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Jordan’s Abdullah: Israel Imposing ‘Unthinkable Solution’ On Palestinians

by Steven Woskow | Jan 15, 2020 | Blog

Jordan’s King Abdullah II accuses Israel of trying to “impose an unthinkable solution” on Palestinians as hopes fade for a two-state solution backed by the international community.

Speaking to lawmakers at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, he says Israel’s construction of settlements in the West Bank and “disregard of international law” could be summed up as “one state turning its back on its neighborhood, perpetuating divisions among peoples and faiths worldwide.”

The Jordanian monarch carries the hereditary title of “custodian” of holy Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem.

Trump Administration Flunks Trade Economics 101

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 15, 2020 | Blog

International trade is one of the many areas in which the Trump administration has been egregiously bad. Trump himself seems to lack even the most basic knowledge about the principle of trade — he seems to think it is always zero-sum with a loser for every winner — and he’s surrounded himself with advisers who are just as ignorant.

We are indebted to George Mason University economist Donald Boudreaux for keeping a close eye on these reckless ignoramuses, who are so casual about our well-being. In the latest of a series of blog posts, Boudreaux again notes how militantly ignorant those advisers are. The latest post again demolishes trade adviser Peter Navarro, who’s never seen an American tariff he did not love. Boudreaux points that Navarro doesn’t even understand what a trade deficit is. On the one hand, Navarro praises Trump’s tariffs for combating the trade deficit while on the other he praises them for stimulating foreign investment in America. What’s wrong with that? Here’s Boudreaux:

Mr. Navarro apparently doesn’t understand the elementary fact that, because every dollar invested in the U.S. by foreigners is a dollar not spent on U.S. exports, the investments about which Mr. Navarro today boasts promote the very trade deficits that, in other contexts, he bemoans. [Emphasis added.]

When people complain about the trade deficit, they are referring to an imbalance in the merchandise account: they mean that the dollar amount of goods that Americans sell to people in a given country or all countries is less than the dollar amount of goods that Americans buy.

But merchandise is only about half the picture. A capital account also exists; that’s a comparison of the dollar value of foreign investment in America with the dollar value of American investment in other countries. When a foreigner earns a dollar from an export to America, he has a few options of what to do with that dollar, which he can’t spend at home. If he buys an American product, he leaves the merchandise account unchanged (a dollar out and a dollar in), but if he invests the dollar in America, he indeed contributes to a deficit in the merchandise account while also contributing to a surplus in the capital account. The accounts are roughly mirror images. But people ignore the capital account, and that’s just ignorant if not stupid.

So it is ridiculous to praise trade restrictions for remedying the merchandise-account deficit and for attracting foreign investment to America (which increases that deficit). If Navarro really understood or cared about the trade deficit (one need not care about it actually), he would condemn foreign investment and demand that foreigners buy American products. I’d like to see him try that.

Trump and his trade advisers would certainly flunk any course in elementary economics.

Presidential War Power

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 14, 2020 | Blog

“It is, however, insane and intolerable that peace depends on the restraint of the Islamic Republic and an American president given to rage-tweeting war-crime threats,” the Cato Institute’s Gene Healy, who studies presidential power, writes in “Trump the Decider.”

“No one fallible human being should be entrusted with the war powers now vested in the presidency. Now, more than ever, Congress needs to do everything in its power to reclaim its authority over war and peace.”

By what authority did Trump order the drone-assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and key Iraqi militia commanders in Iraq, all former allies in the fight against ISIS? Writes Healy:

For now, the official rationale is classified. In terms of public justification, all we have is some hand-waving by Trump’s national security adviser about the president’s “constitutional authorities as commander in chief to defend our nation” and the 17-year old Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Iraq (2002 AUMF). Neither comes close to vesting the president with the power to set off a whole new war.

The 2002 AUMF authorizes the president to use military force in order to “defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq” and enforce various UN resolutions “regarding Iraq.” Unless “45” is going to break out the presidential sharpie and change the “q”s to “n”s, that’s not going to cut it. Neither will the 2001 AUMF, as I’ve explained at length elsewhere (See: “Repeal Old AUMFs and Salt the Earth”).

Healy disposes of the “self-defense” rationale for Trump’s act of war without a congressional declaration of war. I’d only add that if no US troops were in Iraq, they would not be subject to attack by anyone there.

Year Zero 92: Soleimani Was An Imminent Threat, But Not To American Lives

by Tommy Salmons | Jan 14, 2020 | Blog, Year Zero

The Trump administration has backed off of the narrative that Soleimani was in Baghdad to plot attacks on four American embassies, but they haven’t addressed the imminent threat he truly posed. While it’s true the Iranian general can’t be credibly linked to the deaths of Americans or a future plot; he is absolutely linked to plotting peace in Yemen without US support, threatening the world empire’s dominance in the region.

Listen to Year Zero

The Grammar of the Soleimani Assassination

by Sheldon Richman | Jan 14, 2020 | Blog, Foreign Policy

By now we’ve heard enough official explanations of Trump’s assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and others to realize they are all nonsense. (And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo now admits it.) Trump killed Soleimani because, egged on by his unsavory friends Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he has it in for Iran. So when the opportunity to pull off the murder-by-drone came along, he took it. It’s not as though he thought he needed a special justification. It’s good to be the king — er, president.

Most official explanations have entailed some sort of threat to US military or diplomatic personnel, “interests,” or “assets.” And sometimes one US official has had no idea what another is talking about. Trump said four embassies were threatened, but his secretary of defense said that was news to him. Other explanations tie the killings to the breach of the US embassy in Baghdad that occurred after Iran and the US had exchanged strikes in Iraq that took the lives of 25 Iraqis and one American. In other words, it was retribution not prevention. (Killing Iran’s top general while on a peace mission to Iraq seems, let’s say, disproportionate to the temporary embassy breach in which no one was killed or injured.)

If all this is confusing, don’t worry about it: Trump says none of it matters.

But I want to focus on the the initial claim, namely, that Soleimani had been planning “imminent” attacks of some unspecified nature. This, by the way, is debunked by an NBC report that the assassination was planned seven months ago. But we’ll let that go right now.

Since no such attacks occurred, we are entitled to dismiss Trump’s claim. Had attacks been imminent, why would anyone believe that killing Soleimani would stop them? Assassinating him would seem more likely to guarantee them. They were imminent after all.

But let’s go a step deeper — into the grammar, or logic, of all this. I realize that people can use words in differing ways, but I can’t shake the thought that if you are planning to do something, the planned action cannot be imminent. If you tell me something is imminent, I take that to mean the planning is over; execution is next. (Pun unintended but noticed.)

So I would advise that the next time the government tells you it’s killed someone because he was planning an imminent attack, it’s lying.

Michigan Bill Would Ban Unconstitutional National Guard Deployments

by Michael Maharrey | Jan 13, 2020 | Blog

LANSING, Mich. (Jan. 11, 2019) – A bill introduced in the Michigan House would prohibit unconstitutional foreign combat deployments of the state’s national guard troops, an important step towards restoring the Founders’ framework for state-federal balance on the Guard.

Rep. Steven Johnson (R-Wayland), along with a bipartisan coalition of two Republicans and two Democrats, introduced House Bill 5320 (HB5320) on Jan. 9. Johnson joined the U.S. Air Force in 2009. He served for four years, leading a team working on nuclear missile electronics in Montana. He was recently named “most conservative house member” in Michigan by MIRS News.

The legislation would prohibit the deployment of Michigan Guard troops in “active duty combat” unless there is a declaration of war from Congress, as required by the Constitution. It reads, in part:

the Michigan National Guard and any member of the Michigan National Guard shall not be released from this state into active duty combat unless the United States Congress has passed an official declaration of war or has taken an official action under clause 15 of section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States

Cosponsors include Reps. David LaGrand (D-Grand Rapids), Brad Paquette (R-Berrien Springs), John Reilly (R-Oakland) and Jewell Jones (D-Inkster).

IN PRACTICE

Guard troops have played significant roles in all modern overseas conflicts, with over 650,000 deployed since 2001. Military.com reports that “Guard and Reserve units made up about 45 percent of the total force sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, and received about 18.4 percent of the casualties.” More specifically, West Virginia National Guard troops have participated in missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Kosovo and elsewhere.

Since none of these missions have been accompanied by a Constitutional declaration of war, the Defend the Guard Act would have prohibited those deployments. Such declarations have only happened five times in U.S. history, with the last being at the onset of World War II.

BACKGROUND

Article I, Section 8, Clauses 15 and 16 make up the “militia clauses” of the Constitution. Clause 16 authorizes Congress to “provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia.” In the Dick Act of 1903, Congress organized the militia into today’s National Guard, limiting the part of the militia that could be called into federal service rather than the “entire body of people,” which makes up the totality of the “militia.” Thus, today’s National Guard is governed by the “militia clauses” of the Constitution, and this view is confirmed by the National Guard itself.

Clause 15 delegates to the Congress the power to provide for “calling forth the militia” in three situations only: 1) to execute the laws of the union, 2) to suppress insurrections, and 3) to repel invasions.

During state ratifying conventions, proponents of the Constitution, including James Madison and Edmund Randolph, repeatedly assured the people that this power to call forth the militia into federal service would be limited to those very specific situations, and not for general purposes, like helping victims of a disease outbreak or engaging in “kinetic military actions.”

RETURNING TO THE CONSTITUTION

It is this limited Constitutional structure that advocates of the Defend the Guard Act seek to restore. That is, use of the Guard for the three expressly-delegated purposes in the Constitution, and at other times to remain where the Guard belongs, at home, supporting and protecting their home state.

While getting this bill passed isn’t going to be easy, it certainly is, as Daniel Webster once noted, one of the reasons state governments even exist.” In 1814 speech on the floor of Congress, Webster urged similar actions to the Michigan Defend the Guard Act. He said:

“The operation of measures thus unconstitutional and illegal ought to be prevented by a resort to other measures which are both constitutional and legal. It will be the solemn duty of the State governments to protect their own authority over their own militia, and to interpose between their citizens and arbitrary power. These are among the objects for which the State governments exist.”

WHAT’S NEXT

HB5320 has been assigned to the House Committee On Government Operations. It will need to pass by a majority vote in each before moving forward in the legislative process.

Michigan residents who support the bill are strongly urged to contact each member of the Committee and firmly, but respectfully urge them to vote YES on HB5320 when it comes up for a hearing and vote. Contact info for committee members can be found at this link.

Ever Seen Brazil?

by Scott Horton | Jan 12, 2020 | Blog

Army Veteran Has Prosthetic Legs Repossessed After VA Refuses To Pay

‘If You Want Liberty, Go Live In The African Bush…

by Peter R. Quiñones | Jan 12, 2020 | Blog

… otherwise you’re just a LARPer not willing to do what needs to be done to be free.’

Yes, that is an “actual argument” from a Brit on Twitter. Imagine the level of Stockholm Syndrome you must be suffering to believe that people who desire liberty must live like bushmen to achieve it.

If this person were alive in 1852 they would’ve accused slaves who desired their freedom of suffering from “drapetomania.”

The definition of “liberty” is: the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views.

To tell someone that the only way to achieve liberty is to move someplace remote, out of the community they were born into, is to admit that you are not free, and have embraced your chains.

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