The French King Trump Threatens to End Support for the US Revolution

The British hold Philadelphia, New York City, Newport, Rhode Island, Charleston, South Carolina,  Savannah, Georgia, and numerous forts west of the Alleghany Mountains and east of the Mississippi River.  The French King Trump is weary of supporting the British Colonies of North America in their rebellion against King George III, so he declares an end of his support for the Americans unless they cede all of the cities, forts, and their surroundings held by the British to the British.  If the USA makes these concessions, King Trump of France will offer a pledge to protect the sovereignty of the USA in the future.

What President Trump of the USA is trying to force Ukraine to do is worse than the hypothetical I just outlined.  The British Colonies had belonged to Great Britain.  They were not previously entirely sovereign.  They had not had a pledge from Great Britain to treat them as sovereign states.  On the other hand, Ukraine did have a pledge by Russia, the USA, and the United Kingdom to preserve its sovereignty.  Russia dishonored its pledge twice, in 2014 with the invasion of the Crimea and parts of the Donbas and then again in the on-going invasion of 2022.  The USA to its dishonor did not uphold its pledge to preserve the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine in 2014, has done too little to do so since 2022, and now proposes to end its support for Ukraine's attempt to maintain its sovereignty and independence.  King Trump is telling Ukraine not only to give up the territory held by Russian troops, but to give up the grounds that Russia has been unable to take with human cannon fodder waves for the last two years.  King Trump tells Ukraine to reduce the size of its armed forces to two-thirds of its present size, while ceding the most defensible ground between Russian forces and its two biggest cities.  In exchange, the USA will once again guarantee Ukraine sovereignty over the remainder of the country.

France did not assist the USA when Britain invaded the USA in the War of 1812.  The USA did not keep South Vietnam free from the Communists as it pledged to do.  It left its allies in Afghanistan in the most ignominious manner.  It dishonored its pledge to Ukraine, which was given so Ukraine would give up its nuclear weapons.  The word of the USA is not worth much.

Putin is simply an evil man.  He will happily accept the cession of the Ukrainian lands this Trump Treaty would give him.  He will sell his oil and rebuild his nearly destroyed military.  Then he will attack Ukraine again.  The valiant Ukrainians will fight hard, but without their fortified positions, with a reduced military, and without intelligence and weapons assistance from the USA, they will lose people at a faster rate than they have in the present just war they are fighting.  The evil Putin will be rewarded with the present Trump Treaty and with conditions easing his next war against Ukraine.

Russia aspires to be the Mongol Horde.  Ukraine aspires to be a part of Western Civilization, a country inspired by The Enlightenment.  All good men are on the side of Ukraine, whose people have put up a most determined resistance to the tyranny of Russia and Putin.  No moral individual could propose the Trump Treaty to Ukraine.  Trump should be ashamed of himself.  Unfortunately, he is shaming the United States of America.

Biden Administration Misdirection on US Oil Production

 The Biden administration is making a habit of misdirecting Americans on the causes of the increases in the cost of oil in several respects.  They have repeatedly made the claim that U.S. crude oil production is at an all-time high, for instance.  Here is the actual data on U.S. Crude Oil production per week according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration:

The peak in average daily crude oil production was in the weeks of 28 February and 13 March 2020 when the average daily oil production was 13,100 thousand or 13.1 million barrels of oil.  Oil production was reduced after that due to the Covid-19 pandemic and expected lowering of demand for oil as people stayed home or at least stayed closer to home.  The week of 29 January 2021, Biden's first full week in office, the daily average oil production was 10.9 million barrels of oil per day.  The week of 25 February 2022 the daily average crude oil production was 11.6 million barrels.  This was due to some recovery in oil demand and the price of oil due to the easing of the Covid-19 pandemic.  This is still 1.5 million barrels per day below the U.S. peak oil production.

Another Biden administration misdirection is the claim that 9,000 oil leases for oil production means that any shortfall in oil production is the fault of oil production companies.  The Biden administration has made it abundantly clear that they want the prices of oil and natural gas to skyrocket, which means they want their production to lag the demand for them.  They want this to encourage the massive mistake of a false belief in an existential catastrophe due to man-made global warming.  Oil and gas production has no long-term future according to their belief system.  Twice the Keystone XL pipeline was put on track for construction and twice its construction was halted by the Democrats and the Russian-funded environmentalist special interest groups with whom they collaborate.  This has caused the loss of massive sums of capital to its investors.  Other pipeline projects have also suffered as the Democrats ruined the investment climate.

One cannot make use of a lease to drill oil if one is not allowed to produce on that lease under reasonable environmental rules.  One cannot make use of an oil lease if one cannot build a pipeline to deliver the oil to a refinery.  One commonly cannot drill or build a pipeline if one cannot borrow money from banks and other lending institutions.  The Biden administration has been strongly discouraging banks and other lenders from making loans for purposes tied to oil production, oil transport, and oil product production.  They have discouraged liquification facilities and liquified gas transport capability.  They have also placed a moratorium on further leases on federal land and on offshore oil drilling. 

If the Biden administration were to give you the go ahead to invest a billion dollars into an oil and gas production effort, would you feel comfortable that they would not halt you in the midst of your investment or at a late stage in that investment?  If you were not very cognizant of that risk, you would certainly not be someone who should have any control over the investment of a billion dollars.

The Biden administration is definitely responsible for an unfavorable climate for oil and gas production.  It is extremely dishonest of them to claim that any shortfall in oil and gas production is due to the failure of the oil and gas industries.

  

Red Famine - Stalin's War on Ukraine

Anne Applebaum tells the horrible story of the Holodomor, the Stalin-lead extermination of Ukrainians by hunger in Red Famine - Stalin's War on Ukraine.  The Russians proved brutal and anything but good Slavic cousins to the Ukrainians.

Thanks to Stalin's policies, at least 5 million people died due to famine in Russia from 1931 to 1934.  Of these, it was the Ukrainians in the Breadbasket of Europe who died in the largest numbers.  At least 3.9 million Ukrainians starved to death.  Stalin had Russians thugs take all of their food from them and would not allow them to leave to find food elsewhere.

This was not the end of his attempts to destroy any possible dissent in Ukraine.  As the famine struck down so many Ukrainians, Stalin also had virtually all Ukrainian intellectuals, educated professionals, and public officials rounded up and jailed or murdered.  Any Ukrainian associated with the independent Ukrainian Republic from 1917 to 1922 was especially eliminated.  People who had promoted Ukrainian history or the Ukrainian language or literature were sent to labor camps or murdered.  Stalin feared the desire of Ukrainians to be Ukrainians and to be independent.  He wanted to squash all aspirations of a separate Ukrainian nation.  Putin is of the same mind.

Russia is Ruled by Men Inured to Death Who Grew Up in the USSR

 Emeritus Professor R. J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii estimates that the Soviet Empire murdered about 62 million people between 1917 and 1987.  Putin and the Oligarchs of Russia grew up in the Soviet Union environment.  To them, the murder of people to support the power of those who rule the country is the ingrained method of ruling.  Murder is the primary tool of a strong ruler.  Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and now Putin have all utilized this tool with devotion.  The vast regions of the Russian Federation would not have such a low population density were those 62 million people to have survived and thrived and multiplied.

The West needs to understand this, though it seems very incomprehensible.  Ukrainians certainly have greatly suffered from this in the past and are doing so once again.  One day the Russians will surely fall victim to an expanding Red China eager to wrest the Asian lands of an underpopulated Russia from it as well.  Russia has lost an incredible sum of human talent and will lose its Empire as a result.  Time is heavily against Russia.

I Condemn Russia and Red China as an Axis of Evil

The Russian Federation, signatory with the USA and the United Kingdom of a guarantee of independent Ukraine's borders in 1994, has invaded Ukraine.  These guarantees were a critical reason Ukraine gave up the world's third largest number of nuclear weapons on its soil after the dissolution of the USSR.  Yes, Ukraine is not a member of NATO, so NATO is not obligated by treaty to defend Ukraine, but the USA and the United Kingdom are obligated by their 1994 treaty.  Both are defaulting on that obligation now as they did in 2014 when Russia took the Crimea.  To be sure, the treaty was perhaps an ill-considered one by the Clinton administration, but that administration was also very concerned, with justification, about the many nuclear weapons then in Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan as a result of the dissolution of the USSR.  To uphold our treaty, we would have had to provide more military aid and training to Ukraine, which might have stimulated Russia to an earlier invasion.  This was a very knotty problem.

Putin claims that Ukrainians are Russians or at least their close brothers.  He says that historically, Ukraine was part of Russia.  He claims they are both Orthodox by religion and share a language.  This being the case, Ukraine must be re-united with the Russians.

Actually, the Kievan Rus was a separate country with its own court, language, large capital city Kiev, now Kyiv, and distinct farming economy when the Duchy of Muscovy was a small fur-trading town.  The Kievan Rus was the largest country in Europe.  It had extensive interactions with the French court and its court was one of the most advanced in Europe for a couple hundred years (1000 - 1200 AD approximately), which was a status Moscow never achieved.  Present day Ukraine consists of an eastern part that Russia conquered and was largely brought under Russian control by Catherine the Great.  The eastern Ukraine generally became Orthodox in religion and the Russians worked hard to force the Ukrainians to speak Russian.  The western part of Ukraine was united with Lithuania and Poland in various combinations for hundreds of years, then was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from the late 1700s until after WW1, when it became part of Poland.  The western Ukraine is largely Catholic.  There is also a large Jewish population in Ukraine, including the present President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, whom Putin claims is a Nazi.

How have the Russians treated their Ukrainian brothers?  In Czarist times, the authoritarian Czars were constantly suppressing the more freedom-loving Ukrainians.  They discriminated against them for government posts, for education, and tended to call them denigrating names, such as Little Russians.  Then eastern Ukraine, which had briefly won independence when the Czarist government fell in 1917, was brought under brutal Russian Communist control in stages in the early 1920s.  When the Russian Communists implemented the collective farm programs and stole the farmland of the Kulaks, the richer farmers, Ukraine was hit harder than the rest of the USSR.  By about 1900, Ukraine had become known as the Breadbasket of Europe.  Many of its farmers were comparatively well off.  These hardworking people had their land stolen and the professional class of people in the many well-developed cities of Ukraine also lost their property.  Then in 1932 - 1933, the Russians took all the food the Ukrainians had grown and left millions of them to starve.  Once again, Ukrainians were discriminated against for government jobs and all jobs in the USSR were government jobs.  They were also discriminated against in education.  They were thought of by Russians as though they were hillbillies, the actual word a Russian Jewish scientist told me they were.

Putin was a KGB agent and a member of the Russian Mafia.  He climbed to power over the bodies of many Russians, let alone many Ukrainians.  Neither he nor the general Russian are someone any rational Ukrainian would want as a brother.  A brother does not steal the land of his brothers, yet Russians did this to Ukrainians.  A brother does not use brutal force to steal all the food grown by another brother and leave him to starve.  A brother does not prevent another brother from having a good job or a good education.  All around, the Putin claim that Ukrainians are Russian brothers is absurd.  He has managed to heighten that absurdity with his claim upon experiencing considerable Ukrainian resistance to his occupation of Ukraine by stating that he needed to set his nuclear forces at a high level of readiness because he cannot image in world without Russia.  Does he really think that Ukrainian resistance to invasion is a threat to the existence of Russia?  Well, perhaps it is a threat to his rule of Russia and he is a much a megalomaniac as Hitler, who could see no use in the continuation of the Third Reich without himself at its head.  Putin, as is the case with many long term dictators, has become mentally unstable and quite divorced from reality.

Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe, if you count Russia as a European country.  It is larger or about the size of France, and larger than Spain, Sweden, Germany, and Finland.  Kyiv, pronounced Kay-eve, contrary to what you hear on the news, is Europe's seventh largest city.  It is not an Appalachian hollow hamlet.  Lviv, of the western Ukraine and very near Poland, is known as the Cultural Center of Ukraine.  

Lviv is about 60 miles west of the small town from which my wife's family came.  Her older brother and sister were born in that town.  Her father, John Palka, was the village mayor and owned a wealthy enough farm of less than 40 acres, that he was a Kulak.  He also had a history of fighting the Communists, when as a 16 year-old he fought in the Ukrainian Army trying to resist the Communist takeover of Ukraine in the early 1920s.  When the Soviets took over the western Ukraine at the start of WWII upon the heinous partition of Poland between Germany and the USSR, he had to flee his home.  When the Germans attacked the USSR and soon took the western Ukraine, he returned and resumed his duties as mayor.  When the Soviets again returned in the closing period of WWII, Anna's family fled Ukraine and wound up in West Germany in the American sector at the end of the war.  They emigrated to the USA in late 1947 and arrived when Anna, my wife, was about 8 months old.  They settled in Cleveland, Ohio and became part of the large Ukrainian community of Cleveland.  The Palka family was active in the Ukrainian Catholic Church and Ukrainian Scouts.  Anna proudly became a U.S. citizen when she was a student at Case Western Reserve University.

I met Anna when I set up a dinner group to meet at the CWRU Hospital cafeteria of people interested in the works and philosophy of Ayn Rand.  I was working on my Ph.D. in Physics at Case Western Reserve University and Anna was working as a microbiologist at the Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital of CWRU.  We married in December 1973 and I became an adjunct member of her Ukrainian family, though with my deficient skills in learning languages, I never learned to speak Ukrainian.  This and my lack of dancing skills required some tolerance on their part.  Still worse, was my lack of belief in God and Catholicism.  Nonetheless, these good people were quite welcoming.

Some will dismiss my moral and  strategic analysis of the role of the Russian Federation as overly influenced by family bias now, but my family experience is also rich in the lessons of history, about which too few Americans have knowledge. 

The United States have contributed to Putin's ability to invade Ukraine by restraining its own oil, gas, and coal production since the start of the Biden administration.  This has caused the cost of oil and natural gas to rise and 40% of the Russian economy is due to its energy resources.  This was crucial to Russia since its total GDP is smaller than that of either Italy, Canada, or South Korea and barely larger than that of Brazil or Australia.  This is a direct result of the lack of freedom, property rights, and individual initiative in Russia.  Not only have we removed American oil, gas, and coal from the global economy, but we have taken to actually importing Russian oil!  We have been providing Russia with the money to pay its military, provide it with arms, and to assemble for the attack on Ukraine.  We aided Putin in building up a $600 billion war-chest so he can weather the relatively weak economic sanctions being applied to Russia.  We have crippled our own energy production at the urging of radical environmentalists who have received considerable Russian funding to achieve that purpose.  Both Russia and China have long promoted false claims of catastrophic man-made global warming in America to scare us into destroying our own great energy advantages to our economy and to global strategic policy.

Putin and the execrable Xi of Red China have entered into some sort of mutually supportive pact to aid their aggressions against their neighbors and to diminish the effects of any economic sanctions by moral indignant countries.  Just as Putin can cause many European nations great harm by cutting off the supply of natural gas and oil to them through a web of pipelines, so can Red China cause tremendous economic harm now that it was cornered so much of the world's manufacturing capacity.  With its cheap and often slave labor, its lack of concern for the environment, its currency manipulations, and its extensive use of coal-fired power plants, China has managed to become the world's largest manufacturer.  In 2018, the value of its manufacturing output was one and two-thirds that of the USA.  China is the dominant supplier of solar panels, rare earth metals for powerful magnets used in wind generators and other electric motors, chemicals for pharmaceutical production and for the Mexican drug cartels, and LEDs.  They are a huge beneficiary of the wrongheaded goal to establish solar and wind generation as the primary sources of electricity in the developed countries.  China's biggest trade partner is the European Union, closely followed by the USA.  The West is assiduously investing gigantic sums of capital in building manufacturing operations in China.  We are truly providing this evil country the rope to hang us with, just as the early Communists assured one another that the Capitalists would do.

Red China is a totalitarian country whose people outside of the annexed and suppressed Hong Kong have never known freedom.  People who have never or only long ago enjoyed freedom are not a moral people.  Morality only thrives among a free people.  Our Founders were fond of saying that a people could be and remain free only if they behaved morally.  The inverse is also true.  A nation which has long lacked freedom, lacks morality.  This applies to Russia as well as to Red China.

Biden has stated that Ukraine should not be admitted to NATO because corruption was widespread in Ukraine.  Rather than encouraging Ukraine to become less corrupt, the Biden family business actively took part in the corruption in Ukraine.  The Biden family business has also been extremely active in business operations in Red China which are controlled by the intelligence and military agencies of the Chinese Communist Party, including acquiring US company defense intellectual property.  It is not a wonder at all that Biden has worked hard to disassemble the American carbon-based fuel industries.  It is not a wonder that the Biden administration has proven such a weak ally to Ukraine.

Americans should become much more reluctant to purchase goods made in China.  They should encourage our government to allow the US carbon-based industries to greatly increase their production of these plenteous and reliable energy sources.  Americans should strongly condemn the ubiquitous violations of individual rights in the Russian Federation and in Red China.

The U.N. Security Council vote on a resolution to "deplore" the Russian invasion of Ukraine was approved by the USA, France, Britain, Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico, and Norway.  China, India, and the United Arab Emirates abstained on the vote, which the Russian Federation vetoed.  We should remember the immoral choices that China, India, and the United Arab Emirates made on this resolution.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know, but there are no Inquiring Minds on the Left

The Obama/Biden administration was the most corrupt administration in U.S. history, despite the Clinton administration's efforts to be as corrupt as possible.  The Obama/Biden administration used the IRS to prevent hundreds of Tea Party and Limited Government organizations from becoming tax-free institutions to minimize their effectiveness in the 2012 election.  The fact that they got away with this emboldened them to go massively in on interfering with the 2016 election.  The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hired the Brit Christopher Steele to collaborate with the Russians to produce the faked dossier that was used with the extensive collaboration of the Obama/Biden administration to obtain FISA permissions to spy on the Trump campaign.  We now know that Obama, Biden, FBI Head James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Director of the CIA John Brennen, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and numerous Dept. of Justice bureaucrats such as the lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were all involved in the effort to spy on the Trump campaign using a dossier they knew to be fake as their justification.

Claims based on the known fake Steele dossier that Trump was collaborating with Russia were used to offset attention to Hillary Clinton's theft of tens of thousands of government emails, some of which were classified, and which she made readily available to foreign governments by callously putting them on an unsecure server in her home.  Unless Russia, Red China, North Korea, and Iran have only incompetent hacker resources, there is every reason to believe they had access to all of Hillary Clinton's emails dealing with many fascinating State Department activities, which are intertwined with military, intelligence, and commercial national interests of the United States and our allies.  Actually, even our allies may have been hacking into her emails, since they also want more insight into the activities of the State Department and its activities with the military, intelligence, and commercial interests so they can gain an advantage over American in their dealings with us.  By the way, we know that Russia and China have extremely competent hacker resources.

Let me remind you that Nixon was driven from office because a few people broke into the DNC headquarters in the Watergate because they actually believed the DNC was collaborating with Cuba to influence the upcoming election.  They did not break in using a dossier they knew was fake as their justification.  They at least thought they were actually chasing down a national security threat.  Then Nixon tried to cover this up and discovered doing it.  Obama and a host in his administration, including Joe Biden, went a step into corruption beyond what Nixon did by creating a hoax and using it to spy on the Trump campaign and then as a means to claim the illegitimacy of his presidency for about 2.5 years, before slighting altering their claims to then impeach the President.

Now we have a Democratic Party nominee for the presidency in Joe Biden who has amassed a fortune while serving as a public servant in Washington, D.C. for 47 years.  He has a son and other relatives who have made fortunes selling his influence to Russia, oligarchs in Ukraine, and the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China.  The Old Guard Media, the Swamp Rats of Washington, D.C., and the socialist left controlling academia do not want the American people to learn about the many decades of rampant corruption in the Federal Government and more state governments than not.  Their power, influence, easy moral pretense, and income all depend upon being the well-connected special interests who can take advantage of the power to make laws and regulations based on government force and on the vast taxes paid by the great majority of hard-working Americans in the private sector.

If you have an inquiring mind, then you will find this video of Tucker Carlson to be very interesting:

Should Joe Biden become President, we will have many national security problems, since he is certainly a puppet to not only the extreme socialist wing of his party, but he is also in the pockets of Russia and China, and oligarchs in Ukraine. Those are not nice people and they are very happy to hurt the American people.

Concern for Socialist Dictator Maduro of Venezuela is an Indicator of the True Intentions of Democrat Socialists in the USA

The Venezuelan National Assembly was duly elected, while the embattled dictator Nicolas Maduro was the winner of a "sham election under absurdly rigged conditions" according to Democrat Senator Dick Durbin, though he himself is hardly a supporter of the many and broad rights of the individual.  The National Assembly of Venezuela appointed Juan Guaido its interim president, which it is empowered to do by the Constitution of Venezuela.  According to many American Democrat Socialists, the U.S. anointed Juan Guaido and has no business meddling in Venezuelan affairs, though what the U.S. actually did was to recognize the constitutionally appointed President of Venezuela.  Meanwhile, Maduro uses the military to murder and imprison any opposition as he drives more and more Venezuelans into unemployment and ever starvation.

Venezuela was among the richest nations in the world a couple of decades ago.  Venezuela began a bad downward trend after the election of Hugo Chavez in December 1998.  The CIA World Fact Book estimated the loss of GDP in 2015 at 6.2%, in 2016 at 16.5%, and in 2017 at 14%.  The World Bank estimated the GDP loss in 2017 at 14.5% and estimates that the 2018 loss of GDP will be 18%.  The CIA World Fact Book says that the per capita GDP in PPP terms in 2015 was $17, 300, which fell to $12,500 in 2017.  The unemployment rate in 2017 was 27.1%.  The 2017 consumer price inflation rate was 1090% and it is worse now.

The brutality of the Maduro regime and the catastrophic economic deterioration of the country do not put a dent in the international solidarity of American Democratic Socialists and like-thinking nations around the world.  Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Turkey, Nicaragua, and Hezbollah all support the Maduro regime.  American socialist Bernie Sanders says the U.S. must not support a coup against Maduro, though he has usurped the Presidency of Venezuela and thanks to the National Assembly is no longer the President of Venezuela.  The people are rioting against his dictatorial regime in the streets, but their opposition to his regime is not to be supported by the U.S. if Sanders gets his wishes.  Meanwhile, Maduro continues on with the support of Cuban intelligence, Cuban troops, and Putin's private army of mercenaries backing him up.  Protestors are shot in the streets.  Bernie, the coup has already occurred and it is being led by Maduro and his Cuban and Russian allies.

California Democat Ro Khanna and the socialist pop star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are among the many American socialist critics of an "American Coup."  The Maduro - Cuban - Russian Coup is of no real concern to them.  After all, socialism is to be supported by the faithful no matter what hardships it entails.  So many American socialists had no problem with Stalin starving 6 or 7 million Ukrainians to death.  They had no problem with Chairman Mao starving and killing about 60 million Chinese.  Socialism at any cost!

As is usually the case, a religion has no problem killing massive numbers of people to achieve its ends.  The god of the Israelites killed all of the people of Jericho, Sodom, and Gomorrah.  The Catholic Church under Pope Innocent III called for a crusade in 1209 against the heretic Catharists who had become prevalent in southern France, then the most wealthy part of Europe.  This murderous crusade is estimated to have killed more than 1 million people before the end of the century according to Homer Smith in Man and His Gods.  Then there was 300 years of total devastation for vast regions of Europe as the Catholics and Protestants fought each other viciously for the soul of mankind in Europe.  The Christian churches also murdered many thousands of people for having sex with others of the same sex or for being witches.  Islam has a similar murderous reputation, which continues to this day.  So why balk at the murders and hardships needed to set the world on a socialist path?  It is as much a religion as these others.

Unless you have a shred or more of rationality in your character.  If you are capable of and value independent thinking, then the answer is clear.  Socialism is not for us.  It is to be fought as though your life depends upon it.  Your life does depend upon the defeat of socialism.  We have to win this battle against international and against American socialists, because if you are like me, they will kill you.  No brutality is too great for a religion like socialism.

Meowing Media Fuel Mass Delusion of Russian Collusion by Steven J. Allen

Dr. Steven J. Allen has written a very succinct article on the media role in constructing one aspect of a mass delusion that President Trump has colluded with the Russians.  Many, many members of the media have demonstrated various measures of irrationality, incompetence, and dishonesty on an overall massive scale in claiming that presidential candidate Trump called upon the Russians to spy on Hillary Clinton and on the USA.  The facts are clearly explained by Dr. Allen in his weekly column at American Greatness in his 21 April article entitled Meowing Media Fuel Mass Delusion of Russian Collusion.  I love that title (be sure to read it aloud) and both the historical mass delusion reference and the cartoon image with the article.  Well-done Dr. Allen.

Dr. Steven J. Allen (J.D., Ph.D.) is vice president and chief investigative officer of the Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C., and author of the forthcoming book Revolt of the Deplorables.  He began writing a weekly column for American Greatness in March 2018.  All of his articles make essential reading if you want to understand how governance in the USA actually works.  They are all very well-written.  You can find them collected here.

I not infrequently disagree with some of the ideas of other writers at American Greatness, but I have also found many articles there well worth reading and thinking about.  There are a limited number of commentators who are not swept up in blind hatred for Donald Trump or in a love of socialism or collectivism in one guise or another, so having another source for a differing and often rational viewpoint is of value.

Europe, Where Mineral Rights Belong to the State, Cannot Frack

In most of Europe, the mineral property rights and sub-surface property rights of land belong to the state, not the landowner.  Consequently, the landowner is only hurt if minerals or oil or natural gas are extracted from his property.  This makes it politically impractical to extract minerals or oil or gas from most of the land. 

Consequently, the hydraulic fracturing now common in the United States is not helping the Europeans at all to free themselves from a heavy dependence on Russian natural gas.  Because of fracking, made possible by mineral rights ownership being commonly in the hands of the landowner in the U.S., the United States passed Russia in the production of both oil and natural gas last year.  But Europe remains in a state of dependence on Russian natural gas.  The most dependent countries are those of Eastern Europe such as the Baltic countries, Ukraine, and Poland, which Russia pressured in 2006, 2009, and 2015 with reductions or interruptions in their natural gas supply.

Is the Clinton Foundation a Charity?

It is widely being said that the Clinton Foundation gives only about 15% of its income to charity, with the rest going to administrative costs. The truth is actually worse than the unbelievably low 15% pass-through rate. Out of $140 million of donations, the Clinton Foundation has only delivered about $9 million to direct charity work. That is 6.4% or only 43% of the widely stated 15% pass-through rate. It is usually held that a decent charity foundation has a pass-through rate of at least 75%. To be sure, one may make charitable donations to a think tank, where one expects most of the money to go to organization employee salaries, office expenses, and travel to meetings. But, the Clinton Foundation claims to be a charity devoted to women's rights, environmentalism, and mitigating harm caused by catastrophic man-made global warming.

The Clinton Foundation has large contributors from Ukraine, Russia, Saudia Arabia, and other Middle Eastern countries. In view of the following observations, why are wealthy people from these countries giving money to the Clinton Foundation?

• These countries are not very keen on women's rights, environmentalism, or catastrophic man-made global warming.

• There is so much need for charity in work within these countries that they ought to donate their money locally.

• Large donors do their homework to find out what the charity pass-through rate is. If they are really interested in doing charity work, they will not accept a 6.4% pass-through rate to actual charitable aid.

So how else can one provide a motive for the large contributions to the Clinton Foundation coming from nations such as Ukraine, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern nations? It is very clear that the donations were motivated by a desire to influence Hillary Clinton's decisions as Secretary of State and perhaps after she might become President. Given this clear motivation, Hillary Clinton had to know she had a very serious conflict of interest problem. Yet, the Foundation took the money and hid the fact that it was being given to the Foundation for such purposes.

Then Hillary compounded the bad perception by actually approving the take-over of a company that provides 20% of the U.S. uranium needs by Russian interests with close ties to Putin.  Our extensive aid to Ukraine is now subject to being questioned as the result of bribes, rather than as a result of our national interest as well.  I expect we will learn about many other questionable decisions now that this Clinton Foundation is in the spotlight.

Any rational individual will be greatly influenced by the past history of immorality exhibited by the Clintons in assessing the likelihood that they were actually influenced by these bribes to make decisions that might be contrary to the national interest of the United States.

Viewers of An Objectivist Individualist by Nation

Having just discussed who does the most searches on Ayn Rand related topics and who visited the website of the Ayn Rand Institute the most in my previous post, I thought it might be interesting to share where the readers of this blog come from.  Of course, this blog is not primarily about Ayn Rand.  It is about many topics of interest to me, which I discuss in a manner consistent with my own commitment to reason and to morality.  I believe my values are very consistent with those of Ayn Rand, but I do not claim they are identical.  And it must be said that my selection of topics is quite different than was Ayn Rand's.

The pageviews of the last month have been by:

United States, 7002
Russia, 941
United Kingdom, 699
Canada, 221
France, 177
Germany, 155
India, 126
Australia, 98
Spain, 62
Netherlands, 48

The pageviews history for all time have been by:

United States, 86,960
Russia, 8252
United Kingdom, 7455
Canada, 5486
Germany, 2989
India, 2985
Australia, 2822
South Korea, 2272
France, 939
Slovenia, 777

It would be of great interest to me to know who my readers are and why they read this blog.  I wish to invite my readers to either make comments or to tell me why they read this blog in e-mails sent to charles.r.anderson@gmail.com

It is a rather curious thing to me that I have had so many readers in Russia, for instance.  If readers there would be kind enough to shed light on that, I would be most appreciative.  I suspect that part of the reason is that I discuss man-made global warming and energy issues with some frequency and Russia is a giant energy producer and many Russians are rather skeptical about catastrophic man-made global warming.  Either personal reasons for being a reader or general insight into why Russians might read this blog would be welcome information.

While Scandinavians may be big readers of the Ayn Rand Institute website, they are not such big readers of this blog.  Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland do pop up on the list occasionally when I look at the statistics of pageviews for a given week, but this is not a regular thing.  I see South Africa fairly often in such shorter timescales also.  Spain and the Netherlands are also frequently on the list for shorter timescales.

Asian Droughts and Grain Production and Demand

Russian Prime Minister Putin announced that exports of Russian grain have been banned from 15 August through the remainder of the year.  China has imported 1.2 million metric tons of corn this year.  The total Chinese imports of corn from all countries in prior years has been less than 100,000 metric tons a year.  Ukraine has also canceled several contracts to deliver wheat.  Widespread drought in Russia and across the northeastern corn belt of China for the last two years has reduced their supplies.  The growing middle class in China has also developed an appetite for more pork, chicken, milk, and eggs from animals fed on corn, as well as soft drinks that use corn syrup as a sweetener.  China is expected to pass Japan to become the world's second largest economy this year.  Demand for more and better food has been growing in India, Brazil, and Russia as well.

As recently as 2003, China was a large exporter of corn, when it exported 15.2 million metric tons.  One expert believes China will import 5.8 million tons of corn in 2011 and 15 million by 2015.  Russia provided 14.5% of the world's total wheat exports in 2009-2010 according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.  Egypt is the world's largest importer of wheat, buying much of it from Russia in recent years.  Russia exported less than 1 million metric tons of wheat in 2000-2001, but increased that to 17.5 million metric tons in 2009-2010.  The top five wheat exporting nations in the year ending in June 2010 were:

U.S.                    23.6 million metric tons
European Union  21.0
Canada               18.5
Russia                 17.5
Australia              14.0

Wheat prices leaped upward in 2007 and have stayed higher.  The story is similar for corn, oats, barley, grain sorghum, and sugar beets.  Rice prices started going up somewhat earlier, but continued to be higher since 2007.  One of the factors that pushed prices higher in 2007 was the U.S. mandate that required the use of ethanol in gasoline be set at 4.7 billion gallons of ethanol.  This is scheduled to rise to 7.5 billion gallons in 2012.  Meanwhile, the EPA was supposed to rule this month whether the ethanol content in gasoline could be raised to 15%, but now says the tests on engines will not be completed until the end of September.  Should the required gasoline content of ethanol be increased to 15%, there will be a further upward pressure on corn and meat prices.  More wheat and other crops will be displaced as farmers grow more corn.

There is some reason to believe that demand can continue to be met in the grain market.  Average corn yields in the U.S. have doubled in the last 40 years to 165 bushels an acre.  David Fischhoff, V.P. of Technology Strategy and Development at Monsanto Co., thinks corn yield can become nearly 300 bushels an acre by 2030.  If we do that and end the foolish subsidies for ethanol production from corn, it will be much easier for the U.S. to develop a greater and more lucrative export market as the rest of the world eats more meat, eggs, milk, and grains.  Healthy farm product exports would help to ease us out of the recession and produce some of the jobs we have failed to produce for most of this last decade.

Russia Complains that Hadley Centre Only Used Warm Station Data

The Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) of Moscow claims the Hadley Centre for Climate Change of the British Meteorological Office has probably distorted Russian climate data.  The IEA believes Russian weather station data does not support the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.  The IEA says the Hadley Centre used data of only 25% of the statiions submitted and cherry-picked that data.  40% of Russian territory was excluded, the data of stations not supporting any substantial warming in the late 20th and early 21st Century was excluded, and incomplete data sets were commonly given preference to complete monthly data sets.  The IEA claimed that preference was given to data sets from large population centers with urban heat island effects, while data from more remote and therefore more accurate stations was ignored.

This information is extremely important.  It was often noted that the greatest warming had been observed in Siberia and virtually all of Russia was said to have warmed more than most of the rest of the world.  Russia has 12.5% of the world's land.

Other distortions of the data in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand have also come to light.  The entire data set of land surface temperatures is clearly very unreliable.  A careful reassessment of all such data is badly needed before any major policy decisions are based on this data.

Obama - American Rights and Interests Submissive

During the Obama presidential campaign, I pointed out that Obama wanted to make American individual rights and the interests of the United States submissive to the dominant role to be played by the United Nations and by international bodies. The Obama presidency has confirmed my understanding with a good number of dastardly deeds. Among these are:

• Patting rogue terrorist-sponsoring nations Iran, Syria, and North Korea on the head while telling them we should be more understanding of their needs, thus encouraging these bully nations to continue acting badly. Only the believed threat of strong forceful retaliation works to stop bullies.
• Stopping the programs to add components to our missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic because the Russians are not pleased by our idea of defending ourselves from their Iranian client and from them.
• Agreeing with the G-20 nations to close down tax havens, increase the regulations of financial markets and institutions, and give more foreign aid. The tired, socialist nations of Europe and the Obama-planned similar condition of the United States need to keep the wealthy from moving themselves or their money to zones where they might have fairer treatment. The American financial system will be controlled by 20 nations and their perceived needs, not by the free market or even the free market as modified by American governments elected by the American people.
• Obama has agreed to enter into new nuclear disarmament talks with Russia, now that he and Medvedev are Comrades locked in Socialist Solidarity. Russia must reduce its warheads since it cannot afford to modernize or maintain them in any case. Meanwhile, Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia have formed an alliance aimed at the United States.
  
• He maintains the United States breaks International Law if it does not get permission from the United Nations to defend itself against the use of force by any other nation. This means, that the U.S. cannot defend itself if China, or Russia, or any of several socialist Western European countries does not desire that we should defend ourselves.
• He is more friendly to enemies of freedom and of the United States than he is to our longer term allies and to countries which more nearly share our ideas of personal liberty. See how he has shunned Great Britain, Israel, India, and the government leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  
• Obama says the U.S. caused the global recession and financial crisis. Actually, banks all over the world had too many high-risk loans. This was not at all just a U.S. problem. Iceland, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, and China have all been hard hit due to their financial over-extensions, along with many other countries.
  
• Obama declares the U.S. arrogant. Taken together with the item above, this would mean the U.S. owes a great deal of service to the rest of the world. Obama loves to serve. No, actually, he loves to tell you and me that we must serve others.

The United States was long blessed with a belief in the principle that the Federal government existed to serve only as the protector of the American individual's life, his liberty, and his pursuit of happiness. The individual was sovereign and the government existed only to serve the sovereign American individuals. It was understood that the only scale of government compatible with the rights of the individual was a minimal, limited government. Our Constitution carefully described the limited powers of the Federal government and further required that the limited actions it was allowed must be carried out in a manner consistent with the general welfare. It was made clear that the general welfare could only be served by a minimalist government so that individuals would be free to manage their own lives. A more empowered government would quickly become tyrannical.

Obama hates this idea. No, it does not make him a bit uneasy. With every fiber and cell of his body and mind, he hates the idea that the government exists only to serve the self-interest of self-managing individuals. He is determined to crush this principle and anyone who stands up for it. In domestic matters, he ignores the Constitution and he gets others to go along with ignoring it by offering them bribes of power, income, and publicity. In all matters with an international component, he enlists the aid of as many other socialist and/or Muslim and/or other dictatorial regimes as he can in order to accomplish this purpose. At all times, he is completely focused on forcing every individual American to become the servant of the government, which is to be controlled by committed socialist elitists such as himself. Only people such as himself are capable of wisely choosing your values for you and only they are intelligent enough to inform you on how you will achieve the values they have chosen for you.

If you do not achieve any values that mean anything to you, that is just too damn bad. After all, they do not choose to recognize your self-chosen values. You are selfish, while they exist to serve. This makes you unworthy and it makes them gods.

Russian Chaos

Russia continues to fall into hard times as oil prices have plummeted. Even more serious for its future is the fact that its government is now a fascist kleptocracy with deep roots in communism. Its stock market has crashed worse than almost any other nation's stock market. The business climate is very harsh, with the government finding reasons to take over almost any business which has become big under private management. It has become clear that not only is Russia a risky place to invest money, but that success guarantees that one will become a target of a very corrupt government. Success means that one's enterprise will become a carcass in very short order.

Russia is a sort of Illinois-style government given time to become fully evolved! Obama is spreading this Illinois disease to the federal government, by furthering fascism, communism, and Rezko-style political favoritism. If Americans do not rebel against this trend, we will soon have our own Putin.

Europe's Climate Change Leadership

In March 2007, the European Union pledged that by 2020 it would cut carbon emissions by at least 20% from 1990 levels, get 20% of its energy from renewable sources, and make energy efficiency improvements of 20%. Apparently, it was thought to be politically cute to aim for a series of 20% goals for 2020! Better to be cute than rational in politics.

My 14 November 2008 post addressed Europe's leadership also based on a commentary by Driessen. An article in The Economist in the 4 October 2008 issue adds some information on this issue. It says almost every European country is now complaining about their agreement. Britain says it cannot meet the renewable energy goal and Ireland wants protection for its grass-fed cows which emit large volumes of methane. But, most plaintively, the countries of Eastern Europe are worried and upset by these accords.

Poland gets over 90% of its electricity from coal-fired plants. They hope to replace the present power plants with clean coal technology and nuclear power in time, but they are worried about the intermediate timescale. UBS produced a report in February 2008 that the tax on carbon will be so high that 43% of Europe's coal-fired power plants will switch to natural gas. Well, Poland has huge coal reserves, but it has to import natural gas mostly from Russia! So, for understandable reasons of national security, it is very loathe to become dependent upon Russia for its ability to generate electricity. Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary joined Poland on 26 September to sign a joint declaration that the European climate change program would greatly increase their dependence on some countries for their natural gas supply. Apparently they did not have the gumption to state that it was Russia they were worried about.

The Eastern European countries have good reason to worry. In March 2007, the EU pledged "solidarity", a word so associated with socialism that it makes my stomach crawl, should energy supplies be cut-off. They called for increasing the energy supplier vendors and the Nabucco pipeline to bring gas from the Caspian Sea area without passing through Russian control. But, EU countries are individually making deals to undermine Nabucco, such as Germany supporting the Nord Stream gas pipeline deal with Gazprom. Europe's backbone was found to be a flimsy reed during the war in Georgia, with Russia's role as energy supplier being a part of the reason for European accommodation.

Russia is clearly doing everything it can to make Europe its energy hostage. Russia is investing in new pipelines to deliver gas to Europe. It is even trying to control a pipeline from Nigeria to Europe. It is also building a nuclear power plant in its little Kaliningrad enclave, the same one it is putting missiles in aimed at Europe, which is too big for Kaliningrad's needs. They plan to sell carbon-free electricity to Poland, Lithuania, and other nearby countries. Russia is clearly using energy as a means to control and intimidate Europe.

It sure would make more sense for Europe to take its chances that a little more CO2 will do less harm than being beholdened to Russia. If the earth should warm a few tenths of a degree, this would simply be the equivalent of moving a few miles to the south, while Russian control would be as chilling as moving to the North Pole.

Russian Bombers Train in Venezuela

Hugo Chavez, the socialist leader of Venezuela, invited Russian Tu-160 bombers to train in Venezuela and over international waters. This is the first time since the cold war ended that Russian strategic bombers have landed in the Western Hemisphere. NATO fighters escorted the Russian bombers on their 13-hour flight over the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans to Venezuela. Russia also has plans to send a naval squadron with long-range patrol planes to Venezuela in November for joint military exercises in the Caribbean Sea.

Chavez has sided with Russia over the Russian invasion of Georgia. Chavez has spent large sums of oil money on Russian weapons such as Sukhoi jet fighters, helicopters, and Kalashnikov rifles. He hopes to add Russian submarines to his arsenal. He is having Russia set up an air-defense system with rockets and long-range radar as well. Chavez also claims that he will be buying 24 K-8 light attack aircraft from China.

He has been using a flight simulator in hopes of being allowed to fly one of the Russian bombers. He says he wants to fly low past his friend Fidel Castro.

Supplying Eastern Europe with Anti-tank and Antiaircraft Weapons

In view of the brutal and uncalled for Russian attack upon Georgia and the many threats, including nuclear warfare by Russian generals, against Poland, it is important that we should help those countries with borders with Russia or very near those borders to improve their defense capabilities. In my comment on 11 August to Robert Bidinotto's post on the invasion of Georgia of that date called "Russian aggression meets "anticipatory capitulation"", I recommended that we supply Georgia with anti-tank and antiaircraft weapons systems as a part of our response. Now, Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have made the same recommendation in a Wall Street Journal OpEd on 26 August. Max Boot on 25 August called for our helping to arm the ex-Warsaw Pact and border countries with anti-tank and antiaircraft weapons in this Wall Street Journal OpEd.

Such largely defensive and relatively inexpensive weapon systems would make future Russian invasions a much more expensive proposition for Russia.

Russians Threaten to Take Military Action Against Poland

The Russians today threatened to take military action against Poland if the United States proceeded to install the anti-missile defense system there intended to intercept a few missiles from an attack by a small power such as Iran. Poland agreed to the installation of the system within days after Russia invaded Georgia.

Poland is a NATO treaty member and is protected as such from invasion by all NATO countries. This requires the United States of America to defend Poland from a Russian invasion, which the Russians must understand. It is not believed that the Russians will invade Poland, but they are likely to make a response in Belorus or in Kaliningrad Oblast, both of which border Poland. Belorus is closely allied with Russia and Kaliningrad Oblast is a small area retained by Russia on the Baltic Sea which is surrounded by Poland and Lithuania.

We must not make a weak response to Russia. We must be stout in our determination to move forward with the missile defense system in Poland. We should expect NATO to be equally stout in not allowing Russia to intimidate us or Poland.

Russian Expansionist Efforts

For centuries, Russia has sought to control most of Asia and Eastern Europe. Russia has also sought control of the Black Sea and access to the Indian Ocean. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 resulted in many parts of the USSR becoming independent countries. These newly independent states are Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Russia has been trying to regain control of many of these states.

One of the mechanisms for claiming a cause for taking many of them over again was one used by Adolf Hitler prior to and at the start of World War II. Germans had long been spread all over Eastern Europe. Many professionals and many successful businessmen in the cities and major towns of Eastern Europe were of the German nationality. Hitler would claim that the government of one country or another in Eastern Europe was abusing these Germans and then use that as an excuse to threaten to invade the country if he was not given what he wanted. He used this to put pressure on Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland, a large portion of the western part of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia had to give it up when its allies, Great Britain and France, made a deal with Hitler in an infamous conference in Munich. Hitler used the fact that many Germans were in the city of Danzig in Poland to put pressure on Poland. When Poland would not give up Danzig, Hitler, working with Stalin, invaded Poland and WWII started as France and Britain finally declared war on Germany.

When the USSR controlled the former Soviet states which are now independent, it moved many of their people to remote areas such as Siberia and installed many Russians in high positions in desirable areas in those formerly independent countries. Now, there are Russians still in many of the former Soviet states, though they were not native to those areas. One of the Russian tactics to put pressure on these countries now is to claim abuse of the Russians in those countries. This has occurred in each of the Baltic States and to Ukraine, for instance. Russia and Belarus are now in a loose cooperative association, which Putin heads.

The independent state of Georgia, has become an ally of the United States and has contributed troops to the fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The country has a population of 4.6 million and is separated from Russia by the Caucasus Mountains. There are many small ethnic groups in the Caucasian Mountains and some are dissatisfied with the government of Georgia and some are dissatisfied with the Russians. The Russians have given those within the border of Georgia who are dissatisfied Russian passports. There are two regions with many dissatisfied and rebelling people, one with a population of about 50,000 and another with a population of about 200,000. South Ossetia is the smaller region and the Russians have been supporting their efforts to breakaway from Georgia. Here is an article on the issues there and here is one describing the Russian invasion of Georgia.

The Russians have sent in 150 tanks in this invasion of an ally of the United States which has been seeking entry into NATO. The Russians are very opposed to Georgia being an ally of the United States and a member of NATO. As always, the socialist leadership of Russia is eager to learn whatever they can from such fascist socialists as Hitler, who was also eager to learn from Lenin and Stalin. The communists and the fascists have always demonstrated that they have much in common, even when their rivalries for socialist power led them into conflict.

It is wise to remember that American socialists have a long tradition which evolved from an admiration of such socialist leaders as Marx, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and many others. As many of these men were very paternalistic and ruthless leaders, so are many of our American socialists, though they put a smiley face on their socialist agenda most of the time. Nonetheless, they all believe that power grows out of the mouth of a gun and are eager to use those guns to force others to their will. This is the nature of socialism, whether the version holds power over property while leaving nominal ownership in private hands most of the time as in fascism or whether property is owned by the state as in communism. Note that Russia today is a mixture of communism and fascism. The United States is still primarily capitalist, but with a very large measure of fascism, and a smaller measure of communism. The widespread use of income redistribution and heavy hand of regulation is fascism at work, while the U.S. postal system, the U.S. park system, and the public school systems are all instances of communism.