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This week, President Trump delivered shocking blows to his loyal supporters. After promising to get out of Biden’s failed Ukraine war “on day one,” we are now 6 months into Trump’s presidency and he’s continuing to arm Ukraine. Trump is turning Biden’s failed war into his very own failed war.

The Trump Administration also gave “full approval” for Moderna’s Covid jabs for children 6 months and older.

President Trump endorsed Lindsey Graham for re-election saying Lindsey “is always there when I need him.” Meanwhile, the President wants to primary Thomas Massie?

And finally, the biggest betrayal of them all; one that even the most ardent Trump supporters can’t accept — Epstein.

The post A Week Filled With Terrible Decisions By President Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

WSJ News

The post Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Circle appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer . 

Pureblood Potter on X: “Devon man has had enough.

The post Devon man has had enough appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

‘Global War on Terror is Over’…Terror Won: Daniel McAdams

This is a very good article by Daniel McAdams about the hypocrisy and lack of morality by those in charge of the American Empire. All that the powerful in D.C. care about is power/money. Why Americans keep voting for these immoral lying murderers amazes me.

The post ”Global War on Terror is Over”…Terror Won: Daniel McAdams appeared first on LewRockwell.

That seems to be the opinion of Auburn University basketball coach Bruce Pearl who is considering quitting his job and running to replace Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville.  The former Auburn football coach is retiring to run for governor.

Pearl is an uber neocon whose political pronouncements would be more appropriate for a candidate for the Knesset  than the U.S. senate.

The post Poor, Powerless, Defenseless Israel Has No Friends in the U.S. Congress Already? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Ben Bartee

The post Watch Ben Shapiro Declare Epstein Case CLOSED: ‘Facts on the Ground Have Changed’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Lew,

I thought the Roman “Bigfoot” mystery (https://www.lewrockwell.com/political-theatre/2000-year-old-roman-bigfoot-mystery-5000-giant-shoes-unearthed-in-britain/) was fascinating, but not for the shoe sizes—really not that crazy.

It was indeed fascinating how dumb the analysis was by the article’s author.

It got me thinking more about it, though:

https://x.com/BrianDOLeary/status/1943035793150480826 Also on Substack:

https://briandoleary.substack.com/p/giant-roman-boots-to-nba-behemoths

The post In reply to 7/9 Political Theatre topic appeared first on LewRockwell.

di Francesco Simoncelli

(Versione audio dell'articolo disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/la-radice-di-tutte-le-tensioni-in)

Mettiamo un po' di cose in prospettiva per non perdere la bussola. L'amministrazione Trump sta cercando di rimuovere incrostazioni burocratiche negli Stati Uniti che vanno indietro di centinaia di anni. Più del Congresso, il suo compito è quello di convincere l'elettorato (come sta facendo Alberta in Canada affinché non vengano etichettati “separatisti”, o peggio dalla stampa). Portarlo dalla sua, che abbia fiducia è cruciale affinché non si debba improvvisare. La maggior parte delle affermazioni fatte sulla stampa sono fuorvianti, perché fino a ora i nemici lungo la strada non hanno fatto che moltiplicarsi... tutti quelli che nel precedente sistema dell'eurodollaro avevano privilegi. La stampa è uno di questi nemici e Trump piuttosto che dire apertamente le sue reali intenzioni deve sparare tutta una serie di bizzarrie prima di arrivare davvero al punto. Questo, a sua volta, significa dover accettare un certo livello di ambiguità e incertezza in questo momento storico di transizione. Transizione degli Stati Uniti da cosa? Dal sistema di “libero scambio” inglese al sistema americano di politica economica. La ricostruzione della credibilità passa anche da qui.

E questo ci porta altresì al motivo per cui ci sono tanti venti contrari contro la Big Beautiful Bill e perché ci sono tante menzogne a riguardo. Nell'alveo della Reconciliation Bill solo le spese non discrezionali possono essere toccate. Si può discutere del lato entrate e tasse, ma i tagli del DOGE alla spesa non possono essere approvati subito perché gran parte di essi riguardano la spesa discrezionale e vengono approvati nella Rescission Bill. La legge, quindi, è stata tenuta ostaggio dal Senato dai “soliti noti” affinché gli aiuti all'Ucraina, e quindi i dollari all'estero, continuassero a scorrere. Rand Paul e Massie, opponendosi, dato che non hanno mai affrontato una Reconciliation Bill, hanno fatto il gioco di neocon come Murkowski, Collins, Graham, ecc. (senza contare che molti senatori affrontano le elezioni l'anno prossimo, quindi è “comprensibile” un'opposizione da falchi sul lato fiscale dell'equazione). La cricca di Davos, quindi, non sta facendo altro che mettere pressione sui suoi infiltrati al Congresso affinché rallentino questo processo e si possa vendere la narrativa “l'amministrazione Trump non sta facendo niente” oppure “la legge aumenta il deficit”. Davvero? Ci siamo scordati della USAID? Senza contare che le proiezioni del CBO considerano erroneamente i tagli delle tasse come un aumento automatico delle spese.

Non solo, ma il momento era diventato più impellente perché a fine giugno terminavano gli ultimi aiuti all'Ucraina approvati dall'amministrazione Biden. Non solo, ma questa settimana scattano i dazi contro l'UE. Una crisi, quindi, di qualunque natura è necessaria per spostare questi eventi ancora più avanti nel tempo e farli coincidere inoltre con il rollover del debito ($7.000 miliardi) previsto per questa estate. Occasione che non mancherà di essere sfruttata dalla stampa e dagli utili idioti al seguito per far passare l'idea, erronea, che nessuno voglia i titoli di stato americani (ignorando comodamente il gioco portato avanti dalla cricca di Davos di vendere il back-end della curva dei rendimenti e comprare il front-end in modo da dare l'idea di un'inversione della stessa).

Infatti il front-end della curva dei rendimenti americana continua a mostrare un'inversione sempre più pronunciata, questo significa che i possessori esteri stanno vendendo per tenere liquidi i loro mercati e saldare i debiti denominati in dollari. Secondo gli ultimi dati TIC il Canada è stato il venditore più accanito di recente, questo soprattutto grazie al carry trade che è stato impostato da Carney tra la curva dei rendimenti canadese e quella americana tramite l'emissione a marzo di una tranche di bond denominati in dollari americani. Ecco perché Powell, tra l'altro, s'è ostinato a tenere alti i tassi e a tenere il DXY in una banda di prezzo definita facendo in modo che non cadesse al di sotto dei 90 punti: ha semplificato la vita agli esportatori, ha continuato a contrarre l'offerta di dollari ombra e, al contempo, ha reso la vita difficile a chi voleva ancora sfruttare il mercato dell'eurodollaro.

Tra gli altri venditori importanti è risultato Hong Kong che di recente ha visto una severa svalutazione del dollaro honkonghense rispetto a quello americano perdendo il “peg”. Due delle valute più importanti al mondo per il loro “peg” col dollaro americano sono il dollaro di Hong Kong e il riyal saudita. Quest'ultimo non sta mostrando nessun segno di stress, invece. Anche Singapore s'è mostrato un venditore di titoli di stato ad aprile e questo mi fa pensare che c'è canalizzazione di biglietti verdi, da queste “succursali”, laddove servono di più: a Londra. Se mettiamo le due cose insieme, ovvero fame di dollari a livello internazionale e i guai emergenti a Hong Kong, la scena potrebbe essere pronta per una nuova crisi sovrana con epicentro la città cinese e riverberarsi subito a Londra e Bruxelles. Per quanto anche gli USA possano essere travolti da una crisi del genere, la loro condizione economica è nettamente superiore rispetto a quella del resto del mondo. Infatti la maggior parte della salita dell'indice S&P500 è stata dovuta alle Mag 7 negli ultimi dieci anni o giù di lì. Una rotazione della liquidità da queste, e quindi una correzione degli indici azionari principali, all'economia generale significherebbe un buon periodo di consolidamento. Nel frattempo la fuga di capitali dall'Europa attenuerebbe la correzione delle azioni americane facendole tornare, meno traumaticamente, a una media storica sostenibile. Nel secondo trimestre l'Eurostoxx è già inferiore in quanto a performance rispetto al Dow Jones. Una crisi del debito sovrano seguirà a ruota, così come una monetaria. Ricordate, se l'euro e la sterlina sono riuscite a rimbalzare dal fosso in cui stavano finendo è perché hanno venduto (e continuano a vendere) asset denominati in dollari e dollari per ripagare i propri debiti in una valuta la cui offerta è in contrazione.

Per quanto Trump possa voler un dollaro relativamente “basso”, il DXY non può scendere oltre una certa soglia altrimenti ciò significherebbe importare inflazione in eccesso. Questo significa che il DXY tornerà a salire, rimanendo nel range dei 100-105. Più in alto significa che il mondo sta implodendo. Infatti i livelli attuali nei mercati dei cambi da parte di sterlina ed euro sono artificialmente gonfiati, considerando come Ripple sia destinato a disintermediare Londra dal Forex e dallo Swift (Bitcoin è un'altra cosa invece, più collaterale e asset al portatore digitale che fornitore di liquidità).

Nel momento in cui il dollaro risalirà, seguito dal Dow Jones e dal back-end dei titoli di stato americani, insieme a una moderazione dell'inflazione, una crescita solida in generale e una riorganizzazione industriale degli USA, quello sarà anche il momento in cui la FED taglierà i tassi. Molto probabilmente già da questo mese e altre 3 volte durante gli ultimi 6 mesi di quest'anno. L'eccezione a questo percorso è un prezzo del petrolio sui $90 al barile, dato che un'inflazione spinta dalle materie prime più virulenta impedirà a Powell di tagliare i tassi. Se invece ci sarà moderazione nelle vicende geopolitiche, l'oro lateralizzerà e il dollaro salirà insieme al mercato azionario e quello obbligazionario americano, allora avrà le giustificazioni politiche per tagliare i tassi (al di là delle richieste di Trump). 

Il duplice mandato della FED, adesso, al di là dell'Humprey-Hawkins Act, è quello di stabilizzare i prezzi interni dopo la più grande botta d'inflazione mai vista dagli USA sulla scia del Build Back Better di Biden; l'altro punto è prosciugare l'offerta di dollari ombra all'estero. Il lavoro di Powell, da questo punto di vista, è stato tanto arduo quanto egregio... e continuerà a esserlo fintato che riduce il bilancio della FED, toglie il conservatorship da Fannie/Freddie e stabilizza i prezzi immobiliari e ci si sbarazza del SLR permettendo alle banche americane di usare il loro bilancio per rendere più efficiente il mercato dei mutui coprendolo coi titoli di stato statunitensi. I prezzi del 2010 non torneranno, troppe distorsioni monetarie sono accadute sin da allora; l'unica cosa che si può fare è stabilizzare l'economia. E un ulteriore modo di farlo è il processo di snellimento fiscale e taglio delle tasse.

Parecchi fronti sono aperti adesso ma quello fiscale è decisamente più importante. Più verrà ritardata la sua risoluzione, per qualunque motivo, più la cricca di Davos avrà leva nel sabotare gli USA. Non scordatevi le recenti parole di Dimon.

Poi c'è la politica estera. Infatti ho aperto questo pezzo parlando della Big Beautiful Bill perché parte tutto da essa. Inutile dire che nella maggioranza erpubblicana al Congresso ci sono franchi tiratori, come hanno dimostrato ad esempio Pompeo e Graham volati a Kiev per mandare un messaggio; oppure Massie e Paul che avrebbero voluto spacchettare la legge e farla approvare a pezzi... ma questo avrebbe significato una maggioranza di 60, non di 51, al Senato. Quindi piuttosto che continuare ad attenzionare un luogo su cui Trump ha, molto probabilmente, un dialogo con Putin, meglio dirottare il focus altrove e, in questo modo, accontentare i falchi neocon. I fronti aperti sono tanti e il tempo passa, e questa è una situazione che va a vantaggio della cricca di Davos.

Il Medio Oriente è uno di questi fronti, visto che il governo di Israele è facile da agitare. Anche qui, gli inglesi c'hanno messo lo zampino visto che “consigliano” entrambe le fazioni (Hamas in Qatar) e il loro gioco, come hanno sempre fatto, è tradire una di esse per creare una faida. Ed è quello che ha fatto l'MI6 il famoso 7 ottobre scatenando il vespaio a Gaza che vediamo ancora oggi. Gli Stati Uniti, con Trump, hanno lavorato per gettare le basi di una pacificazione nell'area, ecco perché gli arabi in Oman, Arabia Saudita, Emirati Arabi Uniti, Siria, Turchia, Kuwait sono rimasti, all'atto pratico, in silenzio quando l'aviazione americana ha effettuato la sua operazione in Iran. Così come sono rimasti in silenzio Russia e Cina.

Francia e Inghilterra vedono cosa accade e gonfiano l'isterismo di Israele, perché vogliono continuare ad avere influenza nella regione e fare in modo che continui a essere instabile: va a loro vantaggio e tiene impantanati gli USA, con potenziale di intervento diretto e quindi spesa di dollari all'estero. Inutile dire che francesi e inglesi cercheranno altresì di approfittare della confusione nel governo iraniano per insinuarsi. È un gioco pericoloso e più si andrà avanti diventerà ancor più pericoloso, visto che c'è la sopravvivenza della cricca di Davos in gioco. L'azzardo americano è stato quello di lasciar scatenare Israele il giorno dopo la scadenza dei 60 giorni per un accordo sul nucleare: in questo modo si manda un messaggio che le deadline devono essere rispettate (power politics) e il mancato rispetto porta conseguenze per la parte attenzionata... che sono progressivamente più severe in proporzione alla sua reticenza a trattare (si veda la pronta capitolazione dell'UE sui dazi al 10%).

Come si inserisce in questo contesto l'attacco americano sul suolo iraniano? Ha spostato l'attenzione in Medio Oriente dalla Russia e accontentato i neocon (tutti in festa) affinché votassero per la Big Beautiful Bill; ha indispettito l'Iran al punto da voler chiudere lo Stretto di Hormuz (cosa che farà male solo all'UE in termini energetici); è stato un indispettimento mirato visto che gli USA hanno avvertito l'Iran per tempo prima di attaccare (e chissà se prima della deadline una bozza d'accordo sottobanco non sia stata raggiunta); ha accontentato Israele nella sua richiesta di intervento americano; quest'ultima è stata una soddisfazione, però, che ha fatto continuare lo scontro tra Iran e Israele, i due agitatori più pronunciati in quella zona. Con il ridimensionamento dell'Iran andranno a morire tutti quei gruppi terroristici che hanno messo a ferro e fuoco il Medio Oriente (Houthi, Hezbollah, Hamas); con il ridimensionamento di Israele potrebbe cadere l'attuale governo in carica di cui l'amministrazione Trump non si fida.

Il “vero” tradimento del MAGA sarebbe stato se il 30 giugno, alla scadenza degli aiuti in Ucraina, essi fossero stati rinnovati; il tradimento assoluto del MAGA sarebbe se venisse salvata la City di Londra. Fino ad allora si tratta solo di muovere la prossima tessera sul tavolo del GO.

Circa due settimane fa parlavo di come in Iran ci fossero fazioni così come in tutti gli altri Paesi del mondo. La fonte di destabilizzazione nell'aerea è sempre stata la sua possibilità di avere armi nucleari, cosa che ha dato a Israele la motivazione per essere costantemente agitato e opporsi a questa eventualità. Non è necessario che fosse reale adesso o in passato, il solo fatto che pendesse questa spada di Damocle nella regione era sufficiente per creare tensioni. E Israele aveva tutte le ragioni per opporsi; la power politics funziona così, bisogna farsene una ragione.

Torniamo un attimo indietro nel tempo. L'accordo JCPOA stretto da Obama con l'Iran serviva a far arrivare gas e petrolio in Europa a prezzi più convenienti. Di contro l'Iran ci guadagnava la possibilità di accedere a fonti di uranio per scopi civili. Gli USA non ci guadagnavano niente e servivano solo da garanti dell'accordo. Anzi, ci avrebbero rimesso solamente in caso di guai, ma sappiamo che l'amministrazione Obama non lavorava nell'interesse della nazione. C'è da aggiungere, anche, che gli inglesi sono i responsabili dietro le quinte per le tensioni nella regione dato che il loro obiettivo, oltre che controllare indirettamente l'Iran tramite un governo fantoccio, è quello di impedire alla Russia di collegarsi con l'Oceano indiano bypassando così il Mar Nero. Iran e Russia sono due vecchi pallini inglesi. Questi ultimi si sono garantiti che una ferrovia da San Pietroburgo fino a Chabahar non venisse mai costruita (così come si sono assicurati che non fosse costruita dall'Alaska alla Russia). Anche il fermento in Georgia si inserisce in questo contesto.

Comunque, sin dall'accordo Sykes-Picot e dalla Dichiarazione di Balfour (anche perché la Prima guerra mondiale è stata scatenata per smantellare definitivamente l'impero ottomano), gli inglesi hanno continuato a manovrare nell'ombra in Medio Oriente per estendere e conservare la loro impronta colonialista. Questo significa tramite Israele e anche attraverso il proxy Stati Uniti. Quando questi ultimi, però, hanno iniziato a emanciparsi dall'influenza della City di Londra, principalmente con l'abbandono del LIBOR, ciò ha sparigliato le carte anche a livello geopolitico. Il caos è stata una conseguenza, soprattutto a livello bellico col moltiplicarsi dei conflitti a livello mondiale sulla scia di un riassestamento delle alleanze a immagine e somiglianza di suddetta indipendenza americana. Uno di questi conflitti è stato ovviamente quello tra Israele e Palestina, dove entrambi i popoli sono stati traditi dagli inglesi per accendere la miccia e far continuare poi ad ardere il fuoco della guerra. Ecco perché è saltata fuori adesso la storia che Israele ha finanziato per anni Hamas. Ecco perché, da due anni a questa parte, è diventato legittimo criticare aspramente gli israeliani. Il 7 ottobre è stata un'operazione palesemente portata avanti dai servizi segreti inglesi dell'MI6, i quali hanno ha usato il proxy di Hamas in Qatar per attivare la falange in Palestina e quindi “tradire” Israele.

Ecco perché Netanyahu è stato messo da parte durante i negoziati di Trump in Medio Oriente con gli altri stati arabi ed è stato pronto ad attaccare l'Iran senza esitazione per conto degli USA. Questi ultimi avevano bisogno di una dimostrazione di forza per pacificare l'Iran, mandare un segnale agli altri player mondiali che l'amministrazione Trump fa sul serio quando imposta delle deadline (messaggio rivolto a Bruxelles e Ottawa) e accontentare i neocon al Senato affinché togliessero il “veto” alla Big Beautiful Bill. In questo contesto Netanyahu rimane uno strumento di persuasione, come ha potuto constatare lui stesso avendo dovuto combattere da solo contro l'Iran. Ritengo che il suo ascendente sul resto del mondo fosse dovuto all'affiliazione con gli inglesi, ma adesso quei tempi sono andati e, ciononostante, rimane comunque inaffidabile visto che s'è fatto terra bruciata intornio a lui a livello politico. Altresì, per quanto l'AIPAC abbia finanziato la campagna di Trump, non ha la stessa influenza che aveva durante il suo primo mandato.

E questo ci porta al momento attuale, dove le fazioni all'interno dell'Iran si stanno dando battaglia per determinare chi emergerà come classe dirigente. Sono dell'idea che gli inglesi non si lasceranno scappare l'opportunità creata dagli USA per intrufolarsi finalmente nel Paese, come leggiamo dalla seguente notizia. È un modus operandi già conosciuto ai lettori del mio blog. Credo altresì che l'amministrazione Trump abbia staccato il proprio accordo una delle fazioni in Iran affinché emerga come vincitrice in quella che adesso è una guerra civile sotterranea nel Paese mediorientale. Ecco perché ha dichiarato la scorsa settimana che “otterremo ciò che vogliamo in Iran”. Questa partita ancora non è finita e gli inglesi, per quanto ridimensionati a ogni livello (sociale, finanziario, geopolitico), non sono sconfitti. La loro rete d'influenza va indietro di centinaia di anni e non sarà affatto facile incrinarla. Sta di fatto, però, che Russia e Cina sono rimasti a bordo campo, e questo mi fa pensare che sottobanco Putin e Xi siano d'accordo con la riorganizzazione della regione mediorientale portata avanti da Trump. Così come gli altri stati arabi che hanno stretto accordi commerciali con l'amministrazione Trump.

È un gioco ricco di azzardi e qualunque cosa potrebbe andare storta da adesso in poi. Ad esempio, tra Israele e Iran c'è la Siria ed essa è un punto di pressione nell'area. Inutile dire che gli inglesi sono molto presenti anche lì, attraverso di essa sarebbe relativamente facile far deragliare la pace di Trump. In aggiunta a ciò ci sono anche i Balcani, dove ci sono i serbi che sono cristiani ortodossi, i croati che sono cattolici e i musulmani. Di conseguenza è relativamente facile che “qualcosa vada storto” da quelle parti, ma non perché quelle persone si odino a vicenda bensì attraverso il solito modo di fomentare attriti attraverso eventi terroristici che attizzano un odio artificiale tra i vari gruppi religosi/etnici. Ho già descritto il meccanismo in un altro pezzo e ciò avviene tramite ONG, lavoratori dell'ONU, organizzazioni filantropiche, media generalisti, organizzazioni di relazioni pubbliche, ecc. Poi uno si ricorda dei legami rafforzati a livello di intelligence tra Bosnia e Inghilterra e il quadro diventa più chiaro. A tutti questi punti di pressione dobbiamo aggiungere anche l'area del Baltico, dove anche qui gli inglesi stanno avendo influenza in particolar modo sull'Estonia. Insomma il minimo comun denominatore è che le aree menzionate sono state riempite di dinamite e il “divide et impera” per gli inglesi è una passeggiata nel parco; sono maestri nell'agitare, scuotere e destabilizzare.

Purtroppo non sarà un percorso in linea retta e sarà irto di ostacoli. Ma badate bene sempre a un fattore per capire chi vuole cosa: fate caso a coloro che parlano di accordi e coloro che invece vogliono alimentare il conflitto per il proprio tornaconto. 

Supporta Francesco Simoncelli's Freedonia lasciando una “mancia” in satoshi di bitcoin scannerizzando il QR seguente.

In a new report, the CIA’s Deputy Director for Analysis explains that senior leaders of the agency’s center on Russia “strongly opposed” the now-infamous Steele dossier, which was advanced by former British spy Christopher Steele and deployed as the backbone of the agency’s investigation of so-called Russian collusion in the 2016 election. Officials with the CIA’s center on Russia said of the dossier that it “did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards” and contended that its inclusion in the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of the 2016 election would “jeopardize the credibility of the entire paper.”

According to the declassified CIA report released last week, John Brennan, who was the CIA director from 2013 to 2017:

showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness. When confronted with specific flaws in the Dossier by the two mission center leaders—one with extensive operational experience and the other with a strong analytic background—he appeared more swayed by the Dossier’s general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns. Brennan ultimately formalized his position in writing, stating that “my bottom line is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”

Former CIA analyst Bryan Dean Wright, who served under Brennan, opined at Fox News that the CIA report shows that his former boss lied about his use of the dossier, manipulated who would write the ICA, interfered in its drafting, rushed the document to completion, and shared it with more than 200 U.S. officials to ensure that it would be leaked. Wright concluded that based on the information in the report, Brennan, who is 69 years old and retired, should be in prison.

To those who have been paying attention for the last several years, none of what the report reveals should come as a surprise.

“Vladimir Putin personally ordered the influence campaign to boost Donald Trump’s election prospects,” Brennan contended in his 2020 book Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad. By then, the Russia hoax had been fully exposed as a Clinton campaign operation. Brennan repeats the hoax’s narrative many times in his book, which serves as a confession of the CIA’s aggressive partisanship under his leadership, and its abject failure to fulfill its appointed duties.

For a better chronicle of the agency’s downfall, readers can tap an insider who had more intel experience than either Brennan, Wright, or the unnamed author of the new CIA report. Angelo Codevilla received his first security clearance at age 23, when he worked for Bendix Aerospace Systems Division on Air Force contracts to study Soviet military tactics. Three years later Codevilla served as U.S. Navy officer assigned to military intelligence. That involved training in counterintelligence investigations and a tour of duty as an intelligence briefer for the chief of naval operations.

In the U.S. Foreign Service, Codevilla served as a regional analyst in Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Service on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, gave the intel vet “a unique bird’s-eye view,” as he explained in his 1992 book Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century.

As a staffer for Sen. Malcolm Wallop on the subcommittee on budget from 1977 to 1985, Codevilla was asked to scrutinize “a two-foot-high stack of justifications for all U.S. intelligence agencies’ requests for money.” Codevilla was also principal author of a report to CIA director designate William Casey, classified “above top secret.” According to books such as John Ranelagh’s The Agency: The Rise and Fall of the CIA, and Bob Woodward’s Veil, agency bureaucrats felt threatened by Codevilla’s report.

In 1974, the CIA fired Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton, a veteran of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to the CIA. After that, “the primacy of social and bureaucratic considerations” took over, and “this hurt American CI [counterintelligence] badly,” Codevilla wrote.

Breaches followed. From 1968 until 1984, John Walker, his brother, his son, and his associate Jerry Whitworth, sold to the Soviet Union the operating manuals of the U.S. Navy’s best code machines, together with volumes of daily settings. “Yet for 16 years,” Codevilla recalled, “U.S. counterintelligence had not a hint of this potentially mortal hemorrhage.” In similar style, CIA officer William Kampiles, sold to the USSR for $3000 the entire operating manual of the KH-11satellite.

Those who wanted to win the Cold War “lost out to those who wanted to manage a perpetual competitive-cooperative relationship with the USSR,” Codevilla wrote in Informing Statecraft. President Gerald Ford, briefed daily by the CIA, in 1975 told the world Poland was “free” and in 1976 proclaimed “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” The captive peoples knew better but, as Codevilla showed, the CIA had no clue:

The revolution that swept Eastern Europe in 1989, an event that ranks in importance with WWI, was wholly unheralded by technical intelligence. Antennas sensitive to millionths of amps, and orbiting cameras that could detect mice on the earth’s surface, did not see hundreds of millions of people ready to overthrow the communist world. (italics original)

The CIA line on East Germany, Codevilla noted, “had not deviated far from East German propaganda.” The “bureaucratically unchallengeable” CIA “might not always be right. But it would never be wrong.” True to form, the agency was unprepared for a new century characterized by jihadists screaming “death to America.”

In 1980, four years after the CIA fired James Angleton, the CIA hired Fordham University grad John Brennan, who in 1976 voted to elect the Stalinist Gus Hall, a candidate of the Communist Party USA, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union. As Brennan explains in Undaunted, he voted for Hall “on a lark,” a confession of poor judgment, at minimum. Instead of showing him the door, the CIA hired Brennan, who then rose through the ranks with lightning speed. The Undaunted author describes the scene at the CIA on Sept. 11, 2001:

We learned that the Pentagon had been attacked and that a plane had crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania … George [Tenet] called his senior staff back into the room to coordinate actions that the CIA would need to take as the attack against our homeland was unfolding.

In other words, the mighty CIA knew nothing in advance about the worst attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor. As a leftist, Brennan believed in “the Islamic teaching that jihad is a holy struggle in pursuit of a moral goal,” and “violence and jihad not necessarily synonymous.” As the jihadist threats mounted, Brennan had his eye on domestic politics instead.

Read the Whole Article

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Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held a press conference Tuesday at Ronald Reagan National Airport where she stood before flags, banners, and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees. Starting off her prepared statement, Noem declared right after introducing herself: “We have some very exciting news to announce.” But, when the announcement came, informed individuals would be justified in responding: “Really? You are way too easily excited.”

Noem continued her prepared statement, revealing that the “very exciting news” and the reason for having the press conference was that “TSA will no longer require travelers to remove their shoes when they go through our security checkpoints.” As Porky Pig would say, “That’s all folks.”

Noem went on to relate that TSA had enforced since 2006 a policy that people must take off their shoes at TSA checkpoints. However, people who traveled now and then by commercial flights over the nearly 20 years she says this policy was in place know that the policy had disappeared and reappeared off and on. Travelers did not always hear TSA agents demanding people take shoes off. Some times travelers would hear TSA agents instead saying that people could keep shoes on.

So, from Noem’s announcement, it looks like TSA is back on the you can keep your shoes on track — for now at least. That is kind of nice, sort of. You see, if you do leave your shoes on, that may, like many other aspects of clothing, create an alert to cause TSA agents to subject you to “enhanced” screening, with “enhanced” here meaning you will be subjected to additional harassment and abuse. So, make your call. You may find it preferable to just take shoes off each time, despite it not being demanded.

Additionally, the TSA demanding passengers take off shoes has been just one small part of the harassment it metes out on travelers. Noem is leaving in place the rest — waits in line, demanded production of identification documentation in violation of the right to travel anonymously, zero privacy in regard to what is in bags or pockets, confiscation of nonthreatening though verboten items, subjection to potential harm from never properly safety tested “full-body scanners,” “pat downs” that are pretty much the same as friskings by police and that without special governmental protection would be regarded as assaults or sexual assaults, etc.

Noem’s announced change in TSA policy is a pittance. If she wants to make a change that is in reality “very exciting” and would bring major benefit to travelers, she should move forward with the elimination of TSA and the harassment to which it subjects travelers in America each day.

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

The post The Easily Excited Homeland Security Secretary appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: During the recent Iran–Israel war, the US used up to 20% of its global stockpile of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) ballistic missile interceptors, each costing over $18 million. THAAD isn’t effective against hypersonic missiles, which both Iran and even Yemen’s Houthis now possess.

What do you make of this?

Doug Casey: War, in the long run, is a matter of economics. If you can’t afford to fight a war, you’ll lose the war. Missiles are now the preferred weapon for taking out enemy targets, and the only effective counter is anti-missile missiles. The problem is that both are brutally expensive. Can the costs be kept down, so war is more… affordable?

Generals, politicians, and “defense” contractors, however, love expensive high-tech toys. But if you’re going to afford a war, the most cost-effective weapon is an ignorant teenage boy—something the Third World, especially the Muslim world, is awash in. They’re cheap and stealthy delivery systems, far more effective than multi-million-dollar missiles. There’s an endless supply of them, and they can be employed in a myriad of ways. From an economic point of view, it makes no sense for technologically advanced countries (like the US) to use ultra-expensive weapons to attack primitive countries, as we’ve done for the last 75 years.

Regardless of the weapons used, the thing to remember is that war amounts to setting wealth on fire. Missiles are about taking real goods, manufactured at great expense, and using them to blow up other real wealth; there can be a perverse logic to it. However, despite their rhetoric to the contrary, I’m not sure governments are too concerned about lots of young men dying. A surplus of unemployed young males is destabilizing, especially in poor countries.

Even a large country like the US will eventually collapse under the weight of war. That’s much more true of the Ukraine. And vastly truer of Israel. Israel will further bankrupt itself shooting down missiles with ultra-expensive anti-missiles. With a gigantic debt load, enormous war expenditures and losses, living on welfare from the US, and no prospect of things getting better, the prognosis isn’t good. About a million (it’s said) of Israel’s seven million Jewish citizens have recently made the chicken run, and those who remain aren’t allowed to leave. I think Israel has a near-insoluble problem. Giving them more money and missiles won’t help.

International Man: President Trump recently unveiled a plan to build a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield over the US, modeled loosely on Israel’s Iron Dome. Critics question its feasibility, effectiveness, and cost. Independent analysts estimate the long-term price tag could reach $800 billion.

What’s your take?

Doug Casey: Almost every major weapons system ends up fighting the last war, and that will be true of the so-called Golden Dome. It strikes me as a criminally stupid idea, further ensuring the bankruptcy of the US government and the US itself, while serving no real useful purpose. If you want to attack the US, you don’t want to use missiles.

First, we don’t have a major military threat. The US is insulated from hostile powers by two very large oceans. Should someone launch a nuclear missile attack—which is what the Golden Dome is supposed to defend against—we would know exactly where those missiles came from. The enemy could expect massive retaliation from the American nuclear triad, which makes the attack pointless. That alone makes the Golden Dome redundant and unnecessary. Apart from that, if an enemy wanted to launch a nuclear attack, it would be more effective with pre-positioned nukes, or nukes delivered surreptitiously with cargo ships and planes.

Nuclear war via missiles scared everybody 70 years ago. But today it’s not a practical threat. The likely threats, I think, are from more subtle areas—cyber war, bio war, or a new type of guerrilla war.

WW3 will have a huge cyber element. Everything runs on computers: the banking system, the monetary system, the electrical grid, the communications grid, the transportation grid, and utilities. A successful cyber-attack would turn almost everything we use or need into a brick overnight. It would be cheap and effective, cause widespread chaos and mass casualties, without kinetically destroying very much.

If the enemy is really serious, though, they’ll use bioweapons. Viruses and bacteria can zero in on, or exclude, certain populations. Why have a nuclear war when you can neatly kill the people who are the real problem? And both cyber and biowar offer a great deal of plausible deniability.

The third option was demonstrated on September 11, 2001. The attack with commercial airliners was ultra cheap, super effective, and hard to counter. I suspect we’ll see numerous mutations of that theme. It’s a new type of guerrilla war. Millions of military-age males—cheap teenagers—have infiltrated the US over the last decade or so. For all we know, many may be organized as informal guerrilla armies to be activated whenever. They could surreptitiously wreak havoc.

There’s no real defense against these types of attacks.

But the real enemy is not some foreign power, but the fact that the US has turned into a dysfunctional multicultural domestic empire, which is likely to suffer serious financial, economic, social, and political problems over the next years.

Spending a trillion dollars on a useless Golden Dome is an insane distraction. Who comes up with these idiotic ideas?

International Man: The F-35 is the most expensive weapon system in human history, with lifetime costs projected at over $1.7 trillion, according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Is the F-35 worth the price tag—or is it a military-industrial complex boondoggle?

Doug Casey: The F-35 is a perfect example of fighting the last war, like having cavalry regiments before World War 1 or battleships before World War 2. Aircraft carriers and high-tech fighter planes are their WW3 equivalents.

What is the F-35 built to fight? Other fighter planes? But the next generation of fighter planes will be pilotless, highly sophisticated, and much cheaper. They’ll be drones run by artificial intelligence, which won’t need to drag around a heavy, expensive, and limiting pilot. The F-35 is a dinosaur.

The real enemy here, however, isn’t Russian or Chinese fighters. The real enemy is US military contractors—the so-called defense companies. They’ve learned to fight wars by hiring lobbyists instead of engineers. They take decades to build planes like the F-35, which are already obsolete by the time they’re in production.

It amazes me that during World War 2, the P-51—one of the most effective fighters of the war—went from blank paper to production in six months and was turned out at $50,000 per copy, which is about $600,000 or so in today’s money. The F-35 has taken 30 years to put into production; it got underway in 1995. And it costs—who knows, because the numbers are floating abstractions, buried under mountains of phony accounting and corruption. But somewhere between $100 and $200 million per plane. Enough money that you almost can’t afford to lose one. And that doesn’t count the huge direct and indirect maintenance costs.

International Man: Recently, Israel and Ukraine used relatively cheap drones smuggled into Iran and Russia to bypass advanced air defenses and hit strategic targets with ease.

How are drones changing warfare and its economics?

Doug Casey: Drones are totally changing the entire nature of warfare. The next generation of drones—which are already being manufactured—are the size of bumblebees or even houseflies. They can be produced by the millions and released onto a battlefield or into a city.

Moving up from there, you’ll have quadruped drones like the BigDog, and of course, real, true-to-life Terminators. Tesla anticipates manufacturing AI-powered bipedal robots for as little as $10,000 apiece. Oscar Wilde didn’t know how right he was when he said that life imitates art.

I would not want to be a soldier fighting drones of all descriptions. Human soldiers are dead meat on the battlefield in the next generation of military technology, which is already here.

International Man: It seems the US military-industrial complex is more focused on producing ultra-expensive hardware than on building systems that actually win wars.

What are the investment and geopolitical implications of this trend?

Doug Casey: Everybody’s familiar with Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex. That was 65 years ago—a lifetime—and it’s mutated and grown like a cancer since then. Today, any movie with a modern military theme is probably propaganda for the government or the companies that manufacture its weapons. Anyway, Congressmen don’t think in terms of the effectiveness of weapons; they think in terms of the number of dollars that will be spent in their home district and the number of people that weapons manufacturers can employ.

Innovations, however, are made by small companies or individual inventors, not by giant companies run by administrators and suits. You don’t want to own the Lockheeds or General Dynamics. You want to own small outfits, run by innovators, not suits.

It’s funny that after World War 2, the War Department changed its name to the Defense Department. It’s odd because the Defense Department has nothing to do with defense. It’s a complete misnomer. The US hasn’t had any wars defending the US, or “freedom”, a word they always throw in there, in living memory. As America transformed into an empire, very much like ancient Athens in many regards, its many wars have been offensive, not defensive. They’ve been wars of words and lies as well as wars of weapons.

In any event, the best defense for the US, or any country, is economic strength and liberty, not a giant military/industrial bureaucracy.

In addition to economic strength, successful countries have a citizenry that shares common values and loves their culture. Those things pretty much disappeared as the US mutated into a welfare-warfare state.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Why the Military-Industrial Complex Always Wins appeared first on LewRockwell.

Helping people with eating disorders is a laudable goal, but there remain unknown health risks associated with a clutch of new weight loss drugs – and significant costs.

Ozempic was developed initially (and FDA-approved in 2005) for the treatment of life-threatening diabetes. Wegovy was approved by the FDA on March 8, 2024, to treat obese or “overweight” patients. Both use the same medication, glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) agonists, but differ in dosage. Medicaid and Medicare are more likely to cover the use of Ozempic for diabetes than they are Wegovy for obesity, depending on state standards administered under these federal programs. Controversy centers on their use for weight loss because it is less urgent than diabetes.

GLP-1 was initially created using the Gila Monster after researchers identified a hormone in the lizard’s toxic venom that closely resembled the GLP-1 found in the human gut. Human GLP-1 regulates appetite and blood sugar; the reptilian form is longer-lasting. Subsequent research led to the development of the synthetic version used in Ozempic and Wegovy, which is manufactured through recombinant DNA technology by genetically engineering bacteria or yeast cells to produce proteins that mimic human GLP-1. GLP-1 drugs stimulate patients’ pancreases to secrete more insulin and signal their brains to feel fuller with less food.

Ironically, this effect essentially counters food additives designed to stimulate people’s appetites – perhaps Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the FDA will eventually ban such substances. In the interim, concerns about cost, ethics, and safety abound.

Ozempic and Wegovy are taken by weekly injection, and cost in excess of $1,000/month. Their long-term safety is unknown, and most patients who discontinue use quickly regain lost weight. These drugs yield hundreds of billions of dollars in Big Pharma profits by creating a dependency in patients to “cure” them from the harms of ultra-processed foods and a sedentary lifestyle, as documented in the MAHA Commission Report.

Wegovy’s manufacturer concedes on its webpage that the regulatory approval of Wegovy involved “a relatively short duration of follow-up, limiting the assessment of long-term outcomes….” Synthetic GLP-1 frequently causes vomiting and nausea, and may induce more serious complications, including intestinal blockage and pancreatitis. One study found patients prescribed GLP-1 were at 9.09 times higher risk of pancreatitis, 4.22 times higher risk of intestinal obstruction, and 3.67 times higher risk of gastroparesis (stomach paralysis). UK officials recently announced plans to study links between GLP-1 use and acute pancreatitis after hundreds of recorded incidents, including over 100 in 2025 alone.

It may not be shocking that a recombinant-DNA hormone synthesized from Gila Monster venom poses health risks to patients seeking weight loss. Alarms have sounded for years in the US that weight loss drugs threaten serious, life-changing side effects. A leading lawsuit is pending by a Louisiana woman who claims “she suffered vomiting so severe it caused her to lose teeth.” Her attorneys are reportedly investigating over 10,000 claims related to these drugs. The firm alleges on its website other possible harms, including gallbladder issues, vision loss, encephalopathy, and death.

Kennedy was an outspoken critic of weight loss drugs prior to his appointment as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Biden administration opened the door for Medicare and Medicaid to provide coverage for these costly drugs; RFK Jr. criticized them and the companies that manufacture them. The downsides of popular medications like Wegovy and Ozempic underscore why Mr. Kennedy is rightly skeptical.

The potential healthcare savings of an effective weight loss intervention are astronomical, but the benefits of these drugs vanish when they are discontinued.

The potential for long-term health risks coupled with extraordinarily high costs to taxpayers suggest this is a devil’s bargain leading to lifelong dependency. What is the difference between public funding for a pharmaceutical techno-teat to counterbalance gluttony and sloth and lifelong methadone to rescue people from poor decisions relating to illegal drug use? Financial analysts forecast that profits from this class of drugs could easily exceed $100-$150 billion annually very shortly.

The ever-present modern consumer desire for a quick fix (in this case, literally a jab in the belly) for complex health challenges circles back to Kennedy’s preferred prescription for obesity: improved diets and exercise.

Kennedy has emphasized that the U.S.is authorizing the rampant use of these insufficiently tested drugs while Denmark restricts their approval. The human body can shed weight with exercise and wholesome foods without the dubious aid of Big Pharma on the taxpayer’s dime.

Such drugs also create a sort of split personality for the social justice movement – is obesity to be “affirmed” as beautiful, while those who take weight loss drugs are derided as self-stigmatizing? Which is more unhealthy – being fat, or taking potentially harmful pharmaceuticals to combat obesity? How much should the government be involved in personal weight loss and its economic costs?

The scientific jury is still out on the long-term health risks of these drugs. Manufacturers, meanwhile, hide behind FDA approval to advertise their fat-preventing wares as “safe and effective.” Robert F Kennedy, Jr. is right to encourage people toward the middle road of exercise and a conscientious diet – the safest route, albeit less traveled.

This article was originally published on The MAHA Report.

The post Are Weight Loss Drugs Worth the Costs and Risks? appeared first on LewRockwell.

It is getting harder and harder to breathe. The world grows smaller as storms gather. All night the storm raged furiously, the lightning, thunder, rain, and wind locking us in and away from the world. No one expected it to be this bad. The dogs howled like wolves.

At most they said it would hinder us, and we, wanting to believe the experts who daily warn of something to fear – overripe bananas, marginal risks of severe weather, squirrel flu, spiders in tight pants, the wrong mascara, fear of falling in loose pants – accepted. Now we are huddled against the onslaught, gasping at the fury that imprisons us.

No one can sleep with the roar and rapping all around. Dawn comes slowly and dark. We huddle around our dinguses to link us to a world we cannot see or hear. They don’t ding. We have lost power. Someone wonders if the satellites are still up, but the sky is too dark for auguries. We listen to the clatter of an eerie silence. Our silence. We are all unknowingly holding our breaths. Another says, I think our phones are wasted, it feels like digital death. The dogs nod.

It is getting harder and harder to hear. Beethoven was so young to become deaf to the world. Someone says this for some unknown reason. She is old. She then says he said, “I will take fate by the throat, it shall not overcome me . . . I feel that I am not made for a quiet life.” The kids laugh. The windows and roof shake, the dogs howl, I think how true. For me, at least.

Yesterday the Israelis killed 104 Palestinians in Gaza. Par for the course, a daily occurrence. Many children among them. Did those kids hear the bombs and bullets coming? Were they gasping for breath? They are no longer breathing.

Did they call out to God? Do hundreds call out? Thousands call? Millions? Which God?  The slaughterer’s made them dead on prayers to their genocidal God who lives in Tel Aviv.

God help us. How? The phones are wasted. Where is the Good God hiding? How can we call him?

The immigrant grandmother, hiding here from Trump’s masked thugs, says through her tears, do any of you remember how in Columbia 25,000 people, 8,00 children, all innocent, died, none of whom are calling out now, as the survivors did when they asked the great good God, why this savage death, after the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted and stuffed their mouths with mud, courtesy of Vulcan, the God of fire, courtesy of God Almighty.

No one answers her. Her prayers are singed with a cynicism that she hates. We can’t answer. Most don’t remember. Who will tell her why the good God, the good Earth, their mother rose up to bury so many in mud? Who can tell the survivors’ families why Our Lady of Guadalupe rose and drowned their loved ones recently?

Who is this person called Fate who knocks at our doors? Mother Nature? Father Grinning Jackal in suit and tie with blood oozing through his fake teeth, talking casually about nuclear war and slaughtering the innocent?

An old man says, let’s listen, we must defy fate. He puts a record on the battery operated record player. The wind is howling hideously so he turns the sound up to full volume. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in C minor rocks the room, the walls shake like dice in a cup, tossing us on such swells of feeling that time is arrested in its turning. One hears the call to revolution.

Suddenly it is October 1962, a man is time-travelling. The Cuban Missile Crisis – real fear everywhere. Fate knocking on the door, obedient men propped at flashing boards, in Moscow and Washington, D.C., awaiting orders. They are still waiting.

There was a call then. A few men heard it. It was soul deep. In those days there were humans who could recite poetry, grasp the meaning of madness. We survived and have moved on. They call it progress. Technological progress. The machines have the answers to all our questions, except the important ones.

Who will answer the wailing voices seeking answers? Who can tell them why the good God, the good earth their mother rose up to bury them in mud and water? Who dare answer the 1,000,000 Pakistani dead, drowned on November 13, 1970 beneath a cyclone driven tidal wave? Or maybe it was two or three million. Who knows? Who cares to ask: Was it an act of Mother Nature, of God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth? Tell me, who the hell is responsible.

It is getting harder and harder to breathe. The world grows smaller as storms gather. We have been wasted by the phones, dinguses that will not save us from the nuclear weapons that the jackals with polished faces have prepared. Dead men sit at flashing boards awaiting orders. It is depressing but true, and while naturally we cannot stop nature from devouring her children, we can stop the human killers from their appointed task to close down the world and engender all a silent void.

Long later, hours, years – who knows when? – the unexpected storm abated, the roads out were cleared. It was still hazardous to try. The old man who played Beethoven said as we were leaving that we must take fate by the throat and hear the silent cries of all the people desperate for peace on earth.

“Oh, it is so beautiful to live – to live a thousand times. I feel that I am not made for a quiet life.”

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post When Fate Knocks at the Door, Take It by the Throat appeared first on LewRockwell.

While New Yorkers are obsessing over the possibility of a socialist Muslim becoming mayor of their town this autumn, I have yet to read or hear anything about the Palestinian woman doctor who is still operating on the wounded and dying while nine—yes, nine—of her children were killed after an Israeli bombing attack. I suppose if I go on I will be accused of anti-Semitism, such is the grip the neocons and the Israeli lobby have on the good old US of A. A recent know-nothing called Hammer, who works for Newsweek—I was surprised to read the rag still exists—accused The American Conservative of something along those lines, simply because TAC advised Uncle Sam not to get involved in the Middle East. A wise suggestion, and one that was the reason why Pat Buchanan, Scott McConnell, and yours truly founded the magazine 22 years ago. (The moron in the White House listened instead to the neocon cabal, with the disastrous results that we had predicted.) Now another neocon moron attacks the magazine that has yet to get anything wrong. Which brings me to the point I wish to make this week.

“Murdering children makes any normal person’s blood boil, yet right-wing newspapers in Britain and America have not printed a single word about it.”

War crimes are being committed in Gaza by the Israelis, with purposeful killing of noncombatants and the decimation of civilian property, both crimes abetted by the Biden and Trump administrations. A friend of mine who was recently in Gaza had no words to describe the horrors that are taking place as I write. The crimes against humanity and the genocide began immediately after the IDF retaliated against the Hamas massacre of Israelis in October 2023. Eight days after the war began, an Israeli scholar by the name of Raz Segal identified Israeli army shooting of Palestinian noncombatants as genocide, such was the ferocious response of the IDF against helpless civilians. (Eight hundred genocide scholars have signed a letter calling it genocide since.) The New York Times, which is Jewish-owned, called the Israeli bombardment “the most intense bombing in contemporary history.” Neutral doctors returning from Gaza stated that Israeli snipers were shooting toddlers in the head, and an American doctor, Mark Perlmutter from North Carolina, told the media that in thirty years of working in zones of conflict he had never seen children being incinerated or “shredded” the way they were in Gaza.

Murdering children makes any normal person’s blood boil, yet right-wing newspapers in Britain and America have not printed a single word about it. Not one. And as one’s heart goes out to the Texas parents who have lost so many of their children to the floods—the numbers are close to 100—imagine what Palestinian mothers are subjected to, with more than 15,000 children killed by the IDF.

As a child I remember reading warnings that for each Wehrmacht trooper found dead in Athens, ten Greeks would be picked at random and executed. Twelve hundred Israelis died in the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and the death toll of the reprisals now stands at over 60,000. You do the math. The Israelis have outdone the Nazis by a lot.

The dead and blinded-for-life aside, the Israelis have also destroyed the fishing industry, the sewage system, all the farmland, and 90 percent of the housing, so people must live in tents or among the rubble of collapsed buildings. Furthermore, and under government orders, the IDF shoots at Palestinians waiting in line for food after Israel denied access to food suppliers. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, a decent man and a good soldier, has called Israeli actions war crimes. In fact, the wording is not even adequate for the horrors of Gaza. And yet, pro-Israeli lobbies and Hollywood types scoff at the truth. Israeli partisans in the land of make-believe are mainly Jewish, and as Elon Musk’s AI chatbox revealed, woke, antiwhite, and anti-Palestinian biases have and will continue focusing against them in Jewish-made films.

Will Israel and the genocidal Netanyahu succeed in killing all 2 million of Gaza’s residents? No, what he will force them to do is leave for deserts unknown. What he will do is expand the West Bank illegal settlements and eventually take over the whole territory. My only question is, where is Uncle Sam? Where are the Saudis, the Gulf monarchies, and the E.U. while the genocide is taking place? And why is the war criminal Netanyahu welcomed in the White House? Shame on you, Donald! I was for you big-time.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

The post Turning a Blind Eye appeared first on LewRockwell.

For many years I reported monthly on the jobs reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Over the years the new jobs were consistently in health and social assistance, waitresses and bartenders, and government employment.  

Manufacturing jobs making things that could be exported to pay for imports simply were not present.

I emphasized that the jobs offshoring policy associated with globalism was de-industrializing the United States and destroying the middle class and the ladders of upward mobility that had made America an opportunity society.  I held accountable the economic professors at Harvard and Dartmouth who promised that the lost of US manufacturing jobs, which they derided as “dirty fingernail jobs,” would be replaced by higher paid clean fingernail tech jobs.  No such jobs ever appeared for the displaced manufacturing work force which has ceased to exist.

Fortunately, the US dollar being the world reserve currency allows the US to pay its bills by printing Treasury bonds.  As Treasury bonds are the reserves of most foreign central banks, there has been a constant demand for more reserves.  Thus, financing the US debt has been no problem. When US debt grows, so do the reserves of the world’s central banks.  No problem.  David Stockman in 45 years has been unable to learn this.

The problem is internal.  Manufacturing jobs are high productivity, high value added.  Therefore the wage is high.  The replacement jobs–stocking big box store shelves are low productivity.  Consequently, the growth of income from wages stagnated and declined.  Today American living standards are based more on credit than on productivity.

Engineering and design follow manufacturing.  When manufacturing leaves, so do engineering and design.  

America was the loser.  China was the winner.  Wall Street forced American manufacturers to offshore their production to China in order to raise profits from lower labor and compliance costs. Wall Street ordered US manufacturers to “meet the Chinese price” or Wall Street would finance takeovers of the companies and move their production offshore. Clearly, Wall Street is an anti-American entity.

I remember when Washington’s strategic thinkers said it would be 50 years before China would be a problem for American hegemony. The offshoring of US manufacturing, technology, and business knowhow reduced the time to 5 years.  Today on a purchasing parity comparison, the Chinese economy exceeds that of the US.  This is what globalism did for America.  It made the American economy subordinate to China.

American economists were too well paid by globalists for me to draw them into a debate.  Instead, they stayed with their propaganda, and America lost the ladders of upward mobility.

To worsen the situation, the Democrats and Republican business interests left the borders open to millions of immigrant invaders who have overwhelmed educational, health, and housing services and driven down wages in the low productivity jobs.  Today the profits of fruit and vegetable growers and meat slaughter houses depend on cheap immigrant-invader wages.

But this is only the beginning. According to Bloomberg News, Artificial Intelligence will soon eliminate 20-40% of the jobs in America’s largest cities. Robotics are eliminating other low skilled wage jobs.  What will America do with a population displaced by the digital revolution and AI?

Civilizational collapse stares us in the face, and not a single media source mentions the fact.

Let’s look at June’s jobs report.  It is the same as those I reported over many years.  Where are the 147,000 jobs?  Health care and social assistance provide 58,600 jobs.  Leisure and hospitality provide 20,000 jobs. State and local education provide 63,500 jobs.  That accounts for June’s new jobs.

Clearly this is not a robust economy. Except for the 20,000 leisure and hospitality jobs, most of the rest are financed by  government budget.

Now, you tell me how is America a superpower instead of an emperor without any clothes?  Why should anyone be afraid of a country that pays its bills by printing debt instruments?  The reason is that the US has nuclear weapons and is under Israel’s direction.  

That is sufficient to terrify the world.

The post Globalism Destroyed American Jobs appeared first on LewRockwell.

When the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict started in 2014, American and multinational conglomerates rushed to ensure they got their “piece of the pie” in the unfortunate country. In around a decade or so, the Kiev regime changed laws and enabled the total or near-total takeover of every remotely valuable asset built by generations in the Soviet Union. While the socialist superstate certainly had its flaws, the legacy it left in former Ukraine has never been matched by any government since the latter’s “independence” in 1991.

Namely, while the country had a massive industrial sector until then and a population of 52 million, mostly well-educated and working in various specialist fields (Soviet Ukraine was a scientific and industrial powerhouse no less than Russia itself), after 1991, all this collapsed for good.

By the early 1990s, relatively prosperous Ukraine turned into an underdeveloped country with only a fraction of its Soviet-era scientific and industrial potential, selling mostly agricultural products and essentially serving as a cheap resource for the political West’s brutal (neo)colonial exploitation. By the mid-2010s, NATO fully hijacked the unfortunate country and turned it over to the Neo-Nazi junta that’s now effectively conducting genocide against Ukrainians themselves. Namely, the demographic collapse is so catastrophic that it’s highly likely there’s only half of Ukraine’s 1991 population in the country at this point. The suicidal war with Russia (its closest kin) continues, while the United States is now openly demanding whatever’s left of Ukrainian resources (with even this lost to Russian all-out advance across the frontlines).

In fact, the situation is so bad that the infamous BlackRock, the world’s most exploitative (neo)colonial conglomerate, has actually given up on NATO-occupied Ukraine. According to Bloomberg, it suspended work on “a multibillion-dollar Ukraine recovery fund”, supposedly following President Donald Trump’s election win. Apparently, this prompted France to work on a replacement deal, with initial support from Germany, Poland and Italy. The report, published on July 5, further states that BlackRock ceased all efforts to “search for institutional investors in January”, effectively ending the planned $500 million fund that was intended to be secured from various Western governments, development grants and investment banks. In turn, another $2 billion from other private investors was also lost after they withdrew.

The report also points out that the investment stopped due to “a lack of interest amid perceived uncertainty in Ukraine”. In other words, nobody wants to sink billions of dollars into an endemically corrupt mafia state run by Neo-Nazi goons in the middle of an unwinnable war with a military superpower nextdoor. Truly shocking. However, jokes aside, it doesn’t take an economic expert to understand that the most basic logic implies that nobody remotely sane would make that kind of investment. Worse yet, the notion of “perceived uncertainty” is even more laughable. Namely, as previously mentioned, the Russian military is now advancing on multiple fronts, meaning that this “uncertainty” is not a matter of perception, but an objective reality that any thinking investor would take into account.

The Bloomberg report further states that the investment fund was scheduled to be unveiled at the “Ukraine Recovery Conference” on July 10-11 in Rome. A BlackRock spokesperson said that the conglomerate “completed advisory work for the recovery fund pro bono in 2024, but no longer has any active mandate”. Worse yet, although France promised to “step up”, it seems this is also falling through. Citing “people familiar with the matter” Bloomberg reports that “it remains uncertain how effective the plan will be without American backing”. In other words, investors from the European Union are just as skeptical as their US counterparts, which tends to happen when people are getting their information from sources other than the mainstream propaganda machine which still insists that the Kiev regime is “defeating Russia”.

Numerous independent authors from around the world (particularly at InfoBRICS), have been reporting that the so-called minerals deal that the Trump administration was trying to push for since it came to power would fall through. We repeatedly argued that the minerals promised by the Neo-Nazi junta weren’t even under its control, while areas with any known resources lack the mining industry to support extraction.

It would take years and tens (if not hundreds) of billions in investment just to establish it. In other words, the investors would need to give lots of money to the losing side. Expectedly, such business deals are wholly unattractive to people who don’t like losing massive financial assets. The Kiev regime tried to do everything in its power (effectively selling the entire country) to change their opinions, but to no avail.

For instance, the Neo-Nazi junta frontman Volodymyr Zelensky pompously announced his $1 trillion “reconstruction plan” years ago, even promising each corporation what can only be described as free rei(g)n in oblasts (regions) they invested in. The results have been catastrophic for NATO-occupied Ukraine, with around 30% of its arable land handed over to (neo)colonialists.

In addition, cheap Ukrainian agricultural products flooded European markets (after they were initially promised to starving Africans and for which Russia was blamed by the mainstream propaganda machine), resulting in massive protests by farmers across the “old continent” as their market share collapsed virtually overnight. However, even this turned out to be a bad investment, particularly after the Russian military entered the Dnepropetrovsk oblast.

Source Infobrics.org.

The post Why BlackRock Suddenly Gave Up on the Neo-Nazi Junta appeared first on LewRockwell.

FDR as Our Greatest Twentieth Century President

A few weeks ago I’d published an article on Father Charles Coughlin, the notorious radio priest of the 1930s, and my extensive reading revealed that he had been a far more formidable figure than I’d ever realized.

Although he was relegated to just a sentence or two in my introductory history textbooks, Coughlin had pioneered political commentary in the new medium of radio broadcasting, and partly as a result he had amassed an astonishing audience of perhaps 35 million regular listeners by the early 1930s, a total that may have amounted to one-quarter or more of all American adults. This enormous following probably made him the world’s most influential media figure, someone who dominated large segments of American society. Although the occasional fireside chats of President Franklin Roosevelt were hugely popular and FDR received thousands of letters each day, Coughlin’s own audience was much larger and his daily volume of mail far greater.

As a populist social reformer widely regarded as being on the left, Coughlin had been a strong and important early supporter of FDR and his New Deal economic policies, but he eventually came to regard these as a failure and turned against Roosevelt, also later becoming a leading figure in the effort to keep America out of World War II. That latter political turn led FDR to successfully deploy the full power of his federal government to drive Coughlin from the airwaves and permanently end his political activities.

• American Pravda: Father Charles Coughlin
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • May 19, 2025 • 8,000 Words

Coughlin was hardly alone in his strong opposition to our involvement in World War II, with polls showing that some 80% of the American people held similar views, nor was he even the most prominent public opponent.

Earlier this year, I published a long article on the career of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh and his America First campaign, a political movement that had similarly sought to block our involvement in the war. In that work, I’d drawn very heavily upon an excellent 2024 book of that title by historian H.W. Brands, whose coverage focused entirely upon that Roosevelt-Lindbergh political duel of the early 1940s.

• American Pravda: Charles A. Lindbergh and the America First Movement
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • February 10, 2025 • 15,600 Words

Although Coughlin and Lindbergh were the primary figures in those articles, in each case President Roosevelt had been their main opponent, so he also had a central role both in my political narrative and in the extensive reading that I had undertaken to produce it.

Prior to Roosevelt, no American president had ever dared to exceed the two term limit informally established by George Washington, but FDR shattered that tradition by winning a third and eventually a fourth term, becoming the longest-serving president in our national history. My school textbooks told the story of how FDR’s New Deal rescued our country from the terrible depths of the Great Depression and then how that same president went on to win the Second World War against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the greatest military conflict in human history.

During his many years in office, FDR had hugely expanded the size and scope of the American federal government, establishing Social Security, Federal Deposit Insurance, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and numerous other basic elements of our society that I had always taken for granted. Along the way, he had become an enormously popular hero to a huge fraction of the American public, notably including a young Ronald Reagan, who began his political career as an ardent New Deal Democrat, and despite his later decades as a conservative Republican still always lionized FDR and many of his policies.

Given such political achievements, it’s hardly surprising that Roosevelt’s Wikipedia page runs 21,000 words, with another 32,000 words devoted to his New Deal policies, with the former declaring:

Historians and political scientists consistently rank Roosevelt, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln as the three greatest presidents.

These articles and my reading led me to realize the very scanty and meager extent of my knowledge of FDR and his New Deal policies. For nearly my entire life, my understanding had been limited to what I had gleaned from my textbooks and absorbed over the years from my newspapers and magazines. However, about eight or nine years ago, I’d read a highly critical late 1940s book about Roosevelt and his presidency, and found it sufficiently persuasive that I’d later summarized some of its surprising information in a 2018 article. But in the back of my mind, I’d always wondered whether that account was merely a severely distorted and one-sided critique, a biased version of events that I had accepted because of my general ignorance of the subject.

Therefore, I recently decided to broaden my historical understanding of that era with an extensive study of FDR and his presidency, focusing my reading upon fully mainstream historiography, and that major project consumed much of the month of June.

The Privileged Life and Early Career of FDR

I’d been very favorably impressed with the Brands book, and noticed that the same author had previously published a lengthy 2008 biography of FDR that had been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, so Traitor to His Class, a doorstop-sized work running around 900 pages seemed like a good starting point for my investigation.

From the beginning, Brands emphasized Roosevelt’s very wealthy and elite family background. The future president was a descendent of the early Dutch settlers who had founded New York, and he followed that family tradition by being educated at Groton and Harvard College. FDR seems to have been a mediocre student with few if any intellectual interests, and years later he always described his failure to be admitted to Harvard’s elite Porcellian social club as the greatest disappointment of his entire life. By all accounts, Roosevelt almost never read any books, with the sole exception being dime detective stories. I’d sometimes come across these sorts of striking anecdotes about FDR in my casual readings, but having them explicitly stated in such a weighty and widely-praised biography fully confirmed their credibility.

After college, FDR enrolled at Columbia Law School, though he found legal studies rather uninteresting, received mediocre grades, and dropped out before graduating. By contrast, he was a very active and enthusiastic member of the New York City Yacht Club, so despite his lack of a law degree, a yachting friend of his soon offered him an unpaid apprenticeship at one of America’s most prestigious law firms. Roosevelt found practical legal work just as dull as he had his law school classes, but the couple of years or so he spent in that position, half of that time working without salary, seems to have been the only real job he ever held in his entire life.

During that period, Roosevelt was already telling his friends that he intended to make politics his career and hoped to reach the presidency, something that struck me as an astonishingly bold goal for someone then in his late 20s with such unimpressive personal achievements. But his very successful subsequent political career owed much to a crucial factor that I had entirely failed to grasp.

When I first began reading candid accounts of FDR’s background and his personal characteristics, the historical analogy that immediately came to my mind was that of President George W. Bush, but I’d failed to fully appreciate just how closely the two cases matched. As most people know, Bush’s very successful career in Republican Party politics was almost entirely due to the famous name of his father, President George H.W. Bush, with many ignorant voters notoriously getting the two men confused. I think it’s widely acknowledged that if Bush’s last name or even his first name had been something different, it’s unlikely that he would have ever been elected to anything at all.

Similarly, I’d always found it an odd coincidence that America had had two presidents with the rather unusual name Roosevelt just a couple of decades apart, but until reading the Brands book I’d failed to understand that much more than mere coincidence was involved.

As the author emphasized, the two terms in office of President Theodore Roosevelt, followed by his extremely active and high-profile post-presidential career had made TR the foremost public figure of his era, also establishing “Roosevelt” as the most famous political name in America, perhaps even in the entire world. FDR came from an entirely different branch of that family, being only a fifth cousin of his important relative, although his wife Eleanor was actually TR’s niece. But FDR’s very famous last name was still regularly regarded as a major political asset, with Democratic Party leaders always glad to put up a Roosevelt of their own and capitalize on the huge fame of the progressive Republican of the same surname.

So when the Democrats of Dutchess County in Upstate New York heard that FDR might be interested in running for office, they eagerly recruited him even though he’d spent the last few years living in New York City. His district was a heavily Republican one and Roosevelt was wealthy enough to fund his own race, so he seemed like the ideal candidate. FDR was handsome and charming and he campaigned in an expensive and gaudy red automobile at a time when horse-and-buggies were still the main means of transportation, so as he drove around his rural district, his unusual vehicle often attracted as much attention as the candidate who rode inside it. The year 1910 happened to be a very good one for Democrats, so Roosevelt won an upset victory by 1,440 votes, entering the New York State Legislature, while his fellow Democrats gained control of both houses.

The election of a Democratic Roosevelt was considered a major political novelty, especially since most people incorrectly assumed that he was actually a close relative of the recent Republican president. The New York Times soon published a lengthy profile on the freshman lawmaker, with the feature writer even declaring that “His patronymic had gone before him.”

Back then, the notorious Tammany Hall Democratic political machine ran New York City, with the state’s Democrats being sharply divided into pro- and anti-Tammany factions. FDR became a leading figure in the latter camp, probably inspired by a mixture of TR’s progressive views and his own shrewd political instincts on how to make a quick name for himself.

Once again, the Roosevelt surname worked wonders, and the freshman lawmaker received a great deal of national media attention as he and his allies successfully blocked the preferred Tammany candidate for New York Senator, an office that was still selected by a vote of the State Legislature. Numerous newspapers all across the country hailed FDR’s efforts and ran his photograph, with the Cleveland Plain Dealer identifying the young officeholder with TR’s battles against corruption, while lauding his bright political future:

Franklin D. Roosevelt is beginning his public career fully as auspiciously…If none of the colonel’s sons turn out to be fit objects for popular admiration, may it not be possible that this rising star may continue the Roosevelt dynasty?

Over the years that followed, this same exact pattern would often repeat itself. Political opportunities of an important nature would regularly be showered upon a relatively young man whose own rather undistinguished personal achievements while in office would otherwise have passed almost unnoticed. Being a political celebrity with a famous last name was just as beneficial a century or more ago as it has been in recent decades.

A bitter political battle between progressive and non-progressive New York Republicans had allowed FDR to initially slip into office, and in 1912 this same Republican battle was repeated on the national level. Theodore Roosevelt came out of retirement to mount a vigorous third-party challenge to his own hand-picked successor President William Howard Taft, with the result of the bitter three-way presidential race being the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Meanwhile, FDR won a difficult reelection campaign by the same relatively narrow margin as before.

Franklin Roosevelt in the Wilson Administration

Roosevelt seemed generally bored by state politics and he was also enough of a realist to recognize that once internal Republican battles subsided, any hopes of reelection in his district would probably fade away. He had enthusiastically endorsed Wilson for the presidency, so he eagerly sought a position in the new administration. Wilson had appointed a North Carolinian newspaperman named Josephus Daniels as Secretary of the Navy, and FDR successfully lobbied Daniels for the position of Assistant Secretary, a perfect fit given Roosevelt’s love of yachting as well as his desire to follow in the footsteps of TR, who had himself served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy decades earlier.

Daniels had no interest or experience in either naval affairs or administration, and had been advised by his predecessor that the Secretary of the Navy did nothing but approve the requests of the various admirals. But being a Bryan progressive, he was extremely suspicious of all the corporate military contractors, and according to a contemporaneous observer quoted by Brands, rightfully so, with the navy brass mostly consisting of deadwood, often corruptly linked to their corporate suppliers.

Daniels had a good working relationship with his young subordinate, and given his lack of interest in naval matters, he delegated a great deal of authority to FDR. According to Brands, even though Roosevelt had barely turned thirty, he already had his eye set on the White House, and therefore made every effort to ingratiate himself with the leadership of the navy. This included pressing very hard for an aggressive new building program of battleships, destroyers, and submarines, a project aimed at making our navy second to none, which was an extremely radical American idea for that era.

FDR was hugely ambitious, continually seeking every possible path for political advancement. Despite being only in his very early 30s and lacking any significant accomplishments, he decided to run for New York’s U.S. Senate seat in 1914, the first time that position was determined by popular election. Roosevelt had only served less than eighteen months in the Wilson Administration and Wilson anyway discouraged his appointees from involvement in state politics, so when he faced the longtime politician backed by the Tammany machine, he was crushed in the worst election defeat of his career. FDR got barely a quarter of the vote in the Democratic primary, while his opponent went on to lose heavily in November to the Republican candidate.

The outbreak of the First World War later that same year proved a major political opportunity for FDR, with our sleepy peacetime navy suddenly facing the potential challenge of a world military conflict as the threat of German U-boat attacks gradually drew America into the war. Daniels was firmly aligned with Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan in the anti-militarist, anti-war camp, while Roosevelt took a very different position than his superior in public hearings, emphasizing the need to greatly expand our naval forces. The 1915 sinking of the Lusitania almost led Wilson to declare war, prompting Bryan’s resignation with Daniels nearly following him out the door. Roosevelt railed against his superior in private, while emphasizing his very contrary views to Wilson and the rest of the government.

While the leadership of the Republican Party was strongly pro-war, the Democrats were sharply divided, with their urban Irish and German voters and their Western progressives strongly opposed, so Wilson’s very difficult 1916 reelection campaign had to carefully balance those conflicting elements. Wilson therefore campaigned on the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” but then brought America into the conflict just months after his extremely narrow victory. Roosevelt took full advantage of this new opportunity, doing his best to promote naval shipbuilding, proposing some innovative wartime measures, and even hiring his own publicist to promote his activities.

On a much more embarrassing personal note, his wife Eleanor received some important media attention, being featured in a 1917 Sunday Times article on the importance of following federal guidelines to conserve food during wartime. The very affluent but rather insouciant Mrs. Roosevelt emphasized that both she and her numerous family servants were doing everything they could to economize:

Making the ten servants help me do my saving has not only been possible but highly profitable. Since I have started following the home-card instructions, prices have risen but my bills are no larger.

In 1918 FDR arranged to travel to Britain on an inspection tour, including a brief trip to the Western Front in France, a visit that allowed him to always afterward claim that he had “seen combat.” Although he was just a junior figure in the Wilson Administration, his famous last name once again opened many important doors, getting him lengthy personal meetings with King George V, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, French Premier Georges Clemenceau, and many other top officials.

Upon his return home FDR planned to resign his government position and join a naval unit, thinking that he might see combat. As Brands explained, “With luck he might be decorated, even lightly wounded,” something that would prove very useful for a “president-in-the-making.” But the war ended too soon for his plans to come to fruition.

Many millions of those who reelected Wilson in 1916 did so believing that he had promised to keep America out of the European war, and they were outraged when he asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany just weeks after his second inauguration. Wilson also soon enacted a military draft, the first and only such measure in our national history except for the Civil War fought more than two generations earlier.

Potentially forcing millions of Americans to fight and die thousands of miles from home in a foreign war proved extremely unpopular in many parts of the country, and harsh sedition laws were soon passed, threatening long prison sentences for anyone who challenged those controversial government policies. In 1912 socialist Eugene Debs had won 6% of the presidential vote, among the best results for any minor party candidate in history, but when he made a few disparaging public remarks in 1918 about government policies and the draft, he was quickly sentenced to ten years in federal prison for sedition.

All these factors together with Wilson’s other political blunders resulted in a sweeping Republican victory in the 1918 elections, followed by Wilson’s severe stroke and the final Congressional defeat of his effort to enroll the U.S. in the League of Nations, an international project that he regarded as his main public legacy.

As a result, the Democrats realized that they faced almost certain defeat in 1920, so they nominated a bland Midwestern governor to lead the hopeless effort. The Democratic convention then balanced that ticket by picking as vice president the young and attractive 38-year-old FDR, a Wilsonian progressive with a famous name. Just as expected, Republican Warren Harding won by a huge landslide with over 60% of the vote, while his party picked up enough additional Congressional seats to establish majorities larger than any they had enjoyed since the Reconstruction Era two generations earlier. This election represented the greatest political defeat that the Democrats had suffered since the Civil War and marked the beginning of the near-total Republican national political dominance of the 1920s.

But Roosevelt himself had meanwhile gained his first national platform, giving most American voters an opportunity to size him up and recognize that he compared favorably with the winning candidate. As Brands puts it, “If voters could envision Warren Harding as president, they could certainly envision Franklin Roosevelt.” So FDR was hardly damaged by being on the losing ticket, and he had now become one of the leading figures in the national Democratic Party, much closer to his longstanding goal of reaching the White House than might have seemed possible just a year or two earlier.

While he contemplated his next political move, Roosevelt’s new political stature and his Washington connections soon landed him a very lucrative position as a front-man and rainmaker at a New York financial house run by a sailing friend of his. That position paid him the pre-tax current equivalent of millions of dollars each year for part-time work with only vague duties.

This discussion of FDR’s early career has run far longer than I had originally intended, and was drawn from less than the first 150 pages of Brands’ 900 page volume, while it lacks any of the important events of Roosevelt’s dozen years in the White House. But although I had been somewhat familiar with his years in the presidency, I was very surprised by what these earlier years revealed about the future president’s personality and character.

Brands is a biographer sympathetic to his subject, but many of the basic facts he set forth in a friendly manner seemed quite remarkable to me. Politics obviously attracts the politically-ambitious, but I’m not sure I’d ever read a biography of someone who had been so firmly determined to reach the presidency from such a young age despite his complete lack of any personal achievements, notable or otherwise. Roosevelt was a handsome, charming fellow, but his only major assets seemed to have been his personal wealth and his famous political name, while he appeared to have no clear goals or interests in public policy, let alone any ideology, being almost a blank slate in that regard.

I recalled the stinging remarks that Texas Democrat Jim Hightower made decades later regarding a future President Bush: “He was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple.”

Years later, the eminent progressive jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes famously declared that Roosevelt had a “second-rate intellect but a first-rate temperament.” But this sounded exactly like the sort of thing Neocon pundits might have said about President George W. Bush in the years after 9/11.

I think all these aspects of Roosevelt’s personality are highly relevant as we begin to consider his later political career and his time in office.

Given the enormous hagiography that eventually enveloped FDR’s wartime presidency and continued during the decades that followed, I think this examination of his early career helpfully cuts him down to normal size, allowing the contrary evidence to become much more believable. Once we begin to think of Franklin Roosevelt as being more of a George W. Bush or a Warren Harding, subsequent matters begin to make much more sense.

Read the Whole Article

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The Vatican, on July 3, approved a new votive Mass “for care of creation” which Pope Leo XIV celebrated for the first time on July 9. A follow-on from the Francis pontificate promulgated to mark the 10th anniversary of Laudato Si’, the new votive Mass has elicited a variety of contradictory responses. I’ll weigh in: I think it is balanced in the middle, and in medio stat virtus. It’s in the middle because it avoids two extremes: the Scylla of secular environmentalism and the Charybdis of disregard for the inherent good of the temporal world. Let’s examine both.

Secular Environmentalism

Vatican sources said the new text was a response to Laudato Si’s call to recognize human life is “grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor and with the earth itself” (66). That insight is biblically grounded. It is part of what I call our “Genesis heritage,” the common Jewish-Christian patrimony about seeing the world that comes from the first book of the Bible.

That book also teaches that those relationships are warped by sin. Man hides from God (Genesis 3:8). With only two people in the world, one already blames the other (3:12). The postlapsarian resistance of nature—even one’s body—is already announced by God (3:16-19).

Genesis also teaches a truth we cannot lose sight of: man has dominion over the created world. The “world” and man are not at least co-equal partners. Creation is a tool for human good (Genesis 1:26-28). That dominion over creation is intended by God (1:26), given explicitly to man (1:28), and connected to participation in the divine image and likeness (1:27) because it involves man’s ongoing share in co-creation under God.

God invites man to co-creation in an IKEA world—assembly required—by which, as rational and responsible creatures, humans can build. They must build responsibly, which means that they can be faithless fiduciaries of that dominion. The solution is conversion: be a faithful fiduciary.

Secular environmentalism neglects this idea. It either denigrates man as a lousy steward of creation and/or makes creation at least man’s co-equal. Those ideas are wrong on Genesis’ warrant.

Man is not just another creature: he is creation’s apex. All other things are simply decreed; man’s creation is preceded by God’s deliberation and receives a unique dimension—the divine image and likeness. Everything else made is “good.” Only man’s creation is pronounced “very good.” And nothing else is created after man, with God taking His rest—not as an absence from the ongoing work of creation (that would be deism) but because he has other persons with whom to share it.

Pope St. John Paul II repeated Vatican II constantly that “man is the only creature God wanted for himself” (Gaudium et Spes, 24). Who is “himself?” For Augustine, it’s God (Confessions 1,1). For Vatican II (according to Fr. Peter Stravinskas), it is man because seipsam refers to “creature.” So, is “himself” man or God? I suggest we expand the Council to encompass both. God wanted man as man, not just as another creature decorating His world. And God wanted man for God, as a creature capable of a communion of persons with Him who is the Ultimate Communio Personarum in the most important bond of all: love.

That is not the perspective of secular environmentalism. It is ready to cut man down and aggrandize creation. Consider efforts to confer “rights” on rivers, animals, and other phenomenon, an initiative foretold by Justice William Douglas in his 1972 Sierra Club v. Morton opinion seeking to enfranchise trees.

A philosopher once asked, if a tree falls in the forest without a man around, does it make a sound? It does—at least for the squirrel who flees being crushed. Today’s question, however, should be: If a tree falls in the forest without a man around, who cares? “Who” applies only to persons. Does a pristine world of babbling brooks, trees, and squirrels “care?” That question needs to be asked by all the young people foregoing parenthood “in the name of the planet.” That is also abandonment of the Genesis heritage. Let’s not overvalue the environment.

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The Parasitic Super-Rich Ruling Class (PSRRC) has been actively stealing from the people and attempting to control our government since its founding. But their Coup in 1913 was the nefarious beginning of the end of our freedoms and our Constitutional Republic.

The PSRRC started digging our grave with four consecutive tools in the Coup of 1913. These started with the ratifications of the 16th and 17th Amendments, authorizing income taxes and direct voting for Senators. The newly-formed IRS then authorized Tax-Free Foundations. The Congress passed another unconstitutional law in 1913 authorizing the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank as the last nail in the coffin.

Now let’s look at the four pillars of our destruction in more detail: !. Income Taxes, 2.Direct Voting for Senators, 3. Tax- Free Foundations and 4.the privately-owned Federal Reserve Bank.

The Federal Reserve Bank and its branches are unconstitutional and privately-owned. This Bank is the single greatest threat to our freedoms and prosperity. It is generally accepted that those who control the money supply (and you surely know who they are!), control the country, regardless of election results.

The Federal Reserve Bank’s Power to print fiat currency allows them to finance wars for profit and other government boondoggles for the benefit of the PSRRC at the expense of the public.

The bank prints unconstitutional fiat money out of thin air to buy government bonds to finance government deficits, which exceed 37 trillion dollars. To the extent that this fiat money exceeds production of goods and services, it is also inflationary.

Our Constitution requires the use of gold and silver for currency. The Federal Reserve unlawfully prints fiat dollars because they can’t create gold and silver to finance wars for profit or fund Communist cities. The Federal Reserve has the power to expand and contract fiat currency, causing inflation and depression, which in turn causes redistribution of wealth to the PSRRC. They could not do this with gold and silver lawful money.

The Second Pillar for the demise of our Republic was the 17th Amendment that allowed Senators to be elected rather than appointed by state legislatures. The result was that states and the people lost their voice in the Senate  and gave it to big money, the PSRRC.

The Third Pillar was Tax-Free Foundations enabled by the new IRS. This allowed the wealthy to retain the power of their money, with strings, thru eternity. This gave them additional  power to control corporations with control of additional stock.

These four Pillars were the foundation for the gradual cumulative destruction of our Constitutional Republic over the last 112 years.

We must remember that the Media is mostly owned or controlled by the PSRRC. The media, along with the educational system, brainwashed much of the population and were especially effective among the ill-educated in the Communist inner cities.

The end result is an all-powerful corrupt Federal Establishment, half of which is a Criminal Enterprise because of its usurped powers rightfully belonging to the states. The federal income tax was the key, because it gave the Federal Establishment all the money needed to fund usurped state functions, concentrating all power in Washington DC.

The Federal Income Tax reversed the Constitutional relationship between the States and the Federal Establishment. Constitutionally, each state is in fact a Sovereign Government. The Federal Establishment is not a Sovereign Government and has very limited powers under its creation document crafted by the several states, the US Constitution. The Income Tax unlawfully gave the federal establishment the money to usurp and control state functions.

Democrat politicians, leaders and funders are simply promoting a Communist agenda. Their power is centered in the Communist cities where unconstitutional federal funding of able-bodied Communists and illegal invaders is the rule. If this continues with tax money extorted from working people, there will be Civil War,  It is inevitable.

I don’t see how any Democrat can be reelected if people are informed, when every last Democrat voted against massive tax cuts for the average person. I am well-aware that this latest bill does not reduce the deficit, but we must pray that Trump’s great vision comes to fruition…otherwise we are doomed.

I have written on the specifics of the unlawful existence and actions of federal agencies and departments in the past, and will do so again. But, I leave you with this thought:

Any unlawful functions or actions not under the Constitution are null and void, and President Trump can (and should!) cancel them with the stroke of his pen . That is, of course, if the PSRRC and their minions in government don’t kill him as it is alleged that they did to the Kennedy Brothers and so many others who oppose their criminality against the people.

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On Sept. 16, 2001, five days after the attacks on New York and Washington, DC, President George W. Bush declared, “This crusade – this war on terrorism – is going to take a while. And the American people must be patient. I’m going to be patient. But I can assure the American people I am determined.”

Four days after that, President Bush declared the “war on terror” to be primarily against al-Qaeda. “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda,” he said in an address to Congress and the nation, “but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

He described the enemy thus:

This group and its leader — a person named Osama bin Laden — are linked to many other organizations in different countries, including the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.  There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries.

Bush was correct in his assessment of the group.

One of those countries into which al-Qaeda jihadists implanted themselves was Syria, where from 2011 – with the support of the Obama Administration – they attempted to overthrow the secular leader, Bashar al-Assad, using terrorist tactics they had been well-trained in.

They soon changed their name – but not their stripes – and became the Al-Nusra Front, headed up by an experienced jihadist who fought against US troops in Iraq by the name of Abu Mohammad al-Jolani. His group was known for chopping off heads. Perhaps even American heads.

Last December Jolani’s jihadists – with support from the US, Turkey, and Israel – finally brought down the Assad government and quicker than you can say “Washington PR makeover” he clipped his beard, switched out his tactical military watch for a $90,000 Patek Philippe World Time Chronograph, and declared himself president.

The “civilized world” cheered the re-emergence of democracy in Syria!

At their first meeting earlier this year in Saudi Arabia, President Trump praised jihadist Jolani as “a young, attractive fellow” and “a tough guy, a fighter, with a very strong background. He has a lot of potential, he’s a real leader.”

This was a US-designated global terrorist with a $10 million bounty placed on his head by the US authorities. His “wanted” poster STILL remains on the X account of the US Embassy in Syria!

This week, President Trump “removed sanctions on Jolani’s Syria at (Israeli Prime Minister) Netanyahu’s request,” and just yesterday Secretary of State removed Jolani’s old al-Qaeda affiliate (which had gone from al-Nusra to HTS over the years) from the US terrorist list.

As one observer on X quipped:

The history of the GWOT (Global War on Terror) began in 2001 with the US invading Afghanistan to dig out Al Qaeda. It ends twenty-four years later with the US recognizing an AQ affiliate as the new ruler of Syria.

According to Brown University’s Cost of War Project, the “Global War on Terror” cost the American people at least eight trillion dollars. It also took the lives of perhaps a million people.

And what did we get for all this blood and treasure? In Afghanistan, the Taliban were after 20 years of US military action replaced by the Taliban, and in Syria a fierce opponent of al-Qaeda was replaced by…al-Qaeda!

As Jake Sullivan, then right hand to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, wrote to the Secretary in 2012, “al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria.” He wasn’t joking!

That was the shot…here’s the chaser:

In the same week the United States removed sanctions on al-Qaeda ruled Syria, it placed sanctions on…UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese!

Who is Albanese? She is the fearless defender of human life in a Gaza where it is slowly being extinguished by Israel with the backing (and weapons) of the US government.

In hitting UN human rights defender Albanese with sanctions, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote:

Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt @IntlCrimCourt action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.

Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated. We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.

The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies. (emphasis added)

What might those “whatever actions” be? Clearly it is a physical threat against Albanese for speaking out against a mass murder happening in real time, observable for all who wish to do so on our own computer screens.

So that is it. The “Global War on Terror” is over. Terrorists have been elevated by the US government to be heads of state and those who speak out against state terrorism are threatened with “whatever actions we deem necessary” to shut them up.

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

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