The Censors Smack Paradigm Press
The Censors Smack Paradigm Press
Before we launch into our main topic today, we devote Bullet No. 1 to a reminder that election results notwithstanding, the censorship-industrial complex is alive and well.
“YouTube removed Jim's Rickards’ post-election briefing,” a reader informs us after we linked to it in Wednesday’s edition.
“Is Paradigm aware that YouTube removed the video of Matt Insley and Jim Rickards?” asks another. “I watched it prior to it being shut down. I imagine they considered the discussion of the 2020 Georgia vote disinformation?”
“Can it be reposted on the Paradigm site?” asks a third.
Yes, absolutely. Here’s the link for anyone who missed it before it got the banhammer.
In the event, we were told it was taken down for “medical misinformation.”
The censorship battle is ongoing — and sometimes, even alleged champions of free expression like Elon Musk are inconsistent.
On his Market Ticker blog this morning, retired internet CEO Karl Denninger informs us as follows: “So-called ‘free speech’ X has handed me a seven-day suspension for telling the AP to stick their recommendation to get more COVID jabs in their own butts, deeming that ‘violent speech.’” [Emphasis his]
You can’t make this stuff up.
Whether it’s elite organs like YouTube or counter-elite platforms like X, “content creators” are frequently at the mercy of automated reviews and automated decrees with no right of appeal.
We’ve been on the censorship beat ever since the day in 2018 when Alex Jones was simultaneously “de-platformed” by four companies. And we promise to stay on it for the duration.
Let’s move on. For Bullets No. 2 and 3 today we recall a fantastic moment in the history of the 20th century — a moment that is highly relevant now as the once and future president assembles his cabinet.
35 Years After the Wall Came Down…
It was 35 years ago tomorrow that the Berlin Wall fell.
As it crumbled, so too did the scourge of Bolshevism that created misery and death for tens of millions across seven decades.
The event made such a powerful impression on your editor as a young man that I bought this poster and had it framed…
It’s stayed with me through several bachelor apartments as well as the homes I’ve shared with my bride in big city and small town alike.
Not only did the fall of the Wall signal the end of the Soviet brand of Marxism, but it also marked the end of a Cold War that cast a shadow over the entire globe for decades.
For the United States, the end of the Cold War was a chance to start fresh and reclaim our heritage of liberty. And our leaders blew it.
There was a time when America would go to war… and then demobilize when the war was over. That was true even for a brief period after World War II.
But with the Truman Doctrine in 1947, Washington began to adopt a state of permanent mobilization for war.
The “conservative” movement’s thought leaders insisted the values of individual liberty and small government had to be thrown overboard in service to the cause of defeating communism.
William F. Buckley Jr. made the case in early 1952: “We have got to accept Big Government for the duration — for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.”
Thus, he went on, we must endure “large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington — even with Truman at the reins of it all.”
(As it happens, Buckley wrote that article during a two-year stint on the CIA’s payroll. Conflict of interest much?)
When the Soviet menace withered away, America’s military-industrial complex refused to do likewise.
If you’re of a certain age, you might remember Jeane Kirkpatrick. She was Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations. She was one of Reagan’s hardcore hawks when it came to the Soviets.
Perhaps she was most famous for a speech she delivered at the 1984 GOP convention and this line: “They always blame America first!”
She also coined the term “San Francisco Democrats” during that speech.
Kirkpatrick died in 2006 at age 80
A few months after the Wall fell, Kirkpatrick published an essay in The National Interest titled “A Normal Country in a Normal Time.”
How did she see America’s role in the world once the evil empire had dissolved?
“A Normal Country in a Normal Time”
“The end of the Cold War frees time, attention and resources to American ends,” Kirkpatrick wrote.
“The United States performed heroically in a time when heroism was required, altruistically during the long years when freedom was endangered. The time when America should bear such unusual burdens is past. With the return of ‘normal’ times, we can again become a normal nation.
“A good society is defined not by its foreign policy but by its internal qualities… Foreign policy becomes a major aspect of a society only if its government is expansionist, imperial, aggressive or when it is threatened by aggression. One of the most important consequences of the half century of war and Cold War has been to give foreign affairs an unnatural importance.”
And she issued a warning going forward about the elites who had become so powerful during that half-century: “It has become more important than ever that the experts who conduct foreign policy on our behalf be subject to the direction and control of the people.”
Alas, it was too late. Over the last 35 years, the “experts” went rogue. The aim, as two of their leading scholars put it, was “benevolent global hegemony.”
They embarked on “democracy promotion” in Iraq and Afghanistan — even as they coddled dictators in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
They put U.S. military bases in more countries than ever before — 70, by one conservative count. (There are only 195 countries in the world.)
Incredibly, they even expanded the NATO alliance that had been formed for the sole purpose of containing the Soviet threat — stirring Russian fears of encirclement, ultimately provoking Russia’s cruel invasion of Ukraine.
The military-industrial complex metastasized into what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls the MICIMATT (pronounced mickey-matt) complex.
That’s military, industrial, congressional, intelligence, media, academia and think tanks. The MICIMATT has subverted all the “internal qualities” of our “good society” — at staggering cost.
Years before he coined the term “military-industrial complex,” President Dwight Eisenhower feared what permanent mobilization for war really meant: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
That’s not a plea for welfare-state socialism. It’s basic economics: Every tax dollar that’s extracted from the productive economy for the military is a dollar you and I can’t spend bettering our lives.
Ike even ran the numbers in that speech: “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete pavement.”
Twenty years of “forever wars” waged across the Middle East and central Asia from 2001–2021 cost $8 trillion, according to research from Brown University.
That’s not just the direct war-fighting costs, but also all the ancillary costs — including future health care for veterans and interest on the debt incurred to pay for the wars.
$8 trillion. The entire national debt racked up by Uncle Sam in the two centuries before Sept. 11, 2001 was only $5.8 trillion.
Donald Trump is creating a stir on social media today with a promise to “dismantle the deep state.”
But there is also a stir about the prospect of Trump returning his secretary of state and CIA director Mike Pompeo to a senior role in the administration.
Pompeo was one of the worst of the warmongering ogres in Trump’s first administration. He’s every bit as awful as Liz Cheney, who Trump denounced so forcefully on the campaign trail in recent weeks.
Pompeo was also on stage with Trump the day before the election in Reading, Pennsylvania — and spoke at Trump’s final rally in Pittsburgh.
If the deep state is to be “dismantled”... and if there’s any hope of being “a normal country in a normal time”... there will be no place for Pompeo in Trump’s new administration.
Something to ponder ahead of tomorrow’s anniversary…
Trump vs. Powell
Any decisions made by the Federal Reserve yesterday were quickly overshadowed by chatter about Fed chair Jerome Powell’s job security.
Donald Trump has made noises now and then about firing Powell — whom he appointed in 2018.
The subject came up yesterday during Powell’s every-six-weeks press conference. Jim Rickards describes the back-and-forth like so for readers of Rickards’ Crisis Trader…
One reporter asked if Powell would resign if the president requested. Powell’s answer was “no.” The reporter then asked if Powell could be legally required to leave as Fed chair. Again, Powell’s answer was “no.”
Another reporter asked if the president could fire the Fed chair or members of the Board of Governors. Powell’s terse answer was, “Not permitted under the law.” When other reporters pressed this point, Powell said “I’m not going to get into the political things here today.”
Not exactly surprising. “The issue is not as much about Powell’s personal status as it is about the independence of the Federal Reserve from White House pressure,” Jim points out.
In the end, Jim says it’s a tempest in a teapot: “Trump is very unlikely to fire Powell or pressure him to resign. Powell’s term as chair expires in early 2026 so he’s not around that much longer in any case.
“Trump will almost certainly not reappoint Powell in 2026 and will be free to choose his own chair. It may be politically convenient to keep Powell around in the meantime because the White House will have someone to blame if the economy heads south early in Trump’s term as it well may.”
Anyway, the Fed did fulfill expectations and trim the fed funds rate another quarter percentage point yesterday — on top of the half-point cut in September. The rate now sits at 4.75%. The trajectory is for another cut at the next meeting in mid-December.
“In Powell’s view,” says Jim, “inflation is normalizing (meaning it’s moving toward the Fed’s 2.0% goal), and labor markets are normalizing (meaning unemployment is going up but not quickly and not by much).
“In this world, there’s nothing for the Fed to do except stay the course with 0.25% rate cuts unless there are material changes in the economy.”
The major U.S. stock indexes ended the day with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq at record highs, and the Dow slightly in the red.
Today it’s the Nasdaq’s turn to take a breather, while the Dow is on track for its first close over 44,000.
As we write, the S&P is also in record territory — a tantalizing eight points away from the round number of 6,000.
Gold poked its nose back over $2,700 briefly overnight, but now it’s back to $2,688. Silver has sunk to $31.34. Crude is selling off to end the week, down nearly two bucks to $70.40.
Bitcoin is in record territory at $76,268. Speaking of which…
The Taxman Accepts Crypto
In what may or may not be a sign of progress, the City of Detroit says it will accept crypto for payment of taxes.
“City officials said payments will be made through a secure platform and managed by PayPal,” reports the Motor City’s CBS outlet.
According to the Detroit Free Press, cryptos that will be accepted include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and PayPal’s dollar-backed stablecoin.
The launch date is still up in the air — “mid-2025” is as firm as officials will get right now.
While at least three state governments accept crypto for payments — Colorado, Louisiana and Utah — Detroit will be the biggest city to do so. PayPal will immediately convert the crypto to U.S. dollars, the better to avoid any price fluctuations.
"This new payment platform will increase accessibility for Detroiters who would like to use cryptocurrency,” says city treasurer Nikhil Patel; “More importantly, the platform upgrade will also make it easier for Detroiters to make electronic payments — including those who may be unbanked."
That’s interesting. As you might be aware, crypto adoption in developing countries is frequently faster than in the developed world. Now the experience might be opening up to the poorest of the poor in a major U.S. city as well. If you’ve got a cheap smartphone, who needs a bank?
The move definitely feels like another step toward mainstream awareness and acceptance.
All the same, considering that the very first crypto was designed to be a currency independent of any government influences… maybe it’s a step back?
Have a good weekend,
Dave Gonigam
Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets
