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1. American Memory Hole: How the Court Historians Promote Disinformation 
2. The JFK Assassination Chokeholds 
3. It’s Good to Be a Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity
4. 801 Things You Should Know
5. How to Trade In Stocks 
6. Living in a Mindful Universe: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Heart of Consciousness
7. Rich Man Poor Bank: What the banks DON’T want you to know about money
8. War at the Top of the World
9. Money: Sound and Unsound
10. How the Brain Works: The Facts Visually Explained (DK How Stuff Works) 
11. Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come 
12. How Your House Works
13. Stretching to Stay Young
14. Top Secret America
15. Two Treatises on Competitive Currency and Banking
16. I Will Teach You to Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. Just a 6-Week Program That Works
17. Water: For Health, for Healing, for Life: You’re Not Sick, You’re Thirsty!
18. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art 
19. What Really Makes You Ill?: Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Disease Is Wrong
20. Fauci’s First Fraud: The Foundation of Medical Totalitarianism in America (Medical System Corruption)

The post Great Books You Need To Read appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ultimately, there is no mystery as to why the Forever Wars go on endlessly. Or why at a time when Uncle Sam is hemorrhaging red ink a large bipartisan majority saw fit to authorize $95 billion of foreign aid boondoggles that do absolutely nothing for America’s homeland security.

To wit, Washington has morphed into a freak of world history—a planetary War Capital dominated by a panoptic complex of arms merchants, paladins of foreign intervention and adventure and Warfare State nomenklatura. Never before has there been assembled and concentrated under a single state authority a hegemonic force possessing such unprecedented levels of economic resources, advanced technology and military wherewithal.

Not surprisingly, the world’s War Capital is Orwellian to the core. Its endless pursuit of war is always and everywhere described as the promotion of peace. Its jackboot of global hegemony is gussied-up in the form of alliances and treaties ostensibly designed to promote a “rules-based order” and collective security for the benefit of mankind, not simply the proper goals of peace, liberty, safety and prosperity within America’s homeland.

Unfortunately, the whole intellectual foundation of the enterprise is false. The planet is not crawling with all-powerful would-be aggressors and empire-builders who must be stopped cold at their own borders, lest they devour the freedom of all their neighbors near and far.

Nor is the DNA of nations infected with incipient butchers and tyrants like Hitler and Stalin. They were one-time accidents of history and fully distinguishable from the standard run of everyday tinpots which actually do arise periodically. But the latter mainly disturb the equipoise of their immediate neighborhoods, not the peace of the planet.

So America’s homeland security does not depend upon a far-flung array of alliances, treaties, military bases and foreign influence operations. In today’s world there are no Hitler’s, actual or latent, to stop. The whole framework of Pax Americana and the Washington based promotion and enforcement of a “rules-based” international order is an epochal blunder.

In that regard, the founding fathers got it right more than 200 years ago during the infancy of the Republic. As Brian McGlinchey recently noted,

Let’s review some key excerpts of Washington’s foreign policy guidance, starting with the principle he put above all others:

“Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated.”

With this guidance, Washington echoed the wisdom of other American founders. Thomas Jefferson urged “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

John Quincy Adams approvingly said, “[America] has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings…She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Needless to say, peaceful commerce is invariably far more beneficial to nations large and small than meddling, interventionism and military engagement. In today’s world it would be the default state of play on the international chessboard, save for the Great Hegemon on the banks of the Potomac. That is to say, the main disturbance of the peace in today is invariably fostered by the self-appointed peacemaker, who, ironically, is inherently the least threatened large nation on the entire planet.

That is to say, the United States is essentially invulnerable to conventional military invasion and occupation. On the North American continent its $28 trillion GDP towers over the combined $3.8 trillion GDP of its Mexican and Canadian neighbors by more than 7X.

And on either shore arise the vast Atlantic and Pacific moats, which are even greater barriers to foreign military assault in the 21st century than they so successfully proved to be in the 19th century. That’s because today’s advanced surveillance technology and anti-ship missiles would consign an enemy armada to Davy Jones’ Locker nearly as soon as it steamed out of its own territorial waters.

The fact is, in an age when the sky is flush with high tech surveillance assets a massive conventional force armada couldn’t possibly be secretly built, tested and mustered for surprise attack without being noticed in Washington. There can be no repeat of the Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku and Zuikaku strike force steaming across the Pacific toward Pearl Harbor sight unseen.

As a practical matter, even America’s ostensible “enemies” have no offensive or invasionary capacity at all. Russia has only one aircraft carrier—a 1980s era vessel which has been in dry-dock for repairs since 2017 and is equipped with neither a phalanx of escort ships nor a suite of attack and fighter aircraft—and at the moment not even an active crew.

Likewise, China has just three aircraft carriers—two of which are refurbished rust buckets purchased from the remnants of the old Soviet Union, and which carriers do not even have modern catapults for launching their strike aircraft.

Indeed, invasion of the American homeland would require a massive conventional armada of land, air and sea-based forces many, many times larger than the military behemoth that is now funded by Washington’s $900 billion defense budget. The logistical infrastructure that would be needed to control the vast Atlantic and Pacific Ocean moats surrounding North America and to sustain an invasion and occupation force of the US mainland is so mind-mindbogglingly vast as to be scarcely imaginable.

For want of doubt, the graphic below compares Washington’s 11 carrier battle groups, which cost about $25 billion each including their escort ships, suites of aircraft and electronic and missile capabilities. But self-evidently, none of the non-NATO countries shown in the red area of the graphic—China, India, Russia or Thailand—will be steaming their tiny 3, 2 and 1 carrier battle groups toward the shores of either California or New New Jersey any time soon. An invasionary force that had any chance at all of surviving a US fortress defense of cruise missiles, drones, jet fighters, attack submarines and electronics warfare would need to be 100X larger.

Yet there is no GDP in the world—$2 trillion for Russia, $3.5 trillion for India or $18 trillion for China—that is even remotely close in size to the $50 to $100 trillion GDP that would be needed to support such an invasionary force without capsizing the home economy.

At the same time, the 11 US carrier battle groups, which will cost upwards of $1.2 trillion over the next decade, would have no role in a continental Fortress America defense at all. They would be sitting ducks in the blue waters, and far less effective than aircraft and missile defenses based in the North American interior.

In short, these massively expensive forces have no purpose other than global power projection and the conduct of wars of invasion and occupation abroad. That is, they are military accoutrements of the War Capital, not even remotely relevant to a proper Fortress America defense.

In today’s world the only theoretical military threat to America’s homeland security is the possibility of nuclear blackmail. That is to say, a First Strike capacity so overwhelming, lethal and effective that an enemy could simply call out checkmate and demand Washington’s surrender.

Yet there is no nation on earth that has anything close to the First Strike force that would be needed to totally overwhelm America’s triad nuclear deterrent, and thereby avoid a retaliatory annihilation of its own country and people if it attempted to strike first. After all, the US has 3,700 active nuclear warheads, of which about 1,770 are operational at any point in time. In turn, these are spread under the sea, in hardened silos and among a bomber fleet of 66 B-2 and B-52s—all beyond the detection or reach of any other nuclear power.

For instance, the Ohio class nuclear submarines each have 20 missile tubes, with each missile carrying an average of four-to-five warheads. That’s 90 independently targetable warheads per boat. At any given time 12 of the 14 Ohio class nuclear subs are actively deployed, and spread around the oceans of the planet within a firing range of 4,000 miles.

So at the point of attack that’s 1,080 deep-sea nuclear warheads to identify, locate and neutralize before any would be blackmailer even gets started. Indeed, with respect to the “Where’s Waldo?” aspect of it, the sea-based nuclear force alone is a powerful guarantor of America’s homeland security.

And then there are the roughly 300 nukes aboard the 66 strategic bombers, which also are not sitting on a single airfield Pearl Harbor style waiting to be obliterated, but are constantly rotating in the air and on the move. Likewise, the 400 Minutemen III missiles are spread out in extremely hardened silos deep underground. Each missile currently carries one nuclear warhead in compliance with the Start Treaty, which would also need to be taken out by would be blackmailers.

Needless to say, there is no way, shape or form that America’s nuclear deterrent can be neutralized by a blackmailer. And the best thing is that according to the most recent CBO estimates the nuclear triad will cost only about $75 billion per year to maintain over the next decade, including allowances for periodic weapons upgrades.

As shown below, therefore, the heart of America’s military security requires only 7% of today’s massive military budget. Indeed, the heart of the nuclear deterrent—sea-based ballistic missiles—is estimated to cost just $188 billion over the next decade, or 1.9% of the $10 trillion national defense baseline.

10-Year Cost Of US Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Per CBO Estimates, 2023 to 2032

Here’s the thing. The actual cost of the national security budget is $1.3 trillion per year. Yet if you allow an ample $250 billion per year for a Fortress America continental defense and $75 billion for the triad strategic deterrent, the question recurs. Where does all the rest—$975 billion—go?

As we will amplify in Part 2, it goes to the War Capital’s pursuit of global military and political hegemony and to fund the deferred cost of past overseas policing operations, neither of which were and are necessary for America’s homeland security. And beyond that, tens of billions more slop-over into pure budgetary self-promotion. That is, military contractor lobbying and bribes, think tank studies and advocacy programs and NGO and national security agency propaganda and influence operations all around the planet.

Still, just consider the implications of the chart below. About $346 billion of the $1.3 trillion national security budget is for veterans compensation, medical care and other benefits. These programs serve upwards of 6.2 million disabled veterans and dependents and 9.2 million enrollees in the Veterans health care system.

Yet absent all the unnecessary wars that have occurred since the Cold War attained full force in 1948-1949, the US would have only 60,000 veterans of foreign wars today, of which just 11,448 are currently receiving disability benefits. Even when you add in their dependents, the total of WWII era vets receiving disability compensation is just 34,265 or 0.6% of the total beneficiary roll of 6.159 million.

At average compensation and medical care cost of $35,000 per beneficiary, the total cost would be $1.2 billion currently and barely $10 million per year by 2035 when only 311 WWII vets are projected to remain.

That’s right. The FY 2024 cost of veterans benefits owing to unnecessary wars, such as the 1.385 million Vietnam vets on disability and the 3.37 million Gulf War vets receiving disability payments and VA health care, is $345 billion.

And that deferred cost figure for the Forever Wars amounts to 116% of China’s current $298 billion defense budget, 425% of India’s $81 billion, 480% of Russia’s $72 billion (pre-Ukraine), 595% of Germany’s $58 billion and 690% of South Korea’s $50 billion military budget, notwithstanding the madman who rules across the DMZ.

Yet it only gets worse from there. By the end of the 10-year budget window, the $550 billion baseline cost of veterans benefits will amount to 55,000 times more than what a Fortress America homeland security policy would have generated over the past seven decades.

Needless to say, that begs the question, why in the world has Washington become the War Capital of the World, generating hideously excessive costs that the taxpayers of America neither benefit from nor can remotely afford?

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post Why Washington DC is the War Capital of the World appeared first on LewRockwell.

[Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesmen, and the Antebellum Rupture of American Democracy by John Suval, Oxford, 2022, 281 pp. ]

Historian Charles Tilly once famously described the origins of the state as this: “war made the state and the state made war.” Tilly also understood, however, that the process of building and consolidating state power involved much more than simply waging wars against competing states. As Tilly notes in his book Coercion, Capital, and European States, states engage in several other activities to consolidate and expand their power. For example, states are greatly concerned with expanding their monopoly on coercion within a territory by “attacking and checking competitors and challengers within the territory claimed by the state.” Tilly further notes that state power is enhanced by “extraction” of resources from populations subject to the state power. Once extraction takes place, the state can proceed further to “distribution” which includes “the allocation of goods among members of the subject population.”

These methods of state building apply to nearly all modern states, and they certainly apply to the United States. Much of this can be seen in how the United States expanded in the nineteenth century. Many Americans, however, remain in the grip of fanciful myths about the growth of the American state. For example, these myths often perpetuate the idea that the federal government’s expansion into new territories west of the Appalachians after the American Revolution was generally non-violent, passive, and laissez-faire.

This naïve view of American frontier expansion generally leaves out most of the details about how the US’s central government—from the early nineteenth century onward—took a very keen interest in how the American frontier was settled, and by whom. Indeed, Congress spent many hours debating and passing legislation designed to ensure that the frontier was settled in a way that served the interests of powerful lobbies and individuals in Washington.

Many of these forgotten details are explored in John Suval’s 2022 book Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesmen, and the Antebellum Rupture of American Democracy. Suval’s book is fairly unusual among frontier history books in that it generally does not focus on conflicts between settlers and indigenous tribes, or on the process by which the settlers arrived on the frontier. Rather, Suval focuses on the relationship between settlers and the federal government, and on how federal policymakers in Washington viewed the settlers.

In the process, Suval provides a helpful case study in how the American federal government carried out a campaign of state building in frontier lands. From Washington’s perspective, frontier settlement was about more than mere domestic policy. Settlement was also an important geopolitical tool.

The Geopolitics of Frontier Settlement

As with all states, the American state has sought to expand its own power at the expense of other states. In the nineteenth century, this meant expanding US influence and monopoly power westward across North America. At the time, the largest competitors were foreign states like Britain, Spain, and Mexico. More informal competition came from the quasi-states that were the Indian tribal governments.

After Spain lost most of its American colonies in the secession movements of the 1820s, the most significant foreign competition for the US regime in North America became Britain and Mexico. Subsequently, American settlers often worked in an informal partnership with the US federal government to assist the US regime in annexing Mexican and British lands. Suval illustrates how American settlers in California paved the way for US annexation of California in the Mexican War: American settlers moved into California with the assumption that the American regime would soon follow and absorb these lands into the United States. Indeed, the rhetoric of westward settlement was often militaristic in nature. Suval writes:

The mystical rhetoric about Manifest Destiny had positioned California as the promised land of an “irresistible army” of Anglo-Saxon farmers who, by virtue of being white American cultivators, would naturally come to possess the region and spread enterprise and republican institutions.

In the minds of most settlers, this also meant annexation by the United States. Moreover, the fact that “Anglo” settlers had become so numerous in California by 1848 further motivated the Mexican government to give up its claim to California during negotiations over the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. An ongoing flood of settlers after 1848 would also ensure that there would be no ambiguity about who controlled California. That is, American settlers helped seal the geopolitical fate of California.

Similar methods were employed to “encourage” the British state to give up its claims to much of Oregon Country in the late 1840s. After 1818, the US and Britain shared joint control over Oregon Country which extended hundreds of miles north and south of what is now the US-Canada border. After 1843, however, sizable factions in Congress pushed for new policies designed to make Oregon part of the United States. Democrats pushed for grants of 640 acres to American settlers with the understanding that settlers would be assisted by the US government in resisting any intervention from either British or indigenous residents. It was assumed US military intervention was only a matter of time once the benefits of “US control and protection” were promised to settlers. According to Suval, the scheme’s supporters feared “Nobody would go [to Oregon] without the inducement of land” and that without free land for American settlers, “England would be left to occupy the whole country.”

In the early 1840s, much of this legislation languished in Congress, but the message had been sent to settlers who now believed it was only a matter of time. Promises from leaders in the Democratic party meant many settlers believed they would be—to use a modern policy term—”backstopped” by the US government were they to settle on lands of dubious legal status.

Eventually, this symbiotic political relationship between settlers and the US government worked as planned. Pro-settler factions in Congress assured settlers that the US government would not be far behind them. In turn, settlers poured into new regions which then gave the US government an excuse for expanding its military and diplomatic role in the disputed territories.

Similar methods were employed in assisting settlers with efforts to seize tribal lands from the indigenous population. From the very beginning, tribal governments had presented a threat to the consolidation of the federal government monopoly over frontier lands. Moreover, policymakers in Washington could not decide if tribal governments were truly sovereign entities whose relationship with the United States was governed by bilateral treaties. By the time of Andrew Jackson, however, most national policymakers had come around to the idea that Indian groups were fully subject to the whims of the US Congress and ought to be treated accordingly. By the early 1830s, the US had already created a system of Indian “reserves” set aside or tribal groups where they would be insulated from white settlement.

These “reserves,” however were soon targeted by Jacksonians. Suval illustrates the methods by which the American state systematically employed tactics of sticks and carrots to “convince” tribal groups to move West of the Mississippi. This began with promises of free land further west in exchange for abandoning the tribes’ current homelands. If that did not work, US representatives then explained to tribal representatives that a rising ride of whites would soon overwhelm them. These warnings then turned to threats. Tribes that persisted in staying put were then threatened with military action as a last resort. Needless to say, the treaties that came after this array of threats were effectively signed under duress.

The subsequent “removal” of many tribes soon followed, including those tribes that had adopted written languages and constitutions, such as the Cherokee. The fact that many of these tribes lived in permanent agricultural settlements was not enough to save them from settler claims that all Indians were nomads with no understanding of property or land.

Land Redistribution as Public Welfare

Forcing tribes to abandon their lands for smaller and more remote “reserves” served an important geopolitical function by removing challengers to federal supremacy within the American territorial heartland.

Indian removal served an important domestic function, as well. Pushing Indians westward opened up new lands that were then handed over to white voters. This served to buy votes from poor white voters looking for cheap land. Then as now, members of Congress knew the political value of free handouts to voters. As Suval notes, “The journals of the House and Senate from the 1830s abound with bills providing for the relief of destitute white settlers and for the extension of preemption laws [i.e., legally recognizing illegal settlement] even to those claiming Indian reserves.”

In the 1830s a model was thus created that would be used for decades. Foreign claims on various lands—whether British, Mexican, or tribal—would be ignored or abolished by the US government with the purpose of making those lands available to white American settlers. The political party that could present itself as the greatest supporter of “free” land for settlers—usually the Democratic party—would then be rewarded with new loyal voters. This political mechanism was captured in a new catchphrase that appeared in 1845: “Vote Yourself a Farm.” Voters understood that with the right pressure tactics, settlers could obtain “free” land complete with federal assurances of legal and military support against any other claims to those lands from non-Anglo American settlers. Politicians in Congress were happy to play along.

Using Frontier Settlement to Carry out National Policy

The myth of a laissez-faire federal government in frontier policy is also contradicted in the ways frontier settlement was managed to serve national domestic concerns. Chief among these was slavery. Those familiar with US debates over slavery between 1820 and 1860 know that settlement of the frontier was at the center of the fight between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. Not surprisingly, then, the federal government frequently intervened to decide if newly settled territories would allow slavery or not. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, of course, required federal intervention to ensure that slavery policies in new states and territories reflected deals struck by federal policymakers in Congress.

Moreover, federal positions on new territorial acquisition in the west often reflected debates in Washington over maintaining a balance between slave and free states. For example, Suval shows how after the US annexed Texas in 1845, the annexation of Oregon as a free territory became a priority for anti-slavery forces. Thus, land giveaways in Oregon functioned as both public welfare and as a tool against the Slave Power. The idea that local residents could simply create their own institutions and decide for themselves on slavery matters was largely dismissed in Washington. It was only with the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854 that Congress experimented with the idea of true local sovereignty. Suval provides an extensive discussion of how Kansas essentially served as a national referendum on whether or not so-called “popular sovereignty” would be allowed to frontier settlers. Even on the distant plains of Kansas in the 1850s, there was no escape from national politics.

Federal State Building on the Frontier 

Although Suval does not address or employ the theoretical framework of state building as imagined by Tilly, Suval nonetheless shows how the US in the nineteenth century was engaged in typical state-building activities. The federal government in this period was immensely successful at excluding potential rivals from the desired territories. Concomitantly, the federal government employed these powers to seize and redistribute resources to favored populations that could, in turn, help in consolidating federal power. Far from ignoring frontier settlement or allowing the frontier to “organically” develop, the US government was careful to manage frontier lands in ways that enhanced federal power and helped federal politicians address national political goals.  Dangerous Ground should be required reading for students of American political history looking for a more complete picture of frontier politics in the nineteenth century.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post How Westward Expansion Strengthened the Federal Government appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured. Twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate, while culture plunges into the abyss.”

~ Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

Every aspect of government, every moronic vote for any master, every atrocity, every war, every form of censorship, every genocide, every economic disaster, and every form of totalitarianism, is fully dependent on the lack of self-ownership by any and all in the collective herd of those who voluntarily allow themselves to be enslaved by any ruling State. Any acceptance of rule, any rule, is the antithesis of freedom. The very idea of rule runs counter to any sanity, and no one who accepts rule without active and forceful dissent, deserves his lot in life as a slave.

This is the actual problem, this is the bottom line, this is the big picture. All else is but a consequence of the allowance of rule. Concentrating on hate, every singular event, every form of tyranny, every isolated evil perpetrated or allowed by the State, every psychotic ‘election,’ and every pitiful falsely-claimed victim; all while ignoring, chastising, negating, and abandoning the individual and independent self-rule, is cause for great alarm. When this attitude is broad-based and taken up by the masses, which happened a long time ago, collective ignorance and universal stupidity becomes the norm. This causes division and constant blame where it should not exist, for the real problem lies with the fact that the people individually and collectively have accepted authoritative governance as their god.

This of course seems to this doltish society of fools, as the easy way out; so as not to have to be responsible for themselves or their own subsistence. What a society like this breeds is exactly what we have today in this country, and most of the rest of the world, especially in the West; a pathetic, weak, and controlled proletariat class, dependent on their chosen master’s whims, restrictions, and regulations. They wallow in complacency, while choosing to exist as submissive addicts of rule. The incessant nature of this total societal  laziness, irresponsibility, and cowardice, is cloaked in ignorance, fear, and hate for one another; all solicited by the governing slime, and all unwarranted.

The end product that arises from this societal mindset, especially in the U.S., is eye-opening to say the least. Most of the people here actually believe they are free and live in a free country. They are fat and happy, regardless of the tyranny they face, and able to eat all the poison that fast food chains and processed manufacturing can dish out; soon (already are)  to be in the form of genetically-modified organisms, fake meat, worms and bugs, chemicals, metals, and unknown biological and technological nano-particulate matter. This is happening while the vast majority have no concept of their fate due to their blind obedience to the State, and its agendas.

Hypocrisy and contradiction are rampant among this complicit population, and it is seemingly never-ending. Much of this behavior is based on the concept of duality of standards, this a common theme, especially concerning Americans. They tend to take on an air of sympathy, mostly false I might add, for the plight of others around them, whether locally, nationally, or internationally; not because it is legitimate, but because of arrogance, superiority complex, or the need to pretend to care so as to please their particular group-think role. This conjures up images of race-baiting, red against blue, right against left, forced inclusion, diversity nonsense, the idiocy of transgender policies, so-called anti-war attitudes, which rarely actually exist from either ‘side,’ and the incredibly ludicrous notion of “spreading democracy,” as if that is not pure aggression in any form.

Most Americans support war, regardless of the level of slaughter and death, so long as it is pretended to be for the ‘right reasons,’ and is being waged to suit deceitful manufactured State narratives, usually based on illegitimate fear, and promoted by the scum in government, military, and media. Since spoiled Americans do not have brutal war in country, it is easy to feign false empathy and fake concern for others, while getting fat watching fake television news, and supporting this country’s foreign policies, which are the most brutal in the history of man. Currently, approximately half the country are pretending to support the evil Zionists in Israel, and about half are pretending to support Palestine. The U.S. government is claiming both sides at once, and the lowly masses are falling right in line. The U.S. is up to its neck using the tax revenue and all the fake money it can create to fund every war, whether in Israel, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, or elsewhere, and the population here has only to decide which party ‘supports’ which side in order to choose their team. It is not war they are upset with, but which party benefits from which particular war.

If they actually wanted to stop war, they would eliminate the single cause of war, which is the State and its governing monsters, instead of taking sides akin to a sporting event. When the U.S. attacked Vietnam, killing millions of innocent civilians, there were again two sides of the same coin, and both at the time also supported the government who aggressively prosecuted that heinous war. When the U.S. aggressively attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, again killing millions, including 500,000 children under the age of 5, most in this country were watching this evil on television, and applauding the bombings, sanctions, and total destruction of countries and people. It has been the same from both sides for every conflict, every war of aggression; for the entirety of history. This is hypocrisy at its highest level, but then, contradiction lives and breathes in the ‘good ole USSA.’

The actual murderers who are the assassins for the State are the military, but most all in this country still cheer them on in their slaughter of innocents. They act on orders alone, and not moral behavior, killing without conscience.  The military industrial complex is the fascist partner of government, and only acts in the interest of the State, never the people. Throw away the flag of death, refuse to utter any allegiance to the bloodied flag, and withhold any support for the anthem of war.

It seems, no, it is almost certain, that people everywhere support the very evil they claim to abhor. Every country on earth has a government, and every government is pure evil; only seeking money, power, and control over their subjects. In WWII, the German people supported German government, the Americans supported the U.S. government, the British supported the government in England, and on and on, and all supported war. Any who shun rule, any who loathe war, any who want to be free, have to stop all State authority; they have to abolish the perpetrator of war, which is the State. This has never happened, so why do so many think things will improve by their continued support for any State or Nation? Why do any believe that authority of any kind is the answer, when in fact. that authority is the entire problem?

In order to be truly free, all rule must be abandoned in favor of natural law and self-rule. So long as government and authority are present, slavery will remain universal, and mass obedience to that authority will be the way of life. Instead of concentrating on each and every incident of economic destruction, carnage, rape, theft, torture, murder, killing and perversion of children, and war, forcefully challenge the cause of all this horror, which is the government you alone allow to exist. The big picture will not ever change so long as the masses concentrate on the results of rule, as opposed to the fact that rule itself is the problem, and cause of all the terror inflicted on the bulk of humanity.

You are a huge part of the problem. All those who seek or allow rule, allow government, and willingly obey a master are the problem. All those who voluntarily choose (vote) to select a new master with expectations of ending tyranny, are the problem. All those who cower and hide from responsibility in the face of totalitarian rule, are the problem. All those who ‘respect’ authority are the problem.

The only way any government or State can rule, the only way it can demand compliance of its criminal arbitrary ‘laws,’ the only way it can advance any war, is with the voluntary consent of the people. Withhold that consent, negate all authority, and defend at all costs your own liberty.  It is time to eliminate the State, once and forever, and sent it to the depths of hell where it belongs.

“You might think that there’s some authority you could look to for answers, but all of the authorities you can think of are fake.”

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

The post The Pathetic Want of Rule, Authority, and Collectivism, Has Led to the Tortured Enslavement of Man appeared first on LewRockwell.

“If the government can suspend your rights anytime it deems something is a crisis, you don’t have rights. You have permissions.” — “Pismo” on “X”

While our country sleepwalks through the deadly aftermath of the evil Covid-19 operation, the World Health Organization (WHO) puts the final touches on a nice bit of fuckery called its Pandemic Treaty on International Health Regulations (IHR) or “One Health” initiative, a Globalist power grab disguised in the saintly white robes of public health medicine. The agreement, to be finalized at the end of this month, will cede what’s left of your liberty to this unelected bureaucracy for the sake of global “equity and inclusivity,” meaning more lockdowns, constant surveillance, forced “vaccinations,” restrictions on medications, and censorship of anyone who voices a contrary opinion of these actions.

Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s Covid-19 all over again, a second crack at controlling everything you do and every choice you might make by a cabal of governments and corporations, in other words, an international gang of fascists. The WHO is an agency of the United Nations, run out of Switzerland. You might recall this is the same place where the World Economic Forum (the WEF, a.k.a. “Davos”) has its headquarters. For years, the WEF has been issuing blueprints for a techno-fascist global regime under which, they state baldly, “you will own nothing and be happy.” (And eat bugs.)

These birds are not kidding around, though anyone can see the megalomania on display, the grandiose will-to-power that seeks to subjugate the plebes of the world — and radically decrease our numbers — so that a remaining tiny elite can enter into a post-modern, techno-transhuman utopia uncluttered with us “useless eaters.” The corporate money and organizational mojo out of Davos is behind what amounts to a homicidal racketeering scheme masquerading as disease prevention.

Of course, the pharmaceutical companies are front-and-center in the mix. They stand to make hundreds of billions of dollars distributing their mandated “vaccines” — which, you know by now, will not be properly tested, and, as currently being demonstrated by the Covid shots, are covertly designed to kill as many people as possible over a long period of time by switching off the natural defenses of your immune system, guaranteeing bewilderment and compliance by the hoodwinked masses. This might sound like a paranoid sci-fi movie, but, alas, the first phase has already happened starting in 2020. And since the pharma companies provide most of the advertising revenue for cable news media, you have been successfully mind-fucked into not seeing what is going on all around you: a whole lot of sickness and death.

Fortunately, it is the nature of megalomania that it always thinks too highly of its power and reaches too far. For one thing, this WHO “treaty” has to be signed by its member nations. Not all of them are eager to do that. One was Slovakia, whose prime minister, Robert Fico, was gunned down a few days after he announced his country would opt out. The coterie of the USA behind the senile and incompetent “Joe Biden,” is avid to sign us onto the treaty, largely because much of global Big Pharma operates out of our country, and rents so many members of Congress, especially most of the Democratic Party.

Under the US Constitution, the president can’t follow through on an international treaty without the Senate’s approval by two-thirds of its members. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) has been the most active figure in that body investigating the crimes of the Covid-19 op and organizing votes against the treaty, which he declares to be all 49 Republican senators. Thus, there can be no two-thirds majority ratification of the WHO treaty.

But note that the shadow government running “Joe Biden” has been doing all kinds of things in overt defiance of the Constitution and the rulings of the US Supreme Court on what is permissible under the Constitution, for instance, cancelling colossal sums of college loan debt. The “Joe Biden” regime is lawless. Anyone following the malicious prosecutions of candidate Donald Trump and the mass round-up of J-6 protestors can see how that works. So, you are advised to call and write your elected representatives in Congress to make sure that the executive branch (the White House and its agencies) gets the message: no deal on the WHO treaty.

There are other trends underway at this time that may assist us in escaping what amounts to a globalist coup d’état. One is that the economic and political crack-up of Western Civ is tending in the opposite direction of the extreme centralization of power that the WHO represents. Things are breaking down, especially things organized at the gigantic scale. Just look at the chaos overtaking corporatized doctor practices and conglomeratized hospitals in America. The corruption and degeneracy of national governments, with their colossal bureaucracies, has reached the stage that few among the people subject to them can fail to notice. That has sapped their legitimacy and prompted citizens to non-compliance with their increasingly insane diktats.

Under the Constitution, the duties not spelled out under federal authority are left to the states. Public health is one of these. Accordingly, the attorney-generals of twenty-two US states have declared their objection to the WHO treaty in a letter to “Joe Biden” and their intent to ignore its commands. What remains to be seen is whether the Globalists can use a new engineered pathogen out of their many bioweapons labs to stir up another pandemic scare to terrorize the world population into being pushed around. Don’t doubt that they will try it, especially in a year when many nations will be holding elections. And don’t get fooled again when they do.

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

The post An Urgent Matter appeared first on LewRockwell.

So where does this leave us? We’re on our own.

This month I’ve described what can be summarized as The Decay of Everyday Life: the erosion of the fundamental elements of everyday life: work, opportunity, social mobility, security and well-being, which includes civility, conviviality and a functional, competent social-political order.

In other words, Everyday Life includes far more than the financial statistics of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the stock market, wealth and income. Everyday Life is fundamentally about relationships, agency (i.e. control of one’s life and ownership of one’s work), the fulfillment of life’s purposes (livelihood, family, friends, community and self-growth), leisure time and the experiences of everyday living, both the stressors and the joys.

As I’ve explored in recent posts, the experiential elements of Everyday Life have decayed over the past 40 years: life is more difficult and less secure in ways that are not offset by technological advances. Indeed, the most highly touted technological advances (Internet and mobile phones) have increased the burdens of shadow work and introduced new pathways of addiction and stress that have reduced well-being. Rather than being free, they include structures of control that we have yet to grasp, much less limit.

Here are my recent posts:

Precarious: One Misfortune Away from Insolvency
Squeezed for Decades, America’s Working Class Is Finally Up Against the Wall
Lost in the Vast Wasteland of Social Media
Hikikomori and Lying Flat: When “Making It” Becomes Hopeless
Withdrawing from the Rat Race Is Going Global

The Decay of Everyday Life echoes the title of one of the more important books I’ve long recommended, The Structures of Everyday Life Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century Volume 1 by Fernand Braudel. The book outlines how changes in the economic structure led to changes in everyday life.

The structures I outline in the five posts describe the economic structures that shape our daily lives and the political and social structures we inhabit. While I focus attention on the way globalization and financialization have hollowed out our economy and increased the precarity of labor, in the larger context we can identify these structural drivers of decay:

1. The balance between labor and capital has been skewed to capital for 50 years. Labor’s political power and share of the economy has declined, while capital’s political and economic power has become dominant. This has driven income-wealth inequality to extremes that are destabilizing the economy and the political-social orders.

Increasing the sums labor can borrow to keep afloat only works until debt service consumes all disposable income, crushing consumption. The end result is mass default of debt and the erasure of debt-based “assets” held by the financial elites (top 10%).

Labor will have to restore the balance with capital or the system will collapse in disorder. History is rather definitive about this causal chain.

2. Process and narrative control have replaced outcomes as the operative mechanisms and goals of the status quo. The illusions of limitless “progress” and “prosperity” have generated a mindset in which outcomes no longer matter, as “progress” and “prosperity” are forces of Nature that can’t be stopped, so we can luxuriate in Process–completing forms and compliance documents, submitting reports to other offices, holding endless meetings to discuss our glacial “progress”, mandating more Process, elevating managers who excel at Process–with the net result that building permits that were once issued in a few days now take months, bridges take decades to build, and incompetence reigns supreme.

To obscure the dismal outcomes–failure, delays, poor quality, errors–narrative control is deployed, expanded and rewarded. The managerial class has been rewarded and advanced not for generating timely, on-budget, high-quality outcomes, but for managing Process and Narrative Control: everything’s going great, and if it isn’t, the fault lies elsewhere.

The net result of this structure is that the competent either quit in disgust or assigned to Siberia, while the incompetent are elevated to the highest levels of corporate and public-sector management.

Read the Whole Article

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I can’t help but wonder what proponents of America’s participation in the old Cold War dinosaur known as NATO are thinking about NATO officials who are contemplating sending NATO military personnel into Ukraine to train Ukrainian troops in their war against Russia. Those who relish the idea of nuclear war between the United States and Russia undoubtedly must be ecstatic over the possibility of such a move.

It has been clear for some time that Ukraine is losing its war with Russia. Ukraine has lost countless young soldiers and their front-line troops are now largely composed of middle-aged men. Its production has plummeted. Its supply of weapons is low, which is why it continues to desperately seek replacement weapons from the United States. Ukrainian forces continue to retreat. And there is the increasing possibility that Russian forces will achieve a breakthrough in Ukrainian defense lines.

Obviously feeling desperate over the battlefield situation, European officials within NATO are contemplating sending military personnel into Ukraine to help train Ukrainian soldiers.

But wouldn’t that put NATO and Russia into direct military conflict? After all, what happens if a Russian missile kills a bunch of NATO soldiers inside Ukraine?

According to the New York Times, “So far the United States has said no, but Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that a NATO deployment of trainers appeared inevitable. ‘We’ll get there eventually, over time,’ he said.”

Brown’s objection, for now, seems to be based more on military practicality rather than the possibility than the increased likelihood of nuclear war. He stated, “For now, he said, an effort inside Ukraine would put ‘a bunch of NATO trainers at risk’ and would most likely mean deciding whether to use precious air defenses to protect the trainers instead of critical Ukrainian infrastructure near the battlefield.”

The Times adds the important kicker in all this: “As a part of NATO, the United States would be obligated under the alliance’s treaty to aid in the defense of any attack on the trainers, potentially dragging America into the war.”

It’s important that we keep in mind why the United States continues to move ever closer to the possibility of all-out nuclear war with Russia. The reason is so that Ukraine can be a member of NATO, something that Russia has long opposed. If the day ever comes when mushroom clouds are suddenly and unexpectedly enveloping cities in Russia and the United States, those who are still alive can mull over whether Ukraine’s membership in NATO was worth it. Indeed, they can also contemplate whether U.S. membership in that old Cold War dinosaur was worth it too.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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I don’t know who actually compiles this information, but typically you see states ranked in various magazines and advertisements.  They use criteria like best schools, lowest crime, happiness score, income level, etc…, so what if we jammed that up a might bit!   Given the acrimony I think we should divvy up states based on another set of criteria:  1.  all black, or all white, or all Asian.   2.  Only libertarians allowed.   3.   Higher knowledge required.   4.   We don’t give a fark everyone is welcome!   5.   Must enjoy working.   6.   Likes to do nothing.   Within this frame of criteria, each state would be ranked.  They could never deviate from this set of rituals.   Because this criteria reflects who you are and will become – based on your own choices.

There was a Star Trek episode wherein Captain Kirk was with his soldier guys on planet Q where warring was going on and The Capt in all his wisdom wanted to join the war.   Then these wisemen appeared, wearing cloaks, floating somewhat, immune from assault of any kind – they were all elderly men with white beards.  They couldn’t believe how barbaric humans were despite millennials of training.

You see, humans are barbaric.  Life became via barbarism and has remained so without evolution.  It never evolved out of our psyche.  Man is stagnant – and something else is propelling us.   We are the exact same creatures that existed 10,000 years ago.  History is about WAR.  That’s how it is defined; schoolbooks, literary books, nonfiction etc..  history is war.   That’s what splashes the news headlines daily – everything is a WAR.   And those guys in the robes have left us to our demise.  Likely quite disgusted.

The amount of jeers from the grandstands for ‘Death’ is like a cartoon.  They can’t really demand children and women be pummeled and squashed.   Yet they do!  Eyes wide in anticipation of the Blood…   That would be another Star Trek episode wherein society was obedient until the clock struck midnight and all chaos let loose.  Landrau struck the clock again at 6am and everyone became obedient slaves.  Barbarism – inherent in the psyche.  But.. not everyone’s psyche.

It seems to me that calling for bad wishes on another person or persons is not too far up on the evolutionary scale.   Death threats are now a yawn.  If we were to accept the muddle of history/0mythology, the civilizations of 3000 BC were a more cohesive family – not by training – but by inherent wisdom.  The Biden administration wanting to return Americans to the life in 1800 is an interesting – reverse evolution.

I imagine reverse evolutions are quite common in history – wherein entire cultures or societies lose their knowledge and must start over in building back to what they used to know.  A circular.   And then a select few so very much – Tesla and Da Vinci come to mind – bring society back from the darkness.  Incredibly ingenious men persons appear in the midst of a dark tie and everything changes.   And BOOM – we are back baby!

And then the FBI and CIA just had to ruin the party.  Stealing every written patent and using the military to match Tesla’s brain.   They couldn’t do it!  Any more than the Pharma industry could match Dr. Bradstreet’s brain – he cured cancer – using natural human proteins.  “OFF YOU GO!”  It seems like such a waste of life.   Smell the roses – that sort of thing.

SO – this is my brain – it doesn’t get a lot of sleep and has a tendency to go to the far far lands where man has never been…

Reprinted with permission from Helena-The Nationalist Voice.

The post A Biography of Human Thought appeared first on LewRockwell.

A federal judge in Canberra has sentenced whistleblower David McBride to five years and eight months for exposing Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. Australia is such a tyrannical police state.

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I don’t spend my time attacking the US war machine because I have any special love for Hamas, Iran, Russia, China, or any other power. I do it because the US empire is quantifiably the most destructive and tyrannical force on this planet, by an extremely massive margin.

No other power has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions and displacing them by the tens of millions. No other power is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, starving people around the world with blockades and economic sanctions, staging proxy wars, color revolutions and coups all over the earth, and working to destabilize and destroy any nation anywhere on this planet who dares to defy its dictates.

Only the US empire is doing this. No other power comes anywhere remotely close.

That’s as murderous and tyrannical as it gets. Propaganda-addled empire simps sometimes try to act like it’s strange and suspicious that I spend all my time criticizing the US war machine, when what’s actually strange and suspicious is that everyone else does not.

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The US State Department is justifying continued US support for Israel’s Gaza assault despite its own acknowledgement of evidence of Israeli war crimes, claiming there’s been a “substantial increase” in efforts to get aid into Gaza. It makes this claim days after Israel shut down the most crucial entry point of aid into Gaza, which remains closed.

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It’s hilarious how imperial spinmeisters keep trying to convince young people that it will be those who opposed a genocide who will have to worry about their futures. Israel apologists are aggressively hammering this line “If you protest against Israel employers won’t hire you!” You idiots, young people know they live in a world where opposing a genocide can hurt your job prospects. That’s why they’ve decided to change the world.

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Besides October 2023, the all-time month with the most searches for the word “Nakba” is May 2024, when one artist released a song containing the line “the Nakba never ended”. You want to know why the kids are pushing celebrities to oppose the Gaza genocide? That’s why.

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I am so done listening to people bitch about Gen Z. After watching what superstars and leaders these kids have been on Gaza these last seven months, we shouldn’t be asking how we can guide them, we should be asking how they can guide us.

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One of the many reasons it’s absurd to say a Jewish person from New York has more of a claim to Palestine than the Palestinians because the New Yorker is “indigenous” to the land is that their argument depends on expanses of time that have no relevance to the human lifespan. Claiming you had ancestors there 500 or 1,000 or 2,000 years ago is a moot point, because vast stretches of time like that have no meaningful personal relevance to a species that only lives about eighty years, whereas there are survivors of the Nakba still alive today.

If an event is so far back in history that you don’t personally experience its reverberations and its consequences, then it’s not recent enough to have any personal relevance to you. American descendants of slavery can rightly claim that slavery is personally relevant to them for example, because that population is still experiencing the reverberations and consequences of that historical event. Some white guy in New York who happens to share a religion with people who lived in Palestine a few millennia ago cannot make the same claim.

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Ironically if Biden was really the anti-Israel Hamas lover that Republicans claim he is and if Trump was really the pro-Russia isolationist that Democrats claimed he was, we wouldn’t be seeing the horrors in Gaza and Ukraine that we’re seeing today.

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When I escaped from an abusive relationship which got very abusive as I was trying to leave, my ex went around telling everyone we knew that his abuse wasn’t what it looked like and it was actually quite complicated. Just like Israel and its apologists are doing right now.

That’s just what abusers do when people start calling their obvious abuse what it is, whether you’re talking about interpersonal or international affairs. You see bloodthirsty swamp monsters like John Bolton using the “it’s complicated” talking point all the time, because if you look at the raw data of the US war machine’s behavior it’s very clearly an extremely abusive and destructive force.

Imperial narrative managers work hard to make the depravity of the empire sound a lot more complicated than it is so that people will assume it’s best left to the authorized “experts”. And because of how locked down our rulers have the information ecosystem it often works; people look at things like Israel-Palestine and assume it must be very complicated, because if it was as simple as it looks then surely their government and their media would not be so supportive of Israel.

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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

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The United States and its Western allies appear to be mounting a hostile media campaign against the Indian government of Narendra Modi.

Sensational media accusations of India running an assassination program against expatriate dissidents and spying operations in Western countries have gathered pace recently, leading to acrimonious relations.

Parsing the Western allegations, it is plausible that Washington and its Five Eyes partners are amping up false-flag provocations to coerce New Delhi into adopting pro-Western policies toward Russia and China.

The latest spat follows Australian media reports of Australian authorities warning lawmakers to take extra precautions against spying when visiting India. Australian MPs are advised to use “burner phones” to avoid their regular devices being hacked into.

The rapid souring of relations has taken the Indian government by surprise. Vociferous denials of spying by New Delhi are mixed with a sense of disquiet that supposed friendly Western countries have taken an unexpected provocative position.

Warnings about phone hacking for Australian politicians and business executives traveling to India have only been applied recently.

This purported concern for Australian state security officials also contradicts a national security document published last month by the government of Premier Anthony Albanese which praised India as a “top tier” international security partner.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been treated royally in state visits to the United States and Australia within the last year. U.S. President Joe Biden extolled “shared values” during a lavish reception at the White House, while Albanese playfully referred to Modi as “the boss” at a festival in Sydney.

In recent months, however, the Western countries known as the Five Eyes – the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – have run highly critical media claims damaging India’s international image. The U.S. State Department and Congress have published reports claiming that the Modi government is violating human rights at home and abroad in what is termed “transnational repression”.

The most serious allegation was made by Canadian Premier Justin Trudeau who accused Indian security services of involvement in murdering an Indian-born Canadian opponent of the Modi government in Vancouver last June. New Delhi strenuously denied the claims as “absurd”.

There may be some truth in claims that the Indian state agents are spying on dissidents among its vast diaspora abroad. Nevertheless, it also seems that Washington and its Western allies are exploiting a propaganda opportunity.

There are indications that Trudeau was prompted by U.S. intelligence to make his explosive claims. Trudeau’s public pronouncements on the matter were highly irregular for diplomatic protocol, and it was noted that the accusations were based on vague intelligence claims, not hard evidence. It was also significant that when Trudeau was criticized for rashness and lack of clarity, the U.S. ambassador to Canada David Cohen stepped in to defend Trudeau’s decision to go public and disclosed that “shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners” had formed the basis of the Canadian prime minister’s claims. In short, prompted.

As with Canada so also Australia, as it seems the United States is the party that is driving the media campaign against India.

Following a bombshell report in The Washington Post last month, Australian media have become feverish with claims of Indian spies having been “kicked out” by Canberra.

The Australian media have cited Australian state security services as confirming that a “nest of spies” told to leave the country were Indian agents. But it seems significant that it was The Washington Post’s initial report that triggered the controversy.

The Post did not substantiate its claim about purported Indian spies in Australia. The head of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization, Mike Burgess, was also circumspect about naming Indian agents as being the culprits when asked about the accusations.

Furthermore, the Australian government seemed caught off-guard by the spate of allegations against India.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Finance Minister Jim Chalmers both declined to be drawn on media claims of Indian spying against Australia.

That suggests that the Australian state security apparatus is conveying an agenda by its U.S. counterparts which the government in Canberra is not fully aware of.

What is that agenda?

As posited in a previous article, the geopolitical prize for Washington is to pressure the Indian government into complying with a more hostile policy toward Russia and China.

India has been keenly courted by Washington to join its security and military alliances in the Indo-Pacific region. India is a member of the U.S.-led Quadrilateral Security forum that includes Japan, South Korea and Australia. The “Quad” has an overlapping anti-China stance with the AUKUS alliance of Australia, the United Kingdom and U.S.

Notably, though, India did not participate in joint naval exercises with the U.S. and Australia last month. The exercises were aimed at curtailing what is claimed to be China’s expansionism in Asia-Pacific. India and China have had hostile differences in the past over border disputes, but there seems to be a reluctance in New Delhi to join the overt antagonism that Washington is seeking with Beijing.

Regarding Russia, Narendra Modi has maintained a steadfast independence from Washington’s cajoling to condemn Moscow over its Ukraine military intervention. India has refused to implement economic sanctions against Russia pushed by the U.S. and its Western partners. Indeed, India is buying record levels of Russian oil exports and continues to source most of its military purchases from Russia. Washington no doubt wants to snatch that multi-billion-dollar military export market in India from Russia.

As a key member of the BRICS forum, India is a strategic partner with Russia and China in advocating for a “multipolar world order”. That order emphasizes fairer trade and egalitarian partnerships supporting the majority of poorer nations known as the Global South. The BRICS forum challenges the status quo of U.S.-led Western hegemony, which the United States and its Western allies euphemistically call the “rules-based order”.

India, especially under Modi, presents a conundrum for Washington and its Western partners. Washington wants India to unequivocally choose the Western geopolitical camp to augment the objective of isolating Russia and China and to undermine the geopolitical challenge of a multipolar order to the U.S.-led dominance.

The bigger geopolitical picture would explain why the U.S. and its Western allies are mounting a media campaign against India with allegations of assassination plots and spying. It is a form of coercion – or blackmail – of New Delhi to “get with the program”.

Moreover, there is suspicion that American intelligence services and their counterparts are the ones targeting Indian expatriates in a false-flag provocation against New Delhi.

The Modi government is certainly wary of dissident opponents such as Sikh activists who are agitating for a new independent state called Khalistan based on Punjabi separatism from India. It would not be surprising if Indian agents were surveilling such opponents in the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But the question is: are the U.S. and its Five Eyes allies exaggerating the allegations of targeting to intensify media pressure on New Delhi?

The Washington Post report cited above, which instigated the Western media coverage, has the hallmarks of a CIA psy-op. First of all, it discloses that an alleged assassination plot by India was busted by a U.S. double agent, which sounds like a setup. The report also contains a notable contradiction in that it claims the U.S. was not aware of the extent of Indian spying and “transnational repression” until a suspect was arrested in the Czech Republic and his phone was hacked uncovering alleged links to Indian intel. That was around July 2023. Yet, the same report also disclosed that FBI agents were notifying Sikh leaders in California about being targeted several weeks before that. If U.S. security services did not know about India’s murder plots then how were they able to issue warnings to supposed targets?

The streamlined Western media campaign to compromise the Indian government is suspiciously orchestrated. The timing indicates a bigger geopolitical calculation and ulterior agenda by Washington.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The post Washington and Western Allies Turn on India over Russia and China by Ramping up “Transnational Repression” Claims appeared first on LewRockwell.

For years, researchers have highlighted the therapeutic potential of exercise when it comes to preventing and treating depression. I’ve been a long-term advocate for exercise as a primary treatment option for depression, and two recent meta-analyses confirm just how well-reasoned this advice has been.

The most recent of the two, published in the February 2024 issue of The BMJ,1,2 analyzed 218 randomized controlled trials with 14,170 participants, and found that a wide variety of exercises significantly alleviate symptoms of depression, regardless of severity. As reported by the authors:3

“In isolation, the most effective exercise modalities were walking or jogging, yoga, strength training, and dancing. Although walking or jogging were effective for both men and women, strength training was more effective for women, and yoga or qigong was more effective for men. Yoga was somewhat more effective among older adults, and strength training was more effective among younger people.

The benefits from exercise tended to be proportional to the intensity prescribed, with vigorous activity being better. Benefits were equally effective for different weekly doses, for people with different comorbidities, or for different baseline levels of depression …”

Lead author Michael Noetel, a senior lecturer at the School of Psychology in Queensland, Australia, told PsyPost:4

“We were surprised exercise worked so well for so many people. The benefits were bigger than we expected. Exercise was as good as therapy and drugs.”

Dance Your Blues Away

While dancing showed a particularly large effect, the authors didn’t give it much consideration due to the low number of studies (only five), and the low number of participants in each study. It makes sense that dancing would have a significant effect on mood though, considering it’s difficult to dance and hold on to distressed emotions. Try it sometime.

Dancing with a partner also brings in the oxytocin aspect. Oxytocin is often referred to as the “love hormone” because it plays a crucial role in forming social bonds and increasing trust among individuals.

It can improve relationships, which is a significant factor in overall mental well-being. It also has a calming effect and can reduce stress levels and anxiety by lowering the stress hormone cortisol. Music also engages your emotions, so it makes sense that music combined with physical movement might have a unique ability to change one’s emotional state.

Exercise Is 1.5x More Effective Than the Best Antidepressants

The second analysis — an overview of 97 systematic reviews5,6,7 — involved 128,119 participants who took part in 1,039 different trials. It was published in 2023. Populations included healthy adults, people with mental health disorders and people with chronic diseases.

This is the most comprehensive review of research to date, and clearly demonstrates that exercise can rapidly alleviate mild to moderate symptoms of depression, anxiety and other forms of psychological distress. Importantly, it found that exercise was 1.5 times more effective than the most prescribed antidepressants. As reported by the University of South Australia, which performed the umbrella review:8

“University of South Australia researchers are calling for exercise to be a mainstay approach for managing depression as a new study shows that physical activity is 1.5 times more effective than counselling or the leading medications …

[The study] shows that physical activity is extremely beneficial for improving symptoms of depression, anxiety, and distress. Specifically, the review showed that exercise interventions that were 12 weeks or shorter were the most effective at reducing mental health symptoms, highlighting the speed at which physical activity can make a change …

Lead UniSA researcher, Dr Ben Singh, says physical activity must be prioritized to better manage the growing cases of mental health conditions.

‘Physical activity is known to help improve mental health. Yet despite the evidence, it has not been widely adopted as a first-choice treatment. Our review shows that physical activity interventions can significantly reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety in all clinical populations …

We also found that all types of physical activity and exercise were beneficial, including aerobic exercise such as walking, resistance training, Pilates, and yoga. Importantly, the research shows that it doesn’t take much for exercise to make a positive change to your mental health.'”

Exercise Banishes Insomnia

In related science news,9 exercise also has demonstrably beneficial effects on sleep, helping to banish insomnia, which is a common complaint among those with depression.

The study, published in BMJ Open,10 included 4,339 participants, ages 39 to 67, who were followed for 10 years. Thirty-seven percent of participants consistently did not exercise while 25% were regularly active, 20% stopped being active and 18% started exercising between the beginning and the end of the study.

Compared to those who didn’t exercise regularly, those who exercised regularly throughout the study had 40% lower odds of insomnia, and this finding held true even after accounting for factors such as age, gender, body mass index, smoking history, and study location.

“Physically active people have a lower risk of insomnia symptoms and extreme sleep duration, both long and short,” lead study author Dr. Erla Björnsdóttir, sleep expert and researcher at Reykjavik University, told CNN Health, adding:11

“Our results are in line with previous studies that have shown a beneficial effect of physical activity on symptoms of insomnia, but the current study additionally shows the importance of consistency in exercise over time. It therefore matters to be physically active throughout your life in order to reduce the risk of insomnia and short sleep duration.”

If You’re Over 40, Avoid Jogging

While many studies stress the importance of high-intensity exercise for depression, a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the March-April 2023 issue of Missouri Medicine12 highlights the importance of proper exercise dosing depending on the type of exercise performed.

When it comes to jogging, people over 40 increase their risk of atrial fibrillation by a massive 500% to 800% from this type of exercise. What they concluded is that once you get into your mid-40s and 50s, exercise should be fun and stress-reducing, not competitive.

High-Intensity, High-Volume Exercise Backfires After a Certain Point

Other types of high-intensity exercises can also backfire if you do too much of them. The 2023 Missouri Medicine analysis13 found that while vigorous exercise up to 75 minutes per week reduced the risk of all-cause mortality and other diseases in a dose-dependent manner, benefits plateaued after that.

So, people who were doing four to seven hours of vigorous exercise per week didn’t get any additional benefit, and from a cardiovascular standpoint, lost some.

Endurance exercise such as jogging and running can also cause drastic elevations in cortisol, which can wreck your health. One of the functions of cortisol is to raise low blood sugar, but it does this by breaking down your muscles, bones and brain.

It sacrifices your lean muscle mass to release amino acids that your liver converts to glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis. So, ultimately, chronically elevated cortisol will increase inflammation and impair your immune function.

Cortisol is also the primary aging hormone. If it is chronically elevated, you will likely die prematurely as it is highly catabolic, meaning it breaks down tissues. To stay healthy as you age you need to be anabolic and build healthy tissues like muscle and mitochondria, and high cortisol will seriously impair those efforts.

Moderate Exercise Cannot Be Overdone

On the other hand, they found that you cannot overdo moderate exercise, loosely defined as exercising to the point where you’re slightly winded but can carry on a conversation. Examples include gardening, walking, recreational bike riding, yoga, nonintense swimming and pickleball.

Perhaps even more surprising, moderate exercise also improves all-cause survival better than vigorous exercise — about two times better.

Walking is perhaps one of the best forms of exercise. It’s about 2,000 steps per mile, and every 1,000 steps you get on average per day reduces your mortality by 10% to 15%. Benefits don’t plateau until you reach 12,000 steps a day, but you never start losing benefit from walking too much.

Overdoing Strength Training Is Worse Than Doing Nothing at All

The Missouri Medicine analysis14 also detailed the sweet spot for strength training, and it’s far lower than previously thought. The graph below, from the meta-analysis, shows the J-shaped dose-response for strength training activates and all-cause mortality. As you can see, the benefit maxes out right round 40 to 60 minutes a week. Beyond that, you’re losing benefit.

In the video above, best-selling author and high-performance coach Siim Land reviews these and related findings.

Once you get to 130 to 140 minutes of strength training per week, your longevity benefit becomes the same as if you weren’t doing anything, which is nothing short of shocking. If you train for three to four hours a week, you actually end up with WORSE long-term survival than people who don’t strength train!

Granted, these data are focused on longevity, not depression relief, but I wouldn’t recommend getting into a habit that will ameliorate one area while backfiring in another.

Doing more than one hour of strength training per week will begin to negate longevity benefits. Moderate exercise such as walking, however, cannot be overdone.

So, the take-home message here is that 20 minutes of strength training twice a week on non-consecutive days, or 40 minutes once a week, is the sweet spot for optimal payoff in the long term. You also don’t want your exercise regimen to center around strength training. It should be an add-on, as you get far greater long-term benefits simply from walking, or any other moderate exercise.

Other Studies Confirm Importance of Strength Training in Moderation

Other studies confirm the importance of strength training in moderation, keeping your weekly total to an hour or less. Among them is a systematic review and meta-analysis of 16 studies published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2022.15

Muscle-strengthening activities were associated with a 10% to 17% lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), total cancer incidence, Type 2 diabetes and all-cause mortality.

As in the Missouri Medicine analysis, this review found a J-shaped association, with a maximum risk reduction of all-cause mortality, CVD and cancer (10 % to 20%) being observed at a dose of 30 to 60 minutes per week. After 60 minutes, the benefits of strength training started to diminish, and above 140 minutes per week, it was associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality.

Yet another 2022 systematic review published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that:16

“Compared with undertaking no resistance training, undertaking any amount of resistance training reduced the risk of all-cause mortality by 15% … cardiovascular disease mortality by 19% … and cancer mortality by 14% …

A dose-response meta-analysis of four studies suggested a nonlinear relationship between resistance training and the risk of all-cause mortality. A maximum risk reduction of 27% was observed at around 60 minutes per week of resistance training … Mortality risk reductions diminished at higher volumes.”

Get Your Nature Fix

Lastly, the Missouri Medicine analysis also discusses the benefits of spending time in nature. You need at least 1.5 to two hours outdoors each week for good health, even if it’s only a local park or tree-lined street.

As noted by lead author Dr. James O’Keefe, a cardiologist with the Mid-America Heart Institute at St. Louis Hospital in Kansas City, whom I interviewed about these results:

“Japanese people who live in Tokyo, one of the biggest cities in the world, will get on a bullet train and an hour or two later be at the mountains and in the forest. They go hike around or even just sit in nature and smell the pine and the fresh air. Then they get on the bullet train and go back home.

They show reductions in blood pressure and improvement in mood. And there’s really, really strong benefits … It’s been shown to … reduce anxiety and improve sleep …”

So, in conclusion, if you struggle with depression, a consistent exercise routine should be your first priority. Just make sure you get the exercise volume or dosing correct for the type of exercise you’re doing so that you’re not inadvertently negating other benefits.

Sources and References

• 1, 3 The BMJ 2024;384:e075847
• 2, 4 Psypost.org April 2, 2024
• 5 British Journal of Sports Medicine Epub February 16, 2023
• 6 Science Alert March 2, 2023
• 7 New York Post February 24, 2023
• 8 University of South Australia February 24, 2023
• 9, 11 CNN Health March 27, 2024
• 10 BMJ Open 2024;14:e067197
• 12, 13, 14 Missouri Medicine March-April 2023; 120(2): 155–162
• 15 British Journal of Sports Medicine 2022; 0: 1-10
• 16 American Journal of Preventive Medicine August 2022; 63(2): 277-285

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Uno degli aspetti più importanti dell'articolo di oggi è la parte riguardante le proteste in Georgia, le quali possono diventare facilmente e rapidamente un innesco a dir poco preoccupante per un conflitto più serio e ampio nella regione. Nel 2008, quando scoppiarono le tensioni anche a livello militare, tutto ebbe inizio dal vertice di Bucarest di quell'anno in cui si disse chiaramente che Ucraina e Georgia sarebbero entrate nella NATO (nonostante il parere contrario di Germania e Francia, che però non erano in grado di fermare i loro alleati, ovvero gli USA, nel caso in cui si dovesse perseguire un obiettivo specifico). I rapporti da lì in poi si sono letteralmente sgretolati. La Georgia venne “persuasa” dai russi a tornare in carreggiata, mentre la storia dell'Ucraiana la conosciamo bene: di rivoluzione colorata in rivoluzione colorata fino al colpo di stato del 2014 è stata trasformata in un'arma puntata contro Mosca. Ora che però Kiev è stata passata al tritacarne e la situazione della NATO è compromessa, in Georgia si stanno moltiplicando manifestazioni e proteste nella capitale. Per cosa? L'approvazione di una legge che vuole la registrazione su un particolare elenco di quelle attività che operano sul territorio e che ricevono un tot. del loro bilancio in finanziamenti esteri, detto in parole povere. C'è la mano dei russi? Se davvero fosse così facile la spiegazione allora si dovrebbe dire che ci fosse anche nel 1938 negli USA. Quest'ultima, però, non ha criteri oggettivi in base ai quali determinare la registrazione, bensì interpretabili, perché prevede che tutte quelle attività che sono sotto la direzione/controllo/istruzioni di agenti esteri devono registrarsi; invece la legge georgiana è più oggettiva: se l'attività riceve più del 20% del proprio bilancio in finanziamenti, deve registrarsi. Ora, oltre alle bandiere europee presenti in questi tafferugli, salta all'occhio la presenza di James O'Brien, sottosegretario di stato americano per gli affari europei ed euroasiatici, che è lì per far arrivare un messaggio (a dir poco mafioso) al parlamento georgiano: non approvare quella legge altrimenti scattano sanzioni. Questo ufficialmente... ufficiosamente ritengo che sia lì per fare quello che la Nuland fece nel 2014 in Ucraina. Ma non è finita qui, perché oltre a suddetto O'Brien a Tbilisi c'erano anche i ministri degli esteri di Islanda e Paesi baltici che hanno partecipato alle proteste. Dove avete già visto queste scene? Durante il colpo di stato in Ucraina nel 2014, allora c'erano Victoria Nuland per gli Stati Uniti e anche funzionari europei. Oggi si rischia di cadere nella stessa trama. Lo scettico potrebbe affermare che mi stia spingendo molto in là con la fantasia, salvo poi constatare la presenza di altre “briciole di pane” sparse lungo il percorso che vanno a supporto della mia tesi. Quindi, è davvero un caso che mentre l'Ucraina viene piegata come un fuscello d'erba, si stia tentando di aprire un nuovo focolaio in Georgia? Se le cose dovessero andare così, allora a questo giro la risposta russa sarà ben peggiore di quella di due anni fa, visto che, ad esempio, se dovesse esserci un eventuale altro giro la minaccia potrebbe arrivare da Nord.

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di Tom Luongo

Prima di approfondire ciò che penso stia realmente accadendo con le proteste anti-israeliane nei campus universitari, voglio che una cosa sia molto, molto chiara: Non sono affatto d'accordo con ciò che Israele ha fatto in risposta all'attacco del 7 ottobre. Non sono d'accordo con quello che ha fatto anche Hamas, il massacro di civili da parte di musulmani, ebrei, ucraini, russi, ecc. è moralmente ripugnante.

Nessun “Se...”, nessun “E...” e certamente nessun “Ma...”.

Allo stesso tempo voglio ricordare ciò che ho scritto sulla guerra in Ucraina a giugno dell'anno scorso:

Gli inglesi ne hanno bisogno perché la loro faida secolare contro la Russia non può finire con una sconfitta in Ucraina.

Gli Stati Uniti pensano di averne bisogno a causa del ridicolo pensiero delle Grandi Potenze sulle colonie e sul fatto che si sentono "migliori" degli altri.

La cricca di Davos ne ha bisogno perché non può portare il mondo sotto il suo controllo totale se esistono ancora grandi nazioni.

Visto attraverso la lente dei mercanti di potere che hanno scatenato questa guerra, vi lascio con un'ultima domanda: “Cosa sono centomila slavi morti che combattono per delle paludi?”

Un buon inizio.

Tornando al 2017, abbiamo parlato all'infinito di come le ossessioni di Benjamin Netanyahu stessero facendo degli ebrei i capri espiatori di tutti i problemi del mondo. Faceva innervosire tutti comportandosi come se governasse il mondo e potesse far ballare tutti i principali leader mondiali al suo ritmo, perché aveva i grandi e cattivi Stati Uniti a coprirgli le spalle.

A proposito, avrete notato lo stesso comportamento in posti come Lituania, Polonia e Francia.

Tutto ciò che doveva accadere era che venisse rimossa la protezione dei sionisti e del sionismo da parte dei nostri media e che si potesse iniziare a cercare un capro espiatorio.

Persone come Nick Fuentes sarebbero passati dall'oggi al domani da persona non grata a coraggiosi rivelatori di verità; oppure abbiamo dimenticato che nemmeno tizi come Mike Enoch e Richard Spencer erano dei veri nazisti?

Ho avvertito tutti subito dopo il 7 ottobre che Netanyahu stava operando con falsi presupposti, ovvero che gli Stati Uniti si sarebbero sempre attenuti ai suoi comandi.

In caso contrario sarebbe ribollito di rabbia anche nei confronti dei nostri leader; i soldi dei contribuenti americani dovevano andare all’estero per difendere i suoi scoppi d’ira, mentre non c'era un centesimo in patria. Ed eccoci qui con il presidente Mike Johnson, ora l’uomo più odiato in America per la sua strenua difesa di Israele. Per mesi ho dovuto sopportare che i conservatori nel campo di Trump perseguitassero Ron DeSantis a causa del suo sostegno a Israele, eppure ecco lo stesso Trump in questo momento che chiede la pena di morte per coloro che protestano contro Israele.

Questa rabbia per il massacro di civili per ciniche ragioni geopolitiche è ciò che sta alimentando alcune di queste proteste, la parte organica; c'è poi anche una parte inorganica in questo movimento contro Israele.

A tal fine non userò la parola tanto di moda “genocidio”, perché 40.000 su 3 milioni NON sono un genocidio. È terribile, è barbaro, ma non è un genocidio. I genocidi sono meccanicistici, procedurali; ciò che sta accadendo a Gaza non è affatto questo.

Questa è un'iperbole intesa a suscitare una risposta emotiva e risucchiarci nell'orbita psicologica dei nostri oppressori. Ricordate gente, la propaganda è fitta su tutti i lati di questi conflitti e non è diverso da quanto accaduto durante i primi giorni della guerra tra Russia e Ucraina.

Vi ricordate quando tutti si stracciavano le vesti per i missili “ipersonici” della Russia? Notizia flash: tutti i missili sono ipersonici.

Non è diverso dall'istrionismo quando qualcuno in precedenza diceva qualcosa di lontanamente antiebraico. Allora uno avrebbe potuto aspettarsi una chiamata dagli avvocati dell'ADL; abbiamo convissuto con queste sciocchezze per decenni.

Ma, per favore, non pensate nemmeno per un secondo che quella fosse una sorta di prova di una Grande Cospirazione Ebraica. Ci sono molti altri gruppi che sono altrettanto protetti quanto Israele.

Notate come non li elenco qui per sottile questione retorica.

So che il ritornello comune è: “Guardare chi non si può criticare ed è quello che ti governa”, l'ho usato anch'io in passato. Ma poiché credo di essere diventato più bravo a vedere le cose con chiarezza, penso che l’osservazione migliore sia: “Guardare a chi ci è permesso di criticare e si capirà chi i nostri governanti vogliono che odiamo”.

A questo punto credo che il secondo sia il filtro molto più predittivo attraverso il quale visualizzare la finestra di Overton attuale rispetto al primo.

Questi due gruppi oggi sono gli Stati Uniti e Israele.

Torneremo a sentirci dire di odiare la Russia più avanti questo mese, dopo che Putin avrà fatto una mossa contro Zelensky.

Quando diamo uno sguardo attento alle divisioni su questo tema, emergono importanti distinzioni. I nostri campus universitari esistono in una realtà che è molto diversa dalla rabbia nel cuore del Paese, che per la maggior parte sostiene il diritto di Israele di difendersi dopo i fatti del 10/7. Le loro prospettive separate sono il perno che gli abusatori narcisistici usano per mettere i due gruppi l'uno contro l'altro e guadagnarci.

Nel momento in cui Soros e la cricca di Davos hanno trasformato le proteste universitarie nella versione aggiornata di quelle del Black Lives Matter nel 2020 o Occupy Wall Street nel 2008, abbiamo un classico gioco “divide et impera” da parte dei soliti sospetti, indipendentemente dalla giustezza della causa.

Ora gli americani, giustamente indignati per la violenza di Hamas, si contrappongono ai ragazzi dei college, giustamente indignati per l'inaccettabile risposta di Israele.

Il risultato sono più divisioni all’interno di una società che viene suddivisa quasi di ora in ora.

Ora ponetevi la domanda più importante: cui bono? Chi ci guadagna e perché?

Netanyahu o è un utile idiota oppure un complice. La maggioranza israeliana (e quella americana) che sostiene le sue azioni contro Hamas sono state assolutamente spinte nel ruolo di utili idioti.

I soldi di Soros vengono ancora spesi, immagino.

E credo che ciò sia stato fatto in modo tale che, alla fine, tutti gli ebrei sarebbero diventati poi le vittime del prossimo pogrom... o, più precisamente, “Il pogrom per porre fine a tutti i pogrom”, a meno che non venga fatto qualcosa per risvegliarli e capiscano dove si sta andando a parare.

Ecco perché mi ha fatto piacere vedere che l'attacco missilistico iraniano ha inviato il messaggio giusto alle persone giuste: agli israeliani che seguivano ciecamente l'aggressione di Netanyahu per motivi pseudo-religiosi e per il falso senso di sicurezza offerto dall'alleanza con gli Stati Uniti e con le difese aeree Iron Dome di Israele.

Allo stesso tempo l'Iran potrebbe aver ricevuto un campanello d'allarme su quanto possa essere surclassato dalla tecnologia missilistica statunitense/israeliana durante la presunta risposta israeliana.

Quindi su questo fronte è un po' una situazione di stallo, che credo sia una buona cosa.

Ancora una volta, la propaganda a cui credete in questo scambio dice più su di voi che sulle persone che si lanciano missili a vicenda.

Quei quattro missili balistici che sono riusciti a raggiungere il suolo potrebbero rappresentare i “missili” più efficaci della storia umana: hanno mandato in frantumi quell'illusione di sicurezza, visto che un sacco di israeliani sono corsi all'aeroporto più vicino per sfuggire al pericolo.

Allo stesso tempo anche gli iraniani hanno ricevuto il loro campanello d’allarme: se Israele iniziasse una guerra contro l’Iran quest'ultimo sarebbe in grossi, grossi guai. Non lasciatevi risucchiare dal vortice secondo cui nessuna delle nostre armi funziona: molte funzionano e bene anche.

Detto questo, è nostro compito, non responsabilità, eliminare la risposta emotiva alla violenza (così dannatamente difficile da fare, lo so!) per guardare fuori dal microcosmo della psicosi sul campo e guardare quel fastidioso quadro più ampio attraverso cui operano le persone che hanno fomentato questo conflitto.

È ovvio che se si gratta un po' la superficie di queste proteste si può vedere la mano dell'attore esterno con il pollice sulla bilancia. C’è davvero indignazione per ciò che Israele ha fatto a Gaza e per ciò che Netanyahu deve ancora fare.

Ci sono anche un sacco di forze esterne, però, che amplificano questo conflitto che risale a decenni prima della nascita dei ragazzi che protestano. Oppure abbiamo dimenticato che i sovietici appoggiavano l’OLP e Hamas è stato creato dall’Occidente (un po’ come l’ISIS) per essere il gruppo palestinese che Israele era pronto ad affrontare?

Queste proteste, nel complesso, sono organiche quanto le rivolte del Black Lives Matter nel 2020, la rivolta ucraina a Maidan nel 2014, le proteste di Occupy Wall Street nel 2008 e ogni altra “rivoluzione colorata” tentata e/o riuscita negli ultimi quarant'anni.

Ovvero, non lo sono affatto: sono, strategicamente, un’arma per arrivare a un risultato particolare. Le proteste di Occupy Wall Street riguardavano originariamente il razzismo e poi sono state dirottate (fonte Tim Pool) da forze organizzate per marciare altrove.

I cecchini erano sui tetti che sparavano a poliziotti e manifestanti in piazza Maidan per garantire il caos e il rovesciamento violento di Viktor Yanukovich. E sono morti (fonte Roger Zelazny).

Perché queste proteste legittime sono state dirottate? Conosciamo la risposta. Il mio interesse per questo tema è iniziato con questo tweet in cui ho citato una persona che rispetto profondamente ma che, secondo me, ha perso la testa.

I'm sorry I fundamentally disagree here. Nothing Gabbard said here is off-base.

These protests are part of another color revolution tactic to undermine the US politically. They are NOT organic anymore than the BLM riots were organic in 2016. Their cause is just, their… https://t.co/qY68vEeVdT

— Tom Luongo (Head Sneetch) (@TFL1728) May 4, 2024

Sapete perché conoscono bene i nostri inneschi? È perché li hanno installati proprio loro!

Perché coloro che hanno definito stronzate cose Occupy Wall Street, o hanno visto la mano della Nuland su Maidan, o l'organizzazione di Antifa durante le rivolte del Black Lives Matter, o che hanno coperto le rivolte della Primavera Araba, non riescono a vedere la mano pesante di quelle stesse persone adesso? Perché c'è Israele nel mirino?

Lascio a voi l'interpretazione. La mia opinione personale è che alle critiche a Israele, a lungo represse e in qualche modo giustificate, è stato ora permesso di scatenarsi per scopi geopolitici più ampi.

Questa è la prima ondata di frustrazione che si trasforma in rabbia giusta, se non ipocrita. Ancora una volta, ora, a quanto pare, è bello poter finalmente criticare Israele.

Ricordate quando abbiamo scoperto che gli stronzi anti-impero americano come Caitlin Johnstone e Bernard di Moon of Alabama desideravano che gli americani morissero durante il COVID affinché tutti ci potessimo accorgere del marcio nel nostro sistema sanitario privato?

NO? Io sì e ancora non li ho perdonati. Perché mi hanno mostrato chi erano veramente: ideologi impegnati nelle loro agende politiche piuttosto che campioni di pace e umanità.

Il mio amico e collaboratore, Dexter White, mi ha spinto a fare un podcast durante i primi giorni della guerra in Ucraina perché sentiva che mi stavo avvicinando troppo a giustificare l'inizio della violenza da parte della Russia lì. Ho dovuto elaborare un sacco di teoria cristiana sulla guerra giusta per superare tutto ciò e non credo di aver fatto il miglior lavoro, col senno di poi.

Il mio lavoro qui non è dirvi quello che volete sentire, ma a volte quello che avete bisogno di sentire.

I palestinesi morti sono una tragedia, ma lo stesso accadrà anche agli ebrei morti. E se Netanyahu si trovasse con le spalle al muro a causa delle forze esterne che ora stanno dilaniando Israele, creerà proprio lo spargimento di sangue che tutti noi vogliamo evitare.

Chi sono queste forze esterne? La cricca di Davos. Perché? Perché vogliono che gli Stati Uniti siano coinvolti in guerre che 1) li mandino in bancarotta sia economicamente che moralmente e 2) giustifichino la fine della politica degli Stati-nazione e il passaggio alla governance globale nelle loro mani attraverso le Nazioni Unite.

E se Israele e alcuni ebrei e arabi, che alla maggior parte delle persone è stato insegnato a odiare, devono essere vaporizzati nel processo, beh, c'è tutta quella storia delle frittate e delle uova rotte...

Oppure non abbiamo guardato il film Watchmen abbastanza volte per capire la battuta?

La frustrazione e la rabbia sono facili. Sono, come continuavamo a sentirci dire da quei fastidiosi film di Star Wars, la via verso il lato oscuro. Quindi il mio messaggio a tutti è semplice: fate attenzione a ciò che desiderate.

Oppure il prossimo scambio non riguarderà qualche migliaio di morti, ma qualche centinaio di milioni.

Ricordate la prima regola della geopolitica espressa dall’architetto del XX secolo, Winston Churchill: “Non ci sono alleanze, solo interessi”.

Quando mi guardo intorno e vedo l'enorme spinta all'interno delle Nazioni Unite per una soluzione a due stati in Medio Oriente, il mio “senso di ragno” formicola in un modo che ascolto sempre.

Detto questo, diamo un'occhiata un po' al quadro più ampio e vediamo cosa sta realmente succedendo nei nostri college e come il denaro affluisce in essi, perché è qui che potremmo trovare un filo conduttore.

Teniamo sempre presente che l’obiettivo è ed è sempre stato quello di indebolire gli Stati Uniti politicamente, socialmente ed economicamente. Quindi è mio compito essere scettico su ciò che vedo ora.

Mi sta diventando chiaro che il piano della cricca di Davos è quello di dividere il mondo su Israele/Palestina usando l'ONU come “voce della ragione” per quanto riguarda il “genocidio” a Gaza. L’Europa si è schierata pienamente a sostegno di questa idea, ma lo ha fatto per marginalizzare/neutralizzare l’influenza di Stati Uniti e Regno Unito sulle Nazioni Unite, ponendo le basi per una riforma di tale istituzione con Europa e Cina al timone.

La dipartita degli Stati Uniti sarebbe una buona cosa per loro, visto che porrebbe fine alla relativa influenza che hanno sulle Nazioni Unite. Ma questa è ora la parte apertamente dichiarata della strategia: Trump e il Congresso neoconservatore (Israele) contro Biden e gli europei/RoW (Palestina) sono solo pedine in questo gioco di potere.

Ovvero: fine degli Stati-nazione, default sul vecchio sistema, trasferimento del potere a istituzioni globaliste come l’ONU, controllo di tutte le rampe d'accesso alla civiltà con un passaporto digitale e denaro fasullo.

Non lasciatevi ingannare: a questa gente non gliene frega niente dei palestinesi. Sono un mezzo per raggiungere un fine e più Israele li uccide, più forte diventa la posizione della cricca di Davos.

E se non vi piace che lo sottolineo perché volete solo sentirvi bene mentre la vostra rabbia scorre, peggio per voi. È quello per cui mi pagate, anche se vi mette a disagio.

Detto questo, diamo un'occhiata a come la reazione istintiva del Congresso a queste proteste potrebbe essere stata una trappola tesa per questi idioti globalisti, che sono prevedibili quanto le 24 ore di una giornata.

Cos'è stato approvato dal Congresso con l'Antisemitism Awareness Act? In breve, una riformulazione dell’ordine esecutivo di Trump che vietava al governo federale di finanziare l’antisemitismo utilizzando come giustificazione l'Articolo VI del Civil Rights Act del 1965.

Se questa cosa è stata nei libri contabili per tutto questo tempo come ordine esecutivo, allora perché nessuno se n'è mai lamentato fino ad ora? Perché è stato resuscitato in questo momento per alimentare la folla indignata?

Per dare un po' di contesto, ecco la denuncia dell'ACLU:

In una lettera ai rappresentanti, l’ACLU ha scritto: “La legge federale proibisce già la discriminazione antisemita e le molestie da parte di entità finanziate dal governo federale. La HR 6090 non è quindi necessaria per proteggere dalla discriminazione antisemita; invece raffredderebbe la libertà di parola degli studenti nei campus universitari equiparando erroneamente all’antisemitismo le critiche al governo israeliano. Mentre sosteniamo pienamente gli sforzi per combattere la discriminazione e le molestie attraverso denunce e indagini dell'Articolo VI, ci opponiamo fermamente all'uso della definizione IHRA o a qualsiasi definizione di discriminazione che minacci di censurare o penalizzare il discorso politico protetto dal Primo Emendamento”.

Ciò che è in gioco qui non è il raffreddamento della libertà di parola, ma il sussidio di certi tipi di libertà di parola che poi travolge qualsiasi controargomentazione. In altre parole, il denaro delle tasse va a sovvenzionare il fiorire di questo virus mentale egualitario attraverso il Civil Rights Act che ora ha superato il limite della follia.

Quindi quello che l'ACLU sta effettivamente dicendo è che va bene che alcune persone ricevano soldi per parlare delle loro questioni ai sensi del Civil Rights Act, mentre altri devono semplicemente starsene buoni e accettarlo.

La libertà di parola nei campus universitari è stata un terreno di gioco dissestato sin dal 1965.

Se si vuole la libertà di parola nei campus, allora a tutti dovrebbe essere permesso di parlare liberamente senza essere sopraffatti da coloro che ottengono miliardi per avere una piattaforma più grande di altri.

E l’ACLU e altri ora vedono la trappola e stanno cercando di trasformarla in una questione ai sensi del Primo emendamento. Non che io giustifichi questa roba, ma dobbiamo smetterla di leggere i titoli dei giornali e reagire in modo spropositato a essi. Perché se il disegno di legge diventa legge, con tanto di svolta politica contro questo tipo di protesta, cosa che comprende sdraiarsi davanti al traffico, ecc., i soldi finiranno assolutamente. In effetti, sono già finiti.

In sostanza, questo disegno di legge non è tanto diverso dalle leggi anti-ONG approvate in Georgia sulla scia di quelle approvate precedentemente in Russia; sono un mezzo attraverso il quale il governo nazionale può tracciare il flusso di denaro esterno al Paese per scopi politici. Sono leggi letteralmente progettate per porre fine alle “rivoluzioni colorate”.

E non c’è nulla che possa portare la gente nelle strade a gridare “Diritti umani!” e fomentare la violenza sventolando come feticcio queste leggi. È così che Alexei Navalny, ad esempio, s'è costruito la sua fama in Russia.

Questi demoni della cricca di Davos vogliono un flusso di denaro illimitato e non rintracciabile per destabilizzare la società dalle fondamenta.

Nel caso di questa legge sull’antisemitismo l’obiettivo sono gli Stati Uniti, ma la traccia dei finanziamenti è ancora più perniciosa. Il Civil Rights Act è stato l’inizio di questo progetto, la spina dorsale della loro Lunga Marcia attraverso le Istituzioni; è stato un progetto lungo perché avevamo strutture legali e sociali talmente forti da resistere a queste sciocchezze.

Il Civil Rights Act è stato ciò che ha permesso al virus mentale marxista dell’egualitarismo di metastatizzarsi liberamente con i nostri soldi nei campus universitari per quasi 60 anni. Non c’è da stupirsi se stiano combattendo ogni tentativo d'indebolirlo.

Se si vuole provocare l’ira dei globalisti, vi basta semplicemente togliere loro le operazioni di riciclaggio di denaro.

Chiedete alla Cina chi c’era veramente dietro le rivolte di Hong Kong del 2018 e il trattato di estradizione. Si trattava di un’operazione britannica per proteggere gli asset dell’MI-6 nel sistema bancario di Hong Kong e l’ancoraggio del dollaro di Hong Kong al dollaro statunitense. I black bloc che vanno in giro disturbando il traffico, lanciando bombe?

Davvero pensavate che fossero spontanei?

O, meglio ancora, chiedete a Putin perché è un crimine in Russia registrare le ONG come agenti stranieri (FARA) come negli Stati Uniti. Vi ricordate che Obama invocò il Logan Act per convincere il consigliere di Trump, Paul Manafort? No? Giusto perché la storia è solo superficiale.

Quando lo facciamo noi è per la sicurezza nazionale, ma quando lo fa qualcun altro è una prova di delinquenza.

Sono tutte stronzate, gente.

Come sempre, la cricca di Davos ha visto un’opportunità per dividere e governare con l’ennesima crisi umanitaria e attivando il proprio popolo. Non si sarebbero mai aspettati che qualcuno avrebbe avuto il “coraggio” politico per difendere Israele, perché ci hanno detto che ora va bene avere i nostri Due Minuti di Odio nei confronti dei sionisti.

Se qualcuno tentasse di contestualizzare il conflitto in un modo diverso dalla narrativa dominante, otterrebbe l'etichetta di “complice di genocidio”.

Proprio come chiamavano tutti “Servo delle corporazioni (Occupy Wall Srett)”, “Pagato dai russi (Maidan)”, “Razzista! (Black Lives Matter)”, “Anti-Scienza (COVID)” e “Negazionista climatico”.

Hanno vissuto in un mondo in cui potevano gridare le loro insensate sciocchezze e nessuno al potere aveva il coraggio di alzarsi e dire loro di no: “State zitti e sedetevi”.

Potete essere arrabbiati e avere il vostro punto di vista, ma non sconvolgerete più il mondo per i vostri scoppi d'ira. Niente più soldi per questo. Le rivoluzioni colorate non saranno più gratuite negli Stati Uniti. Il Civil Rights Act può ora essere sfidato apertamente perché la cricca di Davos ha fatto il passo più lungo della gamba attaccando Israele negli Stati Uniti. Sebbene pensassero di poter interrompere il legame tra Stati Uniti e Israele, cosa che potrebbero finire per fare a lungo termine (una cosa assolutamente positiva), ciò metterà anche in moto lo smantellamento del Civil Rights Act come mezzo per finanziare il loro continuo controllo sulle nostre istituzioni.

Questa è la vera ironia di questa situazione e per molti americani programmati per credere alla Grande Cospirazione Ebraica, ciò di cui erano veramente arrabbiati era non essere in grado di parlare onestamente dei veri problemi. È davvero difficile credere che fosse stato fatto apposta?

Quindi è un momento di emozioni contrastanti, simile alla vecchia battuta di vostra suocera che precipita da un dirupo e finisce sulla vostra nuovissima Ferrari.

Detto questo, nutro immenso rispetto e simpatia per quei ragazzi là fuori sinceramente indignati per ciò che sta accadendo a Gaza. Parla dell’inizio del ritorno di una certa empatia negli Stati Uniti in un momento di vera crisi; mi dice che alcuni di loro ancora sono genuini.

Perché questa volta la cricca di Davos et.al. hanno morso la mano che nutriva la bestia egualitaria. Questa volta il flusso di denaro sta finendo perché gli ebrei, giustamente, ritirano il loro sostegno da tale infrastruttura.

Quando Bill Ackman smette di fare la sua donazione da $10 milioni all’anno ad Harvard a causa di questa storia, il gioco è cambiato.

Quando il MIT smetterà di utilizzare la diversità ai fini dell’ammissione, il gioco sarà cambiato.

Ora l’amministrazione Obama/Biden ha provato a prendere di mira gli ebrei e il risultato è stato un fallimento. Gli ebrei post-olocausto pagarono fior di quattrini al governo federale per il racket della protezione e quindi doveva essere garantita.

Fino a questo momento di vera crisi ovviamente, quindi ora quel sostegno è andato via.

Ed è per questo che finalmente si sono visti i college chiamare la polizia per sedare le proteste. Non perché stavano eseguendo gli “ordini dei padroni ebrei”, ma perché hanno visto i soldi prosciugarsi e hanno detto: “Oi vey!”

È davvero diverso da ciò che sta accadendo in altre aree del Paese riguardo ai criteri DEI, ESG e a tutte le altre stronzate marxiste con cui abbiamo avuto a che fare?

Ora sappiamo che l’intero controllo dell’intelligence negli Stati Uniti, il cosiddetto Quarto ramo del governo, è stato finanziato attraverso queste stronzate. Il denaro sempre più degradato fluiva attraverso il governo federale per sostenere ogni stupido progetto marxista di reclutamento attraverso l’Ivy League, basato sulla profilazione psicologica. È così, ad esempio, che hanno reclutato Jeffrey Epstein.

Le migliori scuole erano le migliori perché era lì che scorreva il denaro. Quei soldi si stanno esaurendo e stanno andando altrove. Adesso può iniziare l’opposizione politica ai costi reali del Civil Rights Act, perché può essere impugnato legalmente dato che non riceve più copertura politica dal Congresso.

Quel sistema di reclutamento di leader politici e servizi d'intelligence dovrà fare le valigie e trovare una nuova casa. E lo farà, perché queste persone sono locuste.

La parte migliore di tutto ciò è che i veri sionisti (che sono solo un’altra parte della massa di Davos) al Congresso sono caduti completamente in questa trappola. È un pantano politico. Biden è stato messo al potere per dare il via a questa spinta finale volta a distruggere gli Stati Uniti e la situazione si sta ribaltando a suo sfavore. In precedenza il Partito repubblicano non si sarebbe mai opposto alla “discriminazione anti-bianca” perché il costo politico sarebbe stato troppo alto. Come si separano gli ebrei dal resto dei “bianchi privilegiati”?

Nel linguaggio moderno di come dovremmo vedere lo status di vittima degli oppressi, il “potere ebraico” è al centro di tutto il razzismo “anti-bianco”. Quindi adesso odiate gli ebrei? Grande! Grazie per aver fatto davvero sapere a tutti qual è la vostra vera agenda.

Ora abbiamo le basi politiche per portare avanti le azioni legali attraverso i tribunali per smantellare il Civil Rrights Act. Piaccia o no, la chiave di tutto ciò è che la maggioranza degli americani che sostengono Israele è la chiave di tutto ciò e usarla per dire “Basta” è la trappola.

Soros et al. pensano che mettere il mondo contro Israele sia la vittoria. Forse. Va bene ora criticare Israele, ma che lo faccia il governo federale è contro l'Articolo 6 del Civil Rights Act. E ciò estende il gioco più importante, impedire agli Stati Uniti di cadere nella trappola della guerra civile e della dissoluzione, per un altro ciclo presidenziale.

Ora può essere una questione cruciale smettere di spendere i soldi dei contribuenti in programmi sociali progettati per distruggere il Paese. Questo è il primo passo concreto per riappropriarci delle nostre istituzioni.

Se non sprofondiamo nella guerra civile, si fermerà il crollo del mercato del debito statunitense, il che è un vantaggio sia per l’Europa che per la Cina. Questo è il motivo per cui c’è questo costante aumento dei conflitti esteri. È per questo che gli inglesi stanno dando il via libera all’Ucraina per usare i suoi missili all’interno della Russia. Gli Stati Uniti devono essere trasformati in un paria e l’attuale campagna contro Israele ne è l’avanguardia.

Per essere chiari, anche Netanyahu è caduto in questa trappola. Qui tutti usano tutti gli altri. Noi – americani, europei, palestinesi, russi, ucraini, africani, arabi e sì anche EBREI – siamo le vittime.

Quindi non incoraggiate nessuna delle due parti in questo conflitto. C’è violenza più che sufficiente nella storia del Medio Oriente per giustificare entrambe le posizioni. Il mio obiettivo con il pezzo di oggi è quello di farvi riflettere su come possiamo scendere dalla ruota dei criceti e smettere di giocare ai loro stupidi giochi, ribaltando la situazione geopolitica a nostro vantaggio.

Più spingiamo affinché questa guerra di logoramento psicologico finisca, più è probabile che potremo evitare il grosso degli spargimenti di sangue di cui hanno così disperatamente bisogno per giustificare un governo globale e la sofferenza universale.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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di Mark Jeftovic

Abbiamo sempre sostenuto che l’ascesa di Bitcoin e del mondo fintech decentralizzato avrebbero rappresentato un cambiamento nel sistema monetario e che sarebbe stato ingenuo aspettarsi che i “poteri costituiti” e l’establishment sarebbero crollati senza combattere.

Dopotutto coloro che traggono vantaggio dall'Effetto Cantillon hanno avuto il controllo monopolistico su un meccanismo che per oltre un secolo ha trasferito di nascosto la ricchezza di tutti gli altri nelle loro tasche.

Ora, all’improvviso, arriva Prometeo – sotto forma di Satoshi – e regala all’umanità un nuovo meccanismo, chiamato crittografia asimmetrica a chiave pubblica. In realtà è solo matematica, ma consente a ogni individuo sulla Terra di proteggersi dalla sopraccitata appropriazione indebita.

If you want to keep your #Bitcoin safe from the government, just make a seed phrase using Jeffrey Epstein’s clients’ names.

That way the FBI will never look for it.

— Walker⚡️ (@WalkerAmerica) April 26, 2024

Ancora peggio per le élite è che il loro meccanismo per sottrarre ricchezza alla società è denominato in unità di valuta fiat che perde il proprio valore nel tempo, mentre la plebe che fa uso di questo nuovo sistema sta scoprendo che il proprio potere d’acquisto aumenta nel tempo.

Coloro che traggono vantaggio dall'Effetto Cantillon stanno combattendo l’inesorabile cannibalizzazione del proprio potere d’acquisto a causa degli effetti perniciosi dell’uso del debito, mentre il nuovo sistema emergente è spinto da effetti di rete e buoni incentivi vecchio stile.

Per l’establishment, i banchieri centrali, i politici e i clientes probabilmente tutto sembra un po’... ingiusto.

Non sorprende, quindi, che chiunque tra loro che veda la proverbiale scritta sul muro si rifiuti di “ingoiare la pillola arancione”, e scaglierà tutto il potere, l’influenza e la corruzione istituzionalizzata a sua disposizione per cercare di prevenire la prospettiva di un’iper-Bitcoinizzazione.

Chokepoint 1.0 è stata un’iniziativa dell’era Obama, inaugurata nel 2013 ha posto le basi per escludere gli operatori finanziari non sanzionati dal sistema bancario preesistente: prestiti con anticipo sullo stipendio, reti di trasferimento di denaro – e, cosa più importante, ha messo fine da un giorno all’altro a un settore: il gioco d’azzardo online.

Chokepoint 2.0 è arrivato sulla scia del bear market crypto 2021-2022, le conseguenze del fallimento di FTX (insieme a Celsius, Terra/Luna e tutto il resto).

Abbiamo visto il presidente della SEC, Gary Gensler, combattere gli ETF su Bitcoin, la formazione dell'“esercito anti-criptovalute” di Liz Warren e un assalto coordinato contro le banche cripto-friendly – tra cui la stessa Silvergate Bank, che fino ad allora stava andando benissimo, ma alla fine ha ceduto.

Uno dei principali artefici di Chokepoint 2.0, Bharat Ramamurti, è ora a capo della CFTC.

Chokepoint 3.0 ha iniziato a essere riconoscibile a metà del 2023; la prima volta che ne ho sentito parlare è stato da Riot Blockchain a febbraio, in risposta al “sondaggio” pianificato dal governo degli Stati Uniti sull'utilizzo di elettricità da parte dei miner Bitcoin.

Da quando la SEC ha subito la sua umiliante perdita contro Bitcoin nell'approvazione degli ETF spot, sembra che il ritmo del FUD normativo negli Stati Uniti sia aumentato e ora provenga da tutte le parti:

• Abbiamo riportato in precedenza che la SEC ha preso di mira Uniswap;

• Da allora ha accusato Metamask di essere un broker di titoli senza licenza (Consensys, la società madre di Metamask, sta ora facendo causa alla SEC per “sequestro illegale”);

• I fondatori, l'Ad e il CTO di Samourai Wallet sono stati arrestati e accusati “di reati di riciclaggio di denaro e trasferimento di denaro senza licenza” secondo il comunicato rilasciato dal Dipartimento di Giustizia degli Stati Uniti.

• L'FBI ha lanciato un avvertimento ai consumatori affinché evitino di utilizzare exchange senza KYC:

“L'FBI mette in guardia gli americani dall'utilizzare servizi di trasmissione di denaro in criptovaluta che non sono registrati come Money Services Businesses (MSB) [...] evitate servizi di trasmissione di denaro in criptovaluta che non raccolgono informazioni Know Your Customer (KYC) dai clienti quando richiesto”.

Aggiungendo anche che:

“L'utilizzo di un servizio che non rispetta gli obblighi legali potrebbe comportare il rischio di perdere l'accesso ai fondi dopo che le operazioni delle forze dell'ordine hanno preso di mira tali imprese”.

Che parafrasando le parole dell'FBI significa “Not your keys = not your coins”.

• Il 26 aprile il Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) ha annunciato che avrebbe ridotto a zero il valore collaterale degli ETF con esposizione a Bitcoin o criptovalute a partire dal 30 aprile. Ha inoltre diminuito il valore delle obbligazioni spazzatura B1-B3 (spingendo il “valore dell’haircut” dal 50% al 70%).

L'elenco potrebbe continuare, ma ne approfondiremo un paio in più oltre l'elenco puntato.

Il vice segretario del Dipartimento del Tesoro degli Stati Uniti, Wally Adeyemo, ha avvertito che “i gruppi terroristici aumenteranno l'uso di valute virtuali e altri asset digitali”, anche se:

“Mentre continuiamo a valutare che i terroristi preferiscono utilizzare prodotti e servizi finanziari tradizionali, temiamo che senza un’azione del Congresso volta a fornirci gli strumenti necessari, l’uso di asset virtuali da parte di questi attori non potrà che aumentare [...]”.

Detto in modo diverso, e facendo eco a ciò che altre forze dell’ordine e ministeri governativi statunitensi hanno ripetutamente affermato nei loro studi, criminali e terroristi preferiscono ancora utilizzare il denaro fiat – vale a dire dollari statunitensi – per svolgere le loro attività.

Eppure nuovi poteri costituzionali sono in qualche modo necessari per risolvere un problema che non esiste.

A tal fine abbiamo ottenuto un'anteprima delle possibili informazioni fiscali relative agli asset digitali. Il nuovo modulo fiscale 1099-DA proposto per segnalare i “Proventi di asset digitali dalle transazioni” è stato pubblicato sul sito web dell'IRS:

Ben visibile per la sua presenza è l'opzione della casella “wallet unhosted” e possiamo vederla richiedere indirizzi per il trasferimento e persino ID delle transazioni.

Nulla di tutto ciò dovrebbe sorprendervi, infatti ci aspettavamo un aumento delle normative e della verifica dell’identità su tutte le strade che entrano o escono dalla criptoeconomia.

Adesso quando arriva il momento di togliere le fiches dal tavolo (se si sceglie di farlo) bisogna tenere conto dell'impatto fiscale e segnalarlo di conseguenza (qui in Canada il governo ha aumentato la tassa sulle plusvalenze dal 50% al 66,6% – portando l''impatto fiscale effettivo sui guadagni massimi dal 25% al ​​33%: entrerà in vigore il 27 giugno e copre Bitcoin e altre criptovalute).

Tenete inoltre presente che una delle nostre premesse principali è che la ricchezza è sempre più un viaggio di sola andata verso la criptoeconomia senza mai ritornare al sistema fiat, che riteniamo abbia una durata limitata. Ciò significa che il sistema finanziario mondiale si biforcherà inevitabilmente in due sistemi monetari separati.

Un sistema basato sulle CBDC in cui il denaro viene sostituito da punteggi di credito sociale; in cui i servi neo-feudali arrancano attraverso vite di silenziosa disperazione, dove la loro quotidianità è ottimizzati per obiettivi collettivisti e di “decrescita”. “Socialismo d'emergenza”, per usare il termine di George Gilder.

E una rete di cripto-anarchia – marmorizzata in questa utopia mondiale e neo-marxista, sarà costituita da numerose enclavi, micro-sovranità, città-stato e persino caste in cui la ricchezza reale è detenuta da individui che sono relativamente liberi di esercitare il libero arbitrio. È lo scenario “The Sovereign Invidividual”, scritto in grande.

Da che parte della Grande Biforcazione vi troverete è praticamente da vedere in questo momento. Le CBDC rivolte al commercio al dettaglio sono ancora lontane, misurate in termini di anni, di conseguenza c'è ancora tempo per schierarsi dalla parte giusta dell'imminente apartheid monetario.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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di Finn Andreen

Sebbene la classe politica occidentale critichi costantemente la natura “autoritaria” di alcune nazioni, bisognerebbe prima spazzare davanti alla propria porta tanto per parafrasare Johann von Goethe. Infatti gli stati-nazione occidentali e le istituzioni internazionali da anni intaccano la libertà e i diritti sia degli individui che delle imprese.

In primo luogo le pressioni fiscali e inflazionistiche esorbitanti sulle popolazioni occidentali non dovrebbero mai essere considerate “normali” o “accettabili”; sono gravi violazioni dei diritti di proprietà in sé e per sé. Queste pressioni da sole aiutano a spiegare la stagnazione economica e la decadenza politica delle società occidentali. Inoltre alla polizia e alle forze di sicurezza occidentali sono stati conferiti poteri precedentemente impensabili, molti dei quali ora permanenti. Wikileaks e altri hanno rivelato i programmi di sorveglianza di massa su intere popolazioni imbastiti dalle agenzie di intelligence occidentali.

La censura e la propaganda sono pratiche comuni da parte dei governi e dei media generalisti, soprattutto nelle democrazie occidentali dove il controllo dell’opinione pubblica è fondamentale. Ma la violazione dei diritti in Occidente ha preso una svolta drammatica con i confinamenti senza precedenti e ingiustificati di persone sane durante la pandemia Covid-19, con l'obbligatorietà della vaccinazione e con gli altri scandali politici che hanno riguardato questi vaccini.

All’ordine del giorno ci sono ulteriori restrizioni alla libertà di parola su alcune piattaforme social. Nuove leggi, come il RESTRICT Act (Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology) negli Stati Uniti e il Digital Services Act in Europa, vengono approvate in modo antidemocratico. Sebbene all'apparenza vengono propagandate come protezione per le persone, consentono all’élite oligarchica occidentale di aumentare il proprio controllo sulla società, attuare la propria agenda globalista e proteggersi dal dissenso.

Nel futuro prossimo le cose probabilmente andranno molto peggio: dall’allarmante controllo capillare delle vite individuali attraverso i wallet digitali e le valute digitali delle banche centrali alle gravi  conseguenze economiche e sociali dei “Green Deal”, tutti i campanelli d’allarme suonano già da tempo.

Alla luce di queste gravi violazioni dei diritti e le minacce di ulteriori violazioni, ci si potrebbe aspettare una reazione da parte della maggioranza dei destinatari. È vero, ci sono sacche di disobbedienza politica, come le proteste degli agricoltori in Europa, ma si tratta di movimenti marginali di persone che stanno sperimentando in prima persona le linee di politica sopra menzionate.

Ci sono segnali positivi di disapprovazione tra la popolazione in generale, come una misurabile perdita di fiducia sia nei media generalisti occidentali che nei leader politici, ma non c’è una massiccia opposizione a queste evidenti violazioni dei diritti individuali. Quindi, prima di chiedersi quali siano le condizioni necessarie per un cambiamento politico radicale in Occidente, è necessario analizzare questa indifferenza.

L'abbandono dei diritti individuali

Il mondo occidentale è stato in grado di produrre testi importanti come la Dichiarazione francese dei diritti dell’uomo e del cittadino e la Carta dei diritti degli Stati Uniti, entrambi del 1789. Il loro scopo era quello di garantire la protezione dei diritti e delle libertà individuali contro la coercizione statale. Per più di due secoli questi due documenti hanno svolto un certo ruolo nel frenare le violazioni più eclatanti dei diritti individuali da parte dei governi occidentali contro i loro sudditi.

Va notato, tuttavia, che questi documenti non solo sono stati interpretati in modo abbastanza “arbitrario”, ma sono stati violati, anche apertamente, in molte occasioni (ad esempio, la coscrizione forzata e la tassazione, per citarne solo due). Ciò è inevitabile quando tali diritti sono tutelati solo dalla volontà dei legislatori e dei giudici di aderire a vecchie pergamene, per quanto “sacre” spesso si pretenda che siano. Considerando la protezione relativamente scarsa dei diritti individuali che questi documenti hanno di fatto fornito, non sorprende che tali diritti – in particolare quello più fondamentale, il diritto di proprietà – possano essere indeboliti tanto facilmente oggi.

Probabilmente l’attuale sfrontata violazione dei diritti può verificarsi per diverse ragioni. In primo luogo, nella cultura postmodernista prevalente, i significati delle parole sono soggettivi, positivisti e non devono essere presi sul serio. Ciò si riflette nell’attuale zeitgeist che considera l’intervento statalista non solo accettabile, ma anche un mezzo migliore per muovere la società rispetto ai “vecchi e pittoreschi principi”. Un buon esempio di ciò sono le misure draconiane che si prevede verranno imposte per combattere il “cambiamento climatico”.

In secondo luogo, i diritti individuali sono solitamente disattesi dalla maggioranza perché sono dati per scontati. Questa è l'ingenua convinzione della “fine della storia”, secondo la quale le “democrazie liberali” occidentali sono l'apice dello sviluppo morale e politico dell'umanità. È l’idea, comune tra le persone di buon cuore ma politicamente ignoranti, che i diritti individuali non necessitano più di attenzione perché sono già stati acquisiti, una volta per tutte.

Oggi in Occidente non si capisce che la lotta per la libertà non finisce mai. Come disse Benjamin Constant in un famoso discorso all’assemblea francese del 1819: “Per beneficiare della libertà che vorrebbe, il popolo deve esercitare una sorveglianza attiva e costante sui suoi rappresentanti”. Altrimenti, come scrisse George Santayana: “Se tutti gli interessati non manterranno un occhio vigile sul corso degli affari pubblici e non si pronunceranno frequentemente sulla loro condotta, presto si renderanno conto del fatto che sono stati ignorati e ridotti in schiavitù”. Tali parole di saggezza non sono mai state assorbite dalla popolazione occidentale.

L’attenzione ai diritti positivi

Il terzo modo in cui i diritti individuali vengono compromessi è quando vengono interpretati in modo troppo ampio e quindi diluiti. Ciò accade quando vengono ampliati per includere non solo i diritti negativi, ma anche quelli positivi, quelli che ci si aspetta che lo stato faccia rispettare. Ciò legittima sia la crescita di quest'ultimo sia la sua coercitiva e ingiusta redistribuzione della ricchezza al fine di garantire “uguaglianza di opportunità” o, peggio, “uguaglianza di risultati”.

Tale pensiero permea la società occidentale odierna, anche nella Dichiarazione dei diritti umani delle Nazioni Unite, la quale parla di “diritti” positivi come il diritto al lavoro, il diritto alla parità di retribuzione, o il diritto al riposo e al tempo libero. Questi ovviamente non sono “diritti” nello stesso senso del diritto naturale alla proprietà e la loro applicazione da parte dello stato viola necessariamente i diritti di proprietà altrui. Infatti, come scrisse Murray Rothbard nel suo libro L’etica della libertà: “Il concetto stesso di 'diritti' è 'negativo', poiché delimita le aree dell’azione di una persona nelle quali nessun essere umano può interferire”.

Come sempre, bisogna istruirsi sulla libertà

Può esserci un solo risultato da questo abbandono dei diritti individuali da parte della maggioranza in Occidente: la loro strisciante violazione evidente oggi. Se i principi dei diritti naturali fossero davvero insegnati, invece del vacuo mantra ripetuto fino alla nausea secondo cui “tutti gli uomini sono creati uguali”, il nefasto programma di controllo imposto dalla minoranza dominante potrebbe essere contrastato molto più facilmente.

Vale la pena ricordare che la prima frase della Dichiarazione dei diritti dell’uomo e del cittadino afferma: “L’ignoranza, l’oblio o il disprezzo dei diritti umani sono le uniche cause delle disgrazie pubbliche e della corruzione del governo”. Gli sforzi devono quindi continuare senza sosta per informare e istruire le persone sui principi di libertà e sull’importanza di proteggere i diritti negativi contro i continui tentativi di violarli.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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di Octavio Bermudez

L'amministrazione di Javier Milei sta suscitando meritati commenti, sia positivi che negativi. La discussione critica è vitale poiché è il primo presidente libertario, quindi mantenere una distanza tra il libertarismo stesso e le sue azioni di governo è un must se i libertari non vogliono cadere insieme a lui nel caso in cui i suoi piani di governo dovessero fallire.

Solo perché è un libertario e ha avuto accesso alla presidenza non significa che abbia il sostegno immanente del resto del movimento libertario, pertanto non sarebbe saggio salire sul suo carro dei vincitori nel breve termine. Mantenere un atteggiamento critico finché non verranno mostrati ulteriori risultati è la soluzione migliore.

Una grande domanda tra gli ambienti libertari e non si è diffusa da quando Milei ha iniziato come outsider e ha guadagnato una grande popolarità: sta provocando una rivoluzione all'insegna della libertà in Argentina? La popolazione argentina sta gravitando verso il libero mercato e si è allontanata dallo statalismo? Sicuramente sono domande difficili a cui rispondere, in questo articolo cercheremo di avvicinarci a una risposta.

Recenti sondaggi suggeriscono che, nonostante la recessione, Milei mantiene un'immagine altamente positiva tra la popolazione. Al Congresso non ha ancora avuto successo, ma con gli strumenti esecutivi a sua disposizione ha apportato cambiamenti sia reali che simbolici nella vita politica. Dall’assicurare che l’inflazione monetaria cessasse alla vendita di aerei e veicoli di proprietà statale (e molto altro ancora), sia i cambiamenti reali che quelli simbolici hanno avuto un impatto sull'opinione pubblica dato che ha mantenuto la promessa di ridurre la presenza dell'apparato statale nella vita delle persone.

È interessante notare che la migliore analisi del fenomeno Milei non è venuta dai suoi stessi sostenitori ma dai detrattori: una fatta dai sociologi Pablo Seman e Nicolás Welschinger. Gli autori sottolineano molte ragioni per cui il panorama pubblico è cambiato da quando Milei è entrato nell’arena politica. La loro analisi è anche autocritica, poiché ammettono molti fallimenti da parte dei politici e delle istituzioni progressiste.

L'elettore progressista sembrava disposto a sacrificare l'efficienza a favore della proprietà pubblica, nel senso che non importava se le istituzioni pubbliche fossero inefficienti, se si trattava di proprietà statale allora tutto andava bene. Questo tipo di dogmatismo sembrava indistruttibile, poiché resisteva a qualsiasi calamità prodotta dalle istituzioni statali tramite la loro inefficienza. Tuttavia tale e apparente dogmatismo non era così indistruttibile come sembrava, dato che il progressismo ha portato i suoi sostenitori a un livello così estremo di declino economico che il sostegno delle sue istituzioni non è stato più dogmatico ma basato sull’esperienza.

Questo crollo del discorso progressista ha generato frustrazioni e sogni infranti di cui Milei ha tratto vantaggio: ha identificato gli autori del disastro argentino, chiamandoli “casta”, e ha spiegato dettagliatamente come le istituzioni statali siano arrivate alla situazione attuale. Milei ha portato speranza agli elettori disillusi che non necessariamente si identificavano con lui ma vedevano coerenza e un bagno di realtà nel suo discorso. L’“estado presente” (la versione argentina dello stato sociale) si è trasformato da diritto positivo in circostanza di sofferenza; la sua difesa è ancora più difficile di prima. I progressisti si riducono sempre più ai loro circoli dogmatici.

I sostenitori di Milei, come spiegano Selman e Welschinger, sono riuniti in tre cerchi concentrici che alimentano le forze del malcontento nei confronti della “casta”. Il primo cerchio è quello dei “fondamentalisti del mercato”, gli ideologi, a conoscenza della dottrina di estrema destra e libertaria: essi creano la base che viene percepita dal secondo e terzo cerchio di elettori, i quali iniziano poi a sostenere Milei nelle diverse fasi della corsa elettorale.

L'ascesa di Milei avviene mentre la connessione tra le élite progressiste e il popolo si erode a un punto tale che il discorso statalista sembra provenire da un'altra dimensione. Le realtà egualitarie degenerano e finiscono per diventare parodie di sé stesse.

C’è la richiesta di un quadro che consenta agli sforzi individuali di portare prosperità e qui entra in gioco l'individualismo di gran parte della popolazione argentina, che finalmente intravede la strada verso la stabilità e il successo nel duro lavoro individuale. Il sacrificio è ciò che porta a risultati per questa parte della popolazione, la quale non richiede doni ma opportunità. Milei ha saputo rappresentare questi sentimenti facendo la differenza tra “la gente de bien”, la gente per bene, e “la casta”. La casta è descritta come attori pubblici parassiti che vivono come sanguisughe sulle spalle delle persone per bene; essa mira solo alla propria sopravvivenza, ovvero lo status quo. Milei è arrivato per smascherarli.

Alcuni analisti politici hanno espresso preoccupazione per il piano di Milei di ribaltare lo status quo: se il benessere della nazione dev'essere sacrificato per mantenere un sistema politico “ordinato”, allora è necessario sacrificarlo poiché i sistemi politici corrotti sono difficili da ricostruire. Questa tesi non solo è lontana dalle buone intenzioni e dalla preoccupazione per la sofferenza delle persone, ma non rappresenta affatto il piano di Milei. Non è arrivato per distruggere, ma per riorganizzare. Come lui stesso ha affermato, uno dei suoi obiettivi politici è riordinare il teatro politico in parti ideologiche, quindi gli elettori collettivisti votano per i partiti collettivisti e i sostenitori del libero mercato votano per i partiti del libero mercato. Questa la logica per ora sembra aver ottenuto qualche risultato.

I poteri dello status quo sono stati disconnessi dalla popolazione, non rappresentano più “il popolo” ma solo i propri interessi. Pertanto le voci esterne hanno adesso un tono più alto di quanto accadrebbe in circostanze normali e Milei è diventato una di queste voci esterne. Dà dignità ai suoi sostenitori riconoscendoli come individui che possono cambiare il loro futuro rispetto alla decadenza decretata dalla “casta”.

Al di sopra dei risultati ottenuti una volta in carica, Milei ha ottenuto una vittoria in termini di comunicazione: rendere il pensiero del libero mercato più popolare che mai. Ciò non significa che le persone siano improvvisamente libertarie, ma il cosiddetto “Zeitgeist” si è allontanato dal collettivismo. Questo cambiamento di direzione dev'essere sostenuto e capitalizzato se si vuole ottenere una vittoria a lungo termine. In caso contrario, il momento di Milei passerà alla storia come l'ennesima fantasia del “libero mercato”.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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di Martin George Holmes

Uno dei peggiori romanzi del diciannovesimo secolo, sia dal punto di vista estetico che politico, è Anno Domini 2000 (1889) di Julius Vogel. Dal punto di vista dello stile è orrendo, perché l'autore era un burocrate senza abilità letterarie; dal punto di vista politico, poi, è spaventoso perché prevede un futuro in cui l’Impero britannico sarebbe sopravvissuto fino al secondo millennio. Rimane in stampa fino ancora oggi.

Il romanzo di Vogel è rilevante perché confuta i recenti tentativi degli studiosi di ritrarre l'Impero britannico come un esempio di libertà. Neoconservatori come Niall Ferguson e Nigel Biggar sostengono che l’Impero britannico incarnava i principi liberali e li diffondeva in tutto il mondo. Sostengono che il liberalismo viene assicurato attraverso il potere dell'impero e quindi si struggono per la sua fine. Dal loro punto di vista solo la volontà degli Stati Uniti dopo il 1945 ha impedito una crisi del liberalismo occidentale.

Una consapevolezza anche di base della teoria dei diritti naturali demolisce questa retorica “la forza è giusta”. Murray N. Rothbard una volta definì la Gran Bretagna come “l’impero più spietato sulla faccia della Terra”. Il suo ragionamento era basato sull'ampio e duraturo disprezzo dei diritti naturali da parte dell'Impero britannico.

Il liberalismo autentico difende, per principio, la dignità delle singole persone e delle comunità. L’Impero britannico, in netto contrasto, si diffuse calpestando i diritti delle popolazioni indigene di tutto il mondo (che furono brutalmente “civilizzate” attraverso la conquista) e dei suoi stessi cittadini (che furono tassati in modo aggressivo e arruolati per rendere possibile tale conquista). Questo progetto statalista, questa missione “civilizzatrice”, è un anatema per il liberalismo. C’erano elementi liberali nella politica britannica, ma gli imperialisti statalisti li avevano emarginati verso la fine del XIX secolo.

Le parole e le azioni dei leader dell'impero rafforzano questo punto, come illustra proprio Anno Domini 2000. Vogel fu un importante politico imperiale della fine del XIX secolo; per due volte fu premier della Nuova Zelanda, di cui abolì le province e distrusse l'economia attraverso costosi lavori pubblici. Poi andò in Gran Bretagna e lavorò con il partito conservatore dell'arcimperialista Benjamin Disraeli.

Vogel scrisse Anno Domini 2000 quando molti pensatori britannici erano preoccupati per la sicurezza del loro impero. Come difendersi dai rivali? Come poteva l’impero, essendo così disparato, rimanere compatto economicamente e politicamente? La risposta, secondo lui e molti altri, stava nella federazione. Dando alle colonie una maggiore partecipazione negli affari imperiali, i legami di lealtà sarebbero stati rafforzati. La missione “civilizzatrice” sarebbe potuta andare avanti senza sosta. Vogel scrisse Anno Domini 2000 per rendere popolare questa idea tra le masse. Infatti il romanzo ha una trama leggera (alcuni valorosi lealisti imperiali combattono una cospirazione per indebolire l'impero) e un'analisi politica pesante.

I federazionisti imperiali pretendevano di sostenere i principi liberali, ma in realtà li distruggevano per il bene dello stato. La futura federazione nel libro di Vogel collega i territori dell'impero attraverso la coercizione e lo sciovinismo. Le forze armate sono immense: la marina federale la più grande di tutte le altre flotte messe insieme, le varie forze di terra ammontano a oltre due milioni di soldati e una flotta di incrociatori aerei si libra sopra le nuvole pronta a proiettare potenza militare ovunque nel mondo nel giro di poche ore. Una rigida gerarchia sociale, intrecciata con quella militare, domina la vita pubblica. Per mantenere contente le classi inferiori, ci sono generosi programmi di assistenza sociale. Anche le persone normodotate che rifiutavano di lavorare possono vivere comodamente grazie allo stato sociale.

Per pagare questo apparato gonfio, l’impero tassa incessantemente i suoi cittadini e regola centralmente l’economia. Il commercio estero e l’impiego di stranieri all’interno dell’impero sono scoraggiati; esso funziona come un blocco protezionista, i suoi cittadini hanno il comando di commerciare tra loro e di vedere tutti gli altri come potenziali nemici.

L’apparato federale garantisce che le colonie siano ben rappresentate in Parlamento. La sede del governo cambia periodicamente posizione per indicare il suo impegno nelle relazioni inter-impero. Tuttavia questa federazione non è una libera unione di popoli: l'Impero britannico rifiuta la Rivoluzione americana di stati indipendenti che si uniscono volontariamente per una causa comune e rimangono uniti solo finché le loro popolazioni lo desiderano. La federazione imperiale britannica è dettata dall’alto e mantenuta con la forza.

Come affermava lo stesso Vogel: “Mettere in discussione anche la semplice volontà di far andare avanti l’Impero [...] o permettere la separazione di uno qualsiasi dei domini era ritenuto un grave tradimento; e non era mostrata alcuna misericordia al colpevole”. La trama conferma questa idea: quando un certo Lord Reginald Paramatta lancia un movimento separatista in Australia, le autorità lo perseguitano fino ai confini della Terra. Allo stesso modo l’ostilità al vero liberalismo provoca tensioni tra l’Impero britannico e la Repubblica americana, facendo scoppiare la guerra quando il presidente americano, riaffermando l'indipendenza dalla Gran Bretagna, offende l'imperatore britannico. In difesa dell’onore nazionale gli inglesi lanciano un’invasione su vasta scala delle coste americane. Gli incrociatori aerei neutralizzano la costa orientale, l'esercito americano viene sconfitto in battaglia e il New England viene annesso al Canada. Vogel celebra questa aggressione come “il 4 luglio recuperato”: una vendetta per la Dichiarazione d'Indipendenza dei coloni americani nel 1776.

Anno Domini 2000 dimostra che l’Impero britannico non era un bastione del liberalismo. Vogel non predisse il futuro in modo accurato sotto tutti gli aspetti e non rifletteva l'opinione di tutti, tuttavia manifesta la convinzione condivisa da tutti gli imperialisti britannici di tutte le epoche: che la collettività abbia la priorità sull'individuo e che la missione “civilizzatrice” dell'Impero britannico gli conferisce il diritto di opprimere altri popoli e costringere i propri cittadini.

La difesa neoconservatrice dell’Impero britannico, in altre parole, è fallace sotto ogni punto di vista, soprattutto quello morale. Per una vera comprensione della tradizione liberale, bisogna rivolgersi a eventi come la Rivoluzione americana e a pensatori come Murray N. Rothbard.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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The House of Representatives passed the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act” on May 2, by a vote of 320-91 in reaction to demonstrations on numerous university campuses and elsewhere against the brutal and genocidal policy of Israel in Gaza. The Act has now been sent to the Senate, where it seems certain to pass. This is an extremely dangerous bill that could criminalize the Bible, many Christian Churches, as well as any negative remarks about Israel and Jews. In brief, it threatens us with totalitarian thought control. We must do everything we can to oppose it.

First, let’s take an overview of the Act. It adopts the very broad definition of anti-Semitism of the “International Holocaust Remembrance Association.”  The Act calls this definition “a vital tool which helps individuals understand and identify the various manifestations of antisemitism.”

What does this definition say? “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed in hatred of Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” How you can be anti-Semitic toward someone who isn’t Jewish isn’t immediately apparent.

The authors of the definition give someone examples of what they consider anti-Semitic. These include saying that the Jews control the media and Congress, saying that Israel is a racist state, propagating the “blood libel” that the Jews killed Jesus, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, and claiming that Jews in America have “dual loyalty.”

As a number of writers including Tucker Carlson and John Zmirak have pointed out, the definition allows large parts of the Bible to be banned. The most famous such passage is Matthew 27: 25. “His blood be upon us and our children.” This is the “blood libel” that the Act wouldn’t let us teach!

You might object that the Act would never be enforced in this way. The American people would never stand for it! But it would always be there, like a sword of Damocles, hanging over our heads. And don’t be so sure it wouldn’t be enforced! The Scottish Hate Speech Act was passed in 2021, and people predicted it would never be enforced. Beginning in April 2024, though, it has been enforced, and many people have been fined and imprisoned for violating it.

The biggest problem with the Act, though, isn’t the definition of anti-Semitism. If it were, we could substitute a more reasonable definition, such as “hatred for all Jews.” Even if this were done, however, we would still be in an untenable position. Banning any kind of speech, whether it is good or bad, is incompatible with a free society. As the great Murray Rothbard has taught us, all rights are property rights. Everyone can set the rules for speech on his own property, and no one has the right to control what anyone says on someone else’s property. This includes speech which counts as “offensive.” Of course, we don’t live in a libertarian society, but we should come as close as we can in practice to it. This means following the strictest possible interpretation of the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law. .  .abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”. ‘No law” means “no law” and that includes laws against so-called “hate speech.” As the great legal scholar Dr. Wanjiru Njoya says, “Jews must learn to live in a world where people say offensive things about them, same as anyone else. You shouldn’t jail people for saying offensive things about Jews or Israel.”

We need to ask ourselves, why the Act has been passed at the present time. The answer is obvious. It is to block all criticism of Israel. And Israel should be criticized, because of the genocidal policy it is following in Gaza. The US government, led by brain-dead Biden and his gang of neocon controllers, have supported Israel with money and advanced weapons throughout Israel’s invasion. Anthony Blinken, “our” Secretary of State, flew to Tel Aviv as soon as the invasion started and, standing beside war criminal “Bibi” Netanyahu, said, “I come before you not only as the United States secretary of state but also as a Jew.” See here.

Is it “anti-Semitic” to report this? One of the examples the International Holocaust Remembrance Day Association’s definition of anti-Semitism is to say that Jews have a strong influence on American foreign policy. But it’s the simple truth.

And what policy do Blinken and his cohorts support? It is Israel’s policy to exterminate the Palestinians who live in Gaza. The great Ron Unz has called it “the greatest televised massacre of civilians in the history of the world.” Under the Act, Unz could be prosecuted for saying that, because saying that Israelis are committing genocide, or comparing then to Nazis, is forbidden.

As if that were not bad enough, conditions in Gaza are getting worse. Because of Israel’s constant bombing and interdiction of food shipments to Gaza, a famine is occurring there. According to Cindy McCain, the Director of the World Food Program, “There is famine, full-blown famine, in the north, and it’s moving its way south.” Now it will reach the south, because Israel has just blocked food shipments to Rafah.

Should calling attention to horrendous news like this be an offense punishable by jail? You don’t have to be a libertarian to recognize that we can’t have a free society under the censorship conditions this Act would impose.

Many Jews would have to be banned by this standard. The eminent Jewish historian Omer Bartov said last November that “functionally and rhetorically we may be watching an ethnic cleansing operation that could quickly devolve into genocide.” His worst fears have come to pass since then. He too would be banned under the Act. So would Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer.

Jews who don’t criticize Israeli’s war could also be banned under the Act. For example, some very religious Jews are anti-Zionist and don’t recognize Israel as a legitimate state. They could be charged with anti-Semitism. Also, what about Orthodox Jews who don’t recognize conversions to Judaism supervised by Reform rabbis? If they say that such converts aren’t Jewish, they could be charged under the Act as anti-Semitic. So could Reform rabbis who mock the Orthodox as benighted reactionaries.

One of the oddest aspects of this whole deplorable business is that the Act bans statements that the Jews have a lot of political power. One wonders how the Act passed by the astonishing margin of 320 to 91 without pressure from the Israeli Lobby. The sellout Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is bought and paid for. How then can the Act ban a statement that is obviously true and that the passage of the Act shows to be true?

One target of the Act is the heroic university students who are protesting what is going on in Gaza. The sponsors of the Act depict them as lawbreakers who need to be suppressed to preserve “law and order”, but students protests against criminal wars are part of the American tradition. Student protests against LBJ’s criminal war against Vietnam helped bring down his presidency. Libertarians and all other lovers of freedom should never forget that we are anti-war.

Of course the neocons behind the Act don’t see matters this way. These days, students often learn about news through social media platforms like TikTok. Many students learned about what was going on in Gaza though discussions on that platform, and because of this, the neocons in Congress voted to force TikTok’s parent company to sell it within 270 days; if not, it will be banned in America. As Dr. Ron Paul notes, “ The head of the Anti-Defamation League was actually caught on tape complaining about the “TikTok problem.’”

When we talk about the neocons, we should never forget that they got us into the disastrous invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush. The US government killed a million people –half of them children thanks to the US starvation blockade — and cost us trillions of dollars. Despite this—or maybe because of it—neocons like Robert Kagan still praise the Iraq war today. This is the sort of person behind the Act.

In my opinion, the evidence for Israeli genocide is overwhelming, and those who want to ban people from saying so are calling for a ban on the truth. But suppose you disagree. You should still oppose the Act. As John Stuart Mill said in his great On Liberty (1859): “But the peculiar evil of silencing an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race;. . .those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

The great Albert Jay Nock said about censorship that “this degrading enervation of a whole people is rather a heavy offset to the benefits gained by a policy of expediency.”

You shouldn’t be surprised that neocons like Kagan smear this great libertarian and anti-war crusader as an anti-Semite.

We should take the opportunity provided by the Act to engage in a full and frank discussion of American foreign policy. Why are we supplying billions of dollars in aid to a country engaging in genocide? Why are we supporting Ukraine in a war against Russia that could lead to a thermonuclear war? What groups benefit from these policies? By the way, if you are looking for real anti-Semites, you should start with the pro-Nazi Azov Brigade backing the tyrannical dictatorship of Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Let’s do everything we can to get rid of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act and to return to our traditional foreign policy of non-intervention, following the guidance of Dr. Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard.

The post Beware of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act appeared first on LewRockwell.

The main reason that “the West” (USA/Europe/NATO) does not want a defeat or an end to the “Ukraine crisis” is that once it stops, Russia will most surely stop its “Special Operation” in Ukraine and pull out its forces (at least its “offence” forces, leaving perhaps some “defence” in strategic positions).

But the point here is that the lies and bullshit of “the West” would then be plainly exposed.

Because what in truth was the reason for all this money, etc. that “the West” has being pouring into this “fight against Russia”??

The idea is that Russia/Putin want and intend to capture the former Soviet satellite countries (Eastern Europe) and then march into central and Western Europe (hence the ridiculous Putin/Hitler analogy).

But once the truth is revealed that Russia has no interest in and no intention of doing any of this, then there is nothing left to support the demonisation and punishment (sanctions, etc.) of Russia, no?

Demonise and punish a country that is simply going about the business of peacefully supporting its own interests absent any actual aggression on others?

Most of the dumbed-down public (and that, for sure, is much of the public) really does confuse present-day Russia with the former Soviet Union, not realising that the whole “Communist” thing was strictly speaking a Bolshevik (Khazarian?) enterprise and that present-day Russia has happily left its Communist past behind, returning to Christian Orthodoxy, traditional values, love of country, etc. (See Tucker Carlson interview of Aleksandr Dugin).

The dumbed-down constituents of the public are also 100% clueless about recent Russian history, meaning what took place in Russia in the early 1990s and the way in which drunken-Yeltsin was a Western pawn, that is until his final awakening when he admitted that he had made mistakes.

Enter Putin, with currently an 80%+ public approval rating; an old-fashioned “statesman” in today’s world of puppet politicians.

That the dumbed-down public erroneously believes that the big global “enemy” is Russia under the leadership of Putin is nothing less than “suicidal.”

Because in today’s world, Russia is perhaps the major saving grace.

The post Thoughts on Russia appeared first on LewRockwell.

Realism seems to have fallen out of favor in the West, but it just might be ready for a brilliant return to the stage.

I’m expecting an abrupt end of the Zelensky regime in Kiev, followed by cessation of hostilities. A settlement on what is left of, and for, Ukraine, will be conducted between the two neighbors.  The people of Ukraine, and much of the world, already hold NATO and the US — incoherent cheerleaders of war, and under-impressive suppliers of weapons – responsible for starting and extending an unwinnable war, delaying and derailing peace, and permanently ruining their landscape and economy.   Because no one east or west of Washington, DC can figure out exactly who controls or speaks for the US government, Blinken, Biden and Boy Wonder Jake will not be involved or invited to the table.  Blinken will frown very, very, very seriously, Jake will try a CIA workaround (or maybe a reach-around, I won’t judge), and Biden will have another bowl of ice cream.

Following this settlement between Kiev and Moscow, we will learn the real reasons for the neocon and NATO obsession with Ukraine.  Not surprisingly, they are: 1) US and NATO desire to completely control the Black Sea – even though (or perhaps because) many of their ships can’t even get there without multiple maintenance stops; 2) US and EU desire to hide, and continue, their involvement in money laundering, illicit weapons and terrorism export, human smuggling, as well as the dirty money being made by western politicians and their families and companies via Ukraine; 3) Ukraine’s natural resources, including underground mineral deposits, hydroelectric potential and agriculture – not for the energy, construction or food output but to better profit in the fake economy of carbon offsets, credits and green energy subsidies; and 4) to gain a new free-for-all zone for NATO exercises, weapons system testing, military airspace, and biological and nuclear research and development, far removed from regulatory restrictions and NIMBY attitudes that exist in Western Europe and the US.  Sadly, we won’t find out that neoconservatives hate Russia and love snuff films, because we already knew that.

I’m expecting to see what happens to Zionism as a theory when the world it imagined, promoted, and advertised – an angry, hateful world that refuses Israel trade, respect, or legitimacy – suddenly becomes real. The idea of dangerous, powerful enemies united against Israel has, seemingly overnight, become a global anti-Zionist golem, and not a particularly predictable one.  Israel’s leaders and many Zionist believers entered into the destruction of Gaza with rage and contempt, a pre-existent plan for the whole accession of Gaza, and plenty of military capability, bombs and bulldozers. What they discovered was that we live in a world filled with people who watch wars in real time on their phones, who recognize brutality, who think land theft and colonial attitudes are bad, who have been taught bullying is wrong, and that the wealthy should lift up and aid the impoverished, not kill and starve them.  The Gaza strategy – for over 70 years – has been a misjudgment, and a mistake, one that will be continued to the end by Israel, because its very Zionism insists upon it, and cannot stop, much less reverse course.

A new phase of Israel’s evolution is coming, where the price of being a tiny, aggressive, paranoid state has risen substantially, almost overnight. Zelensky had visions of creating for NATO and the US a new Israel in Europe, a bristling, shining, militaristic sword for the will of the West.  That’s not going to work out as planned, but we might instead see what a new North Korea in the eastern Mediterranean looks like.  When no one trades with you, or wants your products, and your socialist system is too expensive, and people try leave, and the state tries to prevent that, the fraying and the poverty of soul and pocketbook accelerates.  Totalitarianism emerges as the state’s last ditch survival mechanism.  The state becomes even more belligerent, at home and abroad, and even more isolated.  Preventing this requires Israel admit that a Zionist democracy is impossible, and work on being a better neighbor.  This would first require humility, among the people, and within the state apparatus.  I’m not sure that is realistic, but it is realism.

When we speak of Israel, we speak necessarily of the United States, where the government operates as a military-corporate-industrial-pharmaceutical-surveillance entity, with elected representatives residing in a political Congress and White House all functioning as directed.  When those representatives fail to function in accord with the needs of the state, they are first hysterically vilified, and then replaced, imprisoned or have fatal accidents. The Israel lobby is significant – so powerful that it cannot be registered under FARA – but it is by no means the only driver of US policy and direction.  We take pride in the state’s self-licking ice cream cone, but like Israel’s Zionism, neither works as advertised.  The US economy, as with Europe’s, has been warped beyond functionality by politically powerful corporate interests. We see this in most major industries, but the once popular US defense industry illustrates this trend well.  Profits are far bigger, and the work far easier, when you have just a few massive competitors who are literally interchangeable, and you build long lead time, expensive systems, that are even more expensive to maintain and operate.  It’s easier to control and lobby politicians in these circumstances, due to sunk cost fallacies, inertia, and “everyone agrees.”  When new money and new debt is created on demand and by command, this system appears to work.

But it doesn’t actually improve our defensive capability, or increase our security, or even make us strong. This fly in the ointment – almost overnight – has become obvious to the whole world.

As with the dysfunctional Zionist state, the US pseudo-republic will be stopped by forces outside its control.  It will be stopped, then corrected, and then transformed by trillions of choices made by billions people – most of whom are not Zionists and not Americans, and many of whom couldn’t care less about what we do or how we do it.

It’s called reality.  What isn’t working gets thrown out, and if necessary replaced with something that does work.  What can’t go on forever, doesn’t….

…which brings us to the US 2024 election.  Barring nuclear war, a government biowarfare agent let loose by accident on purpose, or an asteroid strike, people living in the territory of the US will cope with their insane government as best they can, and they will constrain it through quiet-quitting the state, calm disobedience of state authority, and rejuvenation of community. Actually, nuclear explosions, bio-warfare, and asteroids will be dealt with in much the same way.  The problem is that our extremely vulnerable ruling class, and the state itself, are both wholly unprepared for emergencies, and have all the cohesion of a wet Kleenex.

Realism requires we recognize that the ruling classes and the US government have no durable community and no internal integrity.  The state is a pirate gang writ large.  It is unified by criminal circumstance, functions by fear and tribute, and is surrounded by enemies who would see it stripped, drawn and quartered at first opportunity.  It’s almost enough to make one pity the state, and mourn the ruling classes!

Realism reminds us that desperate, declining states don’t fix themselves.  They quickly become dangerous to innocent bystanders, enemies, and its own citizens – and these three categories become indistinguishable just as quickly.  It’s happening right now in Ukraine, in Israel, and ready or not, in the United States.

The post Next Up, Realism! appeared first on LewRockwell.