The RPI Challenge

Some people say they don’t mind masks. I do. In regular settings of commercial life, they rob people of their personalities and overt signs of human differences. They take away a major part of non-verbal communication. For that matter, they throttle verbal connections between people. I’ve spent a year and a half trying vaguely to make out the meaning of mumbles through masks, and straining my own vocal chords by talking through paper. Put a sheet of plexiglass up and it all becomes nearly...

It’s now been more than eighteen months since governments began the new social experiment now known as “lockdowns.” Prior to 2020, forced “social distancing” was generally considered to be too costly in societal terms to justify such a risky experiment.Yet in 2020, led by health technocrats at the World Health Organization, nearly all national governments in the world suddenly and without precedent embraced the idea of lockdowns.On the other hand, the Swedish regime rejected the idea.For this...

You think you’ve got rights? Think again.All of those freedoms we cherish—the ones enshrined in the Constitution, the ones that affirm our right to free speech and assembly, due process, privacy, bodily integrity, the right to not have police seize our property without a warrant, or search and detain us without probable cause—amount to nothing when the government and its agents are allowed to disregard those prohibitions on government overreach at will.This is the grim reality of life in the...

Building on the bitcoin model, central banks are planning to produce their own “digital currencies”. Removing any and all remaining privacy, granting total control over every transaction, even limiting what ordinary people are allowed to spend their money on.From the moment bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies first emerged, sold as an independent and alternative medium of exchange outside the financial status quo, it was only a matter of time before the new alternative would be absorbed,...

It is important to stop every once in a while and take stock of things, to lay down some breadcrumbs to refer back to when someone asks, “How did we end up In many ways, the story is the same story. The message of 9/11 was: give up freedom for safety, trust the government, and treat your neighbors as potential threats. Now, 20 years later, you realize you went along with it because you were scared, even though the real threat was minimal. The message of Covid is to give up more freedom for...

During last week’s Virginia gubernatorial debate, Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe promised that as governor he would prevent parents from removing sexually explicit books from school libraries, because he doesn't think “parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”McAuliffe's disdain for parents who think they should have some say in their children’s education is shared by most “progressives,” as well as some who call themselves conservatives. They think parents should...

Just as it all ended badly for the West’s military interventions in Vietnam and Afghanistan, so it will in Kosovo. NATO has overstepped its mandate, overplayed its hand, and overstayed its welcome.As the last US military helicopters were leaving Kabul, Afghanistan, many, including myself, emphasized the similarities with America’s embarrassment in Saigon, South Vietnam – but one parallel that few dared to draw was with Kosovo.When I merely asked “Is Kosovo next?” on Twitter, it sent Albanian...

Following the Taliban’s victory over the U.S. military, U.S. corporate media has churned out a new narrative about the imminent threat of terrorism from Afghanistan that sets the stage for future military interventions. Blasted out in a stunningly disciplined fashion, the media has demonstrated as clearly as ever its coordination with the national security state and advancements of its interests.The corporate media coverage in the the weeks following the Taliban entry into Kabul conveyed two...

Most Americans do not know that in the United States currently there are approximately 900 Active-duty generals and flag officers to lead 1.3 million troops in the combined armed forces. During World War II, an admittedly different era, there were roughly twice as many flag and general officers for a little more than 12 million active duty troops a ratio of one to 6,000. In the Navy there are 32 flag officers for each ship currently in commission. In 1944, there was one flag officer for every...

After three years seeking the extradition from Canada of Chinese business executive Meng Wanzhou, the Justice Department has thrown in the towel by agreeing to a deal that enabled Meng to return freely to China. Meng had been under three years of house arrest in Canada, as the Justice Department ferociously sought her extradition. Upon her return to China, Meng was given a hero’s welcome. According to CNN, “tens of millions of people tuned in to watch state media’s online livestream of her...

The New York Times recently reported that the FBI had an undercover informant amid the protestors that entered the US Capitol on Jan. 6 who had related to them his knowledge of the demonstrators’ plans beforehand and his observations of events in the building in real time. The informant was a genuine member of the Proud Boys, one of the groups the feds are trying to charge with conspiracy to overthrow the government. According to the Times, the informant told the FBI in advance that there was...

It’s no longer a question of whether the government will lock up Americans for defying its mandates but when. This is what we know: the government has the means, the muscle and the motivation to detain individuals who resist its orders and do not comply with its mandates in a vast array of prisons, detention centers, and FEMA concentration camps paid for with taxpayer dollars. It’s just a matter of time. It no longer matters what the hot-button issue might be (vaccine mandates, immigration,...

US interventions abroad in the postwar period have created nothing but problems, problems regularly made worse by later attempts to solve the problems created by those previous interventions. While one can find innumerable instances of these failures in South and Central America, Europe, Africa, or Southeast Asia, the US interventions in Central Asia and the Middle East over the past forty years stand among the most illuminating case studies of this phenomenon. They illustrate the full folly,...

Afghanistan’s US-run government was the world’s largest producer and exporter of opium, morphine, and the end-product, heroin. As it did after first seizing power in the mid-1990’s, Taliban, the Islamic anti-drug and anti-communist movement, is shutting down the Afghan drug trade. Billions worth of heroin, opium and morphine that had been flowing into Central Asia, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and Southeast Asia will be sharply reduced. Afghanistan’s drug-based economy is now in dire...

There’s something about human nature that causes people in power to want to “do something” when faced with an unknown problem. Yet sometimes, doing nothing is better than “doing something.” When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more evidence is emerging that the laissez-faire approach to the issue — at least on a governmental/”public health” level — was the solution all along. The path chosen by Sweden, Belarus and a select few nations — which put the power in the hands of...