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Writes Bill Madden:

I recently sent an e-mail discussing how the Federal Reserve Bank loans our dollar into circulation at interest contrary to the dictates of the Constitution ordering Congress to coin money and regulate its value – without interest.  Aristotle’s Definition of Money requires that money be a “store of value” which gold and silver are and which paper is not.  If paper dollars and accounting entries are used for convenience, they must be backed up by the something of value for the monetary system to contain money vs. the fiat currency that our dollar has become.  Our domestic dollar was backed by silver coins until the end of 1964 and the international dollar was backed by gold until 8/15/1971. 

The referenced link is an 18 minute video explaining the preceding paragraph.  Other good videos explaining our convoluted monetary system are “Hidden Secrets of Money” under the “Learn” heading at: www.goldsilver.com.  Knowledge in this area is important because our dollar is collapsing in value as the currency in other nations is gradually being backed by gold.  This is bad news for the dollar which is currently a worldwide reserve currency but is slowly being replaced to the detriment of our dollar and our economy.  Until now, Americans have enjoyed prosperity due to the international demand for our dollars.  Things are changing.

The video talks about the large banks owning the Federal Reserve Bank.  Please remember that humans own the large banks and that it is the equity side of any corporation that decides whether the corporation will act for the benefit of all stockholders or just the benefit of the one or two families controlling the corporation.  Some super-rich families control more than one corporation.  So, corporations are not greedy but the humans controlling the corporation can satisfy their greed by their control of the corporation.  The management side of the corporation may or may not own a lot of stock but their job is to do what they are told to do by the equity side.

Many of our country’s problems would be solved by a return to the Constitution but, unfortunately, that is not what the financial benefactors of our politicians and bureaucrats want. 

The post The Fed vs. The Constitution appeared first on LewRockwell.

Lew,

“It is better to iive for the freedom that Christ has set us free for than to be enslaved in sin and death.” – George Farmer, husband of Candace Owens and father of their four children 

Farmer recently delivered a speech entitled “The Political Order of Antichrist” at the 2025 Catholic Identity Conference. He discussed the temptation, theology and idolatry of technology and the need for Catholics to get involved in developing AI and to get right with the Lord first thing every morning and in all we do. 

The post 2025 Catholic Identity Conference Speech: The Political Order of Antichrist appeared first on LewRockwell.

______________________________________________________________________________________

di Thomas Kolbe

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/lue-accelera-verso-il-collasso-merz)

Il Cancelliere sembra essersi scontrato con la realtà durante la pausa estiva: Merz vede il sistema sociale tedesco in profonda crisi. Nel frattempo i suoi alleati politici a Bruxelles chiedono un aumento della stessa dose di veleno che sta facendo ammalare l'Europa.

Diciamolo chiaramente: gran parte dell'élite politica ha un rapporto frammentato con la realtà. Questo vale tanto per il declino economico della Germania e dell'UE quanto per la comunicazione pubblica degli obiettivi politici strategici, sistematicamente oscurati. Una critica aperta al corso degli eventi potrebbe far crollare la favola politica più velocemente di quanto la realtà possa percolare nell'opinione pubblica.

Merz e lo Stato sociale

Ancora più significative sono le parole di avvertimento del Cancelliere, Friedrich Merz, durante la sua apparizione al congresso del partito della CDU in Bassa Sassonia: “Non sono soddisfatto di quanto abbiamo realizzato finora: dobbiamo fare di più e meglio”.

Eccolo finalmente! Un leggero fremito di autocritica da parte del Cancelliere. Raro, davvero. Eppure quella dichiarazione ci deve far porre una domanda: cosa intende esattamente Merz con “realizzato”? Si riferisce al cosiddetto stimolo agli investimenti, che presumibilmente fornirà un sollievo marginale all'economia tedesca mentre è sull'orlo del collasso? O si riferisce agli ingenti pacchetti di debito e al crescente divario di finanziamento, che molto probabilmente saranno colmati con aumenti delle tasse?

Nel suo discorso a Osnabrück, Merz ha parlato in modo insolitamente chiaro dello stato in cui versa il sistema di welfare: “Lo Stato sociale, così come lo abbiamo oggi, non è più sostenibile finanziariamente rispetto a ciò che possiamo offrire economicamente”. Una diagnosi schietta, che lascia ben poco a desiderare in termini di chiarezza.

Tuttavia non si è fatto alcun accenno a una svolta orientata al mercato, alla fiducia nelle soluzioni individuali, alla responsabilità personale, o a una rapida riduzione della burocrazia. Il messaggio sembra essere: mantenere la rotta.

Momenti di onestà

Merz ha parlato in modo inequivocabile anche dei sussidi sociali: non si può continuare così. Circa 5,6 milioni di persone ricevono i sussidi e molti potrebbero lavorare ma non lo fanno, ha detto. Una realtà che la politica di solito evita.

Un tentativo timidamente esplicito di denunciare apertamente la precarietà della previdenza sociale tedesca. In tempi in cui l'addolcimento della pillola politica è all'ordine del giorno, è quasi un colpo di fortuna quando un politico di spicco riconosce almeno in parte la realtà economica.

Gli ultimi dati economici hanno forse scosso Merz e i suoi colleghi a Berlino? Il PIL si è nuovamente contratto nel secondo trimestre e le prospettive rimangono fosche. Con lo stato che interviene con ingenti programmi di credito e un nuovo debito che quest'anno ha raggiunto circa il 3,5%, l'economia privata si sta contraendo del 4-5%. Definirla recessione sarebbe eufemistico: siamo in depressione.

Più centralismo nell'UE

Mentre il Cancelliere si confrontava con la dura realtà economica della Germania, i rappresentanti dell'UE lanciavano palloni sonda sui media.

È stato Mario Draghi, il poliedrico politico dell'UE, che si alterna con disinvoltura tra l'ex-primo ministro italiano e il presidente della BCE, a presentare l'ennesimo rapporto.

Ha ribadito la sua consueta richiesta: l'Unione Europea deve agire in modo più coeso, come un unico stato, se vuole mantenere un ruolo geopolitico.

Ancora una volta, la stessa medicina che ha fatto ammalare l'Europa: più centralizzazione, meno sussidiarietà e un governo tecnocratico intensificato. Draghi ripropone ancora una volta il piano di Bruxelles, come durante la crisi del debito sovrano di 15 anni fa: potere concentrato a Bruxelles, decisioni al di fuori del controllo democratico, imposte da un apparato politico che dirige le narrazioni sui media. Censura rigorosa, manipolazione dell'informazione: strumenti sporchi per mettere a tacere l'opposizione alla centralizzazione. La stessa logica autoritaria che funzionò allora sta tornando in auge.

La Lagarde e la migrazione

Anche l'alleata di Draghi, la presidente della BCE Christine Lagarde, ha fatto il suo ingresso nel circuito mediatico. Ha toccato il tema dell'immigrazione, un argomento abilmente evitato o distorto nel mondo della politica e dei media tedeschi.

La Lagarde si è lanciata in affermazioni audaci alla riunione della Federal Reserve a Jackson Hole, testando abilmente l'umore dell'Europa. Secondo lei l'UE non potrebbe più crescere senza una massiccia migrazione (di quale crescita esattamente?); ha poi affermato che il PIL della Germania sarebbe oggi inferiore di circa il 6% rispetto al 2019 senza lavoratori stranieri.

Che il Paese sia in depressione da tempo sembra non essere stato compreso dai vertici della BCE. Poi è arrivata la solita solfa: senza migrazione, la carenza di manodopera non può essere affrontata. Nessun accenno ai progressi tecnologici tramite intelligenza artificiale o robotica, che potrebbero compensare la carenza di manodopera. Nessun accenno alla migrazione come rischio per la sicurezza, ai conflitti culturali, o a un Islam politico incompatibile con i valori europei.

La posizione della Lagarde è stata particolarmente eclatante in un momento in cui gli Stati Uniti hanno iniziato a rimpatriare i migranti illegali, ponendo fine all'europeizzazione della politica americana. Il suo discorso, nella terra del risveglio razionale e della svolta politica, non ha suscitato altro che sconcerto.

Jackson Hole ha evidenziato la traiettoria dell'UE: frontiere aperte, élite che ignorano i rischi, mentre la sinistra espande la propria base elettorale a spese della cultura e dell'economia dell'Europa.

Equilibrio precario

Se si mettono insieme i tre eventi – il discorso di Merz, la Lagarde a Jackson Hole e l'ultimo rapporto di Draghi – la conclusione è allarmante: l'economia sta accelerando verso il collasso a causa di una crisi energetica autoinflitta e di un'eccessiva regolamentazione. I fondi sociali, tesi dall'immigrazione illegale di massa, rischiano l'implosione. La soluzione proposta? Centralizzazione, regolamentazione e migrazione incontrollata.

Anche i soliti dibattiti sull'aumento delle tasse del Ministro delle Finanze, Lars Klingbeil, si inseriscono perfettamente in questo contesto: l'individuo non conta nulla, lo stato controlla tutto, gravando sempre di più sui cittadini. L'audacia di attaccare la proprietà privata e aumentare ulteriormente le tasse è sconcertante, e incontra poca resistenza. La CDU di Merz è diventata un muro protettivo di aria fritta, sottile come la carta.

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

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This is a total mindblower!

The post Mike Benz: MrBeast And the USAID Truman Show appeared first on LewRockwell.

We often hear demands to ban so-called “hate speech.” Negative remarks about various groups, including women, black people, homosexuals, Jews, Muslims, can it is alleged, have a negative effect on members of the group who hear or see the speech. It encourages people to hate them and cements negative stereotypes about them in people’s minds. In addition, hearing or seeing “hate speech” offends the members of the group. Free speech may have some value, but whatever value it has it outweighed by the evil of “hate speech.” Almost any group can claim to be victimized by “hate speech,” except for white heterosexual males and Christians, but “hate speech” applies primarily to members of so-called “protected classes.”

From a libertarian standpoint, the question of banning so-called “hate speech” is a no-brainer. Banning any kind of speech, whether it is good or bad, is incompatible with a free society. As the great Murray Rothbard has taught us, all rights are property rights. Everyone can set the rules for speech on his own property, and no one has the right to control what anyone says on someone else’s property. This includes speech which counts as “offensive.” Of course, we don’t live in a libertarian society, but we should come as close as we can in practice to it. This means following the strictest possible interpretation of the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law. . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” “No law” means “no law” and that includes laws against so-called “hate speech.”

Some states have “hate speech” laws on the books. New York is considering a law, already passed in California that requires social media companies to report “hate speech.” This is the “Stop Hiding Hate Act” and has been passed by the State’s Assembly. Here is an account of the measure from Vince Chang, who favors it:

“Under pressure from the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] and other groups, internet platforms have voluntarily adopted measures to regulate hate speech. The ADL described some of the measures that have been taken: Facebook prohibited Holocaust denial content, hired a vice president of civil rights, changed parts of its advertising platform to prohibit various forms of discrimination; expanded policies against content that undermined the legitimacy of the election; and built a team to study and eliminate bias in artificial intelligence. Due to pressure from ADL and other civil rights organizations, Twitter banned linked content, URL links to content outside the platform that promotes violence and hateful conduct. Reddit added its first global hate policy, providing for the removal of subreddits and users that “promote hate based on identity or vulnerability.”

We can see how such laws have a chilling effect on speech if we look at bans on so-called “hate speech” in foreign countries where they are already in operation. I want to focus especially on the Scottish Hate Speech Act.

Let’s first look at an official summary of the Scottish act, from the Scottish parliament site:

“Hate crime is the phrase used to describe behaviour which is both criminal and based on prejudice.

There are already laws in place to protect certain groups from hate crime.

This Bill aims to do three things. It updates these existing laws and pulls most of these laws into one Bill. It also adds to the groups currently specifically protected by hate crime laws.

Criminal courts can generally take into account any prejudice when sentencing a person. Also, people are protected from hate crime through specific laws that apply.

People are currently protected by specific laws on the basis of:

• disability
• race (and related characteristics)
• religion
• sexual orientation
• transgender identity

This Bill adds age to that list and allows sex to be added at a later date.

The Bill creates a new crime of stirring up hatred against any of the protected groups covered by the Bill.”

The bill was enacted in 2021 and came into force on April 1, 2024,

The supporters of this Act want to create a community that is united in supporting “diversity.” Do you see the contradiction? If you oppose what these people call “diversity,” then you are not part of the united community. In other words, only those who accept what we say are free and have rights. As George Orwell said in 1984, “Freedom is Slavery.” Let’s look at what they say in their own words:

“Scotland’s diversity is its strength; and all communities are valued and their contribution welcomed. Hate crime and prejudice threaten community cohesion and have a corrosive impact on Scotland’s communities as well as broader society. Hate crime and prejudice is never acceptable and the Scottish Government is committed to tackling it. This legislation provides an essential element of the Scottish Government’s ambitious programme of work to tackle hate crime and build community cohesion. Anyone who has experienced or witnessed a hate crime is encouraged to report it to the police or to one of the third-party reporting centres that are in place across Scotland. A cohesive society is one with a common vision and a sense of belonging for all communities; a society in which the diversity of people’s backgrounds, beliefs and circumstances are appreciated and valued, and similar life opportunities are available to all. It is through this lens that the Scottish Government has considered the recommendations from Lord Bracadale’s ‘Independent Review of Hate Crime Legislation in Scotland’ in order to inform the modernisation and reform of hate crime legislation in Scotland.

One of the most aggressive groups in trying to silence others for has speech consists of so-called” trans” people. If you don’t agree with them that you can become a man or woman just by “identifying” yourself as one, you can be prosecuted. This is the “democratic community” in action. The prosecutions are by no means confined to religious and political conservatives. Leftwing “gender critical” feminists, who think that a woman is a woman, have been prosecuted. Jonathan Turley tells us what happened to one of them in 2021:

“There is a free speech fight brewing in Scotland where a prominent feminist, Marion Millar, 50, has been charged with the crime of “malicious communication” due to tweets criticizing gender self-identification.  We have previously discussed how feminists are being accused of hate speech and discrimination in these debates.  Indeed, Millar is accused of being a “terf” (a trans-exclusionary radical feminist) by critics due to her opposition to allowing males to declare themselves to be females.  She could now face two years in jail.

What is particularly concerning in this case is that Millar was not told which of her tweets were deemed “malicious.” Millar has thousands of tweets and was told that the charge is based on tweets between 2019 and 2020.  She was simply ordered to the police station and told that social workers would be sent to care for her young twin boys, who are autistic.  After she emerged from the station, she quoted the novelist Salman Rushdie: “Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn’t exist in any declaration I have ever read.”

There are believed to be six tweets that were cited in the complaint, including pictures of the green, white and purple suffragette ribbons tied around trees to support Millar’s cause. The accuser reportedly said that the ribbons looked like nooses and were therefore threats. How ridiculous can you get?

Fortunately, this particular story has a happy ending, at least relatively so. As The Guardian reports, “Scottish prosecutors have discontinued the case against a woman charged with posting allegedly homophobic and transphobic content online. On Thursday morning, the Crown Office confirmed it had dropped proceedings against Marion Millar, a vocal opponent of the Scottish government’s plans for transgender law reform, before a scheduled hearing next Monday and subject to a review with the alleged victims. Millar, an accountant from Airdrie, had yet to plead, but her defence team, which included SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC, was planning to challenge the prosecution on human rights grounds.” The next person might not be so “lucky.”

Let’s do everything we can to oppose the bigots who want to censor us and force us to adopt their insane opinions!

The post Why Banning Hate Speech Is Evil appeared first on LewRockwell.

Artificial intelligence is being sold as the technology that will “change everything.” Yet while a handful of firms are profiting enormously from the AI boom, the financial risk may already be shifting to the public.

The louder the promises become, the quieter another possibility seems to be:

What if AI is not accelerating the economy at all — but disguising the fact that it is slowing down?

For months, the headlines have declared that AI is transforming medicine, education, logistics, finance, and culture. Yet when I speak with people in ordinary jobs, a different reality emerges: wages feel sluggish, job openings are tightening, and the loudest optimism often seems to come from sectors most invested in the AI narrative.

This raises an uncomfortable question:
Has AI become a true growth engine — or a financial life-support system?

The Mirage of Growth

Recent economic data suggests that a significant portion of U.S. GDP growth is being driven not by broad productivity, but by AI-related infrastructure spending — especially data centers.

A study from S&P Global found that in Q2 of 2025, data center construction alone added 0.5% to U.S. GDP. That is a historic figure. But what happens if this spending slows?

Are we witnessing genuine economic expansion — or merely a short-term stimulus disguised as innovation?

Historically, this pattern is not new. In Ireland in 2008 — before the housing collapse — construction boomed, GDP rose, and optimism became mandatory. Skepticism was dismissed as pessimism. The United States experienced something similar the same year: real estate appeared to be a pillar of prosperity — until it wasn’t. On paper, economies looked strong. In reality, fragility was already setting in.

Today, I see echoes of that optimism — except this time, the bubble is not bricks and concrete. It may be silicon, data, and expectation.

The Productivity Paradox

AI has been presented as a labor-saving miracle. But many businesses report a different experience: “work slop” — AI-generated content that looks polished but must be painstakingly corrected by humans. Time is not saved — it is quietly relocated.

Studies point to the same paradox:

• According to media coverage, MIT found that 95% of corporate AI pilot programs show no measurable ROI.
• MIT Sloan research indicates that AI adoption can lead to initial productivity losses — and that any potential gains depend on major organizational and human adaptation.
• Even McKinsey — one of AI’s greatest evangelists — warns that AI only produces value after major human and organizational change. “Piloting gen AI is easy, but creating value is hard.”

This suggests that AI has not yet removed human labor.
It has hidden it — behind algorithms, interfaces, and automated output that still requires correction.

We are not replacing work. We may only be concealing it.

AI may appear efficient, but it operates strictly within the limits of its training data: it can replicate mistakes, miss what humans would notice, and reinforce boundaries that present an “approved” or “consensus” version of reality rather than reality itself.

Once AI becomes an administrative layer — managing speech, research, hiring, and access to capital — it can become financially embedded into institutions, whether or not it produces measurable productivity.

At that point, AI does not strengthen human judgment — it administers it. And then we should ask:
Is AI improving society — or merely managing and controlling it?

The Data Center Stampede — But Toward What?

McKinsey estimates that over $6.7 trillion may be spent on AI and computing infrastructure by 2030 — a level of capital allocation usually seen in wartime. But what exactly is being built — and will it ever return value to ordinary people?

Like other critics, analyst Jack Gamble warns of a troubling pattern: cloud and chip-companies investing in AI startups that then buy computing and cloud services from their backers — potentially creating a circular economy of investment and demand. AI was perhaps becoming a circular economy of expectations rather than a new engine of growth or real value.

Now The State Is All-In: The Genesis Mission

Even before the government intervened, parts of the AI economy already appeared self-reinforcing. Now that intervention has arrived.

As noted in a recent LewRockwell commentary, a 2025 U.S. executive order — dubbed the “Genesis Mission” — may institutionalize AI infrastructure, potentially transforming deeply indebted AI firms into de facto state-backed entities.

In November 2025, the U.S. government signed an executive order merging federal supercomputers, national-lab datasets, private-sector AI firms, and taxpayer funding into a unified national AI platform. This does not guarantee bailouts — but it creates the conditions under which major AI firms may become too strategically important to fail. Once AI is embedded into national strategy, failure becomes more than a financial problem — it becomes a political one.

This transforms AI from a speculative investment trend into a publicly underwritten enterprise, embedding AI infrastructure into national science and economic policy. Under these conditions, any failure of AI — technological, economic, or environmental — will not remain the problem of a few venture-backed firms. It will become a problem for the public and future generations.

Federal support may buffer data-center and computing firms from market corrections, but it also increases systemic risk if the promised productivity never materialises. When infrastructure becomes publicly supported before its value is proven, failure becomes harder to admit — and easier to subsidise.

There is a further concern: once certain firms become “state-protected,” competition may shrink, accountability may weaken, and the largest AI companies could become entrenched as essential infrastructure. That would strengthen precisely the pattern this article questions — where labor is concealed, economic value is assumed, and risk is quietly socialised.

Who Carries the Risk?

The deeper concern is not AI itself — but where the financial risk of AI may already be hiding.

Large retirement funds and passive index portfolios are now concentrated in AI-dependent giants such as Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Tesla. On the debt side, data-center financing and private credit tied to AI infrastructure are quietly entering bond portfolios.

This means the AI boom is not simply an investment trend.
It may already be embedded inside the retirement accounts of ordinary citizens — without their knowledge.

With the Genesis Mission, risk is no longer only held by markets—it is being woven into public institutions, budgets, national research plans, and long-term economic policy.

If AI becomes truly transformative, perhaps this risk will be justified.
But if AI merely relocates labor and props up GDP on paper — then the risk will not fall on venture capital.
It may fall on pensioners, savers, civil servants, and state retirement systems.

Questions the Public Deserves Answers To

• Is AI transforming work — or creating new layers of hidden labor?
• Are data centers driving prosperity — or only supporting GDP in the short term?
• Are citizens knowingly investing in AI — or are they being invested through passive portfolios?
• Is AI creating value — or merely absorbing capital and subsidies?

With so much capital and debt tied to AI it is beginning to resemble something that could be labeled “too big to fail” — much like the private banks that were rescued after the 2008 financial crisis. When enough money, debt, and public risk are tied to a technology, questioning it becomes difficult — and supporting it becomes mandatory — whether it is delivering real value or not.

Conclusion

As I have written elsewhere we should not let AI overshadow human thought. AI may still deliver genuine breakthroughs, but at this moment, belief seems to be moving faster than evidence. History reminds us that optimism is most dangerous when it becomes unquestioned.

Because if the promised future arrives late — or not at all — the cost will not fall on the visionaries or the corporations. It will fall on the public.

Now that AI is being treated as national infrastructure, its success or failure is no longer a private gamble—it has become a public risk. And public risks always come with a public bill.

Note to readers who purchased the book The War on Men: a small number of early print copies were released before editing took place. The current edition has been fully revised, professionally edited, and formatted. If you received an early draft, please message me via Substack or through my X account at @TheMarkGerard— I’ll gladly send you the corrected edition at no cost. Messages are received directly and replied to personally.

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There’s an argument running through the commentariat that goes something like this: AI (Artificial Intelligence) has already rendered some jobs obsolete and will continue this trend until the human race is unemployed.  Even now it surpasses the ability of most people to write an effective opinion essay because it can create logic-driven, elegant compositions in seconds.  Since government schools turn out illiterates, people will depend on AI commentaries for intellectual expression.  Combined with research functions that are allegedly dependent on flawed databases, leading users to accept falsehoods in areas such as medicine, government, and economic theory, it renders them easy prey for a program of complete statism, such as socialism.

Why socialism?  Because socialists promise to care for the downtrodden, which will be every person left alive when AI achieves full robustness.  AI in the hands of a socialist government will feed and house them, and will of course see that it’s done equitably.  This leaves libertarians and conservatives with the urgent need to stop AI in its tracks now, while they still can.

The idea of AI overtaking humanity has a distinguished pedigree.  The website PauseAI presents quotes from leaders in their fields about the dangers of runaway AI:

Physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking had warned that “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race … It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate.”

Elon Musk who is developing his own AI called Grokipedia, said “AI is a rare case where I think we need to be proactive in regulation than be reactive   I think that [digital super intelligence] is the single biggest existential crisis that we face and the most pressing one.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates thinks “Superintelligent AIs are in our future…. There’s the possibility that AIs will run out of control.”

The founder of computer science and artificial intelligence Alan Turning predicted

It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers… They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said,

There’s a long tail of things of varying degrees of badness that could happen. I think at the extreme end is the Nick Bostrom style of fear that an AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) could destroy humanity. I can’t see any reason in principle why that couldn’t happen.

The foregoing experts have IQs far beyond ordinary.  But they’re also human, subject to error.  Inventions that shake up the world have always been feared.

According to Plato the invention of writing “will implant forgetfulness in [men’s] souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.”  As it happened writing by hand can improve memory and learning, especially for children.  And in early America, Thomas Paine showed incredible recall as he hand-wrote detailed critiques while relying solely on his memory.

Calculators have been said to be another tool for the lazy.  But in fact they were found to have “allowed learners to focus on problem-solving rather than mechanical calculations” while fostering confidence in their learning abilities.

While it is in some sense true that the internet has shortened attention spans, there is ample evidence to contradict the claim, such as Substack essays, multi-hour podcasts, and eBooks.  If people are engaged in tasks meaningful to them, while working in a supportive environment that keeps  dopamine distractions to a minimum they are fully capable of multi-hour focus.

People are not, therefore, inert automatons under control of subversive forces.  As Bastiat wrote about in The Law, in which he defined socialism as the improper use of force,

When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing but a mere negation. They oblige him only to abstain from harming others. . . . But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed—then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives.

There is nothing in AI or AGI that requires the imposition of force.  But socialism and its variants does.  Socialism as an economic and sociological theory was thoroughly debunked by Ludwig von Mises in 1920 and again in 1922.  As Mises argued in his 1920 essay, socialism suffers from the fatal absence of market pricing.  Even the best-selling socialist author Robert Heilbroner admitted in 1990, “It turns out, of course, that Mises was right. The Soviet system has long been dogged by a method of pricing that produced grotesque misallocations of effort.”

The only purpose of an economy is to create goods and services that satisfy human wants, not to create jobs.  If AI eliminates jobs in the sense we now understand it, other opportunities will emerge for value creation as they have before when new technologies upset the status quo.  Human wants are unlimited, and theory and history have shown that a market free from state intervention is the best way to satisfy them.

A recent poll shows more college students favor socialism than capitalism.  This is hardly surprising given the socialist orientation of universities and their misrepresentation of capitalism.  As Mises wrote in Socialism, “The terms ‘Capitalism’ and ‘Capitalistic Production’ are political catchwords. They were invented by socialists, not to extend knowledge, but to carp, to criticize, to condemn.”  The economic system that has sent students “graduating with four-year degrees saddled with mountains of debt and little marketable skills” is the Federal Reserve-income tax-warmongering-interventionist-big government monstrosity that is a gross perversion of capitalism.

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MAGA is riding high these days, convinced they’ve finally exorcised the neoconservatives who controlled the Republican Party for decades. Supposedly gone are the days of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the trillion-dollar boondoggles sold as “spreading democracy”? Trump promised to drain that swamp, and his base believes he’s done it—putting America First and mocking the old guard like John McCain and Liz Cheney.

I hate to burst that bubble, but the neocons are far from dead. At best they’re playing possum. And President Trump’s looming military action against Venezuela could be their golden ticket back to power, co-opting the very movement that thought it had buried them.

Let’s start with the obvious: the demise of the neocons has been greatly exaggerated. Sure, their poster boys like Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney couldn’t win a presidential primary at the moment. But look who has staffed both Trump’s administrations. Mike Pompeo, the quintessential neocon hawk, served as Secretary of State the last time, pushing regime change agendas from Iran to North Korea.

Now we’ve got Marco Rubio in the same spot, a guy who’s never met a foreign entanglement he didn’t like. Rubio’s been a darling of the interventionist crowd since his Senate days, advocating for arming Syrian rebels and toppling dictators throughout the Middle East. Trump himself has been more restrained—no full-scale invasions on his watch yet—but that’s a far cry from the drastic change some in MAGA envisioned.

Trump hasn’t decreased overseas troop deployment on net whatsoever and the Pentagon budget has risen significantly in both of his administrations. As for Rubio, he’s trying to sound as America First as he can while serving the current boss but make no mistake: the push for action in Venezuela reeks of his influence, along with other holdovers like Elliott Abrams, who’s been knee-deep in Latin American meddling since the Reagan era. Throw in unconditional support for Israel’s wars, and you’ve got essentially a new Bush administration disguised as America First.

We must also remember that MAGA isn’t monolithic. There’s a vocal antiwar segment who support voices like Rand Paul or Tucker Carlson, warning that boots on the ground in Caracas would betray everything Trump ran on. But the polls tell a different story: a clear majority of Trump supporters back military intervention in Venezuela. According to a recent CBS News/YouGov survey, 66% of MAGA Republicans favor U.S. military action there, compared to just 47% of non-MAGA Republicans.

Overall American support hovers around 20%, but within the GOP base, it’s Trump’s framing as a quick hit against drugs and migration that’s winning the day. If this operation goes like George H.W. Bush’s 1989 invasion of Panama—swift, low casualties, Noriega in cuffs and headlines blaring victory—watch what happens. Bush’s approval skyrocketed to 80%, and it solidified a bloc of Republican voters hungry for more “decisive” action.

Panama was sold as anti-drug and pro-democracy, just like Venezuela today. A short, “successful” war could lure many America First voters back to the pre-Trump era, where every problem abroad demanded a military solution. The antiwar minority would be ridiculed and shouted down as having been wrong to doubt Trump, and the party would inch closer to its old interventionist self.

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.”

During his first term, the neocons in his cabinet persuaded him to bomb Syria twice based on dubious claims of chemical attacks by Assad on his own people. Was that an attack on America? Nope. It was classic neocon moralizing to win support for a regime change Israel wanted. And those troops stayed in Syria under the flimsy pretext of “protecting oil fields,” but really to support the regime change finally ticked off under Biden. Trump didn’t start new wars, but he didn’t really end the old ones either, despite his vociferous claims, and his base mostly gave him a pass.

Venezuela fits right into that pattern. Trump’s been gunning for regime change there since the early days of his first term, supporting neocon puppet Juan Guaidó as the “real president” after Maduro’s sham election in 2018. At Trump’s direction, Washington froze assets, imposed sanctions, and even floated military options back then.

It all fizzled when Guaidó couldn’t muster the muscle to oust Maduro, but the intent was clear: topple a socialist dictator, install a friendly government, and claim a win for “democracy.” Sound familiar? It’s the same script from Iraq to Libya, and now it’s back on the table, with warships in the Caribbean and talk of arresting Maduro on drug charges.

Then there’s the China angle, where MAGA is already primed for neocon co-optation. Trump’s base is all in on antagonism toward Beijing—tariffs, tech bans, and a confrontational military posture. Even the antiwar elements see China as the “real threat,” a rising power that Washington must “contain” to protect Americans.

But China isn’t a military menace; they’re just getting richer because they abandoned communism and aren’t squandering trillions on policing the globe. They’ve got one overseas base—Djibouti—while the U.S. has over 800, with over 200,000 troops staffing them. While by no means a laissez faire free market (neither is the U.S.), China’s growth is market-driven, not conquest-driven. Yet MAGA’s buying the hype, setting the stage for a new Cold War, complete with proxy fights in Taiwan or the South China Sea.

Venezuela could be the gateway drug: intervene there under the guise of fighting drugs and socialism, and suddenly containing China looks like the next logical step.

We also can’t ignore the other elephant in the room. Republicans still rely on tens of millions of Christian Zionists, the built-in neocon constituency I’ve written about before. These folks see U.S. support for Israel as biblical mandate, and they’re all for wars that benefit Tel Aviv, from Iraq to Syria to potential strikes on Iran. Trump’s unconditional backing of Israel keeps them loyal, but it also embeds neocon priorities deep in the party.

Put it all together, and MAGA looks like ripe fruit for the picking. If Trump green-lights war in Venezuela, the loyalists who back him no matter what will turn on the antiwar skeptics, ridiculing them as disloyal doubters of “dear leader.” Success breeds amnesia; a quick win erases promises of restraint. The next Republican contender—J.D. Vance or whoever—could run on Trump’s immigration and trade toughness but ditch the antiwar lip service entirely. Before you know it, we’re back to a full-blown Cold War 2.0, this time against China, with proxy wars galore to “contain” them, just like the old days with Russia.

The neocons don’t need to win elections outright; they just need to infiltrate and redirect. Venezuela isn’t just a sideshow—it’s their pathway back to the driver’s seat. MAGA must wake up before it’s too late.

This article was originally published on Tom Mullen Talks Freedom.

The post Venezuela Could be the Neocons’ Ticket Back to Power appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump’s shoddy peace overtures are not to be taken as a basis for a lasting deal and security treaty.

After nearly four years, the U.S. wants out of a quagmire of its own making in Ukraine. Russia’s objectives remain reasonable, righteous, and achievable. There is no compromising.

Successive American and European governments own this conflict, which can be traced back to the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 against an elected president. Obama, Trump’s first administration, and Biden all promoted the proxy war scenario along with European NATO vassals for the calculated strategic defeat of Russia using Ukraine as cannon fodder.

The provocations accumulated with the genocidal aggression against the Russian-speaking people of Ukraine from 2014 until 2022. The U.S.-led NATO alliance weaponized a NeoNazi regime in Kiev to do its dirty work until Russia ran out of forbearance with the murderous treachery and launched its special military operation in February 2022. Russia’s goals were just and right: to protect the Russian people; to denazify the regime; and to ensure that NATO’s relentless aggression over several decades was brought to a definitive halt.

Despite expending hundreds of billions of dollars and euros on weaponizing a proxy army that comprised not only Ukrainian foot-soldiers but clandestine deployment of thousands of troops from the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Poland, and the Baltic States, among others, the criminal war gambit has been defeated by Russia.

President Donald Trump, in his second administration, has come to realize that the sordid game is up. American imperialist interests are demanding elsewhere in Asia-Pacific with China, the Middle East, and in the U.S. presumed “backyard” of Latin America, with Venezuela.

The European theater is a costly, bloody mess. Ukraine and its NATO sponsors have been roundly beaten. They have run out of men, weapons, and money. As the Kiev regime crumbles from the weight of its own corruption, so too is the preposterous Western narrative that this was some kind of noble cause to purportedly defend democracy from Russian aggression. Democracy born from a CIA-orchestrated NeoNazi coup?

Russia has secured most of the historic Russian lands that were formerly and artificially part of eastern and southern Ukraine: Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye. Russia will push on to secure the rest, including Kharkiv, Nikolaev, Odessa, and Sumy.

Western news media have been telling lies for the duration of this conflict (and long before that). The notion that Western states were chivalrously aiding a democratic Ukraine from aggression was an audacious inversion of reality. The notion that Ukraine could win militarily with Western support and NATO mercenaries has fueled a futile war with millions of Ukrainian casualties. Still, the Western media is pretending that there is “a stalemate” on the battlefield when in reality, the Russian forces are rolling up the NATO army. The next few weeks will see the rapid collapse of the Ukrainian defenses.

Russia never intended to occupy all of Ukraine, let alone continue onwards to conquer European states. The Western narrative is a ridiculous and puerile fantasy portraying Russian President Vladimir Putin as the reincarnation of Hitler. The fantasy has been used to defraud Western economies and the public on a gargantuan scale.

Russia’s goals have always been to secure its people and historic lands and to eradicate the threat of NATO and its NeoNazi proxy. That is being achieved without having to conquer all of Ukraine.

Trump’s peace overtures reflect a long-overdue realization in some Western quarters that the proxy war project has expired. NATO has been defeated in its murderous machinations in the same way that other historic enemies of Russia have been dispatched. Only eight decades ago, Nazi Germany’s war machine was destroyed by the Russian people. But fascism was not fully destroyed. It only went underground in the form of Western states pretending to be democracies.

President Putin has responded diplomatically to Trump’s initiatives by saying that they could form a basis for future peaceful settlement. This is magnanimous. Because very little in Trump’s sketchy proposals comes close to meeting Russia’s righteous demands. In fact, the American “plan” falls short of the serious conditions required by Russia, as Russian analyst Stanislav Krapivnik points out with devastating clarity.

Trump’s conceited presumption to present the United States as a mediator is also contemptible. The United States has been the main architect of the war against Russia. It has the blood of millions on its hands, as have its European accomplices.

History has shown from the 2014-15 Minsk Accords and the Istanbul Peace Proposal in March 2022 that the United States and its NATO vassals are incapable of committing to an honorable agreement. Add to that several arms control treaties that the American side has unilaterally ditched.

Therefore, Russia has the right and indeed imperative to end this conflict on its terms through a decisive military defeat of its enemies in Ukraine.

Trump’s shoddy peace overtures are not to be taken as a basis for a lasting deal and security treaty.

The one positive sign out of the shambles that the United States and its European lackeys are presenting is the tacit admission that their war plans are thwarted. For now, anyway. A victory must ensure that the Western imperialists never try it again.

At least Trump has a bit of practical sense to realize that the quagmire must be abandoned, albeit in a disorderly hurry. The European elites, however, are so invested in lies and propaganda and Russophobia that they can’t even begin to face the reality of defeat. The harder they come, the harder they fall.

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

The post Trump’s Peace Overtures Are a Reluctant Admission of Proxy War Defeat appeared first on LewRockwell.

A key goal in writing this publication has been to provide a voice to those forgotten by medicine, so I try to respond to all the messages I receive—particularly those in dire need. However, as this publication has grown, it’s become more complex and more challenging for me to do that adequately due to the volume of correspondence I receive. I hence decided to have monthly open threads where readers can ask whatever they want and connect it to a shorter topic.

A few days ago, while talking to a circle of friends about child-rearing, one mother compared an infant’s tendency to throw tantrums when sugary foods were withdrawn to what many parents were facing with modern children’s video programs and that she’d learned in the groups she belonged to that numerous parents were now switching to showing their children the shows they’d grown up watching as those shows did not have the same destabilizing effects on their children.

As we discussed this topic (e.g., many of us have banned screens after noticing how negatively they impact developing nervous systems), I realized it needed to be an open thread here due to:

• How unfair and tragic it is that due to the modern toxicity they are bombarded with, so many children no longer have health and spark within them which brings joy to everyone around them.

• All the problems we discussed with children directly tie into the central issues I feel are facing much broader segments of society (e.g., the dopamine trap society uses to control us and make us feel dead inside).

Note: it continually astounds me (and those I point it out to) how different naturally raised children are, and how much rarer they are becoming, given the many fronts on which the predatory forces around us are attacking our health. For those interested, some of the most important strategies I’ve come across for raising healthy children are discussed here.

Addictive Programming

From investigating the current state of children’s programming over the last few days, I found out that large swathes of parents online frequently describe modern children’s “TV” content (particularly YouTube kids videos such as CoComelon) as highly engaging to the point of addiction, with intense emotional reactions (e.g., tantrums) when it’s removed. For example:

• A 2025 Talker Research survey of 2,000 U.S. parents found 22% report “full-on tantrums” as a side effect of excessive screen time, alongside irritability (27%) and mood swings (24%).

Note: this report has a lot of other disturbing statistics (e.g., 67% of parents fear they are losing precious time with their children due to screen addiction).

• The 2025 Common Sense Media Census states: “A quarter of parents use screen media of any kind (not just mobile devices) to help their child calm down when they are angry or upset (25%)” and “17% of parents reporting that their child sometimes or often uses a mobile device to calm down when feeling angry, sad, or upset.”

• In parallel, similar results can be found online. For example, on Reddit parenting forums, searches for “Cocomelon tantrum” or “screen time meltdown” yield a high volume of threads from the last 5 years (thousands according to two AI systems I queried), with parents describing similar patterns: calm during viewing, explosive tantrums (screaming, hitting, inconsolable crying for 20–60+ minutes) upon shutdown, that is often far worse than what was seen with slower shows like older Sesame Street.

• Pediatric resources like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) acknowledge these issues in their clinical guidelines, noting that high-engagement digital media (e.g., auto-advancing games or videos) can lead to tantrums when interrupted due to the media containing behavioral reinforcement designed for maximum engagement.

Furthermore, online reports from parents surged following 2015 as YouTube became much more popular and kids content there shifted to being optimized for toddlers to view without their parents. Research on the effects of overstimulation and attention, in turn, suggest this is addictive and creates ADHD-like symptoms as:

• Modern shows’ rapid cuts (1–4 seconds) overstimulate young children’s developing brains, making it hard for them to disengage and sustain focus on slower tasks (termed the “overstimulation hypothesis”).

•A 2011 study exposed 4-year-olds to 9 minutes of fast-paced SpongeBob SquarePants (11-second cuts) vs. slower Caillou or drawing; the fast-paced group showed immediate deficits in executive function (focus, self-control) lasting up to 4 hours post-viewing—which was not seen in the slower content.
Note: The AAP cites this in its guidelines, recommending that parents avoid fast-paced programs for kids under 5 due to poor comprehension and strain on regulation.

• A 2004 study of 1,278 kids found over 2 hours a day of TV before age 3 was linked to attention problems (e.g., ADHD-like symptoms) by age 7, with fast-paced content being a key factor.

• A 2018 review found early fast-paced exposure correlated with later attentional deficits, as it “rewires” developing brains toward novelty-seeking over sustained focus. Likewise in mice, excessive sensory stimulation decreased anxiety, learning, and memory and increased risk-taking and motor activity.

• A 2023 study linked higher toddler screen time to increased anger/frustration later (e.g., withdrawal tantrums), with each extra hour raising risk by 13%—specifically, preschooler screen time at age 3.5 prospectively contributed to more expressions of anger/frustration at 4.5.

Since many parents specifically cited CoComelon (a YouTube channel) as being particularly problematic (to the point many stated they’d banned it), and often attributed it to the show’s rapidly changing frames every few seconds, I watched a few of them to verify this (noting how disorienting it was to watch this as the shots frequently change every 1-4 seconds).
Note: many people I’ve spoken to over the years believe the shorter and shorter segments (before a screen cut or transition) which emerged on TV was immensely destructive to the American psyche as they took away people’s ability to maintain a lengthy attention span (which amongst other things is necessary to perceive the deeper things around which give true meaning to life or be content in the present).

After exploring why YouTube kids channels like CoComelon do this, I came across a series of explanations, which while appalling, are entirely congruent with my understanding of internet marketers:

• This maximizes “watch time” on YouTube (how they make money) as YouTube’s algorithm heavily rewards total minutes watched and session length. Very young children (1–4 years old) have naturally short attention spans. If a scene stays the same for more than a few seconds, toddlers often look away or grab the remote/phone. Rapid cuts act like a visual “ping” that yanks attention back to the screen every few seconds, increasing average view duration.

• Every sudden cut, zoom, color flash, or new sound triggers the brain’s automatic “orienting response” (the same reflex that makes you turn your head when a door slams). In babies and toddlers, this reflex is especially strong and hard to inhibit. CoComelon and similar channels appear to exploit it hundreds of times per episode, creating a near-constant dopamine loop that feels rewarding to an immature prefrontal cortex.

• It’s designed for the “auto-play” environment. On YouTube and Netflix, the following video starts in 3–6 seconds unless someone intervenes. Fast pacing makes kids much less likely to look away during that critical window, so autoplay chains them from one 8-15 minute video to the next (often for hours). This is likely why CoComelon uploads videos in the hundreds and titles them almost identically (as this creates an endless loop of their content).

• The big YouTube kids channels almost certainly constantly use available analytics to determine their pacing, colors, sound effects, and character design and most likely have found that cutting every ~2–3 seconds keeps 2- to 4-year-olds glued to the screen more effectively than slower pacing. Slower-paced versions tend to get lower completion rates and worse algorithmic performance, so they’re discarded.

• Classic slow-paced shows (Mister Rogers, old Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues), in contrast, were deliberately calm and used long takes because they were designed for developmental appropriateness (and were often watched with a parent). Modern YouTube-first content is intended to be watched alone by a toddler holding a tablet, with no adult co-viewing required, so “grab and hold attention at all costs” wins.
Note: Mister Rogers shared in interviews he would often leave a pause after he said things so children could have the time to process how they felt about it—effectively the polar opposite to what these channels are doing.

All of this has a startling number of implications. Of these, I believe the following are the most pertinent:

1. A large body of evidence has emerged (including numerous regretful statements from tech executives) that screens and all the content associated with them have been designed to be as addictive as possible, with much of this revolving around them having stimuli that trigger dopamine releases. In parallel, quite a few social media executives have said they have tremendous regret about what their products (intentionally designed to be addictive) have done to our children’s brains. Likewise, many articles have been written about how Silicon Valley tech executives send their kids to an alternative school where phones and screens are banned.

Note: as mentioned before, I am inclined to believe this is true, in part because I know marketers are always trying to concoct ways to hook people with their products (a process that has gone into overdrive since the internet has enabled the rapid testing, refinement, and distribution of addictive content) and partly because I frequently feel many of the ways tech messes with your neurology to pull you in (which again touches upon how unexpected it was for me to suddenly end up in a position where I had to spend a lot of time on the computer after this newsletter took off).

2. After the DPT vaccine entered the population, due to its frequent tendency to cause encephalitis, a wide range of neurological and behavioral issues (including violent crime) rippled out through the society as the vaccinated children grew up. In the 1950s, a condition termed “minimal brain damage” [MBD] was coined (with the defining characteristic of it being hyperactivity), which before long became “perhaps the most common, and certainly one of the most time-consuming problems in current pediatric practice”.

The symptoms of MBD (as defined by America’s Public Health Service and the American Psychiatric Association) have a significant overlap with what was seen after encephalitis, DPT injuries, and what was associated with autism. Eventually, they figured out that much of it could be “treated” with stimulants like amphetamines. At that point, the disorder was renamed ADHD (something that coincidentally, every vaccinated-unvaccinated comparison shows is vastly more common in vaccinated children).

Note: Canadian physician Gabor Maté has reported that a significant number of the homeless, often stimulant-using, addicted patients he worked with showed signs of undiagnosed ADHD. He (and others) have said that when their ADHD was recognized correctly and treated—usually as part of a broader trauma-informed approach (as he attributed this change to childhood trauma rather than vaccine injury)—it often helped them stabilize and reduce the destructive cycle of their addictions and the criminalized behaviors associated with them.

3. I have long suspected something similar to what happened with ADHD and amphetamines is happening with screens, as their highly stimulating (and dopamine-releasing) nature is essentially being used to counteract the behavioral disturbances seen in vaccine-injured children. This is particularly insidious because many parents (especially those with less financial resources) are frequently forced into situations where they don’t have the bandwidth to handle their children continually misbehaving, so they are forced to provide their children with addictive technology (and transform them into lifelong users).
Note: an argument can also be made that the mass adoption of screens is a reflection of the economy making it harder and harder for parents to have children.

4. I have long believed a key reason slavery ended was that owning slaves within America (which has numerous associated costs) became less profitable than forcing people into economic servitude, particularly since much of the labor slaves performed could be outsourced to poorer nations where far fewer protections existed for basic human welfare and that cruelty could exist out of sight and out of mind for those who would object to it.

In turn, since the desire to ruthlessly exploit people for profit never fully disappeared from the culture, other ways more profitable ways were found to do it, such as turning people into lifelong customers of the pharmaceutical industry until they eventually succumb to all the ever-increasing number of prescriptions they are placed on (a process which is often set in motion by the chronic illnesses frequently triggered by vaccination—and which I’ve recently heard be termed “biological colonialism”). To a large extent, I feel the same thing is also happening now with harvesting people’s attention online and collecting their data.

If we take a step back, consider that something many parents trust their children watch was actually designed and optimized to hijack their children regardless of the harm it caused their developing nervous system—and that rather than be penalized for this, it’s amassed billions of (lucrative) views because the algorithms content creators follow incentivize this type of quickly produced content.

Read the Whole Article

The post Rejuvenating the Nervous System and Reconnecting With Life appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Unit project, first revealed by Sputnik in 2024, is emerging as the most viable option for breaking the US dollar’s stranglehold on global trade and investment.

In his book co-written with top economist Sergey Bodrunov, Regulations of the Noonomy (international edition published this year by Sandro Teti Editore in Rome), leading Russian economist Sergey Glazyev stresses the need to “ensure a full-fledged switch to national currencies in mutual trade and investment within the EAEU and the CIS, and further – within the BRICS and SCO, the withdrawal of joint development institutions from the dollar zone, the development of their own independent payment systems and interbank information exchange systems.”

When it comes to financial innovation – compared to the current structure of the international financial system – The Unit is in a class of its own.

The Unit is essentially a benchmark token – or an index token; a post-stablecoin, digital monetary tool; totally decentralized; and with intrinsic value anchored in real assets: gold and sovereign currencies.

The Unit can be used either as part of a new digital infrastructure – what most of the Global South is striving for; or as part of a traditional banking setup.

When it comes to fulfilling traditional money functions, The Unit is – pardon the pun – right on the money. It’s meant to be used as a quite convenient medium of exchange in cross-border trade and investments – a key plank of the diversification actively pursued by BRICS+.

It should also be seen as an independent, reliable measure for value and pricing, as well as a better store of value than fiat money.

The Unit is academically validated – including by Glazyev himself – and properly governed by IRIAS (International Research Institute for Advanced Systems), set up in 1976 in accordance with the UN statute.

And crucial at this next step, The Unit is to be launched early next year on the Cardano blockchain, which uses the digital currency Ada.

Ada has a fascinating background – named after Ada Lovelace, a 19th-century mathematician, daughter of none other than Lord Byron, and recognized as the first computer programmer in History.

Anyone, anywhere can use Ada as a secure exchange of value; and very important, without the need to ask a third party to mediate the exchange.

That means every Ada transaction is permanently secured and recorded on the Cardano blockchain. That also means that every Ada holder also holds a stake in the Cardano network.

Cardano has been around for 10 years now – and is a quite popular blockchain. It’s backed by some quite big venture capital firms such as IOHK, Emurgo and the Cardano Foundation. Essentially, Cardano is an excellent option for regular payments because transactions are cheap and fast.

Neither a crypto nor a stablecoin

Enter The Unit.

The Unit is neither a cryptocurrency nor a stablecoin – as it’s shown here.

A concise definition of The Unit would be a resilient reserve of value – backed by a structure of 60% gold and 40% diversified BRICS+ currencies.

The major appeal for the Global South is that such a unique mix provides stability and protection against inflation, especially under the current global financial landscape of wobbly macroeconomics and widespread uncertainty.

Using Cardano, The Unit is bound to become accessible to everyone, via a combination of centralized and decentralized exchanges.

So to enter this new market, individuals and companies will be able to acquire The Unit directly with fiat through regulated banking partners. That means a bridge between traditional finance and emerging decentralized ecosystems – in favor of liquidity, accessibility and reliability, opening the door to full adoption by the Global South.

The Unit can even evolve into a new form of digital cash for emerging economies.

Following exactly the path delineated by BRICS even before the ground-breaking annual summit in Kazan in 2024, The Unit may be the best solution currently available for cross-border payments: a new form of international currency, issued in a de-centralized way, and then recognized and regulated at a national level.

And that brings us to the top conceptual strenght of The Unit: it removes a direct dependency on the currency of other nations, and offers the Global South/Global Majority a new form of non-censored, apolitical money.

Better yet: apolitical money featuring an enormous potential for anchoring fair trade and multiple investments.

What the Global South really needs

A good next step for The Unit would also be to set up an Advisory Board, uniting world standard stars such as Prof. Michael Hudson, Jeffrey Sachs, Yannis Varoufakis and the co-founder of the NDB Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr. (here at the Global South Academic Forum in Shanghai) .

When it comes to BRICs-emphasized de-dollarization – done with a hefty degree of sophistication, without having to spell it out – The Unit will be key. It’s also key that The Unit is not a cryptocurrency.

Wall Street behemoths – especially BlackRock – are big on cryptocurrencies, an enormously unstable set up which eschewed individual holders to the profit of massive institutional players. For example, it’s BlackRock that essentially shapes Bitcoin’s market.

US stablecoins essentially perpetuate US dollar dominance – aiming their firepower directly against possible, future digital currencies offered by BRICS+.

The Unit is the stark opposite, offering a reliable digital monetary tool for the fast advancing Multipolar World. It’s an evolution in itself, bridging the fiat and the crypto worlds; and last but not least, it is a solid foundation for the emerging post-Bretton Woods economy.

Of course the challenges ahead are huge – and The Unit will be fought tooth and nail by the usual suspects as a new concept offering borderless financial resilience for the Global South/Global Majority.

And here may lie the key takeaway: the only way BRICS+ as well as the Global Majority may be strengthened is by developing closer and closer geoeconomic, financial ties. For that, the toxic power of Western speculative capital must be contained – to the benefit of more intra-Global South commodity trading, and more investable capital for productive, sustainable development.

The potential is limitless. The Unit may well be able to unlock it. Even JP Morgan admitted The Unit is “perhaps the most thoroughly fleshed-out of de-dollarization proposals that exist in the cross-border transactions space for BRICS+.”

And there’s no other similarly effective plan anywhere in the world.

This article was originally published on Sputnik News.

The post How the BRICS+ Unit Can Save Global Trade appeared first on LewRockwell.

The surprise success of the new film Sacré Coeur: Son règne n’a pas de fin (Sacred Heart: His Reign Has No End), released in French cinemas in September, has caused great controversy. It is no surprise that such a devoutly Catholic docudrama has divided opinion in French political society, in which laïcité—strictly enforced state secularism, the lingering legacy of the French Revolution—is seen by many as the very defining principle of the French Republic.

What was more surprising, perhaps, was the opposition to the film expressed by some Catholics. In an open letter published in La Croix, a Catholic daily newspaper, a group of what might be termed neo-liberal Catholics claimed that the success of the film illustrated “the growing normalization of far-right ideas within the Christian community” and that the Sacred Heart of Jesus was “being put at the service of a political agenda whose obsession is the reaffirmation of France’s Christian identity.”

We might wonder why any Catholics, neo-liberal or otherwise, would consider the affirmation or reaffirmation of France’s Christian identity to be an “obsession” or a “political agenda.” Is there something wrong with affirming one’s own Christian identity? Is anything wrong with affirming the Christian identity of France or any other historically Christian nation? Aren’t we called by Our Lord, indeed commanded by Him, to make disciples of all nations? Doesn’t this include our own nations?

The real reason why neo-liberal or so-called “progressive” Catholics are uncomfortable with evangelization is that they have abandoned theology for ideology. They don’t think in terms of affirming the Faith or making disciples because they are obsessed with politics not the saving of souls. This is evident by their description of the success of the film on the Sacred Heart of Jesus as “the growing normalization of far-right ideas within the Christian community.” Those who privilege ideology over theology always see things in terms of Right and Left not right and wrong. This is the root of the problem.

All this talk of Right and Left is, quite frankly, not right but wrong. It dates back, ironically, to the French Revolution itself and to the position in which the revolutionaries were seated in the French National Assembly. To see things in terms of Right and Left, instead of right and wrong, is to abandon a virtue-oriented understanding of society in favor of a political and pragmatic understanding of society. It is to embrace the ultimately faithless philosophy of the superciliously self-named “Enlightenment” and to abandon the indissoluble union of fides et ratio which is the hallmark of Christendom.

Catholics do not belong on the Right with the Nazis and Fascists, nor on the Left with the Marxists and socialists. The National Socialism of the Nazis (“far-right”) and the international socialism of the Marxists (“far-left”) have a shared belief in socialism, a belief in Big Government command economies. The Nazis (“far-right”) and the “rainbow” sexual relativists (“far-left”) have shared philosophical roots in the pride of the Nietzschean will to power. The former collectivizes this will in the state; the latter individualizes it in the quest for “self-empowerment.” Neither view is compatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In brief and in sum, the secular “Left” and the secular “Right” share common philosophical roots in the Enlightenment and its rejection of Christendom. None of this has anything to do with the light of the Gospel.

Christians need to jettison the language of Right and Left, which is oriented horizontally on a worldly and relativist axis. Instead, we need to see reality, including political reality, in terms of right and wrong, which is oriented vertically on a moral axis leading upward to Heaven and downward to Hell. It is saints, not politicians, who make the world a better place; and it is sinners, including politicians, who make it a worse place.

If we reorientate the world, including the politics of the world, in terms of right and wrong, we will be orienting it in the right direction, which is toward God. The way that we do this is to try to become saints ourselves, by the grace of God, and to strive to persuade others to want to become saints. This is the only way to make the world a better place. There is no other way.

Those who put their trust in the political programs of the Right or Left, who put their faith in ideology instead of theology, can only make the world a worse place. And this is especially true of those within the Church. “We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right,” wrote G.K. Chesterton. “What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. We do not want…a church that will move with the world. We want a church that will move the world.”

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post Right and Wrong Versus Right and Left appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

In 1931, a quote from an opinion piece by Kurt Tucholsky, under his pseudonym Ignaz Wrobel, in the weekly German magazine Die Weltbühne, stated: “Soldiers are murderers.” This quote is very simple but very true, and although many will cringe at the suggestion, with any critical thought or scrutiny whatsoever, there is no other conclusion that can be reached. Any man who orders another to kill a third party has committed a heinous crime, and should the individual given this charge to kill complete his task, he is guilty of murder. Should this sanity ever become the rule, wars would immediately cease, and peace therefore, would reign.

Before you call for me to be drawn and quartered, or hurl expletives in my direction, allow me to explain my reasoning and expand my thoughts on this subject. First and foremost, I was in the military a few decades ago. I was conscripted by this government, which means I was forced, obviously against my will, into slavery. My very first act when I arrived at the Army inception center in Memphis, was to stand up and say as loudly as I possibly could, that I would never take any order to kill any individual in Vietnam. This caused quite a stir of course, but I was still forced into active duty. My dissent was not tested, as one of my drill sergeants knew of what I was capable of doing, and made sure I stayed stateside for the balance of my two years. The bottom line here of course, is that I refused to kill anyone on orders. If I could do that, any others can as well.

Obeying orders to kill another is never a valid excuse for murder, but soldiers continue to kill knowing that they will be protected by the State. In many cases, this is due to actual fear of state retribution, as most assigned to kill on orders are young and brainwashed, have already been thoroughly indoctrinated since birth to support the nation-state, and due to the lies of which they have been fed, they ‘believe’ in the propagated cause. In other words, the entirety of war and aggression is based on total deception. Regardless of the reasons for this insanity, stupidity, and evil, I agree completely with Herbert Spencer’s view when he said:

“When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves.”

The only use of violent force acceptable in any moral society, is that of actual self-defense against threats of harm or death to self, family, or others, when no other option exists. If in fact one has to defend self, that defense should end once the threat is squelched, or the perpetrator(s) is eliminated. This does not carry over to the idiocy of nationalist State wars, nation against nation, or any aggression supposedly ‘warranted’ by any government. All U.S. wars in history, have been wars of aggression, and never defensive, and killing those in other countries (or domestically) on orders is always an abhorrent crime against man.

Have any of you heard about U.S. soldiers standing down and refusing to kill on orders? Have you heard of any soldiers attempting to stop other soldiers from killing innocents on orders? How many military resignations have occurred for the explicit reason of a refusal to kill based solely on orders? The answer to these questions is in almost every case, none. I am sure there are a few exceptions, but they are not reported, or ever seen on any mainstream media outlet.

Currently, the U.S. government, its military, ICE, and the so-called ‘intelligence services,’ whether directly or by proxy, are funding, arming, or killing on orders in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Somalia, Niger, Libya, parts of South America, and who knows in how many other countries as well? The criminal murderer Trump is ordering boats off Venezuela and Columbia to be blown up with missiles; not knowing who is being killed, as if he or any other has any right to demand the murder of anyone. Soldiers are aggressively killing people far away in other nations on orders , all without any attack on this country of any kind. Soldiers seem always to follow orders without any resistance.

Domestically, Trump has used martial law actions to take over many cities, and killings have occurred on this soil by ICE, police, and military personnel; all on government orders . If any dissent deepens, and ‘planned’ civil unrest takes place, these State atrocities will only worsen, and all brutal and violent enforcement will be levied based on orders.

As I stated almost 15 years ago:

“Is there any order given to U.S. military personnel that is not obeyed? Is there anyone that the U.S. military won’t kill (murder) when given an order? Will there ever be an order that U.S. troops will disobey? As far as I can tell, the answer to all these questions is no!”

“Many who commit horrible deeds have excused these acts by simply saying, “I was just following orders.” This is an empty excuse, and has been used in the past to give cover for some of the most heinous crimes of mankind. Most of those crimes were carried out in the name of war, and those willing to prosecute those unjust wars are just as responsible as those who start them. Guilty all those who purposely participate in these heinous crimes against mankind, every damn one of you!”

And just think for a moment of all of the mass killing here and afar that can take place with AI, drones, poisons, and all the technological ways to murder and psychologically destroy the masses of voluntary slaves who inhabit this earth.

What will you do when more war in your name is responsible for the deaths of millions or billions of innocent people? What will those of you in the military do when you are ordered to kill your friends and neighbors, and/or innocent strangers? What will the rest of you do when the National Guard, police, ICE, or military soldiers are ordered to attack you or your family and friends? Have you ever even considered this distinct possibility? I think not.

The military and its soldiers never serve the people, they only serve the ruling State monsters. The next time you choose to utter the idiotic words, “thank you for your service,” remember this: “Soldiers are just government approved terrorists.” Their loyalty is only to their nation-state masters, and never to the lowly masses. Government uses the children of others as its fodder in war, because they can be brainwashed, but only those who suffer greatly due to their contribution to unnecessary death due to orders, have found their conscience.

This article was originally published on GaryDBarnett.com.

The post Killing on Orders Is Murder! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Two years ago, world-class researcher and analyst “Sundance” posted an alarming essay on his website, The Conservative Treehouse.  Taking a look back at the previous years’ severe COVID tyranny, the rise of the Biden administration’s censorship regime, and the false media narratives pushing a NATO-Russia war in Ukraine, “Sundance” soberly concluded that “We the People” are in an abusive relationship with government.  Within that essay, he embedded a picture of a woman holding a sign that reads: “DANGER: You are being conditioned to view your freedom as selfish.”

At the end of the essay, there is a chart from a mental health organization entitled, “15 Signs That You Might Be in an Abusive Relationship.”  All fifteen signs are worth pondering:

(1) Stop you from seeing friends and family.

(2) Won’t let you leave home without permission.

(3) Tell you what to wear.

(4) Monitor your phone, emails, and communication.

(5) Control finances, won’t let you work.

(6) Control what you read, watch, and say.

(7) Monitor everything you do.

(8) Punish you for breaking rules that keep changing.

(9) Tell you it’s for your own good.  They know better.

(10) Don’t allow you to question decisions.

(11) Tell you you’re crazy, and no-one agrees with you.

(12) Call you names, or shame you for being selfish.

(13) Gaslight you, challenge your memory of events, make you doubt yourself.

(14) Dismiss your opinions.

(15) Play the victim if things go wrong.  It’s all your fault.

Although his essay was meant to highlight how government authorities used COVID to advance totalitarianism throughout the West, “Sundance” concludes with a warning about the mass surveillance State being constructed to control the flow of information, isolate us from each other, and make us dependent upon government bureaucrats for survival.  “I never really understood how people could accept the formation of communism around them,” he wrote.  “Now I do.”

Last week, social media users reposted failed California Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2020 Thanksgiving guidelines: (1) No more than three households present; (2) Parties no longer than two hours; (3) Guests must stay outside; (4) Avoid singing, chanting, and shouting.  As Governor Newspeak prepares for a 2028 presidential run (an election he swears President Trump will cancel because his White House renovations somehow prove that he’s a “dictator”), he does not want Americans to remember how ridiculous all his COVID edicts were.  Remember when he arrested paddle-boarders swimming alone in the ocean?

Newsom was far from the only Democrat enamored with his unconstitutionally created COVID powers.  Democrat governors and mayors locked Americans in their homes, threatened Christians for attending church services, bankrupted small businesses, and mandated that citizens wear multiple masks while alone in their cars.  They embraced tyranny without hesitation and did not even feign to acknowledge the seriousness of their actions.  The COVID Era checked off all fifteen signs of an abusive relationship between government and citizens in flashing neon lights.

Although there is no shortage of examples that amply demonstrate how unapologetically politicians justified eliminating Americans’ freedoms in the name of “safety,” a top-five list of particularly egregious offenses would surely include a Humvee rolling down a quiet neighborhood street in Minneapolis while dozens of heavily armed riot cops — tasked with enforcing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s COVID curfew orders — shot paintballs at residents for standing outside their homes.  While Walz loves to call President Trump a “tyrant,” there is nothing quite so tyrannical as the sight of American law enforcement officers using military equipment to intimidate and assault peaceful Americans for the “crime” of sitting on their front porches.

We are now several years removed from the worst government abuses during COVID, but no Westerner should be under the illusion that the “Reign of COVID Terror” is behind us or that other iterations won’t soon plague us.  Government tyranny is a hydra-headed beast: For every form of government oppression that is struck down, at least two more grow.

In the United Kingdom, members of parliament are demanding mandatory digital identifications that make it easier to track citizens at all times.  Instead of admitting that they wish to continue constructing a totalitarian surveillance State, British authorities claim that the IDs are necessary to combat mass illegal immigration.  In other words, the same government officials who destroyed social cohesion by flooding the country with migrants now want to capitalize upon a government-created problem and expand the national security surveillance State.  The British motto could be: First, harm citizens; then offer a “solution” that harms citizens some more.

Emily Spurrell, the chairwoman of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners in the U.K., has denounced British citizens for raising patriotic flags in protest of decades of government-orchestrated foreign invasion.  The police commissioner argues that waving the Union Jack and St. George’s flags is “not free expression” but rather “intimidation” because patriotic displays make “our neighbors” feel “unsafe” and “afraid to walk down the street.”  Perhaps someone should suggest to Commissioner Spurrell that foreigners who see British flags as “divisive” probably don’t belong in the U.K.  Would she really expect Beijing to bend the knee to a Scotsman who felt “intimidated” by communist China’s Five-star Red Flag?  Or is this just another opportunity for British authorities to shame and gaslight citizens (signs 12 and 13 of an abusive relationship), dismiss their opinions (sign 14), and tell them that the nation’s divisions are all their fault (sign 15)?

Similarly, the European Union has gone all in on monitoring private electronic messages without first establishing any kind of probable cause or seeking a judicial warrant.  The Eurocrats’ justification for their gross intrusion into citizens’ private lives is that they are trying to battle the proliferation of child pornography.  European authorities settled on this convenient excuse because the arrival of unvetted Islamic “asylum seekers” across the continent has set off an epidemic of Islamic men sexually molesting young girls and boys.

For years, European Union authorities have defamed native Europeans as “racists” and “bigots” for objecting to the mass Islamic immigration that is undermining European culture and increasing acts of terrorism and violent crime.  Now those same European officials are pretending to fight crimes against children by giving themselves the authority to read every European’s personal communications.  So Brussels Eurocrats insist on monitoring communications (signs 4 and 7 of an abusive relationship), punishing citizens for breaking rules that keep changing (sign 8), telling Europeans that the new rules are for their own good (sign 9), forbidding them from questioning official decisions (sign 10), and calling anyone who objects “selfish” and “crazy” (signs 11 and 12).  Do you think Europeans might just be in an abusive relationship with their oppressive government?

Before you answer that question, please be aware that Empress Ursula von der Leyen and her censorship-loving Commission are watching.  They are right now creating a so-called “Democracy Shield” that is meant to identify and remove “false content” from the internet (sign 6).  As one European diplomat describes the new “monitoring center” without any sense of shame: “Freedom of speech remains for everyone.  At the same time, however, citizens must be free from interference.”  In the name of “democracy,” the Eurocrats must stop us from communicating with undesirable friends and family (sign 1) or leaving Brussels’s information “safe space” without permission (sign 2).  It’s for our own good (sign 9)!

Across the West, governments broadcast the same public message: The beatings will continue until morale improves.  Who needs to venture out to slay the authoritarian dragons in Russia and China, when Hell is empty and all the devils have government jobs at home?

There are only two ways to survive an abusive relationship: leave the abuser or learn to fight back.  Most of us have nowhere else to go.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Westerners’ Abusive Relationship With Their Governments appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump’s South America policy is getting more ridiculous by the day.

Yesterday he announced a pardon for the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who is serving a 45-year sentence for partnering with drug traffickers who had allegedly shipped 400 tons of cocaine to the United States. He also endorsed a right wing candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura for Sunday’s election in Honduras. Asfura belongs to the same party as Hernández.

This is unlikely (archived) to have the effect that Trump desires:

The reaction to Mr. Trump’s pardon in Honduras was one of shock, and many wondered how it would play into the elections this weekend.

“It will obviously stir up the same powerful negative sentiment seen in the 2021 elections that pushed Juan Orlando out of power,” said Leonardo Pineda, a Honduran analyst, who said that by linking the conservative candidate, Mr. Asfura, with Mr. Hernández, Mr. Trump could actually hurt his chances of winning.

While pardoning a convicted drug smuggler on one day Trump uses the next one to threatening Venezuela for alleged drug smuggling for which there is no evidence.

A week ago the Federal Aviation Administration has issued a Notice To Air Man (NOTAM) for Venezuela:

The alert speaks of a ‘worsening security situation and heightened military activity in or around Venezuela.’

‘Threats could pose a potential risk to aircraft at all altitudes, including during overflight, the arrival and departure phases of flight, and/or airports and aircraft on the ground,’ the FAA notice states.

The warning is for the Maiquetía Flight Information Region which includes Venezuelan airspace and parts of the southern Caribbean – such as Colombia, Guyana, Brazil, and Trinidad.

Venezuela responded by revoking operation rights for airlines which were following that advice.

Today Trump made an explicit threat to all airplanes in Venezuelan airspace:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – Nov 29, 2025, 12:43 UTC

To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

But is he going to do? Order the military to shoot down random passenger planes?

Before that Trump had announced land operations in Venezuela:

President Trump suggested Thursday the United States will “very soon” take action against alleged Venezuelan drug traffickers on land after weeks of repeated strikes in Caribbean waters.

“In recent weeks, you’ve been working to deter Venezuelan drug traffickers, of which there are many,” Trump told military personnel in remarks on Thanksgiving. “Of course, there aren’t too many coming in by sea anymore.”

“You probably noticed that people aren’t wanting to be delivering by sea, and we’ll be starting to stop them by land also,” he continued.

“The land is easier, but that’s going to start very soon. We warn them: Stop sending poison to our country,” Trump added.

The threat is empty. There is no real option for a military land operation in Venezuela.

All Trump assertions about Venezuela, its alleged ‘terrorist gangs’ and drug smuggling are completely bogus.

This is not at all about drugs but about stealing the huge oil reserve Venzuela has:

“[Oil] is at the heart of the matter,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro told CNN in an interview published Wednesday.

“So, that’s a negotiation about oil. I believe that is [President] Trump’s logic. He’s not thinking about the democratization of Venezuela, let alone the narco-trafficking,” added the South American president, who last month was sanctioned by the Trump administration.

Just a week ago Trump had a phone call (archived) with the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in which he presumably tried to press him into resigning:

The United States has built up a substantial military presence in the Caribbean aimed at Venezuela. Administration officials have said their goal is to deter drug smuggling, but have also made clear that they want to see Mr. Maduro removed from power, possibly by force.

The New York Times reported in October that Mr. Maduro had offered the United States a significant stake in the country’s oil fields, along with a host of other opportunities for American companies, in an effort to defuse tensions. But Mr. Maduro sought to remain in power, and the U.S. officials cut off those discussions early last month.

The Trump administration has falsely claimed (archived) that two criminal organizations in Venezuela, Tren de Aragua and the Cartel de los Soles, are involved in drug trafficking while being controlled by President Maduro:

Henrique Capriles, an opposition figure, former governor and presidential candidate who has been marginalized in recent years, said in an interview that while Tren de Aragua is a dangerous gang, the idea that it was controlled by Mr. Maduro amounts to “science fiction.”
…
Regarding Tren de Aragua, drug trade experts point out that it originated in a prison in Venezuela’s Aragua state and American intelligence agencies circulated findings in February that the gang was not controlled by the Venezuelan government. Its leader is thought to be Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, who escaped from the prison.
…
[N]o evidence has been found that Tren de Aragua is engaged in cross-border drug trafficking, according to Insight Crime, a research group focused on organized crime.

When real drug smuggling occurred in Venezuela it was directed and controlled by the CIA:

[E]xperts who have analyzed the Venezuelan drug trade for decades say the Cartel de los Soles is not a literal organization but shorthand for drug trafficking in the armed forces. That phenomenon is not unique to Venezuela, afflicting democratic and authoritarian countries alike in the Americas.
…
The origins of using the term Cartel de los Soles to describe illicit military activities stretch back to an era well before Mr. Maduro became president in 2013. The term gained traction after a 1993 scandal when the C.I.A. worked with the Venezuelan military to send a ton of cocaine to the United States in a bid to infiltrate Colombian cartels.

The whole Trump South America policy is not about drugs or Venezuela but about U.S. control over the whole continent with the help of right-wing proxy leaders.

Meanwhile the U.S. military continues to strike random fisherman near Venezuela (archived) with drones and missiles.

Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has given verbal orders to kill anyone who survives a first strike (archived):

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.
…
Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

Hegseth had overruled the most senior military lawyer of the U.S. Southern Command who had called the strikes illegal:

The JAG at Southern Command specifically expressed concern that strikes against people on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean, whom administration officials call “narco-terrorists,” could amount to extrajudicial killings, the six sources said, and therefore legally expose service members involved in the operations.
…
There have been other signs of disagreement within the administration over the strikes. The head of Southern Command, Adm. Alvin Holsey, plans to step down after less than a year in a job that typically lasts about three years.

Holsey announced in October that he will depart next month.

Eleven people in a boat is by the way a sure sign that these were not drug smuggler but most likely illegal migrants:

Current and former officials within the U.S. military and DEA have expressed doubt that all 11 people aboard the first vessel were complicit in trafficking.

The boat in question, a go-fast vessel with four motors, is common in the region and would typically be manned by a small crew — perhaps one mechanic, a driver or two, and another person focused on security, one DEA official said.

More people on board means less room for drugs to sell, the official explained.

I still very much doubt that Trump will order military strikes on Venezuela. Chances are high that any such operation would end in a quagmire. It would lessen the chances of any other policy success he might want to have.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump Pardons Drug Smuggler, Threatens Venezuela appeared first on LewRockwell.

Alice’s Restaurant – The Original 1967 Legendary Recording

The “Alice’s Restaurant” story, from Arlo Guthrie’s song, is about the musician and his friend illegally dumping garbage on Thanksgiving 1965, leading to their arrest and conviction.

A year later, this criminal record ironically makes him ineligible for the Vietnam War draft, a central theme of the satirical anti-war protest song. The story is based on real events but is hilariously, comically exaggerated, and the song’s chorus, “You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant,” is a nonsensical but memorable line that plays no literal role in the plot.

The song’s lasting impact: “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” became a signature song for Guthrie and a folk anthem for the counterculture movement and its anti-war themes. The story was also the basis for a 1969 film of the same name.

Folk singer Arlo Guthrie endorsed Ron Paul for President during his 2008 Republican primary campaign. Guthrie praised Paul as the only candidate who seemed to believe the U.S. Constitution was still relevant. 

Guthrie’s endorsement was notable because his father was the legendary folk artist Woody Guthrie, a well-known communist and activist. Arlo Guthrie explained his support and registration as a Republican at the time: 

“I love this guy. Dr. Paul is the only candidate I know of who would have signed the Constitution of The United States had he been there. I’m with him, because he seems to be the only candidate who actually believes it has as much relevance today as it did a couple of hundred years ago.” 

Guthrie also stated around that time that he registered as a Republican to encourage more common sense within the party, noting, “To have a successful democracy, you have to have at least two parties, and one of them was failing miserably”. 

The post Alice’s Restaurant – The Original 1967 Legendary Recording and It’s Great Impact appeared first on LewRockwell.

George Galloway has been elected to parliament seven times, and on many issues is one of the most conservative politicians in the U.K. But when he criticized the Ukraine war, he was detained by British police and had his property confiscated. He’s now in exile.

The post The Amazing George Galloway Speaks Out on Being Forced Into Exile After Criticizing Ukraine War appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

X and Rumble broadcaster Ian Carroll analyzed the plotted assassination hit on Candace Owens and how it relates to the murder of her friend and colleague Charlie Kirk. Carroll concludes at 1:43 in this video that credible evidence indicates the leaked information Owens gave the federal government on the plot to assassinate her reveals those behind the plot who have been trained to do the hit are the French Foreign Legion members who have an Israeli connection. This is the exact type of military unit comprised of sketchy individuals, Carroll notes, needed to conduct such operations with forged documents and specialists in new identities. 

The post Ian Carroll: French Foreign Legion Connection to Kirk Assassination and Candace Owens Hit Plot appeared first on LewRockwell.