that. With nearly no knowledge of the history, if Ukraine invaded Donetsk and Lugansk and took away their rights that's clearly wrong. I don't see how the Russian army bombing their cities into dust and murdering the citizens actually helps the people of those regions now though.
Your opinion that Putin just wants a land bridge to Crimea definitely sounds plausible. I haven't heard that opinion before so thanks for sharing that. Personally I'm not sure if trying to march on Kyiv, turning cities to dust and murdering civilians is better than developing ports in places like Sochi, but again, I really don't know much about any of this so I'm sure there are many factors I'm not understanding.
If they want war let them battle it out, leave all the civilians on both sides out of it.
That's the perversity of modern nationalism and ethnic identity movements, though. It makes people imagine the conflicts of others are somehow also their own. Such distinctions are lost as everyone is considered a belligerent based purely on geography or citizenship.
It has been long since I witnessed eclipse
Seeing it again won't be bad idea, lol
About the war, I just feel bad.
We say here that there should be no war at all and the country that is on the truth should be supported by the whole world. We all know that which country is true and which country is false in war Only the lives of the people living there are being wasted and nothing is causing them much trouble.
https://twitter.com/LovingGirlHive/status/1714560755021078909