Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2322

On the Failure of the Communist Coup in the USSR

Anthony Easton offered insights on the coup here.

There was a follow-up by a site member on a forum.

August 1991 Coup attempt “The failed coup against Gorbachev occurred on August 18, 1991” My wife and I were returning from a couple of months in Eastern Europe, mostly in Russia. Our hosts were Ham Radio operators that had invited me to tour Russia. My call sign was well-known worldwide and that is why it happened.We later learned how the Coup was stopped. Our Russian Ham Radio friends just ha...

James Jesus Angleton, the Ghost

The post James Jesus Angleton, the Ghost appeared first on LewRockwell.

Where the Rich Get Richer and the Poor Go to Jail

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” ― Nelson Mandela

This is the tale of two Americas, where the rich get richer and the poor go to jail.

Aided and abetted by the likes of Attorney General Jeff Sessions—a man who wouldn’t recognize the Constitution if it smacked him in the face—the American dream has become the American scheme: the rich are getting richer an...

AlphaZero for President

From KurzweilAI:

Demis Hassabis, the founder and CEO of DeepMind, announced at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NIPS 2017) last week that DeepMind’s new AlphaZero program achieved a superhuman level of play in chess within 24 hours.

The program started from random play, given no domain knowledge except the game rules, according to an arXiv paper by DeepMind researchers published Dec. 5.

“It doesn’t play like a human, and it doesn’t play like a program,” said Hassabis, an...

Is All Great Art Religious?

In my last article for LRC I wrote about literature from the perspective of a somewhat educated abecedarian. I take solace that my opinions are not totally ridiculous by comparing my view of Madame Bovary (first developed about 25 years ago when I read the book) with that of George Sand (that I only recently read). Quoting myself, “In Madame Bovary on the other hand, Emma’s passions make her almost an evil person.  In fact almost every character is nasty.  The basic theme being that below the...

Deconstructing Marxist Critical Theory

For those of you who haven’t been formally introduced to the sociological doomsday weapon of the 20th century, critical theory is an approach to analyzing society not for the purpose of understanding it, but for the purpose of transforming it by undermining its existing institutions.  The hard work of understanding how and why people do things is unnecessary if your goal is merely to take a sledgehammer to the machinery.  Critical theory is the invention of the Marxist Frankfort School of the...

Why There Won’t Be a Revolution in Iran

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani did the right thing going on television and at least acknowledging popular anger over hard economic times. Inflation is high at 12% but down from 40% at the start of Rouhani’s first term. And the recent increase in fuel and food prices by up to 40% has hardly helped.

That was part of Team Rouhani’s 2018 budget, which cuts subsidies for the poor – a key feature of the previous Ahmadinejad administration.

Then there is youth unemployment, which hovers around the...

A Libertarian Defense of Israel

The Libertarian Case for Israel, by Alan Futerman, Rafi Farber, and Walter Block.

As a follow-up to my review of Alison Weir’s book, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel, I would like to examine this essay regarding the libertarian case for Israel.

After noting the anti-Israel sentiment in the Arab world, the authors comment:

What is much more vexing is that a similar attitude is pervasive among the libertarian community (and, even, shonda...

Whose Ideas?

It’s been said that good ideas don’t require force – while bad ones rarely get traction without it. True enough. But how about a qualifier?

Whose ideas?

Yours? Mine?

There is a kind of tacitly agreed upon – or at least, rarely questioned – notion that we all agree on what constitutes a “good” idea. It’s the keystone of coercive collectivism, without which that ideology loses moral legitimacy.

But in fact, we don’t agree about what a “good” idea is. Millions of individuals tend to have million...

This Just In (NOT)

From our “Clippings From The Editing Room Floor” dept.”, comes this face-palming story that begins:

“The third trial of Cliven Bundy has ended in a mistrial. The prosecution failed to turn over documents that would have helped the defense.”

Put more bluntly:

The trial of Nevada rancher and leader of the Sagebrush Rebellion, Cliven Bundy, his two sons and a co-defendant ended yesterday in a mistrial. Why? Because the government had lied out of its ass to the judge and hidden evidence that woul...