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President Trump had a very clear choice in front of him starting in January — Try to save America, or try to save the bankrupt Empire that lives at the expense of the American people. The time had finally come, after 100 years of almost non-stop wars, to make the choice. It has to be one or the other. The American people overwhelmingly voted to “Make America Great Again” as it was before the Empire’s endless wars — drastically cut the government and free the American people. But President Trump chose to do the exact opposite, and the results throughout the economy and American society reflect his choice; in just less than a year.

The post The “Golden Age” of Job Layoffs? appeared first on LewRockwell.

di Francesco Simoncelli

(Versione audio dell'articolo disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/il-drenaggio-della-lbma-e-la-ricapitalizzazione)

La “eco chamber” della propaganda europea/inglese è andata in modalità “berserk” nell'ultima settimana sventolando una crisi della liquidità negli USA a causa dell'impennata del SOFR e dell'uso del Repo facility da parte della FED. Come fare a non finire vittime del rumore di fondo? Leggete Il Grande Default. In questo modo vi sarà più facile capire la fondamentale differenza tra mondo finanziario pre-LIBOR e post-LIBOR, l'intervento della FED nell'esclusivo caso in cui il mercato dei titoli del Tesoro americani diventi bidless e che il malato per eccellenza è il sistema bancario europeo. Gli stress attuali nel SOFR possono essere sfruttati al rialzo solo direttamente (vendita di titoli del Tesoro americani di cui inglesi ed europei sono gonfi, ma sanno che è una misura temporanea dato che rappresentano la principale garanzia collaterale credibile attualmente); quelli al ribasso indirettamente, tramite “l'effetto fionda” e la scommessa che la leva finanziaria verrà di nuovo abusata.

Il caso specifico della prima settimana di novembre è stato un attacco esterno agli USA solo a livello mediatico. Infatti il mercato dei pronti contro termine è stato in subbuglio poiché le pressioni sulla liquidità di fine mese si sono scontrate con lo shutdown, che ha causato l'accumulo di liquidità non erogata sul Treasury General Account presso la FED. Nel giro di un paio di settimane ha assorbito $200 miliardi di liquidità dai mercati monetari e i rendimenti del mercato dei pronti contro termine hanno iniziato a salire. Le banche sono intervenute prendendo in prestito fondi dal Repo facility e prestandoli per trarre profitto dallo spread. Si trattava di pronti contro termine overnight che si estinguono il giorno lavorativo successivo, quando la FED recupera i suoi fondi e le banche recuperano le loro garanzie.

Il lunedì suddetti fondi sono stati liquidati e le banche hanno incassato gli interessi. Il mercoledì non sono stati effettuati nuovi pronti contro termine e il saldo era pari a zero, poiché a quel punto i tassi del mercato dei pronti contro termine erano scesi ben al di sotto di quello del Repo facility e ieri il saldo era pari a zero. E il mercato dei pronti contro termine si è calmato; il Repo facility della FED ha fatto il suo lavoro. Quindi prima di seguire gli “starnazzamenti” sui social e diventare “utili idioti” della propaganda europea/inglese, è bene sapere quali sono le nuove basi su cui operano gli Stati Uniti e chi sono i loro avversari. “Stranamente”, però, nessuno si è chiesto a quanto fossero arrivati invece quelli inglesi.

Ma non mancano anche altri gli attacchi da parte della cricca di Davos: sintomi di stress nei mercati del credito, SOFR che schizza in alto, dichiarazioni di gente come Bailey e Carney che parlano di crisi finanziaria negli USA. E la grancassa di utili idioti sui social amplifica questo messaggio fraudolento. Questa è una guerra e si usano i mezzi della guerra per combattere. Affinché Trump possa avere successo deve confondere gli avversari e mostrare al mondo chi sono. Powell sta mostrando al mondo che uno dei nemici è Blackrock. Semmai la FED dovesse tornare al QE, il mercato immobiliare andrebbe su di giri e Blackrock guadagnerebbe senza doverlo manipolare, perché l'offerta di case è esigua. I prezzi schizzerebbero alle stelle e nessuno vuole questo esito. Blackrock, sin dal Build Back Better, non ha fatto altro che acquistare proprietà immobiliari e venderle a un tasso manipolato per intascare dalle tasse sugli immobili e uccidere la classe media americana. Se però Powell tiene i tassi laddove sono adesso o li abbassa per un'altra volta ancora, il mercato immobiliare rimane dove è adesso, le espulsioni continuano e il mercato del lavoro continua a migliorare (come sta accadendo già adesso), l'offerta di case verrà ampliata tramite lo stimolo del settore delle costruzioni. Il valore delle case esistenti calerà, e sarà un bene, e cambierà il tipo di casa (e il prezzo) a cui possono accedere le nuove famiglie. Istituti come Blackrock subiranno un haircut pesante e finalmente finirà il mito della finanziarizzazione del settore immobiliare. Questo circolo virtuoso, coadiuvato dalla IPO di Fannie/Freddie, darà slancio e sostenibilità ai mutui a 30 anni.

La formula “tutte le strade conducono a Londra” rappresenta il modo in cui i vecchi interessi bancari hanno gestito il loro impero mercantilista per centinaia di anni. Oltremanica, ovviamente, perché erano in competizione con gli olandesi. Nel corso del tempo hanno costruito una immensa rete di persone e relazioni finanziarie in tutto il mondo. C'è un intero universo di persone che non è coperto da Wikipedia e di cui non sappiamo niente, ma ai fini della comprensione di come funzionano le meccaniche è più importante la rete e le relazioni piuttosto che le singole persone o i singoli gruppi. Questa rete/relazioni si manifesta attraverso le linee di politica: arrivano le proverbiali telefonate dall'alto e vengono prese da chi deve mettere in atto gli ordini... e così ci ritroviamo roba come lo Steele Dossier, l'MI6 infiltrato nella CIA, conflitti settari che scoppiano improvvisamente (es. India-Pakistan, Azerbaijan-Armenia, ecc.).

Alla domanda perché l'abbiano fatto e lo facciano tuttora, la risposta è: non hanno collaterale. L'Europa ha da sempre costruito imperi coloniali perché non ha abbastanza risorse naturali da poter restare nel cosiddetto “Primo mondo” e quindi le deve prendere da qualcun altro. In un certo senso questa è la sua storia degli ultimi 500 anni. In quest'ottica Londra ha sparso “gaslighting” cucendo addosso agli USA l'etichetta di “impero del male”: gli americani hanno adottato la politica estera inglese, il sistema bancario centrale inglese, policy di tasse e spese inglesi, un maggiore centralizzazione della società in stile inglese. Va bene essere critici del passato degli Stati Uniti, anche del presente sotto certi aspetti, ma quest'ultimo è di certo tutt'altra cosa rispetto a quando c'erano Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney.

“Tutte le strade portano a Londra” perché adesso l'Europa è il giocatore più debole al tavolo della geopolitica (inclusa la City di Londra ed escluso il Vaticano). Qual è un ulteriore elemento di “gaslighting” sparso dagli inglesi? Il mito dell'onnipotenza degli ebrei. Mettere gli uni contro gli altri serve solo al miglior interessi della City di Londra in modo da disinnescare eventuali minacce.

The Great Dragon or London Money Power, è uno dei tanti libri dimenticati dalla storia (o volutamente fatti sparire dal radar pubblico) che disegnano meglio la mappa di come “tutte le strade conducono a Londra”. Uno degli aspetti principali discussi è la nascita dei cosiddetti Board of Trade negli Stati Uniti, quelli che oggi sono i mercati dei futures. Quando ne veniva creato uno, ad esempio sul mais, sul frumento, sul grano, ecc., finivano sempre per distruggere gli agricoltori. Inizialmente avrebbero emesso un sacco di credito nei confronti degli agricoltori, questi ultimi avrebbero creato fattorie sulle loro terre, coltivato i campi, curato i raccolti e infine avrebbero portato i prodotti risultanti nei mercati diretti dai Board of Trade. Essi si sarebbero arrogati il diritto di regolamentare i mercati, saldare  gli scambi, stipulare i termini dei contratti. Il libro ci mostra come questo “diritto” di regolamentazione si sarebbe sempre concluso con la depressione dei prezzi agricoli, la bancarotta degli agricoltori e l'acquisizione di tutti gli asset liquidati per saldare i loro debiti. La fonte dei capitali dati in prestito? La City di Londra. L'evoluzione dei futures altro non è che la finanziarizzazione selvaggia delle commodity che negli ultimi 50 anni non hanno fatto altro che scendere rispetto a una valuta fiat che invece s'è deprezzata costantemente. Il ciclo di manipolazione unidirezionale è stato interrotto 3 anni fa con l'emancipazione della FED dalla cosiddetta “coordinated central banks policy”. Ecco perché, ad esempio, la LBMA viene drenata di oro dai suoi caveau. La cavalcata dei prezzi dei metalli preziosi segna una nuova era per le commodity, sostituendo la mano onnipresente dalla City di Londra con qualcosa di più sostenibile e in linea con la realtà.

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L'elefante nella stanza: il drenaggio delle riserve della LBMA. Questo campo di battaglia fa parte della strategia dei NY Boys di ridimensionare la leva nel mercato degli eurodollari e l'influenza degli inglesi sugli USA. pic.twitter.com/lyuBM1Pvk1

Prima di passare a trattare il tema dell'articolo di oggi, però, ecco un promemoria di come funziona la geopolitica inglese. Prima dello scoppio della Prima guerra mondiale Kuwait e Iraq erano un solo stato. Poi sono arrivati gli inglesi e “hanno separato” il Kuwait dall'Iraq, affinché quest'ultimo non avesse più uno sbocco sul mare. Come hanno fatto “ad arrivare”? Si sono inseriti all'interno delle linee etniche stressando una fazione affinché ne attaccasse un'altra, in modo da tenere in perenne divisione l'intera nazione ed esercitando così con estrema facilità il potere. Saddam Hussein aveva lo scopo di riunificare ciò che era stato diviso tramite trame sotterranee inglesi nel sottobosco della società. I neocon americani, trotskisti fino al midollo, sono stati facilmente raggirati dagli inglesi affinché facessero il “lavoro sporco” al posto loro. Stesso discorso si può farlo per India e Pakistan.

Lo schema è sempre lo stesso. C'è una maggioranza al controllo di un Paese, e se prendiamo un Paese musulmano ad esempio, diciamo che siano gli sciiti. Un 80% sciita, quindi, e un 20% sunnita. Allora gli inglesi prendono contatti con la minoranza del 20% e la armano, creando i presupposti affinché ci sia una guerra civile. L'obiettivo di armare la minoranza affinché sfidi la maggioranza è quello di alimentare il malumore. La stessa cosa l'hanno fatta al Sud degli Stati Uniti: hanno nutrito l'odio del Sud nei confronti del Nord, quest'ultimo ha imposto dazi al primo, hanno amplificato il movimento abolizionista e, in sostanza, hanno agitato entrambi gli animi affinché arrivassero allo scontro.

E la stessa cosa l'hanno fatta tra Stati Uniti e Canada all'indomani della Guerra d'indipendenza. I lealisti del Nord-est si spostarono più a Nord e presero l'area di Toronto. Trent'anni dopo ci fu la guerra del 1812. I canadesi si credono una potenza militare solo perché sono un'appendice dell'Impero britannico ed ecco perché ancora oggi obbediscono ai dettami del “padrone”.

NOW - Canada PM Carney says AI data centres must be carbon neutral, by paying carbon credits, "We need a price on carbon, I salute my neighbor, the European Union, in pricing carbon and putting in place a CBAM." pic.twitter.com/u8Sja2deT9

Ma quella spiegata qui altro non è che la filosofia del “divide et impera”. Se ci spostiamo poi a livello finanziario, vediamo le stesse impronte digitali: sono le succursali della Banca d'Inghilterra, inclusa la Banca del Canada, e la BoE stessa che stanno cercando di manipolare il mercato obbligazionario americano per scatenare una crisi tale da spingere la FED a inondare i mercati di dollari. Non essendoci più il LIBOR un tale compito non è più semplice come una volta. Per avere un indizio che punta in questa direzione basta guardare le relazioni del TIC: Banca d' Inghilterra e Banca del Canada si avvicendano nel ruolo di posizionamento short e long dei titoli del Tesoro americani. Stanno giocando nello spazio dei decennali e trentennali, fingendo un'inversione nel front-end della curva dei rendimenti; solo che a questo giro non c'è una Janet Yellen che vende il front-end e compra il back-end per semplificare la vita a gente come la Lagarde e Bailey: ci sono i capitali della BCE e della BoE in prima linea adesso. Infatti Bessent non sta amplificando l'inversione della curva dei rendimenti americani tra i 6 mesi e i 3 anni. Ma, soprattutto, non c'è fuga di capitali dagli Stati Uniti, anzi...

Attenzione, però, perché non si tratta solo del mercato obbligazionario americano: tramite rehypothecation e leva finanziaria gli inglesi e le relative succursali hanno gonfiato l'importanza delle cosiddette MAG7 rispetto alle 493 voci restanti nell'indice S&P. Questo significa che quando vogliono ingegnerizzare il panico finanziario, come hanno fatto la penultima settimana di novembre, basta solo vendere un po' di azioni MAG7, vendere un po' di trentennali, vendere un po' di Bitcoin e usare i proventi per soffocare l'ascesa dell'oro. Quest'ultima è una variante dell'attacco al SOFR della scorsa primavera, quando tutti sventolavano il feticcio del “basis trade” senza capire che gli spike violenti che si vedevano lungo la curva dei tassi SOFR era un preciso assalto alla sua tenuta. Powell sta facendo esattamente quello che deve fare, ovvero, drenare liquidità dal mercato dell'eurodollaro. Uno degli “effetti collaterali” dello shutwodn era che il Dipartimento del Tesoro ha riempito il suo conto presso la FED (TGA) e la cosa ha fatto schizzare in alto il SOFR. Nessuna crisi di liquidità nei pronti contro termine, ma semplicemente denaro che non scorreva nel sistema. Ma chi è che è stato danneggiato e ha ottenuto un “free ride” sui social e sui canali d'informazione principali? La Banca d'Inghilterra, l'uso del proprio Repo facility è stato 3 volte superiore a quello della FED. La BoE, insieme alla Banca del Canada, ha attaccato il SOFR all'indomani del termine dell'ultimo contratto saldato col LIBOR lo scorso marzo. Migliaia di miliardi di (euro)dollari a leva gettati per attaccare le curve dei futures del SOFR, ma il tentativo è fallito soprattutto perché Bessent, tramite il sopraccitato TGA, ha iniziato a drenare d'oro fisico la LBMA e successivamente s'è spostato sul rame. Un lasso di tempo di 6 mesi.

Quali altri eventi hanno mostrato lo stesso lasso temporale? Crisi nei pronti contro termine nel settembre 2019 e il successivo intervento della FED a marzo 2020, crisi nei pronti contro termine nel settembre 2007 e successivo crollo di Bear Sterns a marzo 2008. La FED doveva sempre intervenire per stabilizzare i mercati, giocare in difesa. Il gigantesco cambiamento che ancora pochi riescono a percepire è questo: mentre la FED gioca in difesa, il Dipartimento del Tesoro va all'attacco. Sono coordinati adesso nell'intenzione di difendere gli Stati Uniti, mentre invece in passato il coordinamento verteva sulla loro spoliazione. Lo shutdown (ricordiamolo, voluto dai Dem) doveva spingere il drenaggio di liquidità dai pronti contro termine e creare lo stesso tipo di crisi vista nel passato. Cosa ha fatto desistere Londra dal perseguire questo tentativo? Il Dipartimento del Tesoro americano (aiutato dai cinesi tra l'altro) all'assalto del mercato dell'argento fisico, di gran lunga più importante per gli inglesi, e la FED che ha fatto uscire una relazione in cui smascherava le Isole Cayman per le succursali della BoE che sono e le minacciava indirettamente.

La ciliegina sulla torta di tutta questa storia è che se ci sarà un nuovo giro di stimoli fiscali agli americani, non avverrà allo stesso modo di quello del 2021 causando un boom al consumo. Stavolta ci sarà un boom del ripagamento di debiti ed ecco perché le grandi aziende continuano a sfoltire personale. Sarà un problema? No. Facciamo una digressione su questo tema. Lo shutdown voluto dai Dem aveva lo scopo di frenare l'uscita dalla conservatorship da parte di Fannie/Freddie, frenare l'approvazione del Clarity Act e frenare la ripartenza dei mutui a 30 anni (potenzialmente a 50 adesso). La FED è ancora stracolma di titoli garantiti da ipoteca, ma se si cambia il modo in cui funziona il mercato dei mutui negli Stati Uniti allora i titoli sopraccitati potrebbero avere di nuovo un mercato. La FED potrebbe vendere questi titoli, contrarre con decisione il proprio bilancio e non avrebbe più bisogno del quantitative tightening. A spese di chi? Private equity.

La ricapitalizzazione della classe media e la re-industrializzazione del Paese passa dalla capacità degli americani di accendere un mutuo a tassi sostenibili e in un ambiente economico che permetta loro di abbassare l'incertezza. I colletti blu, quindi, devono essere in grado di potersi permettere una casa da $200.000 a un tasso del 3% da estinguere in 50 anni. Questo tasso sarebbe fisso e al di sotto dell'ottimale di mercato, la cui sostenibilità verrebbe scaricata sul private equity che invece si vedrebbe aumentare le proprie commissioni. Il denaro rubato durante la demolizione controllata degli Stati Uniti, sponsorizzata dalle amministrazioni Obama, verrebbe re-investito nella crescita delle industrie manifatturiere e nel sostentamento finanziario di giovani famiglie. Realtà come Blacorock e Blackstone vedrebbero invertiti quei privilegi finanziari che hanno caratterizzato i loro affari immobiliari a spese della classe media americana: si vedrebbero caricato un costo del capitale più alto per le loro proprietà in affitto e i loro spazi immobiliari nella sfera commerciale, pagherebbero più tasse che verrebbero canalizzate per finanziare l'industria dei mutui per la classe media, gli agenti ICE che buttano fuori dal Paese tutti gli H1-B farlocchi potrebbero accendere un mutuo a tasso agevolato e... sentite questa, perché è grossa e la sentirete dapprima qui... esportare un tale modello a livello internazionale tramite Tether.

Vediamo di spiegare ancora meglio la questione immobiliare e mutui. Siamo d'accordo che l'idea di un mutuo a 50 anni, sulla carta, sia tutt'altro che l'inizio di un processo di deleveraging, anzi probabilmente un modo per calciare ulteriormente il barattolo lungo la strada. La questione rimane: come si fa a ricostruire la classe media? Dando loro una possibilità. E non è tanto diverso da quanto fece Roosevelt coi mutui a 30 anni. Durante la Grande depressione non c'erano mutui, permettersi una casa era un lusso per pochi e la povertà dilagava. Il governo federale avviò il programma dei mutui iniziando da quelli a 1 e 2 anni, passando poi a 5 e infine a 30. L'idea dei titoli garantiti da ipoteca nacque allora: venne creato un mercato dei mutui per aiutare la classe media, permettergli di trovare un lavoro, dargli la capacità di poter avere accesso a tutta una serie di beni  che avrebbe agevolato la loro vita. E la cosa funzionò abbastanza rapidamente. Quale fu il meccanismo di base: togliere il denaro dagli “oligarchi” e darlo alla classe media, creando la “proprietà sulla casa” e altresì il motore di un'economia.

Oggi ci si lamenta che passare dai mutui a 30 a quelli a 50 anni fa risparmiare molto poco, i dati sono pessimisti, ecc. Ma se lo si fa mettendo in prima linea il denaro del private equity, “persuadendolo” che adesso deve pagare per il salvataggio ottenuto sulla scia della crisi del 2008, allora le cose cambiano: subirà un haircut sugli MBS esistenti e in questo modo il denaro “risparmiato” sarà dirottato sulla classe media che usufruirà di tassi per i mutui al di sotto di quelli di mercato.

Il sistema fiscale americano è stato costruito dagli inglesi per estrarre quanta più ricchezza possibile dalla loro colonia, soprattutto dalle generazioni più giovani. Circa il 12% delle tasse pagate dai contribuenti va a finire in uno dei peggiori veicoli d'investimento possibili: la previdenza sociale. Senza contare poi i premi dell'assicurazione schizzati in alto a causa dell'Obamacare e i mutui trentennali ibridi (5 anni di tasso fisso, 25 anni di tasso variabile che richiedono giocoforza un rifinanziamento lungo il percorso e rata finale cospicua; in alternativa c'è il mutuo a 30 anni classico a tasso fisso che richiede però un anticipo del 20% della somma totale) che sono una trappola per aragoste piuttosto che la possibilità di comprarsi una casa. Guarda il caso, poi, allo scadere esatto di ogni 5 anni abbiamo assistito a una crisi importante che ha inevitabilmente ritoccato i tassi variabili a livelli più alti. Uno, quindi, parte all'1% e si ritrova dopo 5 anni all'8%. C'è stata letteralmente una flessione economica ogni 4.7 anni sin dal 1971 a causa dell'instabilità crescente del mercato degli eurodollari. E questo spiega anche perché le banche sono reticenti a prestare denaro oltre l'arco temporale dei 5 anni.

Ecco perché, in base all'assetto qui descritto, i mutui a 30 anni con tasse agevolate dal governo federale sono un compromesso pratico percorribile: il mutuatario pone un piccolo anticipo e il rischio viene diluito attraverso i titoli garantiti da ipoteca. Si passa quindi da un modello bancario 3-9-3, a uno 3-6-3 o 3-5-3. La necessità di mutui a 50 anni rappresenta quanto gli Stati Uniti siano stati devastati dagli infiltrati nelle precedenti amministrazioni e quanto siano sbilanciati salari e prezzi degli asset. Certo, si può lasciare che questi ultimi calino del 50% e poi vedere quanto indietro regrediamo all'era della pietra, oppure invece di perorare l'ulteriore implosione della società si può cercare una certa stabilizzazione della stessa e ripartire da lì. Sì, il livello dei prezzi fa schifo, ma due delle principali caratteristiche dell'azione umana sono l'inventiva e l'ingegno... soprattutto in un ambiente che permette la loro piena espressione.

Ripartire dal settore immobiliare, conosciuto molto bene da Trump, ha i suoi vantaggi per ricostituire comunità solide che rimangono in un posto e lo fanno prosperare. Pensate alla Florida dove le tasse sulla proprietà sono state fortemente abbattute e potrebbero addirittura essere portate a 0. Chi avvierà un progetto edilizio avrà la possibilità di incanalare tutte le risorse in quello che sta costruendo, senza dover pensare a mettere una parte dei suoi fondi per pagare burocrati e roba del genere. L'incentivo sarà quello di costruire qualcosa che dura, col tempo necessario e anche bello; non più qualcosa di rassomigliante a una casa nel minor tempo possibile. I materiali saranno più longevi perché l'incentivo è quello di costruire qualcosa di bello e che dura piuttosto che funzionale e conveniente. È questa distinzione che ha permesso di far entrare nell'immaginario collettivo il semplice fatto che le case erano un investimento per le generazioni, facendone aumentare il valore nel tempo. Adesso quest'ultimo cala e la casa si deprezza. Con la IPO di Fannie/Freddie e un mutuo a 50 anni, con una rata inferiore a quello di 30 anni e tassi meglio definiti/prevedibili, le cose cambierebbero. Ma non è finita qui, perché togliere le tasse sulla proprietà oltre ad agevolare la vita a chi costruisce e a chi compra, e avere più asset il cui valore è dettato da materiali solidi alla base, renderebbe più credibili strumenti finanziari come i titoli garantiti da ipoteca (MBS). Un circolo virtuoso tra Fannie/Freddie, compagnie d'assicurazione/fondi pensione e classe media: listare gli MBS costerà una commissione (anche dello 0.1% e Fannie/Freddie passeranno dall'essere una compagnia da $600 miliardi a $3.000 miliardi con utile netto raddoppiato rispetto a quello attuale), ciò permetterà di finanziare i mutui degli americani, gli investitori istituzionali opereranno con derivati coperti dalla solvibilità dei mutuatari e di solidi immobili.

Ciò che davvero conta qui è la prevedibilità, a differenza dell'incertezza seminata dagli inglesi. Infatti anche se le persone si muovessero da un posto all'altro, e vendessero casa, i termini precedenti se li porterebbero dietro attraverso la cosiddetta “portabilità dei mutui”. Infatti qual è il super potere degli inglesi? Manipolare il costo del denaro attraverso l'arbitraggio delle valute e manipolazione del mercato obbligazionario. Se si permette agli americani di impostare un mutuo a 50 anni a tasso fisso e portabile vengono schermati da tali manipolazioni. Niente più finanziarizzazione della classe media: essa ha un flusso di cassa stabile, le compagnie d'assicurazione hanno flussi di cassa stabili e il modello delle agenzie di credito per impostare i tassi dei mutui può essere mandato al diavolo perché non ce n'è più bisogno. E perché Bessent parla di Bitcoin? Perché l'amministrazione Trump ha aperto a Bitcoin? Perché potrà essere usato come collaterale per i prestiti, così come oro e argento (cosa che non si poteva fare prima). Il Dodd-Frank Act precludeva anche questo, soprattutto per le piccole-medie imprese, impedendo di porre flussi di cassa e margini di profitto come base per ottenere prestiti.

Questo è ciò su cui sta lavorando l'amministrazione Trump.

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

???? Qui il link alla Seconda Parte:

When I first wrote (“Murderers for Trump”) about President Trump ordering air strikes against “narco-terrorists” on boats in international waters in the Caribbean Sea, there had been three “lethal kinetic strikes.” The last time I checked, there have now been 21 such air strikes in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, with 83 people killed.

The Pentagon has not acknowledged what aircraft the military is using to conduct the strikes, but it is supposed to include MQ-9 Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles, AC-130J gunships, and F-35 fighter jets.

Because there was no search, seizure, arrest, indictment, arraignment, prosecution, trial, conviction, or sentencing; no proof of what exactly was on these ships; no threat to the United States by the boats or their occupants; no death-penalty offenses (although Trump and some Republicans would like there to be a death penalty for drug offenses); no boats were near American territory; and because Trump took it upon himself to be judge, jury, and executioner; I concluded then, and conclude now, that all of the air strikes are simply extrajudicial murder.

Many of those in the miliary who participated in this extrajudicial murder are no doubt professing Christians. According to the Pew Research Center, 62 percent of Americans identify as Christian. The percentage of military personnel who identify as Christian is higher than the general population. This has been estimated to be between 65 and 75 percent. The percentage of veterans who identify as Christian has been estimated to be 91 percent. That number seems a little high, but the point is simply that a majority of military personnel identify as Christian.

We can be certain, then that professing Christians were involved in the extrajudicial murder of the people on these boats. Just like we can be certain that professing Christians help to carry out the death and destruction meted out by the U.S. military in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, and all the minor military operations that the U.S. military has been involved in since World War II: Bosnia, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Panama, Somalia.

So, my question is a simple one: Why do Christians kill for their government?

Christians are told to “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29), to “recompense to no man evil for evil” (Romans 12:17), to “live peaceably with all men” (Romans 12:18), to not kill (Romans 13:9), to not “render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:15), and that “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal” (2 Corinthians 10:4).

So, why do Christians join the military and so easily and callously kill for their government?

There is no draft. There is no universal military service. No American is forced to join the military and kill on command. The fact that the Bible admonishes Christians to “submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake” (1 Peter 2:13) and to “let every soul be subject unto the higher powers” (Romans 13:1) has nothing to do with anything.

If the government were to come to a Christian and say: “Put on this uniform, take this gun, go to such and such address across town, and start shooting people,” I can’t imagine any Christian not being horrified and refusing to do it. But if the government comes to a Christian and says: “If you voluntarily, of your own freewill, join the military, you will be required to put on a uniform, take a gun, go to such and such country, and start shooting people,” then Christians line up at their local military recruiter’s office and say “sign me up.” Why is it that Christians will defend the foreign military action by saying “I was just following orders,” but not the domestic one?

Isn’t it strange that Americans only object to the “I was just following orders” defense—a defense that was used to no avail by Nazis at Nuremberg—when soldiers from other countries attempt to use it?

Christian soldiers who kill for their government are guilty of idolatry. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3), the Bible says. They have made a god out of the state. They think the state can sanctify murder.

The U.S. military is a giant killing machine. Christians who join the military will be expected to unconditionally follow orders and kill on command to help carry out the U.S. government’s reckless, belligerent, and interventionist U.S. foreign policy. They will not be defending America or its freedoms.

No Christian should kill for his government. No matter how loud the government screams “narco-terrorist.”

The post Why Do Christians Kill for Their Government? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Back in March of 2014, I wrote about how the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) operates an extortion racket-style scheme via its PreCheck program that gives travelers who pay a fee and jump through a bunch of hoops including submitting to fingerprinting and a background check a chance, though no guarantee, that they can evade some harassment from the TSA itself. In the same vein, starting in February, TSA is planning to roll out a new tax and other demands, termed Confirm.ID, that will be required of individuals who do not have REAL ID compliant identification documentation in order for them to travel from point A or point B.

As reported Monday in an Associated Press article, a new 45 dollars fee (really a tax since it is charged by government) will be imposed by TSA on travelers who do not have REAL ID compliant identification documentation. The rollout of the United Sates government’s REAL ID mandate, authorized by congressional legislation 20 years ago, was delayed until last year due largely to opposition from people concerned about REAL ID’s threats to liberty. By paying the fee and complying with other TSA demands in its Confirm.ID process, the AP article relates, a person will be able to seek travel permission from TSA via an alternative method that may take up to half an hour to complete and, if successful, will result in approval for traveling for just 10 days. People have been concerned about the collection of biometric information coming with REAL ID. Confirm.ID may not provide a way around such requirements given that it has the collection of biometric information built into its process.

Americans already fund TSA with their tax dollars, including a “Passenger Fee” or “September 11 Security Fee” included in the total price of each airline flight ticket. But, the TSA, like many of its agents pilfering from travelers’ bags put in jeopardy by the TSA enforced “security” procedures, keeps gaining new means to separate Americans from their money.

The new tax and other demands on people traveling without REAL ID is adding insult to injury given that the push for people to obtain and use REAL ID was itself fueled by rejection of each individual’s right to travel. The new tax is also piled on top of already significant harassment that TSA routinely dispenses. I listed off some aspects of this harassment in a July article regarding Homeland Security Department Secretary Kristi Noem trying to gain some support from people fed up with TSA through announcing a minimal rollback of TSA bullying related to if people may keep their shoes on at checkpoints. I wrote:

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

While the TSA’s new tax and demands on travelers who lack REAL ID compliant identification documentation is repugnant, so too is REAL ID, as was explained by then-United States House of Representatives Member Ron Paul (R-TX) on the House floor when REAL ID legislation passed twenty years ago. You can watch Paul’s speech here.

Neither REAL ID nor Confirm.ID is compatible with respect for liberty. They should be thrown away along with the TSA’s long list of harassment activities.

This article was originally published on The Ron Paul Institute.

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President Trump said on Tuesday that in addition to the airstrikes on Venezuelan boats suspected of trafficking drugs to the United States, the U.S. military would begin hitting targets on land. Not only are all these strikes unconstitutional by any construction, but they are also unprovoked acts of war against a country that poses no threat to the United States.

Since September, the administration has carried out at least twenty-one attacks on civilian vessels in the Caribbean, resulting in eighty-three deaths. Not one of those killed by American forces was charged with a crime in any court, much less convicted at trial. This behavior wouldn’t pass muster under Magna Carta, written by barbarians by our standards today, much less the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

This doesn’t require any fanciful 20th-century reading of the Bill of Rights, like the one that produced Roe v. Wade. That this is impermissible is firmly rooted in constitutional interpretation dating to the man who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights himself.

There were several reasons for the War of 1812, not all of them legitimate. A certain faction among the war hawks of the day just wanted to steal Canada from the British empire. But foremost among the legitimate grievances cited by James Madison in asking Congress for a declaration of war, and frankly the only one most people remember, was the impressment of sailors on American ships into service in the British Navy.

It is important to understand the complaint was not against returning true deserters from the British Navy to Great Britain. As Madison said in his address, “And that no proof might be wanting of their conciliatory dispositions, and no pretext left for a continuance of the practice, the British Government was formally assured of the readiness of the United States to enter into arrangements, such as could not be rejected, if the recovery of British subjects were real and sole object.”

The problem the Madison administration had was that, in addition to disrespectfully boarding American ships by force, the British “so far from affecting British subjects alone, that under the pretext of searching for these, thousands of American Citizens, under the safeguard of public law, and of their national flag, have been torn from their country and from everything dear to them.”

That’s the whole point of due process. The government not only has to prove a crime was committed, but that they have indeed arrested the right person, which they frequently haven’t. This is why the mobbish retort, “narco-terrorists don’t deserve due process” is so counterintuitive. Without it, we don’t even know if the government has arrested the person they believe they have, much less whether this person committed a crime.

The founders risked surrendering their independence from Great Britain over this principle. Now, Trump supporters dismiss it with the wave of a hand.

This is not the only time when due process loomed large in a national issue. Nullification of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 by northern states was firmly rooted in the same principle. Like the impressment issue, the northern states did not deny the constitutionality of returning escaped slaves to their masters. They objected to alleged escaped slaves being summarily seized without due process.

First, you must prove John Doe was a slave who escaped, and also that this is indeed John Doe and not someone you’ve mistaken for him – which, again, the government does all the time to this day.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has cited statistics on this in opposing the administration from a letter written to him by the Acting Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) indicating that 21% of all ships boarded by USCG between September 2024 and October 2025 contained no drugs.

All were boarded because the government thought they were carrying drugs, but one out of every five were not. On what basis are we to believe a similar percentage of those summarily blown to bits on Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s orders weren’t similarly innocent?

As with many of Trump’s abuses, there is precedent to which he can point. Thirteen years ago, President Obama killed an American citizen he unilaterally deemed a terrorist without a trial or any formal charges. He made the ridiculous claim he had satisfied the Fifth Amendment’s due process requirements by a panel of his own self-appointed czars and cronies reviewing the case. But judicial power is delegated exclusively to the judicial branch in the Constitution.

Obama admitted to having a whole list of people he reserved the right to kill at his sole discretion, which his 2012 opponent Mitt Romney fully endorsed.

While no less unconstitutional or un-American, Obama’s crime was at least committed against someone he claimed had incited murder of American citizens. This made him a terrorist, by presidential pronouncement, and therefore subject to extrajudicial homicide as part of the Orwellian “War on Terror.”

The Venezuelans vaporized by the Trump administration, aren’t accused of blowing up, shooting, stabbing, or otherwise committing violence against Americans. They are called terrorists for selling willing American buyers drugs. Yes, the drugs are illegal in the United States, but there is no drug law prescribing the death penalty for violating it, much less without a trial or even a formal charge.

As with most of the other enormities committed by the U.S. government during this century, this one is easy to dismiss because it happens in some other country, to a foreign people most Americans know nothing about. Imagine if Americans walking on the sidewalks of American cities and towns saw people vaporized before their eyes by government drones without any attempt to arrest them or even verify their identity. No American would stand for it.

But what the Trump administration is doing now is even worse because it adds to trampling American liberty the crime of committing acts of war against a nation we are not at war with, which has not attacked us. The United States declared war on Great Britain on precisely the same principle, for acts less egregious than those being committed by the U.S. government against Venezuela.

The United States was once rightly considered an inspiration to the entire world. The “land of the free” achieved a society where the inalienable rights of the individual were more sacred and more protected than in any society in history. Today, it stumbles around the world stage like a drunk, shouting accusations in every direction, mumbling slurred pronouncements about “democracy,” and beating up on weaklings, while the world stands by and waits for it to pass out.

Will we ever sober up?

This article was originally published on Tom Mullen Talks Freedom.

The post Summarily Murdering Venezuelan “Narco-Terrorists” Is Profoundly Un-American appeared first on LewRockwell.

On October 23, the Trump administration announced to Congress that it is planning “land attacks” within Venezuelan territory. Such attacks, of course, would be acts of war, and there are no plans for Congress to declare war on any foreign state.

Moreover, on Tuesday, Trump declared that any country deemed by the administration to be making drugs for US markets is a possible target for US military attack. Trump also stated that military strikes on Venezuela territory would “start very soon.”

Meanwhile, the administration has been using the US military to engage in extrajudicial killings of persons in the Caribbean alleged to be “narco-terrorists.” The administration admits it doesn’t actually know who these people are. The US military is simply killing people without any evidence of actual crimes or of a military threat. Nor has the administration attempted to offer any evidence. The justification for the killings is simply—to use a phrase from meme culture—”trust me, bro.”

The attacks are also meant to serve as a provocation and a threat to the Venezuelan regime, and to serve as an “example” of what will be done on Venezuelan territory if the current Venezuelan president does not go into exile.

So much for the president who, while a candidate, claimed he would oppose any new wars and end existing ones.

Instead, what we have now is a president who advocates for a new war in South America—in addition to his proxy wars in Palestine and Ukraine—and has no intention of adhering to any sort of rule of law in doing so.

So, this is yet another case of “here we go again.” Every few years, no matter who is president, the US regime—i.e., the “foreign policy blob“—comes up with yet another country that we’re told requires “regime change.” And, as with all drives to war, the result is more runaway federal spending, more disregard for the rule of law, and more unmitigated power for the American executive state.

Forget about the US Constitution

By now it’s very quaint to protest the American warfare state by suggesting that presidents should adhere to the US constitution. No president has taken the US constitution seriously in decades, and Congress has done precious little about it.

Nonetheless, whatever opposition can be mustered to the untrammeled bellicosity of US presidents is a good thing. This week, a handful of members of Congress introduced legislation prohibiting Trump from launching “hostilities within or against Venezuela” without congressional approval.

Only a very small handful of Republicans have spoken out against the president on the administration’s accelerating threats and on the killings of  supposed “narco-terrorists” in boats outside US territory. Unsurprisingly, Thomas Massie of Kentucky supports the war-powers legislation. Senator Rand Paul, meanwhile, has condemned the killings of passengers and operators on “drug” boats. And rightly so. As Judge Andrew Napolitano noted this week, one of the most recent “drug-boat” attacks clearly violated international law when the US disabled one boat, and then, rather than arrest the survivors, simply killed them. Napolitano correctly described this as a war crime.

Of course, even if Congress does pass legislation reining in the President’s power to commit acts of war against Venezuela, it’s unclear the legislation would have any effect. The US regime is far beyond accepting any legal limits on warmaking imposed by the US constitution—a document that is obviously defunct except in the minds of those clinging to a romantic fantasy about the state of modern American politics.

A Threat to Actual Americans?

It’s a given that the rule of law will be ignored in this conflict, just as it has been ignored for many decades. But an important political question is this: does the Venezuelan regime pose any threat to actual Americans?

With questions like these, the burden of proof is always on those who want a new war and are demanding tax dollars to do it. So where is the evidence of a Venezuelan threat? If there were one posed by the actual regime, we’d be sure to hear about it, since it would greatly help the warmongers. But, it seems the best the administration can do is deem the Venezuelan regime as a “terrorist” organization. But here they don’t even make the case for any real terrorism—such as the bombing of buildings. No, the administration has been clinging to the idea that Venezuela is sponsoring “narco terrorism.” This term is extremely flexible, and could include anything from cartel activity to the mere selling of drugs within the United States.

(The GOP, the party of “personal responsibility,” now tells us that when Americans voluntarily buy drugs, then it’s the drug dealer’s fault. I wonder if these people also think that gun crime is the fault of gun merchants.)

In any case, all of this is a very long way from “weapons of mass destruction” or “dirty bombs” or even anthrax in your mail—the sort of things that could plausibly be called terrorism. No, the new “terrorism” requiring a US bombing campaign against Venezuela is apparently some people on small boats that the regime swears—cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die—are totally “drug boats.”

In the end, the “narco-terrorism” angle is simply political cover for helping carry out the longtime plans of neoconservatives who have dreamed for many years of installing a US puppet in Venezuela. The fact that Trump recently pardoned Honduran drug lord Juan Orlando Hernandez, who served only one year of a 45-year sentence, illustrates that the administration is not actually concerned about drug trafficking.

Trump’s neoconservative bona fides are now firmly in place, after all. This is a president who vehemently supports Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the most committed warmongering neoconservatives in Congress. The administration also has resurrected the career of Elliott Abrams who was appointed during the first Trump term as a “Special Representative” for both Iran and Venezuela. Abrams—a die-hard Zionist, of course—has been working for many years for regime change in Venezuela, and Trump may be the one to get it for him. Abram’s most recent column at Foreign Affairs shows he isn’t giving up.

Headed Toward another Regime Change “Success”?

It’s always difficult to guess any politician’s true intentions, and this is certainly true of Trump. Regime change, in any case, remains one of the worst options going forward. After all, what success has the US had with regime change in recent decades? The US spent twenty years replacing the Taliban with the Taliban in Afghanistan. After years of allying with terrorists in Syria to effect regime change, al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists are now the dictators of Syria. Trump now invites Syrian terrorists to the White House. In Iraq, the country’s ancient Christian community was decimated in the wake of the US invasion. The standard of living there utterly collapsed, and the Iraqi regime is now far more friendly toward Iran that it was under Saddam Hussein. Libya is now a hotbed for terrorism with slave markets and a ruined economy. These are the American regime’s “success” stories.

What horrors await the people of Venezuela if the US carries out regime change there? I hope we don’t find out. But one likely outcome is this: an enormous wave of Venezuelan refugees moving north.

Nonetheless, perennial calls for regime change somewhere are now standard operating procedure in Washington, with or without Trump in the White House. Every minute of every day, the American empire is dreaming up new wars and new excuses for new wars. Trump apparently has no problem with playing along so long as it helps him spend more money on key constituents, especially his Zionist funders and the corporate welfare queens at organizations like Raytheon.

Some “MAGA” supporters have expressed disappointment in the administration’s refusal to do much to change course on this. But, as Tom Mullen recently noted:

Part of the problem is that Trump’s anti-war platform was never as radical as the true American First crowd would like to believe. He talks a good game about ending “forever wars,” but he doesn’t question the core of the empire—the global standing army, the 800-plus bases warehousing hundreds of thousands of troops overseas, and the non-defensive use of them, as long as the war isn’t a “forever war.”

Indeed, Trump’s posture reminds one of Madeleine Albright’s famous complaint to Colin Powell during the Clinton Years: “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

An empire with a huge offensive military is likely to use it. And Donald Trump clearly likes the idea.

The post Stop the Drive to War With Venezuela appeared first on LewRockwell.

A columnist for the N.Y. Old Bag asks why is a guy who’s been dead for six years a top issue in American life? The man who is asking writes with forked pen. He should know, as it’s his rag that’s putting a nonissue on its front page every day. The nonissue covers for the total breakdown of civil behavior in large American cities, a breakdown due to mostly young black and Hispanic thugs. Lefty politicians opposed to Trump’s illegal-immigration crackdown are openly encouraging assaults on cops, ICE agents, and other government officers. Law enforcement agents are now seen as Nazis and the Gestapo after months of Democrat politicians calling them such names. Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles seem at times to be war zones, with once-beautiful residential neighborhoods now taken over by homeless tents and drugs.

I’ve been thinking about how wonderful American cities used to be when I was young. The first time I went to Los Angeles at 20 years of age, I thought I had landed in paradise: glistening streets, beautiful buildings, mom-and-pop stores, quiet beaches, no crowds, and virtually no crime, along with blue skies and greenery. Today El-Lay is skid row, with open drug markets, tent cities where the homeless lay down the rules, private homes of the rich turned into forts defended by armed guards, and gang violence an everyday happening. Enforced diversity has yet to save a city. Chicago violence, I am told, is even worse.

“Totally different value systems from your own do not make for a peaceful country.”

When I first laid eyes on New York as I was landing aged 11, I thought that it must be a dream. After years of war, Europe lay in ruins, whereas the Big Bagel seemed to have burst out of the sea in its splendor and magnificence. Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building, the Empire State, Broadway—all were a long way from the blown-up buildings and ruined city of Athens.

So what happened? Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration law limiting white European influx, and encouraging unlimited third-world immigration, is what happened. Need I say more? In the Big Bagel, the 300,000 public employees compete for who among them will bark the loudest and be the rudest where the public is concerned. I would say 99 percent are minorities. Once upon a time American informality was welcome; now it’s a bruising everyday experience.

Oh, for the days when tradition rather than reform was the best influence on the quality of citizenship. A common identity is all-important in a society of strangers, a concept that is rejected by liberals and lefties in the name of globalism. Man is free but also bound by moral standards. When the black family imploded sometime in the ’60s, egged on by the liberals and the left, few realized the damage it would do to blacks. I remember some know-it-all football commentator laughing and praising some black player for having twelve or thirteen children, most of whose names he didn’t even know. Well, young blacks without fathers do have a tendency to get into drugs and do bad things to others and to themselves, but our lefty know-it-alls thought otherwise. This is why blacks make up almost 14 percent of the population but constitute more than 55 percent of the prison population.

The great Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas and other such American blacks—dismissed by the usual suspects as Uncle Toms—were among the first to see this but were shouted down by the media and the left, who appreciated con-men phonies like Al Sharpton and praised gangsters like the recently departed Rap Brown as black heroes. The latter just had his obituary covering a whole page in the Old Bag, his murder of a policeman mentioned as an aside.

The American public is now so stupefied by those contraptions everyone holds and looks at nonstop every minute of the day and night, their ability to pay attention or focus on anything not trivial is astounding. Technology has made humans stupider by the minute, and no one has become more stupid than American youths. And it gets worse.

Like Sweden, once the most civilized country of Europe, now among the most violent due to open borders for Middle Easterners and Africans, the U.S. has welcomed all sorts of foreign criminals, the latest an Afghan who murdered a 20-year-old National Guardswoman in cold blood. Totally different value systems from your own do not make for a peaceful country. Minnesota is now littered with unruly Somalis breaking the law but being protected by laws that state one is innocent until proved guilty. Go figure, as they used to say in Brooklyn.

This article was originally published on Taki’s Magazine.

The post A Common Identity appeared first on LewRockwell.

“The United States boldly broke with the ancient military custom of swearing loyalty to a leader. Article VI required that American Officers thereafter swear loyalty to our basic law, the Constitution… Our American Code of Military Obedience requires that, should orders and the law ever conflict, our officers must obey the law… This nation must have military leaders of principle and integrity so strong that their oaths to support and defend the Constitution will unfailingly govern their actions.”—“Loyalty to the Constitution” plaque located on the grounds of the United States Military Academy

Every military servicemember’s oath is a pledge to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

It is not an oath to a politician. It is not an oath to a party. And it is not an oath to the police state.

Yet what happens when those same men and women are being told—by their own government—that obedience to power and loyalty to a political leader come before allegiance to the Constitution they swore to uphold?

That question isn’t hypothetical.

It is the moral line now being tested in real time, and it goes to the heart of what kind of country we are: do we live in a constitutional republic governed by the rule of law, or in a militarized police state where “legality” is whatever the person with the most power and the biggest army say it is?

The answer becomes painfully clear when you look at what our troops are being ordered to do—and what “we the people” are tacitly allowing them to be ordered to do—in the so-called name of national security.

Members of the military are now being deployed domestically to police their fellow American citizens in ways that trample the spirit, if not the letter, of the Posse Comitatus Act.

It’s legally dubious enough that the military is being used to enforce immigration crackdowns and police protests in American cities. But now they’re being tasked with killing civilians far from any declared battlefield in the absence of an imminent threat—all while being told that questioning the legality of those missions is itself a form of disloyalty.

So, which is it: obedience to the Constitution or the Commander-in-Chief?

At the center of this latest maelstrom is a report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody” on a maritime vessel in the Caribbean that was suspected of transporting drugs.

According to multiple accounts, after an initial “lethal, kinetic” strike disabled the vessel and killed nine men on board, a second strike was carried out to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage—an alleged “double tap strike” that legal experts warn could constitute murder or a war crime if the survivors no longer posed a threat.

In all, the boat was reportedly hit four times: twice to kill the eleven occupants on board and twice more to sink the boat.

Intentionally killing survivors clinging to the remains of a boat in the middle of the ocean, in the absence of an imminent threat, whether or not the U.S. is engaged in “armed conflict” with drug cartels, is unlawful.

Murder on the high seas is a crime.

Even the Pentagon’s manual on the law of war says combatants who are “wounded, sick, or shipwrecked” no longer pose a threat and should not be attacked.

Some Republicans who have, until now, turned a blind eye to the Trump administration’s most egregious offenses against the Constitution appear reluctant to let this one slide.

Not surprisingly, the Trump administration has done an about-face.

Hegseth—who bragged about watching the September 2 strike live—now claims he wasn’t in the room when the second strike happened.

Suddenly, the White House—which had been gleefully chest-thumping over its power to kill extrajudicially—is signaling its willingness to scapegoat subordinates in the chain of command.

The man with his head on the chopping block is Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley.

Clearly, it’s a lesson learned too late: when you’re dealing with power-hungry authoritarians, loyalty is no guarantee of protection. It’s always the men and women who carry out the unlawful orders—not the ones who give them—who end up paying the price.

Here’s the problem, though. While the media fixates on who will bear the blame for ordering the double-tap strike, the government war machine is moving forward, full steam ahead.

The Sept. 2 boat strike was part of a broader Trump administration campaign of maritime attacks that has already killed at least 80 people at sea, all without a formal declaration of war or due process—evidence of who they were or what they had done—to warrant an extrajudicial execution.

This is yet another of Trump’s everywhere, endless wars—this time at sea—sold as toughness on “narco-terrorists” at a moment when his poll numbers are slipping, economic promises have failed to manifest, and new Epstein-related revelations continue to surface.

When presidents manufacture new fronts in a forever war whenever they need a distraction, we should all beware.

The Trump administration has tried to frame this preemptive maritime war on suspected “narco-terrorists” as a “non-international armed conflict” with designated terrorist organizations.

Yet what it amounts to is an undeclared war, launched in international waters, without just cause and without congressional authorization.

The legal landscape is not murky—it is clear.

Most of the public debate has revolved around those technical legalities—what kind of conflict this is, which statutes apply, which court might have jurisdiction—yet what is really at stake is whether we are training a generation of American troops to believe that loyalty to a leader can excuse disobedience to, or even override, the Constitution.

Three bodies of law converge here: the Constitution’s allocation of war powers, the international law of armed conflict, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

First, there has been no declaration of war by Congress. Under the Constitution, only Congress can declare war. The president cannot start wars based solely on his own authority.

Second, the law of armed conflict and the law of the sea forbid killing shipwrecked survivors who pose no immediate threat.

Third, the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires every servicemember to refuse manifestly unlawful orders.

A command to “kill everybody” is precisely the kind of order these guardrails were written to forbid.

The rationale that “I was just following orders” is not a defense to war crimes. That is the core lesson of the Nuremberg Trials and the modern law of armed conflict.

Of course, the police state wants mindless automatons who obey unquestioningly.

Reporting on the trial of Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann for the New Yorker in 1963, Hannah Arendt explained, “The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanize them.”

Arendt, a Holocaust survivor, denounced Eichmann, a senior officer who organized Hitler’s death camps, for being a bureaucrat who unquestioningly carried out orders that were immoral, inhumane and evil. This, Arendt concluded, was the banality of evil, the ability to engage in wrongdoing or turn a blind eye to it, without taking any responsibility for your actions or inactions.

Coincidentally, the same year that Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil was published, Martin Luther King Jr. penned his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in which he points out “that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’ It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.”

In other words, there comes a time when law and order are in direct opposition to justice.

Every military recruit is supposed to learn in basic training that there is a duty to obey lawful orders, and an equal duty to disobey manifestly unlawful orders.

No president—Republican or Democrat—can override that principle.

The Commander-in-Chief may issue orders, but he does not get to erase the Constitution or rewrite the laws of war by fiat.

The White House rationale—that a preemptive “kill everybody” attack “was conducted in self-defense to protect U.S. interests”—should terrify every American.

If the government can redefine “self-defense” to justify killing incapacitated survivors on a sinking boat, then it can justify killing anyone—at home or abroad, in uniform or out of it.

No matter how the White House spins it, however, these are crimes and those involved—from Hegseth on down—could find themselves in legal jeopardy and should be held accountable.

The pressure on the military is mounting.

The Orders Project, a nonpartisan initiative that helps connect servicemembers with outside legal counsel, reports a spike in calls from military personnel concerned that they could be asked to carry out an illegal order or pressured to take part in missions that violate their training in the laws of war.

Given Hegseth’s much-publicized approach to waging war without constraints—he has openly derided the military’s Judge Advocate General corps and championed a more “unshackled” approach to lethal force—these concerns are reasonable.

Indeed, there has been enough cause for concern that six members of Congress, all with military or national security backgrounds, recorded a message reminding servicemembers what the law requires: “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders…you must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our constitution.”

For re-stating what every recruit is taught in basic training, these lawmakers have been accused by President Trump of “sedition” and branded as “traitors” who should be arrested and punished by death. The FBI has reportedly opened an investigation. Hegseth has even threatened to recall one of the lawmakers—Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain—to active duty in order to court-martial him for his remarks.

The message from the top could not be clearer: allegiance to the Constitution is a crime.

Every person like myself who has served in uniform has experienced the tension between following orders and honoring that oath. Discipline requires obedience, but a constitutional republic requires lawful obedience.

That is why the oath matters.

It is not an oath to a man, a party, or a policy agenda. It is an oath to a charter of law: the Constitution.

At West Point, a 1943 “Loyalty to the Constitution” plaque proclaims: “should orders and the law ever conflict, our officers must obey the law.”

That principle is not antiquated. It is the foundation of American civil-military relations. Remove it, and what remains is not a republic but a personality cult with weapons.

The danger becomes even clearer when you examine the rhetoric now shaping national policy.

For instance, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently urged the president to impose “a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

A harsher irony is hard to find.

A good case could be made that it is, in fact, the U.S. government that is flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies. Just consider Trump’s steady spate of presidential pardons, the latest to Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for conspiring with drug traffickers to move cocaine into the U.S.

According to U.S. prosecutors, Hernández—quoted as saying he wanted to “shove the drugs right up the noses of the gringos by flooding the United States with cocaine”—took bribes from drug traffickers and had the country’s armed forces protect a cocaine laboratory and shipments to the U.S.

So the president is blowing up boats in the Caribbean he claims—without proof—are ferrying drugs all the while pardoning someone who was convicted of conspiring to transport hundreds of tons of cocaine into the U.S.

This corrupt double standard has become business as usual for the Trump administration.

Now Trump wants to launch land attacks on Venezuela, a country that is conveniently richer in oil reserves than Iraq—all in the so-called name of fighting the war on drugs.

The rapid buildup of U.S. military forces in the Caribbean—which according to news reports includes a range of aircraft carriers, guided-missile destroyers, and amphibious assault ships capable of landing thousands of troops, as well as a nuclear-powered submarine and spy planes—far exceeds what would be needed for a supposed counternarcotics operation and is worrisome enough on its own.

Yet conscripting the military to do the dirty work of the police state—and then throwing them under the bus for doing so—takes us into even darker territory.

The U.S. government’s weaponization of the armed forces for political power is a betrayal of the Constitution, but it is also a betrayal of the very men and women who swore to give their lives for it.

This has never been about public safety.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this has always been about power—who wields it, who is protected by it, and who is crushed under it.

And once a government shows a willingness to break faith with its defenders, it will break faith with anyone.

A government that can discard its military service members can discard its whistleblowers and truth-tellers who expose corruption.

A government that can discard its military service members can discard its journalists, judges, and watchdogs in the press and the courts who insist on transparency and limits to power.

A government that can discard its military service members can discard its political opponents and dissidents, its religious and racial minorities, its immigrants and asylum seekers, its small business owners and workers who organize, its parents and community members who speak up locally, and any citizen who dares to say “no” when the state demands “yes.”

This betrayal of those who swore an oath to the Constitution is not an accident—it is a warning.

Be warned.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

The post The Constitution vs. the Commander-in-Chief: The Duty To Disobey Unlawful Orders appeared first on LewRockwell.

In this essay, I will take on the Putin Hero Worship that is all too common among Russian cheerleaders in Alternative Media. Their misreading of the man and his conduct of the war will multiply 10 times over when a peace is concluded that meets many, though not all of Russia’s objectives.   Yes, we told you so, they will be crowing: peace has come because Putin has made all the right moves and trashed the West.

However, there is a strong argument to make for exactly the opposite interpretation of what has been going on for the nearly four years of this war, namely that it got off to a very bad start and has been drawn out needlessly because of the peculiar strategy that Team Putin put in place and has stuck with notwithstanding mounting fatalities and a worsening international environment that threatens to escalate from the present proxy war against Russia into a Europe wide kinetic war that will devastate the Continent

. If indeed the war ends in the next couple of months, it will be largely due to the efforts of Donald Trump, who is determined to reach a geopolitical settlement with Russia for his own Realpolitik reasons, namely to break up the Russia-China alliance. Regrettably, I agree with Trump that Putin would fight on for years to come in the flawed belief that he is sparing lives by his war of attrition approach and that a total military victory is achievable.  It is not, given the go-for-broke irrational commitment to continuing the war by the EU Member States.

As I have been saying for some time, this war will end and there will likely be Ukrainian capitulation thanks to the political collapse of the Kiev regime, not because the Ukrainian army has been driven from the field of battle. And Kiev is being pushed towards political collapse today by Team Trump more than by anyone else.

****

If we may go back to the very start of the Special Military Operation, I maintain that Team Putin had not done due diligence regarding the likely Ukrainian army response to an invasion and had not fielded an invasion force in the numbers essential for it to succeed.

In my chat with Peter Lavelle on the podcast The Gaggle a couple of weeks ago, Peter reminded me that in the weeks before the start of the Special Military Operation, when I was still a regular guest on the RT show ‘CrossTalk,’ I had been one of the very few analysts in Alternative Media to have predicted the Russian invasion. I do not remember that, but it could well have been so because I am no military expert and would not have seen that the 150,000 troops that the Russians amassed across the Belarus border from Ukraine were only one third the number that normal military doctrine tells you are needed to perform such an operation as crossing into enemy territory to capture the capital and force regime change.

Just a few months into the SMO, I heard from a taxi driver during the hour-long trip from my apartment in an outlying borough of St Petersburg to the city center how Team Putin has stunned his own military intelligence people by not consulting with them before staging the invasion.  And what would a taxi driver know about such things, you may ask.  Well, this driver just happened to be a retired military intelligence officer who remained in touch with his former colleagues and heard the story from them.

Yes, in Russia at various times taxi drivers have been exceptional sources of information. Just remember that Vladimir Putin himself admitted in a public Q&A a year or so ago, that at the start of the 90s he, too, had been a taxi driver for a while just to put bread on the table, given the general economic collapse.

It is fairly obvious that Team Putin expected the Ukrainian military to raise the white flag at the first sign of Russian troops invading, just as they had done in 2014 on Crimea.  One might guess that Putin and his close advisers did not appreciate how effectively British and other NATO trainers had been during the intervening 8 years in reshaping the Ukrainian army. The Russian appeals to the Ukrainian officers to rebel against the extremist nationalist government in Kiev and against the Nazi battalions in their own midst fell on deaf ears.

Indeed, you may go on to ask whether a good people manager like Putin could really ignore the protocol of government administration and not consult with the agency responsible for providing military intelligence.  But this very behavior has in the past two weeks been repeated in a manner for us all to see when Putin completely sidelined Sergei Lavrov and the entire Ministry of Foreign Affairs from the peace negotiations with the USA and Ukraine, relying instead on a relative outsider and neophyte in such matters, Kirill Dmitriev.

Indeed, if the Russian command had poor military and political intelligence on the enemy at the start, it has not become better informed ever since. I point to the ‘surprise’ Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk oblast of the Russian Federation that it took more than six months of fierce fighting to uproot and expel. It is hard to understand why his Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov was not sacked over this disgraceful failure to secure the Russian Federation borders, why no one had checked the fortifications that were supposed to have been built with federal money in Belgorod and Kursk, but never were, or were built with inferior concrete because of local government corruption.

The whole strategy of waging war ‘the Russian way’ brought in by Vladimir Putin  in February 2022, in contrast to the U.S. style ‘shock and awe’ to overwhelm the enemy, has dragged out the war vastly longer than was necessary, has created more killed and severely maimed Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, and has invited Western intervention which all could have been avoided had Putin followed Soviet practice in such matters and used a hammer to crush the fly instead of a napkin.

The lessons of the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968 were precisely that massive troop presence must be brought to bear for successful regime change by force of arms. In both cases, the Soviet invasions were cruel, but in the end relatively few people died and the whole exercise was over in a matter of days, at most weeks, not years as is the case today.

These lessons have not been absorbed by Team Putin to this day. For inexplicable reasons the Boss in the Kremlin refuses to make a decapitating strike in Kiev to end the fighting at once without further loss of life.

As I say above, it is the intervention of Donald Trump that is bringing down the Kiev regime. The United States stands behind the anti-corruption investigations that already have greatly weakened Zelensky’s position following the forced resignation of his head of the Presidential Administration and power behind the throne, Andrii Yermak.  It is Team Trump who have been sidelining Europe, letting the air out of the balloon of the Coalition of the Willing, and preparing the way for capitulation by Kiev before anyone in Brussels can raise a finger.

Don’t get me wrong. I have the greatest respect for Vladimir Putin as the man who put Russia back on its feet economically, socially and in military might after the collapse and disgrace of the 1990s. For these achievements, he may be honored for decades to come with monuments all around the Federation. But as we say in the business world: ‘horses for courses.’  And Putin, the nation builder in peacetime has been making too many wrong moves as Commander in Chief of a nation at war.

This article was originally published on GilbertDoctorow.com.

The post Putin Has Been Wrong About This War From the Beginning appeared first on LewRockwell.

The knives are out for the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The leaks from the Pentagon about him will continue until Hegseth is gone.

The officers do not want a boss who is giving illegal orders while scapegoating the generals and soldiers who follow them:

At the White House on Monday, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, read a statement that said Mr. Hegseth had authorized the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, “to conduct these kinetic strikes.”

She said that Admiral Bradley had “worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”

Bradly gets pushed forward to take the beating while Hegseth and Trump claim innocence:

Bradley will have the chance to address outstanding issues about the strikes when he speaks with lawmakers Thursday behind closed doors. Some lawmakers have said the Trump administration appears to be making Bradley into something of a scapegoat.

“Looks like they’re throwing him under the bus,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), often a critic of the administration, “but these kinds of decisions go all the way to the top.”

Adm. Bradley had the poor choice of following an illegal order or getting fired.

In my recent piece abut U.S. strikes on boats in the Caribbean I suggested that the head of Southern Command, Adm. Alvin Holsey, was made to retire because he rejected orders to kill survivors of U.S attacks:

On the very same day those survivors were rescued, October 16, the DoD announced that the head of its Southern Command was ‘stepping down’: ..
…
It now seems clear that Admiral Holsey got fired for not following Hegseth’s illegal order and for ordering the rescue of the survivors of the strike.

A piece in today’s Wall Street Journal confirms this impression:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shocked official Washington in mid-October when he announced that the four-star head of U.S. military operations in the Caribbean was retiring less than a year into his tenure.

But according to two Pentagon officials, Hegseth asked Adm. Alvin Holsey to step down, a de facto ouster that was the culmination of months of discord between Hegseth and the officer. It began days after President Trump’s inauguration in January and intensified months later when Holsey had initial concerns about the legality of lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, according to former officials aware of the discussions.

Hegseth has now claimed (archived) to have not seen no survivors when he was in the room watching the stream of a second strike happening that killed survivors of an allegedly smuggling boat:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that “a couple of hours” passed before he was made aware that a September military strike he authorized and “watched live” required an additional attack to kill two survivors, further distancing himself from an incident now facing congressional inquiry.
…
“I did not personally see survivors,” he said in response to a reporter’s question, “… because that thing was on fire and was exploded, and fire, smoke, you can’t see anything. You got digital, there’s — this is called the fog of war.”

That, however, contradicts the original reporting of the issue. The Washington Post wrote (archived) that Hegseth was watching the video stream when survivors of a strike were clearly visible and was aware of the order to kill them:

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

The NY Times reports further details (archived):

Before the Trump administration began attacking people suspected of smuggling drugs at sea, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved contingency plans for what to do if an initial strike left survivors, according to multiple U.S. officials.

The military would attempt to rescue survivors who appeared to be helpless, shipwrecked and out of what the administration considered a fight. But it would try again to kill them if they took what the United States deemed to be a hostile action, like communicating with suspected cartel members, the officials said.

After the smoke cleared from a first strike on Sept. 2, there were two survivors, and one of them radioed for help, the U.S. officials said. Adm. Frank M. Bradley, who commanded the operation, ordered a follow-up strike and both were killed.

The reasoning is ludicrous. Survivors of a murderous strike are to be rescued. But survivors who call for help to be rescued have to be killed:

Under the plans Mr. Hegseth had approved, Admiral Bradley interpreted the purported communications between the initial survivors and colleagues as meaning that the survivors were still in the fight, rather than shipwrecked and helpless people whom it would be a war crime to target.

The whole legal construct behind these strikes is obviously nonsense:

The Pentagon’s defense of its actions rests heavily on the premise that there was a “fight” in the first place. In defending the campaign of summary killings at sea as lawful, the administration has relied on Mr. Trump’s disputed determination that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels and that people suspected of smuggling drugs for them are “combatants.”

A still-secret memo by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel accepts Mr. Trump’s claims about the nature of drug cartels and that there is an armed conflict. Based on that premise, it concludes that the boat strikes are lawful.

One of its key related conclusions, according to people who have read it, is that suspected cargos of drugs aboard boats are lawful military targets because cartels could otherwise sell them and use the profits to buy military equipment to sustain their alleged war efforts.

The Pentagon’s emphasis on the purported radio communications appears to rely on that logic. The idea appears to be that without a second strike, another boat could have come to retrieve not only the survivors but also any of the alleged shipment of cocaine that the first blast did not burn up, so calling for help was a hostile act.

The OLC memo is intentionally confusing cause and effect.

People and cartels are greedy. They sell drugs to make money. Whatever arms they may have are used in support of that primary aim. They are in business, not in an ‘armed conflict’. They do not to fight wars for lebensraum or ideologically reasons:

A broad range of legal experts reject the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s claim that this is an armed conflict. They say that there is no armed conflict, that crews of boats suspected of smuggling drugs are civilians, not combatants, and that Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth have been giving illegal orders to commit murder.

Hegseth has given orders to murder civilians. If this were an ‘armed conflict’ Hegseth would have committed a war crime.

Or, as conservative commentator George Will scathingly remarks (archived:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement.

Pete Hegseth has long argued for more brutal wars, for more unfair fights to satisfy his inner psychopath:

In books and on television, Hegseth argued for years that U.S. military leaders should relax rules for American forces, allowing them to fight unburdened by concerns of future courts-martial. More freedom to operate, he insisted, and less regulation by military lawyers would make troops more lethal and effective, and could be justified under the laws of war.
…
Hegseth’s views were shaped by his own experience in the Army. He was deployed to Iraq in 2005, in the northern city of Samarra, which was a counterinsurgency hotbed. The regiment’s Charlie Company, which included Hegseth, employed such aggressive tactics that it was referred to by some soldiers as the Kill Company [archived]. Four of its soldiers were later court-martialed on charges of killing unarmed Iraqis. Three of them were convicted; one case was thrown out on appeal.

Hegseth has cited a JAG briefing on “legal and proper engagement” that he says he and fellow troops received when they deployed. Hegseth says his soldiers were told they couldn’t fire on an armed man unless it was clear he posed a threat.

Hegseth pulled his platoon aside and told them to ignore the legal advice. “I will not allow that nonsense to filter into your brains,” he says he told them, according to his 2024 book “The War on Warriors.” “Men, if you see an enemy who you believe is a threat, you engage and destroy the threat.”

Hegseth brought such convictions to the Pentagon. In February, when he fired the top JAGs, he said they could be potential “roadblocks” to lawful orders “given by a commander in chief.”

Defense Secretary Hegseth’s inherent brutality is likely the reason why he got hired for his position:

Trump selected Hegseth as defense secretary partly because of his views on loosening the rules of engagement, two people familiar with the presidential transition said.

It is high time for Congress to rein both men in.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post The Knives Are Out for Hegseth appeared first on LewRockwell.

European NATO allies have called a NATO Emergency Summit to discuss NATO’s continued existence and whether the US key partner could still be trusted.

Every American signal of US withdrawal brings Russia closer to her target – defeating NATO, not with bullets but with time. This is being recognized gradually by European “leaders”, NATO members which today – 1 December 2025 — came to a climax that called this Emergency NATO Summit in Brussels.

Alliances are not marriages. They can and do gradually fall apart. This seems to be the case NOW. It is no longer a question whether NATO will follow its Washington leadership – or break apart – or continue as a European alliance. The latter is unlikely as European-NATO leadership is today divided to the point where no long term strategy can be expected to lead a NATO military force, let alone bring together a unified budget for a military force – which calls itself a defense force, but in reality, is and has been since 1991 an aggressor, an international war machine.

Professor John J. Mearsheimer explains in detail the challenges faced by NATO, its European leaders and the likelihood that NATO may break apart.

Listen to Professor Mearsheimer’s assessment on this 15-min video:

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Is NATO Breaking Up? appeared first on LewRockwell.

On January 16, 2019, 130 acres of rural North Carolina land near Raleigh were purchased by Carolina Murugan Temple (CMT). A month prior, their plans to build the largest Hindu statue in North America were approved by the county. Under construction now, CMT plans to build a 155-foot-tall statue, which will sit on a 35-foot pedestal. It will be taller than the Statue of Liberty, which stands at 151 feet, not including the pedestal. This new development is a continuation of the Hindu acculturation in North Carolina; in October of 2022, the Sri Venkateswara Temple in Cary unveiled its 87-foot Tower of Unity and Prosperity at a ceremony attended by then North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper.

Along with new temples and 190-foot idols, tracts of land in rural North Carolina areas are also being bought up by Indian companies with the intention of building Hindu communities. One such company, Sustaino LLC., has purchased nearly 400 acres of land across the state. One of their current projects, Vedic Village, is set to include an on-site yoga studio and Hindu temple. The structure of the community is all self-contained, essentially a commune in nature. While their website claims, for legal reasons, that they do not restrict residency based on race or beliefs, the very nature of the community says otherwise.

Further down south, in Texas, a similar development has faced significant criticism. The Meadow, formerly known as EPIC City, is a 402-acre site on the outskirts of Josephine, Texas. Similar to the Hindu-centric Vedic Village, The Meadow’s community plans include homes, a mosque, a religious school, a senior living center, as well as retail spaces. While the inner workings of The Meadow are not as commune-esque as those of proposed Hindu communities, the objective is the same in both cases: to create an isolated community in which these anti-Christian religions can thrive and grow.

The pushback in Texas has been strong—from locals who opposed the development at a town meeting all the way up to Governor Greg Abbott launching investigations into Community Capital Partners, the backer of the development. There appears to be little to no backlash at this increasing Hindu colonization in North Carolina, perhaps due to a lack of press coverage on these developments, although some have spoken out about the new idol statue that is in the works.

The locals who are pushing back against a Muslim city in Texas are getting raked over the coals for “Islamophobia.” Some reports denounce North Carolinian pushback to the 190-foot-tall statue of the false god Murugan as “Hinduphobic.” Are the rejection of false religions and the fear of the colonization of rural America irrational, as the suffix “phobia” suggests? No. Rather, it is the rational response to growing demonic influence in American culture. We see the atrocitiesbeing committed in the United Kingdom by Muslim majority migrant groups; we do not want that here.

John Adams said in a letter to the Massachusetts militia, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The moral framework upon which America was founded, upon which the Constitution rests, is that of Christianity. Our system of government is incapable of functioning without this framework, as we see so clearly in the current collapse of our country in response to the growth of secular humanism. Muslims will inevitably submit to Sharia, not the Constitution or Bill of Rights. The polytheistic pagan worship of Hinduism is so contrary to a Christian understanding of the human person and the Western philosophical tradition upon which our nation was founded that it can in no way be compatible with our system of law.

To give credit where credit is due, I respect the audacity of these groups and religious organizations for taking the initiative to build communities for their followers. They at least know the truth that to expand and grow as a faith, they must join together; their strength is in their numbers. While Muslims and Hindus continue to build isolated communities, mosques, temples, and more, the leaders of American Catholics are preoccupied with climate change and synodality. Attacks on the Tridentine Mass, such as those in the Diocese of Charlotte, serve only to further isolate faithful Catholics and prevent the growth of parish communities.

While our backs are turned in our preoccupation with hand-wringing about the virtues of ecumenism, enemies of the Faith are busy taking over. The internal persecution of traditional Catholics is currently weakening the global church—and it will only continue to do so. Ecumenism without conversion is an empty gesture; it does as much good as giving cash to a drug addict.

American Catholics and Christians must firmly oppose the ideological takeover of our country, whether from secular humanists, Muslims, Hindus, or any other false belief system. We need to work together to strengthen our parish communities and work outward to effect real change in our neighborhoods. Christ said the world will know us by our love, not by our passivity. It is time the faithful start pushing back.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post Hindus Take Over North Carolina; Muslims Take Over Texas; Catholics Take Over Parish Basements appeared first on LewRockwell.

In a recent article, The Intelligence Branch Answers to No One, J. B. Shurk posits the inherent danger to self-government of secrecy.

“Can self-government exist alongside centralized intelligence agencies?  Espionage agencies seek secrets and keep secrets.  To the extent that they inform the public what they know, they decide which secrets can be disclosed.  Now this may be the only way for a clandestine service to operate, but it certainly does not equip the public to make fully-informed decisions.  When choosing which policies or representatives to support, voters know nothing of substance within the classified world.”

Recently I heard Mathieu Pageau describe The Simple Act That Could Have Prevented “The Fall”. (Taken from the transcript so it seems a bit confused, my highlights.)

“When Eve offered the apple to Adam, Adam should have asked God and said, hey, God. By the way, Eve is offering me this. This is what she told me. What’s cool? What should I do? Very simple. Exactly. But. And why why should he ask. Because it contradicts if it didn’t contradict. You know if, if she was giving something that didn’t contradict what God said, you know, wouldn’t have to ask God. You know, if you have free will, you could do. But it’s something that directly contradicts what God said. So in that case, yes, you should inquire. It seems obvious actually when you say no. But this is a real this is a real social phenomenon. I mean, this is how things get subverted. People say things about other people and then they don’t. They make sure you don’t. You don’t connect. See, it’s all about connecting things, right? It’s all about communication and connecting things to God. And he kind of broke that communication. The snake broke it. He’s like, I’m telling you a secret about God. And he’s like, you’re not going to ask him, are you? Because I’m saying he has bad intentions. So if he has bad intentions, why would you ask him? You know, I already convince you that God was lying to you, so why would you then go ask God if he is lying to you? Know you won’t see that’s that’s how Satan tricks people. It’s he makes sure that there’s no communication. See? And this is why, by the way, this is why, the most powerful thing in the world is secret stuff like secret, like that. Let’s say we’re talking about governmental function. Intelligence agencies are more powerful than governments. That’s why they can be. They’re not necessarily, but they can be It’s also why the occult appeals to many people. A cult to something that’s hidden. People like the idea of secret power. absolutely. Yeah. And secret in the sense that. Yeah. Secret from everyone else. That’s one thing too. But you see that the thing is too, there’s nothing wrong with secrets, but they can be used to subvert. And so you got to be careful. It’s like it doesn’t mean secrets are bad, but you got to be real careful when you’re dealing with anything that tells you not to say something.”

In Pageau’s understanding, the great sin of the Fall was not eating the apple but keeping the act a secret from God.

A very entertaining five hours is available by listening to a reading of G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. The plot revolves around the total confusion begot by the secrecy of undercover police espionage agents against anarchist terrorists. The reading is by Ruby Love at her Substack Classics Read Aloud. In a perfectly intended pun, it is a real gem. (Classics Read Aloud is a most unusual spinoff of Doomberg.com, a site for exceptional analysis of energy markets and geopolitics presented by a green chicken.)

However, while I am fully on board with the danger of government secrets, what about private secrets?  I am not very secretive myself, at least I don’t think so. But I can keep a secret or perhaps it is more apt to say I am discreet. My mother was a very nervous person. For that reason I did not tell her what was going on in my life. In college I told my roommates to never call my mom in an emergency. Luckily, there never was an emergency.

I understood my intuitive response to her nervousness had merit when I went to work in Oak Ridge, TN at the Department of Energy’s Y-12 Plant. I was given a Q clearance which is equivalent to Top Secret. As a young engineer working on facilities support I never worked nor even understood that I had seen secret information. However, one day walking through a building I came across a sign indicating the area was a part of the Fogbank project. I had fun accidentally saying the word fogbank in conversation after that. It was only decades later that I learned that Fogbank is a code name given to a secret material used in nuclear warheads. The key concept of secrecy I learned with my Q clearance is the need to know. Never tell someone something unless they need to know it. Decline to listen to someone tell you something unless you need to know it. I think I was right not to tell my mom about much of my typical activities because she really did not need to know. In the news today there is much about the Epstein files and other government activities that I think the public does need to know; at least to some extent, what, why and how the secret intelligence agencies operate.

At the moment I am trying to keep the secret that I bought a new television as a Christmas gift for my family. Clearly, they never read my posts at LRC.

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Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

Predictably but still sadly, with Charlie Kirk out of the way, TPUSA which he co-founded, is now  lobbying for a US war with Iran. Kirk had evolved in the last two years of his life into an antiwar activist. I also found out Tucker Carlson, who evolved to his antiwar stance about 15 years ago, also personally lobbied Trump against attacking Iran.

Charlie Kirk personally lobbied Trump against striking Iran

Six months later, with Kirk gone, TPUSA is in the Pentagon propaganda room lobbying Trump to strike Iran again https://t.co/VdeuGzbb93

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 4, 2025

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The Royalist

The post Harry’s Colbert Appearance Needling Trump Was Reckless and, Politically, Not Astute appeared first on LewRockwell.

Brian Dunaway wrote:

The financial press is awash in alarms such as this, and among these are claxons from well-respected conservative billionaire investors not formerly disposed to hyperbole.

This is not your father’s financial crisis, or for that matter your grandfathers’, or your great, great …

Here’s the money paragraph:

“What would happen if there is an actual failure to deliver in the silver market? Mr. Gold says, ‘If that gets confirmed, then that one day you will see a huge spike, but markets won’t open after that. That will cascade. What will happen is all the COMEX contracts for both silver and gold will default. That will spill over to the rest of the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange). It has contracts on US Treasuries and stocks. They have contracts on everything. If the silver contracts blow up and the gold contracts blow up, how much confidence are you going to have on pork bellies or stocks. … The derivative market is $2 quadrillion. In the future, you are going to measure your wealth by how many ounces of silver and how many ounces of gold you own. … Once you get a failure to deliver, you will get a Mad Max scenario. Failure to deliver will melt down all derivatives. The world runs on credit, and credit runs on faith. If you break faith, then you have a real problem in the financial markets and the real economy.’”

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Eugyppius

The post The entire state of Rheinland-Pfalz is toying with a strategy to outright ban AfD candidates from elected office appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post The ‘Affordability Crisis’ And What It Means For The Midterms appeared first on LewRockwell.