The Jewish Libertarian Blog

The closest thing to a neocon Ron Paul supporter I’ve found

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

Just saw this on the Ron Paul forums. This guy is the closest thing to a neocon supporting Ron Paul that I’ve seen out there.

He’s also the closest to my own views on the subject of Islam.

My biggest disagreement with Ron Paul is his view of Islam. He doesn’t see it as problematic as a religion. But then again, it’s not the Christians’ job to fight Islam, as Christianity and Islam are not all that different. Just depends on the century. Sometimes the former is violent and the latter passive, sometimes the other way around. Just ask medieval Spanish Jews. And we’re always in the middle of our bickering children, the Christians and Muslims.

I trust Paul even though he’s a Christian because he’s first and foremost an advocate of Liberty, the penultimate Jewish value. His Christianity is private, subsumed under his independent conscience rather than leading it.

Dealing with Islam is our fight, not the Christians’. It won’t be a fight of bombs so much as a war of ideas. So Ron Paul is not the one to fight it. His job is to set an example of freedom in the world so we can fight our own battles.

What do Ron Paul, Moshe Feiglin, and Moses have in Common?

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

I will come to the title at the end. Bare with me.

These days, I’ve been waking up in the morning totally nonplussed about the age I live in. So much is happening every single day that it’s hard to believe what is going on. I always try to ask myself whether or not I’m losing my mind predicting doom, but I can’t find my way around the precipice. The financial world is falling into a giant vortex of debt and no one will escape.

What is debt, really? It’s when someone promises to do work that will equal or exceed the value of the capital given to them in advance by the creditor. When no work is done, both debtor and creditor lose out, and there are less goods in the world for the amount of people in it. People then become poorer.

There are no creditor nations left on the planet. I came to realize this when Jim Rogers of all people, one of the more honest, moral investors who is genuinely good at simply being a human being, named Japan as a creditor nation. Few people know this, but Japan’s debt to GDP ratio is more than 220%. This means they owe more than twice what they produce in one year. Work promised for capital given in advance, not done.

The problem is, they’re a huge holder of US bonds. If they go bust, which they will, what happens to those? What happens to the dollar? Everything is so sickeningly intertwined that global finances are impossible to sort out. Everyone has promised everyone work in exchange for capital given (debt), and have not done that work. Now that capital itself that was given is itself in question.

The capital is capital because governments said it is. Governments are losing control of the entire planet. Once this truth is realized, everything, and I mean everything, falls in the hole. When you have a government backed global monetary system, government is the last stand and the last stop. Every government has promised every other government money in return for value. But value itself is backed by government in a fiat system, making this whole thing a sick joke. It’s sort of like the world returning to the tohu vavohu of Genesis 1:2.

So what do Ron Paul, Moshe Feiglin, and Moses all have in common? They are all leaders who hate government. This may sound like an oxymoron, but it isn’t. Any leader who loves leadership will inevitably concentrate power into one point – himself. That power then eventually gets sucked into the vacuum of reality and everything goes back to zero.

The Torah notes that Moses was the most humble man to have ever walked the earth. What that means is that he had no false illusions as to who he was: just a simple man like everyone else. This reality was so ingrained in him that he was able to talk to God himself face to face and not let it go to his head as if he were special. He wasn’t. He was just Moses. What made him “special” was the fact that he understood the true nature of his own being.

When I hear Ron Paul speak, I hear a person with self awareness speak to me as if he were speaking to any other person. All he’s interested in is the truth. I hear the same when Feiglin speaks. The only thing special about these people is that they understand and address reality, and they don’t ever think that there is anything special about themselves.

Judaism does not worship Moses of course. He was just a guy. The same as you or me. He was just a really good guy. Government has been lying to us for a long time. It will fall, because reality always catches up. And when it does, we’ll need leaders who will focus us in the darkness.

And in the chaos, these leaders will cut through the din in order to focus the truth when it comes screaming in our faces.

How would a Ron Paul victory affect Israel’s leadership?

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

As we get closer and closer to the Iowa caucuses on January 3, this is a question I’ve been asking myself with more and more intensity. The prospect that Israel will finally be cut loose and will no longer have an “American Father” but rather a true American friend excites me deeply for both countries.

Israel, both its leadership as well as the Jewish people at large, are so mentally dependent on America that they cannot imagine not being constantly backed by our father in the Western Hemisphere. A Ron Paul victory would be such a mental shock to Israeli society that the Jewish people would be in a type of frenzy, worrying about the future of the Jewish State and predicting doom once foreign aid is cut off.

There will be much confusion here among the leadership as one of the main objectives, if not THE objective of Israeli political leadership has been to secure American friendship so we don’t feel alone. The better they are at being friends with America, the better the Prime Minister of Israel is considered to be. This is why Ariel Sharon was so popular, whereas Netanyahu is at most tolerated, but nobody here really likes him like they liked Sharon.

So what would happen would be similar to a junkie losing his supply of cocaine. Israel would go into something of an existential frenzy, though she wouldn’t be in any real danger, much like an addict isn’t in any real danger when he runs out of blow.

With Israel off the American dime, the people will be able to look in other, more important directions than the American direction. They will seek out new leaders with new paradigms, start to work on the country like it is actually independent.

I believe that it is no coincidence that the Republican primaries and the Likud primaries are happening around the same time. As Ron Paul rises to prominence and the American people start to undergo a mental paradigm shift, Moshe Feiglin will rise in Israel, speaking the Israeli equivalent of the libertarian message, and the Jewish people will undergo the same sort of revolution, waking up from decades of political depressants.

By the time the 2012 elections come around, this could be a very, very different world.

Ron Paul is NOT anti Semitic and neither, amazingly is Michael Scheuer

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , , ,

In a previous post asking whether Ron Paul is anti semitic, I asserted that he is not, but made the claim, which I now realize is false, that Michael Scheuer, a Ron Paul supporter, is.

I realized today that I was absolutely wrong. Scheuer knocked even further sense into me with a clip I saw today from the Freedom Watch show on Fox Business. What follows is the video that convinced me that Scheuer is anti Semitic. Watch it, cringe a bit, but then continue to the next video and you’ll understand the point:

Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com

Now, watch THIS:

Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com

The conclusion, my friends, is this. Israeli hasbara, and ALL the political activity that the American Jewish community does in the US on behalf of Israel is not only unnecessary, but it is harmful. Even people like Scheuer, who you could swear was an anti semite after first video, are obviously not after you watch the second. What they’re sick of is not Jews, but Jews whining.

This means AIPAC is a disaster. It should be disbanded and boycotted. I would not have said that even yesterday. But the worst thing America can do for Israel is keep giving her money.

Is democracy as we know it a failure?

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

I’ve been pondering this question for some time now as western civilization continues to crumble. The western idea of democracy, as it moves further and further from God and more towards government as an end in itself, seems to show that democracy as we know it is indeed a failure.

As government grows and grows, people rely on it more and more, which encourages it to grow and grow until people lose any sense of personal responsibility for their actions. As government continues to collapse under its own weight, the people demand more and more protections from the government, unable to realize that they cannot be provided.

You can tell people 1000 times that there is no money for medicare, social security, and wars, and it simply won’t register. Of course there’s money. The government can just cut a check.

So people unaware that they have personal responsibilities, keep voting for the person who promises to take it away from them in exchange for promises of money and benefits fed by a printing press of money backed by nothing but the word of the government itself, a logical loop of death and inflation.

Money starts to overflow the system. But people will never vote for the guy who promises to flush the system clean. This involves way too much pain and coming to terms with reality. The government has to take care of you, take care of the system, so the money has to keep flowing.

At some point, and this will be soon, reality will take effect regardless of whether people want to acknowledge it or not. This creates more pain than would have been necessary to have been endured had people chosen to recognize reality by free choice, which is arguably the entire purpose of the human race on planet earth.

The reality is that money is only a medium that is reflective of work done. Real money is real stored work in liquid form that can be exchanged. When someone lends you real money, they lend you the work that they did that they do not need at the moment to survive. It’s extra. You have to pay it back by working harder in return. If you don’t pay it back, that work was lost. This is debt. Lost work. If there’s too much of it, there’s not enough productivity to support the population in debt and they collapse and go back to zero. This is a default.

You work hard at your business, you earn money, you store it in an account. You accrue capital. That stored work can be exchanged for other goods and services, or lent on the expectation that it will be repaid in interest.

But the printing press and money backed by the false word of governments has replaced “work”. And reality will catch up in the form of that money losing its pretend value as the assumed storage unit of work done.

When the dominoes fall, all printed money will totally outnumber the amount of actual work done in the world, as the amount of work done in the world shrinks in real terms as people go unemployed. Without productive work, people starve. Increasingly, the money in the world is reflective of handouts by governments rather than work. Money reflective of nothing will lose all value. That’s when the system will become unsustainable.

All the financial tricks done by world banks to play around with money they actually did no work with – produced no food, no thing of actual value, no goods, will be recognized as paper pushing. It will suddenly be discovered that the amount of money in the world way outstrips the amount of real work done in the world.

Work adds value and prosperity to the world. A printing press does not. When the amount of work vs printing press money becomes apparent, that’s when the system falls.

There is no way you will get a majority of people to understand this. They will keep voting for the money until they drown in it.

This is why democracy has failed for now. Unless you can get a majority of humanity to accept reality, which seems a really long shot.

Iran is Israel’s problem, NOT America’s

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

We’ve got to stop acting like children. One of the consequences of having your own country, despite the fact of not having one for 2 millennia, is that we have to stop whining to the world about people who threaten us. It sounds bad, it looks bad, and it makes the world resent us. Simply said, Israel has to stop whining to the world that the Persians want to kill us, and start to stand up for herself and the Jewish people proudly, strongly, and without looking over her shoulder.

I understand the Foreign Ministry’s strategy of trying to guilt and twist the world’s arm into thinking that Iran is a threat to the West. But it just makes the world tired and annoyed at the Jewish people, and it really makes the world resent us.

Man up Jews! If some dictator threatens your existence, fight back! It would be one thing if we were stuck somewhere in the Roman Empire with no army, but we’re pretty self-sufficient now. Standing up for ourselves and taking out our own garbage would do more for this nation than crying about Iran’s nuclear program to the rest of the world that is tired of us anyway for trying to focus their attention on a third world country while they’re about to explode in a chaotic Keynesian economic meltdown.

This also means we have to stop whining when Obama and Sarkozy call Netanyahu a liar. Who really cares? Man up and stop accusing everyone of anti Semitism just because they think a politician is a liar.

Europe and the US have enough problems to worry about without taking on yet another war they can’t afford.

If we take care of this ourselves, we’ll take a hit, but we’ll be better off for it. Psychologically, we’ll be a healthier, stronger nation.

So, Netanyahu, if you want to go down in Jewish history along with Begin for saving the Jewish People, take the Book of Esther to heart:

Bibi – If you don’t stand up for us now, right now, then salvation will rise for the Jews from a different place, but you and your father’s house will be forgotten. And who knows if Iran isn’t the very reason you came to the throne?

The clock is ticking, Benjamin Netanyahu. If you don’t answer the call, the next prime minister will. I’m not worried for the Jews. But I’d like you to have your place in the sun, if only because that’s what you want for yourself.

Netanyahu will quit Likud in February – Hopefully

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

We’ve got 80 days until internal Likud elections. I will be running for a seat on the Likud Central Committee as well as the head of the local Likud branch in Karnei Shomron, my home town. With God’s help and of course endorsement by Manhigut Yehudit, I will win both.

I just got this in my email from the Likudnik website. Translation follows:

When the numbers for the allocation of Likud central committee seats were published, it shocked the party leadership. It is now clear that Judea and Samaria will now constitute a majority in the central committee. It all started in 1992 when the Likud Constitution was ratified by Benjamin Netanyahu, who was the Likud head at the time. The idea was to bring in forces into the Likud which were until then inactive: Judea and Samaria, and small townships. But now it seems that the Golem is rising up against its creators and Netanyahu understood this week at a Likud faction meeting the depth of the problem, and his advisors brought up the idea of once again postponing the elections and/or changing the seat allotment.

However, when they brought up the idea they didn’t take into account that any postponement of the elections would constitute contempt of court because…they declared to the court that elections would take place by January 31.

It seems that the idea sunk just as it rose since the idea is absolutely undoable.

Netanyahu is scared because if he doesn’t control the Central Committee, he may as well just leave the party. This is exactly what Sharon did 6 years ago, and it is what Netanyahu will do in February.

Feiglin will hopefully rise up to take his place as Likud head as Netanyahu unites with Kadima and takes the rest of the Left Wing of Likud with him.

Interestingly enough, things will start heating up in the US at the same time as primary season starts in earnest in January. It’s going to be an exciting month, that’s for sure.

Well, there is one thing that Netanyahu can do to postpone elections. He can attack Iran. Short of that, he’s screwed.

Ron Paul wants to be “Friends” with Iran – Still Good for Israel?

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog ,

This was an email exchange I had with a coworker today. The coworker forwarded me an article from Ynet that quoted Ron Paul as saying that America should be “friends” with Iran. He wrote:

“Do you still think he’s good for Israel?”

I wrote back:

I saw that interview, and yes, absolutely he’s still good for Israel. And for America. Iran is not an American problem. They pose no threat to America and the Iranians certainly can’t attack them across the Atlantic. The big question is does America have the responsibility to be world policeman. If yes, Paul’s crazy. If not, he’s right. I say no, so he’s right. What about WWII – if Congress declares a war, Paul will fight it.

We generally want the US to deal with our problems but this in my opinion is whining which is a desecration of God’s name since the world naturally looks up to us for moral guidance. If we whine it makes God look bad for we are his people. If Jewish history teaches anything, we’re on our own, always have been, always will be.

Iran is our problem, not the world’s problem. We have to deal with it without begging others to help, which always comes at the price of our sovereignty. Paul is a non-interventionist. If we attack, he won’t stop us, condemn us, or help us unilaterally. If congress votes to help us by declaring war, he’ll help us. But it’s not up to him. It’s up to the American Congress.

He can be friends with Iran and I think he should. As for us and what we have to do, we have to attack since they threatened to annihilate us already. And we know to take those threats seriously.

“Iran is no Match for Israel” – says Patriot missile operator

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog

Someone posted this on ronpaulforums in response to a question I had. What he says is very important, and explains precisely why this whole “Iran will nuke Israel” thing is nonsense. That is not to say we don’t need to attack them for threatening us. We do. But we have little to fear from these bunch of Jew haters.

Having been a PATRIOT operator and someone whose trained exclusively against Iran for 2 years, I want to reiterate the most important facts in regards to Iran’s ACTUAL capabilities:

1) They have absolutely no missile that can reach America. None. It is a complete non-issue.
2) Their missile arsenal predominately consists of Shahab-1 through Shahab-5 missiles, Scud-B and Scud-C. Most of these are IRBMs (Intermediate Range) and none are ICBMs (Inter-Continental).
3) We have sold PATRIOT missile defense systems to Taiwan, Egypt, Germany, South Korea, Greece, Israel, Japan, Kuwait, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.
4) In order for Iran to launch any nuclear payload at Israel, they would have to first defeat the missile defense systems in Iraq, UAE, Jordan, Kuwait, and Israel. Just look at line of sight from Iran to Israel and you’ll see it’s a foolish argument. Since there is no way for Iran to defeat these systems, their only option would be to overwhelm them. In order to do that, they’d likely have to launch their entire arsenal of missiles, which is essentially impossible due to the amount of logistics that would involve, without clearly setting of early warning WORLDWIDE.
5) We have great early warning systems that would allow us to send in our Air Force to take out most launch locations, prior to launch. Further, any missiles that do launch would then immediately identify launch locations we miss, so it is unlikely they could fire more than one volly from each location. This means that logistically, they not only have to beat our early warning systems, but they’d also have to launch from multiple thousands of locations.
6) Every nuclear payload launched from Iran has a 9/10 probability of being shot down over their own country and would cause widespread nuclear fallout for IRAN itself.

Ultimately, the conclusion is that it’s a complete non-issue, unless Iran wants to destroy itself with no guarantee of a mutual-assured destruction of Israel. It would be complete suicide with no achievement

Keynes vs Mises: When the Golden Moose come Home to Roost

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

A few posts ago I believe I mentioned the size, numerically, of the Keynesian bubble the world is currently in. The gross domestic product of the entire planet is something like $65 trillion. That’s enough for a nice-sized moose farm, assuming all said moose on farm are solid gold and there are a lot of them.

I kid, but the value of the world-wide derivatives market, which means money that people assume they are owed and that is coming to them, is something around $1 quadrillion. A quadrillion is a thousand trillion. Let’s look at it numerically:

1,000,000,000,000,000

The problem is the discrepancy. That is, say some bank owns a Greek bond, and Greece owes that bank $1,000. Bank gets to write on sheet that bank has $1,000. But really bank does not, because Greece cannot pay bank. So bank loses $1,000. Those dollars never, in fact, existed. They were just assumed to exist.

The same is the case with every dollar over $65 trillion that exists in the worldwide derivatives market, because there’s no mathematical way that a quadrillion dollars in value exists on the planet when planetary GDP is only $65 trillion.

So the difference between those numbers is the size of the bubble in real numeric terms. And when that bubble bursts, everything goes back to zero. Like a planetary jubilee, debt slaves released.

The cause of this bubble is governmental bailouts and handouts and payouts in virtually every western country that can never be repaid. It started at the level of individuals, and went up the money chain from there. The progression is like so:

  1. Federal Reserve prints money and loans it to bank
  2. Bank loans it to Bob, an individual, bank being coerced by some government initiative to give Bob stuff he can’t afford
  3. Bob can’t pay back bank, Bob loses house
  4. Bank can’t sell house, loses loan
  5. Bank asks government to bail it out, so debt goes up the money chain from individual (Bob) to bank.
  6. Federal Reserve prints money and loans it to government
  7. Government bails out bank
  8. Bob loses home and the value of whatever dollars he does have goes way way down.
  9. Bob can’t spend money because he’s broke
  10. GDP, which is 70% consumer spending, goes down
  11. In a panic, Federal Reserve prints up more money so government can give it to Bob so he can spend it.
  12. Government goes into debt, the final level in the money chain.
  13. No one can bail out government, so bubble bursts.

It’s a dollar bubble. It keeps getting printed and printed at every step of the way. And it’s going to burst.

Keynes maintained that by intervening in the economic cycle, i.e. giving Bob money he couldn’t pay back, the government could paper over recessions and only have growth. Where Keynes went wrong was that he didn’t understand that once government has the power to create money out of nothing, that power, like any absolute power, gets abused. Soon, the government isn’t papering over mild recessions by handing out money. They’re furiously handing out money to keep the entire global economy from collapsing.

Think trillion dollar stimulus bills, $700 billion bailouts, $2 tillion European bailout funds, and God knows how many dollars the Fed is printing. Really, only God knows because they don’t have to tell anyone. And Herman Cain thinks this is fine.

But the more they hand out, the bigger the quadrillion dollar bubble grows. And the time until it finally bursts gets closer and closer.

In the end its all about Hubris. Keynes thought he could outsmart human nature by giving the government the right to print money backed by nothing. He thought he could stabilize the world through a simple tactic.

Mises knew better when he said that you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t have growth without recessions, and if you try to, then all you’ll get is one big recession (read: crash) when the golden moose finally come home to roost, or whatever sound they make.