We Are All Julian Assange!: An Anarchist Soliloquy Reply

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

These are the days, dearest motherfuckers. These are those days. These days. These days of rage. These do or die days. These all or nothing days. These days with the ice caps melting and the seas rising to drown their wayward children. These days with the empire collapsing all around us in heaps of flames like the glowing red spires of a thousand Notre Damme’s. Days of hysteria and blindness. Days of gnashing teeth and talking heads decapitated from the reality they pontificate upon. Days of drones strikes and indefinite detention. The end of days for the worlds most abominable superpower, exit stage right. But the actors in this epic tragedy are revolting. Swing low, sweet cherry, Helter Skelter is coming down with a fight. Nero’s finale is rapidly becoming a concerto. In days like these, truth has become a precious commodity. The kind of glimmering prize that even the better angels of our nature are tempted to horde. But sadly sometimes even horded prizes can be taken for granite. Washed away in the rapids of filth that can only be called “truth” in parentheses.

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Kick the Puppy Episode 26 1

rabbithole

California man sentenced to 20 years in fatal “swatting”, calling the cops is always a bad idea, New Zealand democracy turns against itself, perceptions of risk, New Zealand gang leaders refuse to turn in guns, Hell’s Angels and street gangs vow to defend mosques in New Zealand, Kentucky governor signs bill outlawing sex between people and animals, lawmakers introduce bill to make Puerto Rico a state, man steals $122 from Facebook and Google by sending random bills, 1 in 4 young Americans didn’t have sex last year-record high, don’t blame the teenagers, Facebook to ban white nationalism and separatism, YouTube radicalization and the rabbit hole, apparently Beijing is the world’s food delivery empire, age checks to watch online porn in the UK, synthetic alcohol without the dangers?

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Washington State Politicians Drop Cynical Attempt to Impose Taxes on Gold & Silver Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations • Tags:

Sound Money Group, In-State Dealers, and Grassroots Activists Deter Tax-Hungry Politicians

By J P Cortez

Well, here’s some encouraging news…

Efforts in Washington State to impose sales tax on gold and silver were SHUT DOWN today thanks to intense efforts by the Sound Money Defense League, a group of in-state coin dealers led by Dan Duncan, the Association of Washington Businesses, and a large number of vocal grassroots supporters.

Here’s the backstory…

Since last month, a few misguided Washington State senators and representatives have been trying to ram through a new tax on constitutional money.

Their cynical efforts stalled out last month on the senate side, and today, the House Finance Committee voted decisively against imposing a new sales tax on precious metals.

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Keith Preston: US has been at war throughout most of its history Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags:

Press TV. Listen here.

The United States has been perpetually at conflict with other nations throughout most of its history, following the expansionist tradition of past empires, says an American political analyst in Virginia.

“We had the War of 1812, the Mexican war, the Civil War, the wars with various Native American nations (tribes), the Spanish–American War, the two world wars, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, Iraq twice, Afghanistan, just to name some of the major ones,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

“We also have to consider all of the different wars that the United States has played an indirect role in terms of either engineering coups or arming insurgents or funding a particular state that is engaged in a war against its domestic population,” Preston told Press TV on Tuesday.

“When we add all of those wars, we see that the United States has literally been involved in wars in probably hundreds of different countries and territories over the past couple of centuries,” he added.

PressTV-US ‘most warlike nation in history’: Jimmy Carter

PressTV-US ‘most warlike nation in history’: Jimmy CarterFormer US President Jimmy Carter says America has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history, making the country “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.”

Former US President Jimmy Carter said Sunday that America has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history, making the country “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.”

Speaking at his regular Sunday School lesson at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, Carter said the reason for most US wars was Washington’s tendency to force other nations to “adopt our American principles.”

Carter said that China, in contrast to the US, had made massive economic progress by maintaining peace. “How many miles of high-speed railroad do we have in this country?” he asked.

The US has “wasted, I think, $3 trillion” on military spending. “It’s more than you can imagine. China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that’s why they’re ahead of us. In almost every way.”

“And I think the difference is if you take $3 trillion and put it in American infrastructure you’d probably have $2 trillion leftover. We’d have high-speed railroad. We’d have bridges that aren’t collapsing, we’d have roads that are maintained properly. Our education system would be as good as that of say South Korea or Hong Kong,” Carter told the congregation.


AnPrim On Fire: Human Supremacy Within Anarcho-Primitivist Narrative 4

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Environment

By Ria Montana, forest & wetland rewilder https://veganprimitivist.wordpress.com/ 

Within anarcho-primitivism plays an ongoing dialectic pinpointing origins of the problem of civilization. Impugning only capitalism or the industrial age is much too timid. From the left, radical environmental activist leader and author Derrick Jensen impugns the point people exceed their capacity for self-sufficiency, the dawn of cities. In the trilogy Ishmael, The Story of B and My Ishmael fiction writer and civilization critic Daniel Quinn renders agriculture as humans’ dichotomizing choice to be Givers or Takers. Couple city settling with plant cultivating & animal herding and you’ve hit the collective anprim sweet spot.

Looking farther back than agriculture as the start of humans’ split with nature slashes approval. Anarcho-primitivist author and Anarchy Radio host John Zerzan’s look back to origins of art and language has appealed to some but with less enthusiasm. In his 3/13/19 radio show Zerzan reals in analysis on the catalyst of controlled fire, instead positioning civilization’s birth at the point humans domesticated animals and plants. Some say focusing at this fixed ~10 millennia point paints too simple a picture, ignores all civilizations’ embers heating up, culminating to ignite the world ablaze.

Techno-Fire

The debate on civilization’s origins parallels the debate on what qualifies as a technology. Values connoted by technologies are biased to support the interpreter’s view on origins. For example, those who blame agriculture see the plow as an obvious tool of civilization. Those who include controlled fire in the blame see hearths uncovered in archeologic digs as technological shifts in humans’ relationship with living communities that set the stage for domestication of plants and animals. Agriculture-blaming purists deny that using fire is technology toward civilization, perhaps to justify keeping fire in their rewilding repertoire, or perhaps in an effort to ward off criticism of hunting and cooking animals. In the premise set forth here placing civilization’s origins with the beginnings of human primate’s colonizing lifeways, inventions such as mortar and pestle are not catalysts toward civilization if they are not used as colonizing instruments, but spears are catalysts toward civilization if they are used as colonizing instruments, no matter the complexity of design. (Yes other species use hunting implements, but not in a way that degrades and massacres large scale living communities in a mega-regional and eventually worldwide colonizing schema as humans have.)

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Reasons not to take the Julian Assange story at face value 16

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags: , ,

By Adam Ormes

News from Nowhere

Witnessing the uniformity of the popular response to Assange’s removal from the Ecuadorian embassy demonstrates that precious few commentators are willing to discuss the numerous ‘red flags’ in his story. It would seem therefore that it is this reluctant sleuth’s duty to lay them out.

There are perhaps 5 main points to consider here:

  1. Assange’s connection to ‘The Family’ child LSD brainwashing cult – which was very likely an intelligence operation. Substantiating evidence for this claim is provided below.
  2. Assange’s hacker alias, which he used from the age of 16, was Mendax – meaning ‘liar’ in Latin. He was caught after a police raid in 1991, and charged in 1994 “with thirty-one counts of hacking and related crimes. In December 1996, he pleaded guilty to twenty-five charges (the other six were dropped), and was ordered to pay reparations of A$2,100 and released on a good behaviour bond. The perceived absence of malicious or mercenary intent and his disrupted childhood were cited to justify his lenient penalty.” [link]
  3. Assange’s relationships with US government. “On the 17th of November 1994, Julian Assange replied to an email from NASA employee Fred Blonder(,) the UNIX toolkit coordinator at NASIRC (NASA Automated Systems Incident Response Capability). (…) Someone from Los Alamos National Laboratories (mcn) was copied on the email (identity unknown). Also copied on the email was Quentin Fennessy from Sematech. SEMATECH was formed in 1987 as a partnership between the United States Government and 14 U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturers.” Likewise, his former hacking comrade Pieter Zaitko, who went on to work for BBN Technologies, a DARPA military contractor, claimed that Assange’s “graduate work had been funded by a US Government grant, specifically NSA and DARPA money which was supposed to be used for ‘fundamental security research’.” This was subsequently revoked; however it begs the question as to how and why such funding was obtained in the first place. [link]

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The Strange Success of Russiagate Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies • Tags: ,

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

It was the popcorn fart heard round the world. After two years of the vilest Russophobic hysteria seen since McCarthy was hauled off to a laughing academy in a straight-jacket, Robert Mueller, patron saint of butt-hurt Dems and indefinite Muslim detention, came to a conclusion on Russiagate only stunning to those of us who don’t live outside the bulletproof walls of stone blind denial. After 37 indictments for totally unrelated Beltway scumbaggery. After $26 million of the taxpayers pilfered dollars flushed down the fucking toilet. After five hundred thousand hours of unhinged sore losers like Rachel Maddow giving Alex Jones a run for his money screaming their bloody heads off about one grassy knoll after another. The results of the great Russian Inquisition of 2019 are bupkis, notta, zero, no collusion whatsoever between one Donald J. Trump and the Putin regime. You could have heard a pin-head drop at MSDNC.

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In America, talk turns to something not spoken of for 150 years: Civil war 4

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies

By Greg Jaffe and Jenna Johnson

Washington Post

At a moment when the country has never seemed angrier, two political commentators from opposite sides of the divide concurred recently on one point that was once nearly unthinkable: The country is on the verge of “civil war.”

First came former U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova, a Fox News regular and ally of President Trump’s. “We are in a civil war,” he said. “The suggestion that there’s ever going to be civil discourse in this country for the foreseeable future is over. . . . It’s going to be total war.”

The next day, Nicolle Wallace, a former Republican operative turned MSNBC commentator and Trump critic, played a clip of di­Genova’s commentary on her show and agreed with him — although she placed the blame squarely on the president.

Trump, she said, “greenlit a war in this country around race. And if you think about the most dangerous thing he’s done, that might be it.”

With the investigative report from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III said to be nearly complete, and with impeachment talk in the air and the 2020 presidential election campaign ramping up, fears that once existed only in fiction or in the fevered dreams of conspiracy theorists have become a regular part of the political debate. These days, there is talk of violence, mayhem and, increasingly, civil war.

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Turkey has been moving away from American paradigm Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: ,

Press TV. Listen here.

Turkey has been moving away from the traditional American paradigm, a political analyst in Virginia.

Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com. said Turkey was gradually moving away from the traditional American paradigm and heading in a different   direction leading towards Russia.

PressTV-‘Turkey moving away from US sphere of influence’

PressTV-‘Turkey moving away from US sphere of influence’Turkey has been moving away from America’s sphere of influence and improving its relationship with Russia, says a political analyst in Virginia.

Preston told Press TV that tensions between Turkey and the United States especially rose when Donald Trump became the US president.

Preston said since the Trump administration came to power, there is clearly some tension between the United States and other traditional US allies in NATO.

He said a number of issues were the reason for the tensions.

One reason noted by Preston for the increased tensions with Washington is Ankara’s decision to purchase a Russian missile defense system.

“Turkey and the United States are now having a conflict over the question of Turkey’s acquisition of weapons from Russia,” Preston said.

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Fuck the Border 6

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Immigration • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

Well, he finally got what he wanted, dearest motherfuckers. That vile crusted jizz rag we call a president has finally managed to manufacture an actual crisis at the border. After months of saber rattling conspiracy theories about secret jihadists and child actors, after years of demonizing people escaping the shitholes that Uncle Sam dug himself in the killing fields of the Northern Triangle, the grand swarms have finally arrived, too great in number for even the Donald’s enemies on the fake news to ignore. Naturally, Trump is playing up this tragedy as vindication for all his racist wolf-crying but the sick reality is that it’s likely largely the result of it. A self-fulfilling doomsday prophecy for the MAGA era.

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Jill Stein: Rachel Maddow is “Brain Dead” 2

by • Uncategorized • Tags:

Former Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein returns to PRIMO NUTMEG to discuss a plethora of controversial subjects. Dr. Stein answers questions about Venezuela, Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, third-party politics, the corporate media’s RussiaGate smears against her, the details of her appearance with Vladimir Putin at the 2015 RT dinner in Moscow, the Green New Deal, cancelling student loan debt, and whether or not she is running for President in 2020.

Reflections on Electoral Politics (Not a Pleasant Thought) Reply

by • Electoralism/Democratism

Voting is fine as a cultural ritual (like trick or treating on Halloween or setting off fireworks on July 4), but the outcomes of elections are merely reflections of pre-existing cultural patterns.

Elected officials are the employees of the ruling class/power elite, and their job is to implement pre-determined policies that are based on the consensus of elites regarding their own interests. The policies are worked out in think tanks and elite foundations controlled by elite donors and financiers. Anyone who gets elected president has to either do the bidding of the board of directors or be forced out. The elite has gone out of their way to undermine Trump, even though he is one of them, but just doesn’t play by the rules (like gatecrashing the primaries) and goes off script occasionally and actually tells the truth (like how the WMD claim in Iraq was a hoax). Someone who was genuinely antagonistic to elite interests would be out in heartbeat: framed, impeached, criminally charged, assassinated, whatever. Jimmy Carter seems to have been a decent guy. But who was running his foreign policy? Zbig B, who cultivated the Taliban and the Khmer Rouge as clients. Gerald Ford was probably a decent guy? But who was running his foreign policy? Henry the K, who greenlighted Surkarno’s massacre of 500,000 Timorese.

If Tulsi was elected prez either she would have to go the same way as Obama, or have the wrath of the ruling class come down on her 100 times greater than what it’s been with Trump. The same would be true of a Ron Paul-like Republican, a Jill Stein, or a Constitution Party president. I do think that electoral campaigns have a valuable propaganda function, which is why I promote Tusli now, Stein in 2016, Ron Paul in 2008/2012. In my perfect world someone like Carne Ross would be in the Democratic primaries, and someone like Marc Victor in the Republican primaries. But the goal of electoral campaigns should be to disseminate propaganda, not to “win.” The voting thing will happen on its own as ideas permeate the wider culture. A good example is the way that weed legalization and gay marriage went from being fringe ideas to being normalized. But at Antonio Gramsci, F.A. Hayek, Max Weber, Alain de Benoist, and plenty of others have pointed out, it’s winning the war of ideas that matters. The rest will happen on its own. As I once wrote elsewhere:

“The standard pattern in the history of the advancement of radical movements is that a new revolutionary outlook first captures the imagination of the intellectual elite, who become dissenters, and this new outlook then advances into the ranks of those who are most likely to opt for radicalism, or who have the least to lose by doing so. So, in turn, the intellectual dissidents are joined by student radicals and rebellious youth, bohemians and counterculturalists, members of the lumpenproletariat and the underclass, and marginalized or outcast social groups. Eventually, radical ideas begin working their way into the ranks of the conventional proletariat, and then into the middle class, and, finally, the establishment, with social reactionaries reluctantly being dragged along.”

The Amish have a pretty cool take on voting: “The Amish don’t vote in national elections. They vote in local elections. They do so because they have decided long ago that to vote for anyone on the national stage is to vote for a corrupt, lying, scheming Son of Satan. They won’t do it. Instead they argue that on the local level their vote just might make a bit of difference.” I generally agree with this although I think it’s a bit defamatory to Satan to compare him to the political class. https://www.patheos.com/…/disturbed-by-the-presidential…

Will the Red Tribe Revolt in the Face of Blue Tribe Victory? 7

by • Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Secession, Strategy

Leading fourth generation warfare theorist Bill Lind, a paleconservative, discusses the possibility of a Red Tribe revolt as the Blue Tribe increasingly achieves national hegemony. Some highlights:

“…But something far more powerful than any issue is motivating the base: an ever-stronger feeling that it’s us against them.  “Us” is average people who work for a living, follow the rules, go to church on Sunday, and try to be good fathers, mothers, and neighbors.  “Them” is a mix of elites who despise average people, blacks and immigrants who live on working Americans’ tax payments while committing violent crimes and the Globalist 1% who get rich by exporting average peoples’ jobs….I don’t think it will accept that outcome, not when a radically Left Democratic president starts opening the borders, turning the White House into a LGBTQ wedding chapel and lets millions of black criminals out of jail while giving them the vote.  At that point, there is going to be a rebellion.

In much of the South, the rebellion could take an old/new form: nullification.  That issue seemed to be settled before the Civil War, when the Supreme Court ruled that states could not nullify acts of the federal government.  But in recent years, nullification has come back, not from the Right but from the Left, and, because it is coming from the Left, it has been accepted by the Establishment.  Two clear cases are laws regarding marijuana and enforcement of federal laws against illegal immigration.  On the former, state after state has legalized marijuana despite federal law that makes its sale or use illegal.  It is as clear a case of state-level nullification as I can imagine.  With regard to illegal immigrants, many Left-ruled cities have proclaimed themselves “sanctuary cities” where local police will not enforce federal immigration laws.

This is more or less the same argument I have been making for decades. The Blue Tribe (“progressives”)  have largely won the “culture wars” on most issues, and the “Blue zones” (large cities and coasts) are where most of the US population lives, with the Red Tribe located in the territorially large but sparsely populated rural areas. Decentralization involving urban-surburban-rural separation would largely  have the effect of achieving self-determination for most cultural factions while underming the state/ruling class/power elite at the same found. An anarchist-led revolutionary populism with a  far-left/radical-center/far-right “base” against the neoliberal/establishment is clearly the way to achieve such an objective. Think something like Italy’s Five Star Movement or the Pirate Parties on steroids.

One of the objections that is often raised to my perspective is that people will still be oppressed by authoritarian rightists in the Blue zones, or by authoritarian leftists in Red zones. But that is why pan-anarchism is necessary. There will not merely be Blue and Red zones, but purple, green, pink, lavendar, black, white, brown, yellow, and polka-dotted zones as well. This is not science fiction. Ancient Greece was a collection of thousands of cities with hundreds of different political systems. The Holy Roman Empire was a collection of hundreds of kingdoms and thousands of unique territories. The prototypes are already there. There are thousands of autonomous communities and startup societies around the world today.

Read the entire article here.

Reflections on the Democratic Party (Not a Pleasant Thought) Reply

by • Electoralism/Democratism

At this point, it looks like the Democrats are probably going to run an “Anybody but Trump” campaign like the “Anybody but Bush” campaign they ran in 2004 (the only time since 1988 that they lost the popular vote). My guess is that they’ll repeat what Hillary did last time and base their campaign on “Donald Trump is an asshole, and his voters are racist deplorables.” That’s not going to win the sympathy of anyone who is not already a Trump-hater anyway.

The idea that the Democraps are a genuine opposition party is a joke and a farce. While Republicans are the party of the traditional 1% Chamber of Commerce types (the right-wing of the plutocracy), the Democrats are the party of the 0.1% tech and financial oligarchs (h/t Richard Cheimison) whose “base” are the left-wing of the middle class seeking upward mobility through the state and promoting their own urban-cosmopolitan lifestyle interests. Hence, the emphasis on “identity politics,” ecology (“I’m cool because I recycle”), the welfare state (“More free stuff”) and gun control (“Can’t have them icky rednecks and brothas packing heat’). Anti-imperialism is not something that is even on these peoples’ radar. Many of them are openly pro-imperialist (“Muh human rights”). Nor is any serious analysis of geopolitics, class relations, or statecraft.

Historical emergence of climate change, gender equity, and anti-racism as State doctrines 1

by • Uncategorized

An immensely important new paper by Canadian academic Denis Rancourt on how on how “left-wing” ideas have been co-opted by neoliberal capitalism and incorporated into the ruling class ideological superstructure.

The report is entitled “Geo-Economics and Geo-Politics Drive Successive Eras of Predatory Globalization and Social Engineering: Historical emergence of climate change, gender equity, and anti-racism as State doctrines.”

The Introduction / Abstract reads as follows:

The influence of geopolitical and global economic conditions on the fabric of domestic societies and on individual psychology is most frequently underestimated by civilian commentators, especially regarding Western “free and democratic” societies. The military, on the other hand, do not underestimate the importance of broad trade and economic factors on the very fabric of a society and on the psychology of its citizens, at least in targeted developing countries.

This article has two main goals.

The first is to demonstrate the large extent to which the global financial system determines national and regional reality in people’s lives and security, including in the USA itself and in the Western world in general, with an emphasis on the two main post-World-War-II transformations, which were initiated in 1971, following the cancellation of the Bretton Woods agreement, and in 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The second is to describe the on-going tectonic shift that followed the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union in broader terms than is usually envisioned, and how this driven and coordinated shift was chronologically accompanied by: a dramatic acceleration of trade and finance “globalization”, and an unprecedented campaign of social engineering of the Western uppermiddle-classes, aimed at facilitating USA and world-elite opportunistic exploitation of the new global circumstances, in turn leading to the present Gilets jaunes, Brexit, Trump… backlash. (In a sense, “the Russians did it.”)

The full report can be read at the link HERE.

Keith Preston: Turkey moving away from America’s sphere of influence Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

Press TV. Listen here.

Turkey has been moving away from America’s sphere of influence and improving its relationship with Russia, which was underscored by Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system despite US threats not to do so, says a political analyst in Virginia.

“There’s been tensions between the United States and Turkey in recent years over a number of issues pertaining to US policy in the Middle East,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.

“American foreign policy has become increasingly hostile towards Russia in the last few years and the Turks do appear to view that as not being in their interest, in part because of their relatively close geographical proximity to Russia,” Preston told Press TV on Thursday.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday vowed to go ahead with a deal to purchase Russian missiles despite Washington’s suspension of Turkey’s participation in a US jet program.

The US said on Monday it was halting all deliveries and joint work with Turkey on the F-35 fighter jet program if Ankara insisted on the deal.

Washington has suggested Turkey could opt for the US-produced Patriot missiles instead.

But Erdogan said although Ankara was keen to buy the US-produced missiles, “America was unfortunately not giving Patriots to us on the same terms” as Russia.

PressTV-Turkey ignores US threats over Russian S-400

PressTV-Turkey ignores US threats over Russian S-400Turkey is ignoring threats by top US officials to buy Russia’s S-400 missile system.

The row over the F-35 and the S-400 is the latest in a series of diplomatic disputes between Ankara and Washington.

Tensions have been escalating between the two NATO allies over issues including US support for Kurdish groups in Syria that Ankara says are responsible for terror attacks inside Turkey. 

Washington and its NATO allies have strived to prevent the sophisticated Russian-built anti-aircraft weapon system from collecting information about the US-made all-weather stealth multirole warplanes, technically known as the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters, just as they are gaining a foothold in Europe.

Erdogan has also slammed American officials for rejecting his requests to hand over Fethullah Gulen, a powerful opposition figure living in the US, whom Ankara accuses of having masterminded a coup attempt in July 2016.

West Virginia Joins Growing Sound Money Movement Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations

By J.P. Cortez

Six Other States Now Weighing Their Own Bills to End Taxes on Gold & Silver

Before the ink could even dry on West Virginia Governor Jim Justice’s signature on a repeal of sales taxation on gold, silver, platinum, and palladium bullion and coins, legislators in Wisconsin and Maine introduced similar measures in their own states. 

All told, 39 states have now reduced or eliminated sales taxes on the monetary metals, and Wisconsin, Maine, Kansas, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Tennessee are all actively considering bills of their own this month.

West Virginia’s Senate Bill 502 enjoyed tremendous popularity, passing through the State Senate unanimously before passing out of the House 90-9. Starting July 1, investors, savers, and small businesses in the state are no longer required to pay sales and use tax on the exchange of dollars for the monetary metals.

Earlier this week, Representative Justin Fecteau (R –  Augusta) of Maine introduced LD 1446, a measure to repeal sales taxes on precious metals, saying, “Seven years since his 2012 run for President, the monetary policy lessons of Congressman Ron Paul still stick out to me. This bill is an important first step to restore sound money in Maine by refusing to tax the conversion from one legal tender to another.”

And Wisconsin State Representative Shea Sortwell (R – Two Rivers) today introduced his measure to end the taxation of money on the anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt’s controversial gold ban 86 years ago.

“On April 5th, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt made the disastrous decision to confiscate individuals’ private gold holdings through Executive Order 6102. American citizens were forced to turn in their gold under the threat of ten years in prison. Shortly after, the price was arbitrarily raised over 50%, a shocking theft of wealth from the American people,” said Sortwell.

“Wisconsinites ought to have the choice and freedom to use alternative currencies and money without being taxed for it — and this bill would put our precious metal sellers on an even playing field with our Midwest neighbors.”

Meanwhile, West Virginia Congressman Alex Mooney (R-WV) is doing his own part to end federal income taxation of sound money.

Mooney’s Monetary Metals Tax Neutrality Act (H.R. 1089) would “clarify that the sale or exchange of precious metals bullion and coins are not to be included in capital gains, losses, or any other type of federal income calculation.” 

To be sure, the out-of-control spending and debt embraced by many politicians is directly undermining the value of the dollar and our savings, but momentum is building, particularly in the states, to restore sound money in America.

Why “Democratic Socialists” are Conservative 1

by • Economics/Class Relations

This is an important article. Given the growing popularity of “democratic socialism,” it’s important to point out what social democrats actually are, i.e. state-centric reactionaries. An authentic anarchist approach to political economy involves critiquing and opposing the ways in which the state has the effect of centralizing control over wealth, property, and resources, and developing alternatives that are independent of the state.

By Thomas L. Knapp

Garrison Center

A February Harris poll finds that 49.6% of Millennial and Generation Z Americans would “prefer living in a socialist country.”

US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), among other politicians, proclaim a message of “democratic socialism,” evoking an ideology last ascendant in the early 1900s when Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas moved the needle in US elections.

But the devil is, as always, in the details. The goals of today’s American “democratic socialism,” as laid out in Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal resolution, in Sanders’s “Stop BEZOS Act,” etc. look a lot more like Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s effort to “save capitalism” through welfare statism than like the proposals of socialism’s last rise to prominence.

The essence of socialism as laid out by Proudhon and Marx and promoted by the International Workers of the World, et al., came down to destroying the wage system and building a classless society based on worker ownership of the means of production.

Those earlier socialists would almost certainly have lauded gig economy workers as examples of what socialism sought. Today’s socialists disdain them.

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