Lexicon: the Second-Hander 1/5

 -  Robert Douglas as Ellsworth Toohey in
"The Fountainhead" (1949) - Wiki  -

Isn’t that the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he’s honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand.

STRATEGY (1): SUN TZU, THE ART OF WAR

War is an art. War is deception. War is the will to win. War is convincing the enemy he cannot win. War is more than breaking things and killing people. War is philosophy, psychology and brain power.

Oct. 5, 2021 The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Entire Unabridged Audiobook).

The Art of War is an ancient Chinese military treatise that is attributed to Sun Tzu (also referred to as "Sunzi" and "Sun Wu"), a high ranking military general and strategist during the late Spring and Autumn period (some scholars believe that the Art of War was not completed until the subsequent Warring States period. Composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, it is said to be the definitive work on military strategies and tactics of its time, and is still read for its military insights. The Art of War is one of the oldest and most successful books on military strategy in the world.

The Bitter Fruits of Immoral Monetary Policies

On October 9th the Greek Libertarian economist Dr John Charalambakis spoke on the recent crises, the drama of the euro and the tragedy of Greece in a lecture organized by the Austrian Economics Center

In "Fear the Boom and Bust", economists Keynes and Hayek come back to life to attend an economics conference on the economic crisis. H/t EconStories.TV

Charalambakis: We should have left the banks die

by Federico Fernandez and Raoul Kirschbichler

Crossposted from the Austrian Center

The role of the central bank

The mere existence of central banks raises two very important questions:

1) Do we need a central bank? Why should a central authority dictate the price of money? Can’t the market solve this problem as it does with many other prices?

2) What is the relationship between the bubbles from the past twenty or thirty years and central banks?

Are the Fed, the ECB, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan to blame for them? The overextension of money supply and the overextension of credit create bubbles.

STRATEGY (3): SPECIAL WAR

What have minor conflicts in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Novorossiya, Chechnya, the Baltics, Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine and Hungary have in common? All are examples of Russia involved in what is known as 'Special War'. So what is it? 

May 19, 2020 VIDEO of Russian FSB Snipers in Ukraine. 

The conflict in Ukraine is a good example of what is known as Special Warfare -- an amalgam of espionage, subversion, even forms of terrorism to attain political ends without actually going to war in any conventional sense. Also diplomacy, misinformation and disinformation play an important role in Special War. Special war is the default setting for countries that are unable or unwilling to fight major wars, but there are prerequisites, above all a degree of cunning and a willingness to accept operational risk to achieve strategic aims.

How Our Monetary System Works and Why It Must Fail

Something isn't right with the economy. Apart from a few happy positivos, we all know that. It isn't just economic and monetary policy. The problem is structural and systemic

In "The Biggest Scam" you are about to learn one of the biggest secrets in the history of the world... For more, visit Hidden Secrets of Money H/t +Vrijspreker.nl 

In a free banking system, banks will issue their own currencies, as was historically the case. The market will determine which currency will eventually dominate and become the standard. This currency may, or may not be backed up by gold or silver. The central bank would be abolished. 

STRATEGY (2): MACHIAVELLI, THE PRAGMATIST

Most contemporary politicians hold the view that ends can only be achieved by negotiation and by a Pragmatic take on 'what works'. Consensus leads to the best results for the majority. If that doesn't specifically specifies what is the Good, that is not an accident of nature. 

Five Part docu and audio book about Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. (Wiki)

Officially Pragmatism is rooted in 19th Century America. Unofficially its principles are much older. Machiavelli was a typical Pragmatist. The philosophy of Pragmatism is a rejection of the idea that the function of thought is knowledge of objective reality. Instead, pragmatists consider thought to be a product of the interaction between organism and environment. The function of thought is a tool for prediction, action, and problem solving, not for knowledge of reality as such. According to Pragmatism, philosophical topics — such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science — must be seen in terms of their practical uses and successes rather than in terms of accuracy. It leads to a very curious, irrational and amoral world view. This makes it quite dangerous in the hands of the wrong people. 

(VIDEO) BREXIT: NOW WHAT?

On June 23, 2016 the British people voted to Brexit. Britain joined the European Economic Community (the Common Market) as the EU was known then, in 1973. PM Theresa May (a Remainer) miscalculating a snap election that cost her the majority in Parliament, formed a Government with the support of the DUP and proceeded to negotiate exit conditions with the petty, spiteful eurocrats in Brussels. 

Parliament has voted down Theresa May’s terrible Brexit deal. Join us on Thursday in Westminster as Leave Means Leave pushes for a WTO Brexit! https://t.co/KPehbLYm4F pic.twitter.com/i8VcZgT1FW

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) January 15, 2019

UPDATE: As predicted PM Theresa May survived a second no confidence vote. May says she will hold talks with MPs across Parliament to find a consensus on Brexit. She reiterated that the UK will leave the European Union but had “constructive meetings” with Remainer MPs in the LibDems, SNP and Plaid Cymru. All of who are against Brexit completely. She said they must “come together” and “all work constructively to set out what Parliament does want”. But this is a Remainer Parliament in a pro-Brexit Britain. The country expects Brexit to be delivered, not be watered down and killed off by hardline Remainers. No Deal is still better than a bad deal. An overwhelming majority of MPs are intent on diluting Brexit so much that it is unrecognisable to what we voted for. Such a deal does not exist! (Source)

WASHINGTON POST: KHASHOGGI WAS FOREIGN AGENT

In 2017 US President Trump, after a historical speech at the Arab Islamic American Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia aligned with Islamic Reformers. He cast terrorism as a fight of good against evil. The new alliance involves trade and technology in exchange for reformation and fighting radicals. In 2018 the CIA, the Muslim Brotherhood and Western liberals hit back against the reformer Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman accusing him of the murder of a opposition figure Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey. 

I tried to piece together the motivations for why US media and pols on the Left would enthusiastically take part in a Qatari info op against Saudis.

As is often the case, things that look like conspiracies are just people acting on common interests.https://t.co/gevPyoXeGX

— David Reaboi (@davereaboi) December 28, 2018

UPDATE: The Washington Post has caused itself a major scandal since it has come to light they and their martyred “reformer” Jamal Khashoggi were publishing anti-Saudi propaganda for Qatar. They tried to bury this in a pre-Christmas Saturday news dump, but that can’t stop the damage this will do to their reputation. “Text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the columns he submitted to The Washington Post, proposing topics, drafting material and prodding him to take a harder line against the Saudi government,” the Post wrote December 21.

(VIDEO) US WITHDRAWAL FROM SYRIA EXPLAINED

Donald Trump called Barack Obama the founder of ISIS and Hillary Clinton its co-founder, echoing the words of Gen. Michael Flynn that Obama made a willful decision to allow Islamic State to form as a weapon against Assad, known as Operation Timber Sycamore. It made the war in Syria a strategic mess. Geopolitically there's even more at stake after President Trump announced US withdrawal from Syria in December 2018.

JackPosobiec's broadcast: Debunked Navy SEAL story, Project Birmingham update https://t.co/QCbimapHfp

— ☆ Ƙαѕѕαη∂яα 🎄🏺 (@KassandraTroy) December 29, 2018

Jack Posobiec deals at length with Operation Timber Sycamore from the 22:00 minute mark.

UPDATE: On Boxing Day President and Melania Trump emerged at the Al Asad Airbase in Iraq to thank the troops. We will dispense here with the role of the media in this as completely irrelevant. The matter at hand is the President's announced troop withdrawal from Syria, thereby reversing his predecessor's strategic mess to load the dice in the Middle East in favor of Iran.

(LIVE STREAM) GOOGLE CEO AT HOUSE TESTIMONY

Social media are under attack for their left-leaning bias and censoring politically incorrect users and content. Conservative activists are being suspended as a matter of corporate policy. And now the mainstream is finding out that the exploitation of personal data is at the core of the techies' business model! Ow noes!

UPDATE:



Live stream: Google CEO testifies at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.