Joe Salerno: Calculation and Socialism

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A Reader

About Sixty-Eight years ago, the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs in the course of three days. The first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. The second atomic bomb was dropped three days later on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Shortly afterwards, Japan formally surrendered to the U.S. The conventional narrative of this event was that the Japanese were not prepared to surrender to the U.S. and that had the U.S. military invaded the Japanese mainland, American casualties would have been incredibly costly. In other words, dropping the most powerful weapons in the world on two cities, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of lives was necessary to win World War 2. Those of us who love liberty must challenge this conventional account. For if people continue to believe that dropping atom bombs on a country that was ready to surrender was necessary to end World War 2, then Americans will continue to support and cheer for an aggressive and destructive foreign policy of war and empire while extolling it's "success stories". Below is a couple of articles that help to give a much more accurate account of the this historical event.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the US Terror State by Anthony Gregory

The Hiroshima Lie by John V. Denson

Terrorism by Any Reasonable Definition by Anthony Gregory

Harry Truman and the Atomic Bomb by Ralph Raico

Ron Paul's Weekly Column: Why Won’t They Tell Us the Truth About NSA Spying?

By Ron Paul

In 2001, the Patriot Act opened the door to US government monitoring of Americans without a warrant. It was unconstitutional, but most in Congress over my strong objection were so determined to do something after the attacks of 9/11 that they did not seem to give it too much thought. Civil liberties groups were concerned, and some of us in Congress warned about giving up our liberties even in the post-9/11 panic. But at the time most Americans did not seem too worried about the intrusion.

This complacency has suddenly shifted given recent revelations of the extent of government spying on Americans. Politicians and bureaucrats are faced with serious backlash from Americans outraged that their most personal communications are intercepted and stored. They had been told that only the terrorists would be monitored. In response to this anger, defenders of the program have time and again resorted to spreading lies and distortions. But these untruths are now being exposed very quickly.

In a Senate hearing this March, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Senator Ron Wyden that the NSA did not collect phone records of millions of Americans. This was just three months before the revelations of an NSA leaker made it clear that Clapper was not telling the truth. Pressed on his false testimony before Congress, Clapper apologized for giving an “erroneous” answer but claimed it was just because he “simply didn’t think of Section 215 of the Patriot Act.” Wow.

As the story broke in June of the extent of warrantless NSA spying against Americans, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers assured usthat the project was a strictly limited and not invasive. He described it as a “lockbox with only phone numbers, no names, no addresses in it, we’ve used it sparingly, it is absolutely overseen by the legislature, the judicial branch and the executive branch, has lots of protections built in...”

But we soon discovered that also was not true either. We learned in another Guardian newspaper article last week that the top secret “X-Keyscore” program allows even low-level analysts to “search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals.”

The keys to Rogers’ “lockbox” seem to have been handed out to everyone but the janitors! As Chairman of the Committee that is supposed to be most in the loop on these matters, it seems either the Intelligence Community misled him about their programs or he misled the rest of us. It sure would be nice to know which one it is.

Likewise, Rep. Rogers and many other defenders of the NSA spying program promised us that this dragnet scooping up the personal electronic communications of millions of Americans had already stopped “dozens” of terrorist plots against the United States. In June, NSA director General Keith Alexander claimed that the just-disclosed bulk collection of Americans’ phone and other electronic records had “foiled 50 terror plots.”

Opponents of the program were to be charged with being unconcerned with our security.

But none of it was true.

The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday heard dramatic testimony from NSA deputy director John C. Inglis. According to the Guardian:

“The NSA has previously claimed that 54 terrorist plots had been disrupted ‘over the lifetime’ of the bulk phone records collection and the separate program collecting the internet habits and communications of people believed to be non-Americans. On Wednesday, Inglis said that at most one plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone.”

From dozens to “at most one”?

Supporters of these programs are now on the defensive, with several competing pieces of legislation in the House and Senate seeking to rein in an administration and intelligence apparatus that is clearly out of control. This is to be commended. What is even more important, though, is for more and more and more Americans to educate themselves about our precious liberties and to demand that their government abide by the Constitution. We do not have to accept being lied to – or spied on -- by our government.

CIA Operatives in Benghazi

An interesting story has just been revealed yesterday by CNN concerning the Benghazi terrorist attack on 9/11/2012. CNN reports the following:

CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what is allegedly happening at the CIA, in the wake of the deadly Benghazi terror attack.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the assault by armed militants last September 11 in eastern Libya.

Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.

CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency's Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out.

Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency's missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency's workings.

The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.

In exclusive communications obtained by CNN, one insider writes, "You don't jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well."

Ben Bernanke, the Fed, and a Legacy of Failure

The Federal Reserve, America's central bank that has the monopoly power to print money and manage our currency, has been a scourge on American economic prosperity, failing to prevent the boom-bust cycle (also known as the business cycle) while making boom-bust cycles worst. As John P. Cochran has stated,

 It [the Federal Reserve] was set up to protect the value of the dollar and to avoid boom and bust cycles. Since inception of the Fed, the dollar has, in real terms, declined over 87 percent, now having a purchasing power compared to a 1913 dollar of less than 13 cents. Just since the mid-1990s overly easy monetary policy has caused or enabled two significant boom-bust periods with accompanying bubbles in first dot.com stocks and then residential and commercial real estate.

 Not only has the Federal Reserve's policy of monetary manipulation lead to chronic economic cycles of boom and busts, it has distorted credit markets, distorted interests rates, created piles of debt upon the citizenry, created higher demand for consumer goods, leading to high prices for things like food and gasoline, and has helped facilitate a policy of perpetual war and an expansive warfare state.

Despite the overwhelming evidence against central planning via the monetary authorities, chairmen of the Federal Reserve are seen as all-knowing economic wizards who can somehow have all the knowledge and ability to steer the economy in a direction that produces a stable money supply and full employment. For example, former Federal Reserve chairmen Alan Greenspan, who was in charge of the Fed from 1987 to 2006, was seen as the monetary maestro who knew how to steer the economy in the right direction. But since the infamous Housing Bubble of 2007-2008 busted, leading to a recession, Alan Greenspan has denied any responsibility for the economic collapse. Alan Greenspan's policy of excessively and artificially low interests rates combined with a government policy of forcing mortgage lenders to make bad loans to un-creditworthy borrowers led to incredible malinvestments into the housing market, creating an economic bubble that eventually went bust. Unfortunately, Greenspan's successor has made the economy even worse off than before.

Ben Bernanke, who became chairman of the Fed shortly after Alan Greenspan, will no longer be the chairman of the Fed by the end of 2013 due to the fact that his term is about to expire by that time. Many have seen and continue to see Ben Bernanke as "the man who saved the economy". What this means to people who support monetary central planning and people who benefit greatly from this form of wealth redistribution is that Bernanke was willing to make bold interventions into the economy to steer it away from the recession when capitalism was supposedly incapable of fixing itself. But Bernanke's policies have been identical from his predecessor and have failed to move the economy towards recovery: Interests rates were and are continued to be artificially lower than what is necessary for the economy to recover, which is keeping interests rates from tracking the proper levels that the market economy sets for interest rates, which is preventing resources from being directed to their highest value uses. Bernanke's continued policy of money printing and Quantitative Easing have continued to prop up unsound and failing firms while shielding such firms from having to pay the consequences and facing necessary and justified liquidation and resource reallocation. These policies have also contributed to constant regime uncertainty, in which entrepreneurs and investors are reluctant to act on their investments due to their inability to predict how future government actions will affect their private property rights.

Even though Ben Bernanke will be leaving the Fed later this year, we should not expect his successor to be any better. Right now the battle for who will be in charge of the Fed is between Janet Yellen, the current vice chairmen of the Fed and Lawrence Summers, an economist. But such battles are somewhat irrelevant. People foolishly focus on who will occupy the office and not the office itself. That is the fundamental problem with the Fed. Instead of focusing on who will lead the Fed, people should focus on the institution itself, for it is not the leadership of the Fed that has caused our economic problems, it is the Fed itself and the fatal conceit that such an institution can effectively plan the economy that has led America and most of the world towards economic chaos and eventual political chaos. That is why instead of arguing for this chairman or that chairman, we should be debating whether or not the Federal Reserve should be doing the things that it does. The best solution to the issue of monetary manipulation by the central bank that will lead the economy to recovery is to end the Fed.