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The court historians, who insist that they have the only “correct” view of history, like to claim that theirs is the only true version of history because it is based on primary sources. But they fail to distinguish between what the primary sources state, and their own interpretation of the significance to be attached to those sources. Moreover, their selection of which historical sources are to be given paramount importance, and which may safely be ignored, is often selected to fit within their own preferred theory.

In understanding the War Between the States, we are given to understand that the writings of John C. Calhoun, Alexander Stephens, and Jefferson Davis are “biased,” and the truth is to be found in the speeches of Abraham Lincoln which are not biased at all. The only speech of Alexander Stephens we are to study is the so-called Cornerstone Speech—which is so named because we are to focus on the paragraph where he calls racial inequality the cornerstone of the Confederate constitution, and we are to ignore everything else he said about the Confederate constitution because that is not important. This is all presented as the “truth” based on a scientific—or at least science-like—study of the evidence by the trained experts. The implication is that you should no more dismiss the establishment view of history than you would dismiss the report of an engineer on the structural integrity of a bridge.

In his book Theory and History Ludwig von Mises skewered the sham “scientism” adopted by such historians, who depict their collectivist methodology, largely based on studying groups and group activity, as akin to the study of physics or chemistry. For example, the historian Samuel H. Beer in his essay “Political Science and History” argued that the social sciences and the study of history can yield principles that are universally true, based on descriptions across time and place. He called this “the doctrine of universality,” arguing that it can be used to derive theories explaining “the essential nature of law, science, and causal explanation.”

He was even “ready to accept as lawlike and explanatory propositions which do not hold in all contexts.” Part of the reason why social scientists prefer a collectivist approach to the study of history is that they seek, as far as possible, to imitate the methodology of the natural sciences by quantifying and measuring group activity, deriving general theories that would describe and explain the actions of specified groups of people and provide a foundation for making predictions of how people are likely to act in future. The actions of individuals are deemed to be irrelevant to this “study of mass phenomena.” As Mises explains,

While the study of individual traits is of no special interest to them, they hope study of the behavior of social aggregates will reveal information of a really scientific character. For these people the chief defect of the traditional methods of historical research is that they deal with individuals. They esteem statistics precisely because, as they think, it observes and records the behavior of social groups.

Mises argued that the methodology of the natural sciences cannot appropriately be applied to understanding human action, and that history cannot be fully understood without studying individuals. In Human Action, he explains the methodology of the historian as having two components, the first of which is based on examination of primary sources such as historical documents—the aim being to ascertain what the documents say or depict. On this component, any honest historian can be treated as reliable:

Those facts which can be established in an unquestionable way on the ground of the source material available must be established as the preliminary work of the historian. This is not a field for understanding. It is a task to be accomplished by the employment of the tools provided by all nonhistorical sciences. The phenomena are gathered by cautious critical observation of the records available.… What a historian asserts is either correct or contrary to fact, is either proved or disproved by the documents available, or vague because the sources do not provide us with sufficient information. The experts may disagree, but only on the ground of a reasonable interpretation of the evidence available.

On that point, the word of the court historians is no more or less reliable than that of anyone else examining the same documents armed with nothing more than ability to read and basic reading comprehension ability. Good old common sense. Problems arise in relation to the second component, which involves “application of the nonhistorical sciences to the subject matter of history.” Here historians will debate “the effects and the intensity of the effects brought about by an action…the relevance of each motive and each action.” They are not disagreeing about the evidence, but about the significance or implications of that evidence and how that evidence is to be deployed in an explanatory “theory” about history. The theories they derive about history, the narratives they spin and the stories they tell, are neither universal nor scientific. They cannot be “tested” like theories in the field of physics or chemistry, because “there necessarily enters into understanding an element of subjectivity. The understanding of the historian is always tinged with the marks of his personality. It reflects the mind of its author.”

At this level, historians are not disputing the veracity of the facts, but the importance or relevance to be attached to the selected facts, or the value judgments that went into their decision to highlight certain facts and brush others aside. Hence Mises argues that, “Historical understanding can never produce results which must be accepted by all men.” By contrast, scientific principles in the natural sciences are generally or universally true. When we describe gravity as scientific, we do not simply mean that most scientists “agree” with it, nor do we mean that it is a matter of opinion whether one regards gravity as significant or not.

In defending his argument that history can yield universal principles, Beer gave the example of the statement “all apples in basket b at time t are red” as one sense in which we may describe a statement as universal—he saw that as “universal in logical form” because it does not apply to just one apple in the basket or a few apples in the basket, but rather to all apples in the basket. But as Beer goes on to note, this is not, of course, what is meant by saying that scientific principles are universal. As Mises explains it, the principle that “man acts” is scientific and universal because to be human is to act. It does not merely mean that “all men in a specific place p at time t act.” A historian who sets out to describe all apples in a basket, or even all apples in multiple sets of baskets across time and location, is not involved in scientific endeavor, but is merely engaged in gathering the evidence. The evidence is not transformed into a universal scientific principle merely because it happens to apply to all the groups studied by that historian. Beer argued that this weakness—limitation to the particular time and place of the evidence actually studied—could be corrected by ensuring that the statement reflects what he calls “nomological universality”:

…to be a law, a statement must not only be universal in logical form, but also free of such local reference. Or to put the matter more positively, all predicates, it is said, must be “purely qualitative.”

Thus, he regards history as a “science,” or at least science-like, when, to use his example, he examines apples in baskets multiple times and places to derive principles that are generally true about apples. Thus, for example, if we derived a statement such as “there are red apples in different continents around the globe, and such apples are found to subsist across several different centuries” that would be “qualitative”—it describes apples without confining the observation to time and place, and “could be corroborated in a very wide variety of space-time contexts.” It is certainly true that the red apple is ubiquitous. But that is still a descriptive point concerning the available evidence. The fact that red apples are ubiquitous is interesting information and a potentially comforting thing to know—if you go on a global tour you can reasonably expect to be able to find apples wherever you are—but that does not make it a scientific principle comparable to Newton’s laws of motion.

Historians can certainly shed light on human nature by describing events that apply generally to groups of people, or mass phenomena, across time and place, what Beer called “the analytic and generalizing historian,” but this does not mean historical conclusions derived in that way are scientifically and objectively true. The evidence still requires to be put into the context of other explanatory factors. Observing human action at the level of groups obscures a wide range of human activity which does not fit within the group trait under observation. As the distinguished historian Clyde Wilson has argued, “History is not a mathematical calculation or scientific experiment but a vast drama of which there is always more to be learned.”

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

The post History Is Not a Science appeared first on LewRockwell.

The EU/NATO combo cannot but play the role of pathetic yapping chihuahuas. That’s the price you pay for a matrioshka of supreme stupidity.

No one ever lost money betting on the politically suicidal instincts of post-Orwellian EU – that acronym for a virtual Europe.

Call them juvenile bipolar psychos or a bunch of yapping chihuahuas: no Jupiterian or Mercurial voice of reason has been capable to impart to the “leadership” in Brussels and their vassals in most European capitals – yes, there are healthy exceptions – that losers in wars do not dictate terms.

And still those War Council luminaries – with a special starring role for the toxic Pfizer Medusa and her Estonian sidekick unable to even manage a herring stall in the Baltics – insist that essentially the mega-corrupt gang in Kiev must prevail, to the last Ukrainian dead, and on top of it dictate the final terms of their non-surrender.

Reality begs to differ. Plan A was never to talk, much less negotiate with Russia. And still there’s no Plan B.

So after the 28-pointer Theater of the Absurd – which is not even Trump’s plan, but a mish mash concocted by the Witkoff-Dmitriev duo plus “insights” from neo-con Rubio and toxic Zionist asset Jared Kushner – the cross-yapping went ballistic, leading to an emergency “counter-plan” that is, what else, a Loser’s Manifesto.

Even Rubio allowed himself a shining moment: “What plan?” Might as well call it The Euro-kiss of Death.

Russia, meanwhile, behaves like Lao Tzu surrounded by rabid stray dogs. The conditions for a negotiation have been set in detail by Putin since June 2024. These are non-negotiable, and would allow the negotiation to start: Kiev withdraws from the four regions and formally pledges to never enter NATO.

One of the EU’s “counter-plan” points is a 30-day ceasefire, with all territorial disputes to be debated afterwards. So that means everything frozen on the current front line, and no Ukraine withdrawal from the parts of Donbass they still occupy.

None of that – and much more – is remotely acceptable to the actual winner of the war, Russia. It would not be acceptable even if NATO troops were entering Moscow tomorrow.

So the “counter-plan”, elaborated in conjunction with the unimaginably corrupt Kiev combo, is essentially a sabotage op to buy some extra time and buy some $6 trillion in – American – weapons – for their amply avowed Forever War. Fine with Moscow – as the SMO will keep going on, rolling thunder mode.

Losers bombing a peace plan

The EU’s 24-point counter-plan contains nuggets such as Ukraine

receiving legally binding security guarantees from the Empire of Chaos and its vassals: a de facto NATO Article 5 scam with different terminology.

Plus no restrictions on Ukraine’s armed forces and defense industry; control of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (with the Empire of Chaos in the mix) and the Kakhovka Dam; unhindered access to the Dnieper River and control of the Kinburn Spit.

And the killer: Ukraine “financially compensated” – including through the stolen, so far, Russian sovereign assets, which will remain stolen until Moscow pays compensation.

As for sanctions, they “may” – that’s the operative word – be “partially” – another operative word – eased only after a “sustainable peace”, with automatic snap-back if the deal is violated. Translation: the West can sanction Russia again anytime they see fit. No word on provocations by the EU/NATO using Ukraine – the actual set up that led to the SMO.

So what the “counter-plan” proposes – obviously redacted by a bunch of Eurocrats who cannot even fire a pistol properly – is a replica of the exact blueprint that led to the battlefield opened in February 2022.

Russia once again is playing it with boundless patience. The Trump plan which is not really Trump’s is diplomatically regarded as a “good foundation” for further serious negotiations – with the yapping crowd having no access to the table. That’s it – at best.

After all Russia is enjoying a series of overlapping asymmetric advantages in the battlefield: systemic and tactical adaptation; enormous advantage in drone operations (FPV drones with fiber-optics); use of long-range glide bombs.

The chihuahua “counter-plan” essentially calls for a frozen war; a remilitarized Ukraine; a remilitarized NATO; and ultimately a perennial Forever War against Russia. It has already bombed, metaphorically, the original Trump plan that is not exactly Trump’s.

The “counter-plan” should also be seen as a diversionist tactic now that the dark pit of corruption in Kiev starts to be pried upon by the NABU investigation – even as Russian UN representative Nebenzya had been warning the UN Security Council since forever that “you were dealing with a corrupt gang that is profiting from the war”.

Nebenzya also correctly observed that not a single Western country has said a word about the corruption scandal in Kiev. Of course: because a proper investigation will inevitably follow the corruption chain of command all the way to decision making circles in Washington and in Brussels.

The metaphysical void of EU “elites”

Emmanuel Todd, in his ground-breaking The Defeat of the West, published in France early last year (the first review in English is here) was the first European analyst to get deeper into the EU malaise, side by side with his comprehensive analysis of the proxy war in Ukraine.

Recently, in an outstanding lecture in Hiroshima,

Todd made a startling correlation between Russophobia and Protestantism. Certain passages are worth quoting at length:

“What we have seen appear recently in Europe is a specifically European Russophobia, a specifically European warmongering, centered on Northern Europe, on Protestant Europe. Protestant Europe is the United Kingdom, it’s the majority of Germany, it’s Scandinavia, it’s two out of three Baltic countries.”

At the same time, Todd has observed that “Spain, Italy, Catholic countries in general, are neither Russophobic nor hawkish.”

Todd’s key argument is that protestantism “is more dangerous in its zero state than Catholicism”: “Protestantism is more capable of leaving behind a nihilistic society. Protestantism, and the same could be said of Judaism, was a very demanding religion. There was God, there was the faithful, and the world was secondary. The beauty of the world in particular was rejected with, among other things, a refusal of images, a refusal of the visual arts. When such religions, obsessed with transcendence, disappear, nothing remains. The world itself is not interesting, empty. This intense void opens up a particular possibility of nihilism. Catholicism is a less demanding, more humane religion that can accept the idea that the world is, in itself, beautiful. The images have not been rejected in the Catholic world, and the Catholic world is filled with artistic wonders. In a Catholic country, if you lose God, you are left with the feeling of this beauty of the world. If you are French, you still have the feeling that you live — an illusion no doubt — in the most beautiful country in the world.”

Well, it’s slightly more nuanced. What about the – vicious – Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition? Germany was in fact forced by a massive P.R. campaign to become Russophobic, unlike the Baltic chihuahuas. Most of Protestant Europe is in fact atheistic – and the next step from atheism is nihilism. Romania is mostly Christian Orthodox – where hatred of Russia is like a national sport. And Protestantism was essentially Christianity turbo-charged to the Age of Capital. So the main conflict is in fact Western turbo-Neoliberalism v. Christian Orthodox Russia.

Back to the basics. Everyone with an IQ over room temperature knows that the NATO regime in Kiev runs on theft and outright plunder. The lights are now off. Heating is mostly off. The army is steadily collapsing all along the 1,200+ km frontline.

Yet the EU elites – the set up in Brussels just follows their orders –

have invested no holds barred in the inevitable (in their dreams) collapse and looting of Russia. That’s why there was never a Plan B.

If the EU folds now, if they admit they are the irretrievable losers in this absurdist adventure, the economic collapse will be epic. The EU/NATO combo cannot but play the role of pathetic yapping chihuahuas. That’s the price you pay for a matryoshka of supreme stupidity: to provoke and threaten a superpower with the most advanced nuclear and hypersonic arsenal on the planet. Their current “victory” is to bomb Trump’s already shaky “peace” plan.

So many horrors, so little time. On a more auspicious note, let’s give Todd the last word:

“If you are Italian, you actually live in the country in the world where there are the most beautiful things, since Italy itself has become an object of art. In such contexts, the fear of the metaphysical void is less intense, and therefore the risk of nihilism less. In my opinion, the country in Europe least threatened by nihilism is Italy, because in Italy everything is beautiful”.

So shed your metaphysical void, dump those chihuahuas of war, and embrace the beauty of Italy as a living work of art. That’s exactly what I’m doing next.

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

The post The European Matryoshka of Irrelevance appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump correctly called out the TV networks for their fake news and said they should be broken up.  He is correct.  It was President Clinton who apparently was paid by the Jews to let them monopolize 90% of the American media in 6 hands.  

Trump should include National Public Radio in the breakup.  I came to this conclusion today when listening to a NPR host decry making the large number of childhood vaccinations voluntary.  She struck me as a well paid shill of Big Pharma.  She completely ignored, as if the conclusive evidence did not exist, the connection between widespread childhood illnesses, illnesses that did not exist in the population when I was a child, and the numerous vaccinations, some beginning 24 hours after birth, that Big Pharma has succeeded in having mandated if a child is permitted to attend school.  

The Big Pharma shill went on at length about the horror of states passing a law that doctors had to treat an unvaccinated child.  Apparently, the NPR host thought that an unvaccinated child should be permitted to die as punishment to the parents for not having the child vaccinated until its health is ruined and the child becomes a lifetime purchaser of Big Pharma’s medicines to combat the illnesses Big Pharma’s vaccines gave him.

The Big Pharma NPR shill, of course, pulled out the standard denunciation of parents who wanted to send their unvaccinated kids to school so they could infect who?  The vaccinated ones?  If the vaccines work, what does it matter if unvaccinated kids are present?

When I was a child there were no mandatory vaccines. We had no vaccinations against measles, mumps, chicken pox or any of the normal childhood diseases that built our immune systems.  They wanted us to be vaccinated for smallpox, a killer.  It was voluntary and people cooperated.  If kids went barefoot in summer and swam in creeks or lakes in which cows might defacate, there was a danger of  tetanus or typhoid.  So when summer arrived parents were encouraged to have kids given shots in the arm to protect against lockjaw and typhoid fever. If kids were not subject to the risk of a rusty nail through a bare foot or swallowing contaminated water, there was no need of vaccination.

Later we were encouraged to take a sugar cube with a polio vaccine on it, which again was voluntary and most everyone complied.

The only time in my life when I had a mandatory vaccination was when I gradated from Georgia Tech and was selected to be a member of the US Department of State US/USSR student exchange program with the Soviet Union.  As the scheduled itinerary included the Central Asian provinces of the Soviet Union, the Department of State required that I be vaccinated as a protection against yellow flavor.  

The same with pets.  At six months dogs were vaccinated for rabies once for life.  There were no further vaccinations.  Cats were not vaccinated.

Big Pharma using the power of money has managed to get legislated in every state that dogs and cats have to be vaccinated endlessly throughout a life shortened by the vaccination or they cannot be treated by a vet.  

Vets are brainwashed in veterinary schools, as doctors and nurses are in medical schools, into the vaccination narrative.  Consequently, vaccinated cats live 10 years.  Unvaccinated ones live 20 years.  

Big Pharma grows its profits by infusing illness and death into the human and animal populations.  The program  I listened to on NPR was doing Big Pharma’s work.

The post Damn Big Pharma and Its Shills appeared first on LewRockwell.

Borrowing more to maintain spending is hanging on by one’s fingernails, not middle-class security.

The middle class is cracking, but if you want a statistic that “proves” this, there isn’t one. The cracking isn’t a statistic, it’s the culmination of observations logged over the past 15 years about these critical measures of what it takes to qualify as middle class:

1. How much income a household needs to secure the minimum qualifications of a middle class standard of living / quality of life, based on the conventional standards of the 1960s – 1980s. (The qualifying characteristics are listed below.)

2. The upward or downward mobility of those claiming middle class status. Put another way: if it requires monumental effort and perfect execution to achieve the minimum qualifications of middle class security, then that isn’t a “middle class” set of qualifications, that’s an elite set of qualifications.

3. Precarity: how much (or little) financial disruption does it take to tip a household into a down-spiral that becomes increasingly difficult to escape. The foundation of any non-trivial definition of “middle class” (any definition that is solely based on income is trivial) is the financial resilience offered by ownership of assets, particularly income-producing assets, and savings that can be tapped to handle emergencies.

I’ve been addressing these issues for many years. Here are a few of my posts on the decay of the middle class:

Priced Out of the Middle Class (June 28, 2012)

What Does It Take To Be Middle Class? (December 5, 2013)

Misplaced Pride: Most of the “Middle Class” Is Actually Working Class (June 14, 2019)

Squeezed for Decades, America’s Working Class Is Finally Up Against the Wall (May 13, 2024)

Here are the minimum requirements to qualify as middle class, drawn up by myself and readers:

1. Meaningful healthcare insurance. By meaningful I mean healthcare insurance that doesn’t have high deductibles–if you have to pay thousands of dollars before the insurance kicks in, that’s not insurance, it’s a simulation of insurance–and insurance that isn’t reduced to meaninglessness by limitations on coverage and/or zero coverage for core elements of healthcare.

2. Significant equity (25%-50%) in a home or other real estate.

3. Income/expenses that enable the household to save at least 6% of its net income.

4. Significant retirement funds: 401Ks, IRAs, etc.

5. The ability to service all debt and expenses over the medium-term if one of the primary household wage-earners lose their job.

6. Reliable vehicles for each wage earner.

7. If a household requires government assistance to maintain the family lifestyle, their Middle Class status is in doubt.

8. A percentage of non-paper, non-real estate hard assets such as family heirlooms, precious metals, tools, etc. that can be transferred to the next generation, i.e. generational wealth.

9. Ability to invest in offspring (education, extracurricular clubs/training, etc.).

10. Leisure time devoted to the maintenance of physical/spiritual/mental fitness.

11. Continual accumulation of human and social capital (new skills, networks of collaborators, markets for one’s services, etc.)

12. Family ownership of income-producing assets such as rental properties, bonds, family-owned business, etc.

The absolute scale of these requirements is less important than all twelve being included in the household’s quiver. In other words, it’s not necessary to own equity worth millions, but it is important to own meaningful equity across the range of assets listed above.

Back in 2012, I went through each requirement and arrived at a minimum household income of $106,000– adjusted for inflation, the equivalent sum today is $152,000. Before you scoff, please read the entirety of Michael Green’s careful analysis of what qualifies as “poverty level income” and “middle class income:” How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America (via Cheryl A.)

Green concluded the minimum income needed today is $140,000— more or less the same as my estimate, especially given his detailed explanation of why this minimum is barebones.

Green’s analysis of middle-class precarity dismantles all the statistical rah-rah presented as evidence that we’re all getting richer every day, in every way. Like insurance with stupidly high deductibles, this isn’t middle class security, it’s a simulation of middle class security.

This report in the Wall Street Journal suggests this reality is now so undeniably obvious that the WSJ had to address it: The Middle Class Is Buckling Under Almost Five Years of Persistent Inflation: Workers growing tired of economy in which everything seems to get more expensive.

As Green explained, soaring costs for big-ticket essentials–all the things required to participate in the economy in a meaningful fashion–are crushing the middle class.

Read the Whole Article

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Family dysfunction is so widespread in America 2.0 that they had to invent a new term to describe it More and more childless, often lonely ‘Murricans are celebrating “Friendsgiving.” Not Thanksgiving. When your family is hopelessly fractured, you turn to friends, if you have any. Hopefully, you still give thanks before eating.

In the photo above, the “friends” appear as if they’re attending a seance, not a special dinner for the purpose of expressing gratitude for the blessings of life. Now to be fair, it is probably safe to assume that most of those participating in a “Friendsgiving” are not devout believers in God. So they can’t be expected to give thanks to Him for anything. And I must say that at this particular “Friendsgiving,” there seems to be a startling lack of diversity. Only one possible nonwhite, although the dearth of White males is commendatory. Perhaps it’s a special lesbian “Friendsgiving,” although there’s not a single transgender in sight. However you look at it, “Friendsgiving” is not based on traditional themes. The very idea is anti-family, as is everything else emanating from our poisonous cultural overlords. All those TV shows and films depicting the dread of seeing your family once a year. Seinfeld already came up with Festivus in lieu of Christmas. Friendsgiving spares us that annoying family contact.

In my parents’ world, and during my childhood and young adulthood, many families invited a friend or two, or perhaps a distant cousin, to Thanksgiving dinner. Most of us still had enough empathy back then to realize that people shouldn’t have to be alone on a day devoted to family gratitude. There were always unmarried uncles, and what was indelicately referred to then as “spinster” aunts. They didn’t have to worry about going to Boston Market or some other restaurant, by themselves, to “celebrate.” They certainly wouldn’t have thought of bonding together with others without families, or outcast from them, in a “Friendsgiving.” Families went well beyond this in those days, as I heard many stories of a bachelor uncle or a lonely, childless widow being warmly welcomed into a family household. No retirement homes for them. When The Waltons depicted their huge family under one roof, that wasn’t an uncommon thing back then. Goodnight John Boy, indeed.

Set against this backdrop of turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce and assorted pies, is the growing realization, on behalf of millions of Americans, that they are living under an occupied regime. We may not be residents of Gaza, crawling through the rubble of what was once our home, and there may not be actual IDF soldiers patrolling the streets, ready to take out some dangerous child with a rock in its hand at any moment. But we are under an occupation nevertheless. The esteemed “American” congressional representative Randy Fine celebrated Marjorie Taylor Greene’s sudden and inexplicable resignation from Congress by tweeting, “Good riddance. One antisemite down. One to go.” Does this seem like the kind of thing a person representing a free people should say? Isn’t there, if not an actual threat, a snide braggadocio in Fine’s tone? A boast that, hell yes, we’re in charge- what are you gonna do about it? Who, exactly, took Marjorie Taylor Greene “down?”

When you have a supposed U.S. congressional “representative” aggressively advocating for another country’s interests first, and then taunts one of the few members of Congress who are critical of this diabolical stance, you know you’re occupied. When you have another U.S. congressional “representative,” Brian Mast, who feels comfortable in wearing the military uniform of this favored foreign nation, on the floor of our Congress, you know you’re occupied. Both Fine and Mast are Republicans. Many MAGA loyalists probably think they’re strong “conservatives.” Both hail from Florida, a good, solid “Red” state. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has done all he could to criminalize “anti-Semitism,” which is, of course, not even a quantifiable term. Legislating with emotion, just like the crazed “Woke” Left. You cannot claim to be “America First,” when you support so many Israel First public figures. The Wailing Wall is not compatible with the cracked Liberty Bell.

Ben Shapiro. Mark Levin. Laura Loomer. Rosanne Barr. Prominent Jews are lowering their masks, and revealing just how loyal they are to Israel. Not America. As Shapiro proudly said, U.S. support of Israel is what keeps him supporting America. Just like a schoolyard bully- hand over your money and I’ll let you alone. Until the next time. Rosanne was seemingly in our conspiracy-tinged world, but recently literally hissed like some genuine witch, that if America stops supporting Israel, “we’ll” just go somewhere else, and “America will get what’s coming to it.” Then, like she was casting a spell, she snarled, “America will fall!” This was sad to hear. Rosanne was a victim of cancel culture herself, and has been bold in the past, once calling fellow non-Irish success story Howard Stern a “pussy,” and expressing sympathy for the dreaded “holocaust denial.” She has also claimed to be a “Hebrew princess.” I guess she’s still doing her standup act. No longer much of a chance of getting her on my podcast.

The battle to counter the insane “Woke” Left cannot be fought, let alone won, with the likes of Shapiro, Levin, Mast, and Fine in the front lines. They are fighting for a different cause. They are fighting for a tiny nation that was installed by great military forces, with nuclear weapons at their disposal. The battle can’t be won by worshiping great tyrants like Hamilton and Lincoln. Or extolling the “greatest generation” and their “good war.” It can’t be won by worshiping the shameful Nuremberg Trials as the ultimate form of “justice.” It can’t be won by yelling “Nazi” louder than even the craziest blue-haired transgender. It can’t be won by supporting our corrupt, noncompetitive and rigged crony capitalist system. And it certainly can’t be won by resorting to your own cancel culture. Say it with me; it is not a crime, nor is it “wrong,” to publicly criticize our favored “ally” in the Middle East.

We are at yet another watershed moment. Well, I guess we always seem to be at a watershed moment. And what invariably happens is that the lethargic American public just turns their backs, and at best shrugs. We clearly don’t have a tipping point. When you can have a vast majority of White people literally worshiping the most obnoxious and ignorant “culture” a supposed First World country has ever produced, what else is there to say? And a majority of this same group of allegedly higher IQ Whites also believe that an even smaller minority group, which has just happens to hold an exorbitant amount of power that seems mathematically impossible given their numbers, are somehow the “chosen” people of God. Are all the partial Jews just half “chosen?” I have lots of cousins who are half, one quarter, or one eighth Jewish. What exactly is their “chosen” status? This is the group responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. They rejected your savior. And yet you think they shouldn’t be criticized?

Give me a logical reason for Marjorie Taylor Greene deciding to resign? And to pick a date that just happens to be two days after she reaches her full congressional pension status. Boy, that looks bad. Makes her look as greedy and unconscionable as the rest of them. Did someone pick that date for her, for the maximum demonization effect? Maybe she was always phony, playing a role like the rest of the crisis actors. But what possible sense does it make for her to resign, right after Trumpenstein attacks her as Marjorie “Traitor” Brown? Is Thomas Massie next, as the honorable Rep. Fine suggests? Whether he knew it or not, in the motion to release the Epstein files, “unclassified” files are specified. Why would you do that, which leaves the door open for the government to just claim everything significant is classified? Massie lost his wife under very suspicious circumstances, and now has remarried, for which the thrice married Trump called him a “loser” in a scathing, juvenile social media post.

Read the Whole Article

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Last week’s surprise release of a draft Ukraine war peace plan has raised hopes that the nearly three-year bloody conflict may finally come to an end. Ukraine has suffered horrible losses that may change the demographics of that country for decades to come.

If this peace plan can be negotiated in a way that satisfies all sides and the guns finally go silent, I will be the first to cheer. However, the continued failure to understand the nature and origin of the current conflict leaves me skeptical that a real peace can be reached this way.

From the Orange Revolution in the early 2000s to the Maidan revolution in 2014, the US and its NATO partners have been interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs in attempt to manipulate the country into a hostile position toward its much larger and more powerful neighbor, Russia.

We must remember how directly coordinated the 2014 coup was by the United States. US Senators, including John McCain and Lindsey Graham, were on the main square of a foreign capital demanding that the people overthrow their duly elected government. Victoria Nuland was caught on a telephone call planning who would run the post-coup government.

Outside intervention led us to the terrible situation of today. This peace deal is another chapter in that same intervention, with the US and its partners desperately trying to manage and solve a problem that they created in the first place. Can you solve a problem created by outside intervention with more intervention?

For the entirety of this conflict politicians and the media have been unwavering in blaming Russia entirely for what has occurred. I agree that they’re no angels. But the real villains here are the US neocons and their European counterparts who knew it was suicidal for Ukraine to take on Russia but pushed Ukraine to keep fighting anyway. Early in the conflict a deal was on the table and nearly signed that would end the war, but the neocon former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanded that Ukraine keep fighting.

Ukraine is the victim here, I agree. But it is as much a victim of the US and European neocons as of the Russians. They believed they could put NATO on Russia’s doorstep and face no consequences. If the tables were turned and a hostile China set up a new Latin American military alliance with the US as its designated enemy, would we sit by idly as military bases were constructed on our southern border? I don’t think so.

President Trump promised he would end the war 24 hours after he was elected. It was an unrealistic boast, but he actually could have ended it rather quickly. The antidote to intervention Is non-intervention. Biden drug us into the war, that is true. But Trump could have pulled us out by quite simply ending all US involvement. No weapons, no intelligence, no coordination. No need for sanctions or the threat of sanctions, no need for elaborate peace plans.

A real peace deal would realize that it was always idiotic to believe that Ukraine could stand up to Russia’s war machine – even with NATO’s backing. It is unimaginably cruel to demand that Ukraine keep fighting our proxy war down to the last Ukrainian.

No 28-point plans can fix this. The real fix is much simpler: walk away.

The post A Real Ukraine Peace Plan appeared first on LewRockwell.

In December 2024 President Donald Trump named venture capitalist David O. Sacks as the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.”

Sacks is set to guide the administration’s policies for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.

AI-researcher Gary Markus is wondering how two recent tweets by Gary Sacks relate to each other:

One theory of capitalism holds that every company should be left to their own devices, with state intervention kept a minimum. This view was well articulated just a few weeks ago, by White House AI and Crypto Czar and well-known podcaster, David O. Sacks:

David Sacks @DavidSacks – 16:52 UTC · Nov 6, 2025

There will be no federal bailout for AI. The U.S. has at least 5 major frontier model companies. If one fails, others will take its place.

The other theory of capitalism, if we can indeed call it that, holds that we should bailout important companies or industries that might overextend themselves. Quite the opposite from the above.

This latter theory, almost a form of safety-net socialism for overextended companies, seemed to be implied today, in a tweet that seemed to be laying the groundwork for bailout, by none other than … White House AI and Crypto Czar and well-known podcaster, David O. Sacks:

David Sacks @DavidSacks – 17:34 UTC · Nov 24, 2025

According to today’s WSJ, AI-related investment accounts for half of GDP growth. A reversal would risk recession. We can’t afford to go backwards.

The WSJ report Sacks mentions, archived here, is indeed gloomy:

The economy’s dependence on AI comes with risks. Stock price/earnings ratios are near record highs. If lofty profit predictions prove wrong, share prices may tumble and investment could slow. The S&P 500 fell about 2% last week on concerns about a bubble, despite rallying 1% on Friday.

Falling stocks could trigger a reverse wealth effect: Americans would consume less, which would tend to depress sales, profits and, potentially, employment.
…
If AI investment stopped growing, that could knock another 0.5 point off growth, Millar estimates. If it went to zero, that would knock a full percentage point off.
…
Another risk relates to the growing scale of AI-related borrowing.
…
If the revenue necessary to service that debt doesn’t materialize, lenders could take a hit, spilling over into debt markets, said Berezin.

China is letting the first type of capitalism reign their Artificial Intelligence efforts:

Rather than pick winners and losers, China states the policy objective and hundreds of commercial initiatives compete using diverse strategies to fulfil the ambition. Instead of a ‘winner takes all subsidies’ China gets a diverse, agile, ecosystem growing in parallel to its rapidly innovative economy.

Many Chinese models are published as open source and can be run on smaller clusters.

The U.S. has however decided to let the second form of capitalism rule its AI endeavors. There are only a few companies working on large AI projects. Their models are private and blocked from scrutiny. They are promising too much and are spending a huge amount of money. They are in need of ‘safety-net socialism for overextended companies’.

To provide for this the White House issued an Executive Order on:

LAUNCHING THE GENESIS MISSION

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Purpose. From the founding of our Republic, scientific discovery and technological innovation have driven American progress and prosperity. Today, America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an important frontier of scientific discovery and economic growth. To that end, my Administration has taken a number of actions to win that race, including issuing multiple Executive Orders and implementing America’s AI Action Plan, which recognizes the need to invest in AI-enabled science to accelerate scientific advancement. In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories.

The Department of Energy is ordered to direct the initiative combining federal laboratories and ‘industry partners’:

Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall identify Federal computing, storage, and networking resources available to support the Mission, including both DOE on-premises and cloud-based high-performance computing systems, and resources available through industry partners. The Secretary shall also identify any additional partnerships or infrastructure enhancements that could support the computational foundation for the Platform.

The federal government will of course have to pay for those private resources.

Research with the help of AI will be done in six high priority fields. The timeline provided in the Executive Order is extremely ambitious.

Besides providing the instruments for a bailout the Executive Order is also creating the means of central control over AI and its application:

If you strip away the branding, Genesis is the U.S. government building a national AI backbone inside the Department of Energy and then inviting the biggest private sector AI players to plug into it.
…
But underneath, it centralizes the AI stack. Instead of letting the highest end compute and model capabilities drift entirely into the private sector, Genesis pulls them back into a structured federal environment. Access becomes conditional: follow the safety rules, share the data, integrate into the platform and you get to operate at the frontier. Don’t, and you’re on the outside looking in.
…
Genesis is the beginning of a nationalized AI infrastructure strategy. It will function as the bridge between government compute and private sector models, letting Washington influence which companies sit closest to the frontier and which capabilities get priority. It will speed up real scientific breakthroughs, but it will also quietly define the rules of the AI race on who participates, who gets access, and how the most powerful systems are directed.

By allowing for a bailout of over extended AI companies via ‘Manhattan Project’ sized federal spending Trump is also attempting to prevent a stock market slump that would cost the Republicans the majority in the House.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Executive Order Provides for Bailout of Overextended AI Companies appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Weaponizing ticks, Fleas and Mosquitos is a poor Man’s Nuke. It can kill tens of thousands of people at a US$ 1.33 a life.” — Kris Newby, in an interview with Tucker Carlson

In her interview with Tucker Carlson, Kris Newby says according to Willy Burgdorfer, a researcher at Fort Detrick’s bio-weapon lab, bites from infected ticks, cause Rickettsia, also called “Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever” and that is the deadliest tick-borne disease. It was a germ being weaponized by the US military.

In an earlier interview by Kris Newby with Willy Burgdorfer, he revealed having spent over a decade as a contractor at the biological weapons plant at Fort Detrick, Maryland, weaponizing fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes. Stuffing fleas with the plague, stuffing mosquitoes with the deadly Trinidad virus, and then stuffing ticks with either deadly or incapacitating diseases like relapsing fever, Venezuela equine encephalitis, rabies, leptospirosis.

It is like Doctor Strangelove, making new diseases, mixing bacteria and viruses in ticks and other insects, with the intent of this being the perfect stealth weapon – low-cost killing and leaving infrastructure intact. It is a poor man’s nuke.

The plan is these insects are dropped on an enemy. It weakens the population, it ties up the medical resources but it does not destroy infrastructure, like a nuclear bomb would. A bean counter (accountant) in the military said, with “tick-borne tularemia, also called rabbit fever, we can kill 10,000 people at US$ 1.33 a life.”

For further clarification, Willy Burgdorfer is the scientist who discovered the Lyme disease bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi. Ms. Newby discusses Burgdorfer’s dual role as both Lyme disease discoverer and a researcher involved in Cold War-era bug-borne bioweapons programs. She indicates that Burgdorfer’s work on weaponizing ticks and his later revelations about the secretive nature of these projects (in an act of conscience?) are central to understanding Lyme disease’s origins and spread.

Tucker’s comment at the end of the interview,

”It is hard to digest all this. It is just so evil. It is hard to believe that this could happen in the United States and may still happen today.”

Of course, it is happening today.

See this interview (2.5 minutes) by Tucker Carlson with Kris Newby author of “Bitten.”

See also this by Tucker Carlson and Kris Newby (29-min video):

On Kris Newby: Although she did not work as a scientist or researcher directly at Fort Detrick’s highest-level bioweapons laboratories, she has a professional background as an engineer and science writer, including work in Silicon Valley and later as a communications manager at Stanford Medical School.

In her investigative research for the book Bitten (see this reference to her book “Bitten”) and related projects, Ms. Newby uncovered and studied extensive historical documents and accounts related to bioweapons research conducted at the entomological warfare division of Fort Detrick in Maryland, where scientists, including Willy Burgdorfer, had worked on weaponizing ticks and other arthropods.

Ms. Newby explains further that fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes were stuffed with an infectious agent like plague, yellow fever, and rickettsia. The goal was to mass produce these infected arthropods with the capability of dispersing them via cluster bombs or aerial spraying over target areas.

An arthropod is an insect with a segmented body, a hard outer shell called an exoskeleton, and jointed appendages like legs. This group is the largest in the animal kingdom, making up about 75% of all known species and including all types of insects.

This weaponization program involves freeze-drying and milling pathogens to make aerosols for broad dispersal, with ticks and other insects as delivery vectors due to their ability to inject pathogens directly and evade protective measures like masks. This biological warfare approach is aimed at causing high casualties at low cost with stealth delivery.

Thus, Newby concludes that multiple arthropod vectors—ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes—all weaponized with germs in secret military experiments may in the future be used for biological warfare, contributing to outbreaks of insect-borne diseases.​ The “kill benefits” are enormous: low-cost culling of masses and leaving infrastructure intact – hence, the poor man’s nuke.

Bill Gates is already experimenting with this technology in Brazil and elsewhere, under the pretext of new public health biotechnologies in the global South. See this.

There may be more to these secret bio-weapon programs than meets the eye. Could it be that they may replace heavy and expensive, all destructive weapon systems – tanks, bombs, fighter planes, missiles, nuclear warheads? And highly cost-effectively killing people, leaving infrastructure undamaged?

May this be the reason why the World Economic Forum (WEF), UN and especially WHO – and, of course, those who pull the strings behind these organizations – are so adamant in getting all 194 WHO member countries subscribing to the new modified International Health Regulations (IHR) to the Pandemic Treaty? All treaties (not contracts; the difference, treaties are legally not binding) oblige governments to obey WHO pandemic orders, beyond national sovereign health policies.

And with the menacing stick in the back (the type “or else” stick), most, if not all, governments may obey.

Could this also be the reason why the “climate change” (hoax) is suddenly under the wings and responsibility of WHO? Because “climate change” favors the appearance of insects, old and new ones, with deadly diseases, also old and new ones – that MUST be treated with “vaccines”?

This would be a double whammy for the UN Agenda 2030’s primary goal: population reduction at any cost, first by insect bites, second by the new mRNA injections called “vaccines.”

May we just hope and pray for people to wake up before this happens – coupled with digital money, digital ID, digital everything, the digital gulag, the end life in freedom, as we used to know it.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post ‘A Poor Man’s Nuke:’ Weaponizing Ticks, Fleas and Mosquitoes appeared first on LewRockwell.

If the Trump administration decides to invade Venezuela, the backlash from the MAGA base will be so intense that the movement will implode. That’s what Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) recently predicted during an interview with a Libertarian publication.

Paul told Reason’s Nick Gillespie last week that “If [President Donald Trump] invades Venezuela or gives more money to Ukraine, his movement will dissolve.” The sentiment is a reminder that the president’s coalition, which has repeatedly been angered this year, is barely holding together as it is.

Paul’s comments last week seem to have had no effect on the administration, though. On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Nicolás Maduro and his allies a foreign terrorist organization. The move expands justification for military intervention.

Caribbean Buildup

And fresh off the press is the news that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine will soon visit the massive military infrastructure that has been built up in the Caribbean. The official reason for this visit is to thank the troops in the spirit of Thanksgiving, but the suspicion is that it’s more than that. As The New York Times observed, “General Caine has been a major architect of what the Pentagon calls Operation Southern Spear, the largest buildup of American naval forces in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis and the blockade of Cuba in 1962.” The paper added that Caine “is expected to consult with commanders on the armada’s preparations.”

On November 11, the  U.S. Navy’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, arrived in the Caribbean. This added to the thousands of servicemen, amphibious-ready groups, and gunships moved into the region over previous weeks.

Hardly anyone believes this is all about countering Maduro’s narco enterprise. The senator from Kentucky is among the skeptics. “We don’t know their names, we’re presented with no evidence — nobody’s even bothering to pick up the drugs out of the water and tell us [if] there were drugs floating around the boat. Nobody’s bothering to say if they were armed. When we capture people alive, we’re not even prosecuting them,” he said.

Blowing Up Boats

Paul has been expressing skepticism since September that those small boats with outboard engines can even make the 1,000-mile-plus trek to the U.S. from Venezuela. He’s also pointed out the fact that most of the drugs coming into the U.S. don’t even come from Venezuela. It’s a well-known fact that most drugs, including more than 90 percent of fentanyl, is coming through the Mexican border.  Moreover, how can the administration be so sure the boats have drugs if they don’t inspect them? As Paul pointed out:

The most important statistic that should give people pause about blowing these boats up is that when the Coast Guard boards vessels off of Miami or off of San Diego, one in four vessels they board does not have drugs on board. So their error rate’s about 25 percent. It’s hard to imagine that a civilized people would tolerate blowing up people, incinerating them — blowing them to smithereens — if the error rate would be about one in four.

Some legal experts believe this is going to boomerang back to Trump. Judge Andrew Napolitano recently wrote:

The killings at sea will soon reach a federal court as the families of innocent murdered fishermen, and some survivors of botched killings, have signaled to the media their intention to bring actions against the government. Trump says the killings at sea are a war against foreign powers.

Meanwhile, the same office in the Department of Justice that told George W. Bush that he could torture people and Barack Obama that he could kill nonviolent Americans overseas has apparently told Trump just what he wants to hear — that he can wage an undeclared war on select foreign persons and keep secret the legal rationale for doing so. Where is that in Madison’s Constitution, which says only Congress can declare war?

Paul, who has supported the president on several agenda fronts, believes that what Trump is doing is not even true to his political values. “I actually think Trump is the one who is least likely to want to do these things,” he told Gillespie. Unfortunately, most Republicans are still interventionists, and the president is “surrounded by people who believe in regime change and are goading him on.” Paul brought up the poster boy of military adventurism, saying the neocon from South Carolina has the president’s ear. “Lindsey Graham has not changed his positions, but he’s clever, and he’s become very close to the president. [He] influences the president,” he said. Then he dropped the name of another long-standing neocon who is even closer to Trump. “Same with Marco Rubio. So, the pending regime change war in Venezuela is hatched by those people.”

MAGA Jumping Ship

MAGA is already on the skids. The president has reversed or ignored his positions on several critical campaign promises, and the cracks within the coalition are opening up, bigly.

On Friday, a congresswoman who used to be among Trump’s most loyal supporters and defenders, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), resigned after a weeks-long fallout with him. The president’s outsized focus on foreign matters is one of Greene’s major concerns. Trump repeatedly promised “no new wars” and that he would put America first when he campaigned. But many don’t see how continuing to send foreign aid and intervening in overseas conflicts falls under the America First category. Trump infuriated his base when he decided to bomb Iran on what many perceive was behalf of a foreign nation. He has also refused to end U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine. He sells weapons to the Europeans to send to Ukraine, and then sanctions Russia, voiding any semblance of neutrality.

Trump has also backtracked on his Jeffrey Epstein vows. The MAGA base is still furious with his attempt to make the Epstein saga go away without further transparency. Greene was among three key legislators — along with Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — to push the discharge petition that essentially strong-armed the president into signing a resolution that is supposed to force his Justice Department to release all documentation on the pedophile. Whether that happens with full transparency is doubtful, but the move has made it harder for the Establishment’s protectors to keep that mess under the rug.

Why So Tough on Venezuela?

If Trump decides to invade Venezuela, Sen. Paul’s prediction may likely come true — if it hasn’t already.

The looming question is: Why is the administration being so aggressive with Venezuela?

The obvious answer is that it’s trying to effect regime change, something this country accomplished many times in Latin America in the 20th century. But still, Why? What’s fueling this regime change? It’s likely not the stated reason. Venezuela is not even close to being the largest drug trafficker into America. As noted above, more than 90 percent of the fentanyl that poisons Americans comes out of Mexico.

Also, Venezuela is certainly not the only country led by criminals and election-cheating communist tyrants. It’s not even the only country in Latin America that recently had a rigged election. Brazil is in the same boat, and Trump gets along with that communist country just fine.

One of the more popular theories is that this is about opening the U.S. market to Venezuela’s rich oil deposits. That’s plausible. But this administration has also made major moves to make drilling in America easier. And it’s fortifying business ties with several oil-rich Middle Eastern nations, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Another theory is that this is part of America’s attempt to dislodge China’s and Russia’s claws from “our hemisphere.” That too makes sense. However, does that mean we should expect similar campaigns in Cuba, which is way closer to the U.S., as well as Nicaragua, Bolivia, and — again — Brazil?

Election Tampering?

Another speculation is that this is related to a personal beef Trump has over Maduro’s suspected role in U.S. electioneering, and particularity the 2020 election. “Retired” CIA agent Gary Berntsen is among those who claim that evidence shows Venezuela has been rigging elections with USAID taxpayer money, including the stolen 2020 election. This, in part, is the main idea behind Ralph Pezzullo’s book Stolen Elections: The Takedown of Democracies Worldwide. Pezzullo claims that the “citizens of the United States haven’t had a national election that hasn’t been tampered with since 2008,” and that Venezuela, China, Iran, and Russia have been integral to the tampering.

That the election of 2020 was rigged is almost beyond dispute. But how, and who exactly was behind it, are far from clear. The fact that our own cybersecurity experts have yet to admit this indicates that there’s more to electioneering than just Venezuela.

What is clear is that, for whatever reasons, the Trump administration is flexing hard on Venezuela. And no matter how justified it feels, a large segment of Trump’s voters will not agree with it. It’s not what they voted for. Moreover, it would be another unconstitutional war without congressional approval.

Can the Trump administration pivot? Will it pivot and save a MAGA coalition that is on life support? Or will the popular social-media maxim — “No matter who you vote for, you always get Dick Cheney” — prove true again?

This article was originally published on The New American.

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In the summer of 2021, I visited an old friend on Cape Cod and took the opportunity to pay my respects to my mother’s ancestors at the Ancient Sears Cemetery in West Brewster, Barnstable, Massachusetts. My mother is a direct descendent of Richard Sears, who was born around 1595, and settled in Plymouth Colony in 1638.

Though Richard Sears was a dedicated puritan who identified strongly with the faith of the original Plymouth congregation, his descendants in the 18th century came to embrace the enlightenment ideals of the Founding Fathers—that is, freedom of conscience and speech, limited government, and the primacy of the free individual to pursue his interests, unfettered by state power.

The Sears family genealogical catalogue—authored by Samuel Pearce May and amended by Ray L. Sears—that I reviewed at the New England Historic Genealogical Society ended with my grandfather’s generation. My grandfather’s name and 1942 Yale University yearbook photograph were featured, but as he’d not yet fathered his children, my mother was not in the catalogue.

Samuel May offered this flattering summation of my mother’s ancestors:

[Richard’s] descendants showed good breeding, and many of them were prominent in church and town affairs, and in the militia. Their names may be found in the records of the Indian and French wars, the Revolutionary war, and that of 1812. Numbers served during the late Civil war, and shed their blood freely for their country. The family has always been very religious in its tendency, in latter years leaning to the Methodist and Baptist persuasions, and rather given to ‘-isms’; some of its members have been foremost in the temperance and anti-slavery movements, but it has never given rise to any prominent politicians, and while holding many local offices, not aspiring beyond the State Legislature. Of good stature, and comely appearance, they are healthy and long-lived, enterprising and esteemed citizens wherever found.

‘Worth is better than Wealth, Goodness greater than Nobility, Excellence brighter than Distinction’

– Sears Monument.

In July 2021, many residents of Cape Cod were still in the grip of COVID-19 hysteria, and my old friend advised me to lie about my unvaccinated status to avoid causing fear and consternation in his social circle and at his Catboat sailing club.

Thus, when I visited the Sears cemetery, I wondered if the nation they’d help to build was in danger of losing its founding ideas and ideals.

I also noticed something else—namely, that apart from a vague and perhaps vain feeling of pride in my family heritage, I still did not identify with anything resembling a clan, tribe, or religious sect. My values have always been the Enlightenment values of our Founding Fathers.

Now I wonder if this Enlightenment idea of America is incongruous with man’s tribal nature. For at least the last twenty years, higher education administrators, public policymakers, and media pundits have increasingly championed group identities such as race, gender, and sexual preference.

Rarely if ever do we hear celebrations or even articulations of our identity and shared purpose as Americans.

Insofar as any politician ever attempts to define who we are, his definition is invariably predicated on who we are against—that is, a foreign adversary such as Islamic terrorists, China, or Russia (especially Russia).

And so, I wonder:

• What does it mean to be an American?
• What is our shared purpose and project?
• What is good for us—not in terms of being opposed to some other group or nation, but in terms of being for something that is good for us?

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

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In 2008 I wrote an op-ed for the PRESS JOURNAL (Vero Beach, Fl) titled “UFOs: The Other Inconvenient Truth”.  The article included my academic title and my affiliation with the Cato Institute.

That op-ed was a serious piece about the history of the UFO phenomena; it never mentioned “aliens” or alleged “abductions.” Instead, it argued  that there was solid evidence that (some) UFOs were real; that elements of the U.S. government had hidden that information away for decades; and that on-going research was attempting to reverse-engineer recovered  technology for some strategic (military) advantage. It also suggested that secrecy was politically dangerous and that UFO disclosure was imperative, despite the fact that there were obvious societal risks associated with transparency.

Some background. I had studied the UFO mystery for decades so I knew what the heck I was talking about. Besides I had some “confidential sources” that confirmed my most important suspicions. I knew about the pilot and military encounters; about the repeated intrusions  of UFOs over weapon storage areas (WSA) including those that held nuclear ordinance; about the best photographic, electro-magnetic and physical trace cases; and about the official lying and intimidation of witnesses. I also knew that several prominent politicians at the time–including John Podesta and Hillary Clinton–were fascinated by the subject and were pushing for public disclosure. The time was right, I felt, for a tenured academic like myself to highlight the threat that UFO  secrecy posed  for our political institutions and “spill the beans” so to speak.

Boy, was I wrong.

One day after the article appeared  I received a letter from the Cato Institute abruptly terminating my 20-year long  “adjunct scholar” status.  The letter suggested that the scholars program was being “reorganized”  and that was the reason for dropping me. That was nonsense of course. The actual truth was that the Cato Institute (on the bad advice of an associate) wanted no part of the UFO paradigm so they asserted, unconvincing  that the subject was  not  part of their “research agenda.”  And what “research agenda” was that, pray tell?

Now let’s be clear. My position with Cato was honorary and unpaid. I was not being  “censored.” Cato had every right to drop me for any reason whatsoever.  On the other hand, Cato had lied about the reasons

for my departure and then missed  a unique opportunity to uncover and publicize  the most egregious example of governmental overreach in our lifetime: the political suppression of the knowledge that some UFOs were real and that there was physical proof that we were not alone in the Universe.  They hid that information for eight  decades from the public, from the Congress, and perhaps even from several Presidents without a “need to know.”  Now If that’s not a legitimate  “public policy” issue ( for a libertarian think tank)  I don’t know what is.

Fast forward to the present. Almost everything I discussed 17 years ago in that op-ed is now being confirmed (in spades) with the recent release of a new documentary titled “The Age of Disclosure.”  The film is currently available in a few selected movie theaters around the country and on Amazon Prime. In the film, 34 individuals with impeccable credentials in the intelligence, science and political community (including Mark Rubio, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor to the President)  go on the public record to confirm that  UFOs have crashed and been recovered and that the U.S. as well as Russia and China are engaged in a race to reverse-engineer the technology. Chris Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, speaks passionately in the film and calls the UFO reality the “most important story in human history.”  I can’t disagree.

Do yourself a favor and watch the film. And then begin to think about what the institutional  fallout might  be from any REAL disclosure. (Real disclosure, apart from testimonials,  would involve the actual presentation of hard physical evidence). How will our most important civic and political institutions be affected? What are the implications for the economy, for gold, for the stock market, for AI investment, etc?  What are the religious implications of the existence of so-called non-human intelligence (NHI)?  Are UFOs a threat and how do we deal with it? And what about the funding of the cover-up itself? How about the trillions of tax dollars that have been covertly funneled ( without direct Congressional approval) to private contractors and into various “black” programs? Will anyone be held accountable for any of this?

President Trump now has an immense  opportunity to tell the American people the truth about this massive government coverup. He was not a serious part of that story (except for his awkward explanation of the New Jersey UAP sightings last year) so he has little to lose personally for truth-telling now. And since  the UFO disclosure horses have now left the barn, never to return,  it’s high time for the President to acknowledge that fact and then encourage an important societal  discussion about what comes next. It’s your move, Mr. President.

The post UFOs and the Age of Disclosure appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Patrick Foy:

Murder Inc. claims another victim.

Washington has thrown Lebanon and Syria to the dogs.

Thanks to Washington, Israel has air dominance over the entire ME except Iran. 

No need to fight on the ground.

Just bomb and kill from the air.

All opposition to Pax Israeliana  is terrorism.

 

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Thanks, Johnny Kramer.

Daily Wire

 

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Click here:

US Courts

 

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Click here:

Ben Bartee

 

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Le banche cenatali sono un asset in rapido deprezzamento. Lo SWIFT è un asset in rapido deprezzamento. Tutto della società analogica che conosciamo si sposterà su digitale. Tether sarà “l'incubatore”, mentre Bitcoin sarà il collaterale così come oro e argento. E ovviamente anche i titoli del Tesoro americani, dato che USDT è stato il veicolo che nel corso dell'ultimo anno soprattutto ne ha messi a bilancio a frotte. In questo modo il dollaro e i titoli di stato americani, oltre a essere collateralizzati, possono raggiungere gli angoli più remoti del mondo. Il wallet di Tether è la nuova versione, decentralizzata, di sistema bancario centrale. Il compito di Powell era drenare liquidità dal sistema dollaro; il suo compito, inoltre, era quello di supervisionare l'implementazione del SOFR, che toglie l'impostazione del costo dei dollari lontano dalla City di Londra e lo riporta nelle mani statunitensi (mercati monetari + mercati pronti contro termine). In questo modo il mercato interbancario americano può impostare il “prezzo” dei dollari e il prezzo dei prestiti. La FED esiste ancora perché imposta i termini delle aste per i titoli a breve scadenza. Questo sistema andrà avanti ancora un po' perché è necessario spiegare PERCHE' la FED è il problema, visto che la maggior parte delle persone non ha la minima idea di cosa sia, men che meno ha idea di cosa sia il denaro. Il compito di Trump, Bessent e Powell è quello di portare all'attenzione pubblica questa “creatura” e dare una motivazione CONCRETA del motivo per cui le sue operazioni debbano essere smantellate. Quindi c'è bisogno di distruggere (retorica caotica di Trump) e allo stesso tempo costruire (retorica ordinata di Powell), in modo da non innervosire i mercati dei capitali dato che la prima cosa che venderebbero sarebbe il back-end della curva dei titoli di stato americani.

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di Thomas Kolbe

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/lipocrisia-della-lagarde-autonomia)

La Presidente della BCE, Christine Lagarde, ha avvertito la Federal Reserve di non perdere la propria indipendenza a favore della politica. Una manovra trasparente, considerando che la BCE si è da tempo fusa con Bruxelles, diventando un'entità politica.

In un'intervista alla stazione radio francese Classique, la Lagarde ha messo in guardia dal fatto che il presidente degli Stati Uniti Donald Trump sta tentando di prendere il controllo della Federal Reserve:

Se la politica monetaria degli Stati Uniti non fosse più indipendente e dipendesse invece dai dettami di questa o quella persona, allora credo che l'effetto sull'equilibrio dell'economia americana potrebbe essere molto preoccupante, a causa delle conseguenze che ciò avrebbe in tutto il mondo.

Infatti Trump (questa o quella persona) sta esercitando una pressione enorme sulla FED: il suo tentativo di sfruttare lo scandalo interno che circonda la governatrice Lisa Cook per rimuoverla tramite ordine esecutivo e sostituirla con un alleato.

La Cook è accusata di aver fornito false informazioni nelle transazioni relative ai mutui, dichiarando un condominio di Atlanta come sua residenza principale mentre in precedenza rivendicava la sua casa nel Michigan, sollevando lo spettro di una frode ipotecaria.

Poliziotto buono, poliziotto cattivo

Indipendentemente dall'esito, questo segna l'ultimo picco nella battaglia tra Trump e il presidente della FED, Jerome Powell, che Trump accusa di sabotaggio riguardo i tassi d'interesse. Powell ha contrastato l'impennata dell'inflazione causata dalle iniezioni di liquidità durante i lockdown con rapidi aumenti dei tassi e da allora li ha mantenuti ben al di sopra di quelli delle altre banche centrali. Trump, al contrario, chiede drastici tagli degli stessi per liberare il mercato immobiliare congelato e alleggerire gli oneri statali.

Non è ancora chiaro in che misura questa disputa pubblica tra Trump e Powell segua un copione politico. Seguendo la dinamica del “poliziotto buono, poliziotto cattivo”, entrambi sono riusciti ad attrarre investimenti negli Stati Uniti attraverso politiche commerciali e tassi elevati, svalutando contemporaneamente il dollaro rispetto alle altre valute fiat. Missione compiuta, per ora: la bilancia commerciale fortemente negativa si sta lentamente invertendo, le entrate dei dazi stanno aumentando e l'industria statunitense sta recuperando terreno.

Ritorno al denaro privato

Al di là della controversia sulla FED, negli Stati Uniti si sta verificando una piccola rivoluzione monetaria: il ritorno parziale a un sistema monetario basato su banche private. Con il GENIUS Act e l'ascesa delle stablecoin in dollari, l'amministrazione Trump ha definito il quadro giuridico per la creazione di monete private.

Le banche private potranno emettere le proprie stablecoin, ciascuna coperta da garanzie come titoli del Tesoro americani, oro, o Bitcoin. Gli Stati Uniti si stanno muovendo verso un sistema monetario più stabile e competitivo, che riduce il rischio della leva finanziaria e rafforza il settore bancario rispetto alla controparte europea.

La Lagarde non ha tutti i torti quando afferma che il potere della FED potrebbe essere limitato in futuro, ma a differenza del sistema statalista dell'Eurozona, il settore bancario statunitense acquisirà un'influenza significativa a spese della FED.

La Lagarde ha senso dell'umorismo

È quasi tragicomico che il presidente della BCE metta in guardia contro una perdita di autonomia della FED. Dalla crisi del debito sovrano di quindici anni fa, la BCE è stata completamente fusa con Bruxelles. L'autonomia nella politica monetaria dell'Eurozona è inesistente.

Durante la crisi del debito, la BCE è intervenuta massicciamente: i tassi di interesse nominali sono scesi da oltre il 4% nel 2008 a un minimo di -0,5%, rimanendo in territorio negativo per anni; gli acquisti di obbligazioni e le operazioni di rifinanziamento a lungo termine sono aumentati vertiginosamente fino a circa €3.000 miliardi, una liquidità che ha parzialmente sostituito il credito privato. Questo è uno dei motivi per cui l'economia dell'Eurozona ha fatto affidamento sulla domanda pubblica finanziata dal credito per rimanere a galla.

Grazie ai suoi strumenti anti-frammentazione, la BCE ha fornito copertura alle obbligazioni della periferia dell'UE indipendentemente dalla disciplina fiscale.

Crisi mai risolta

I risultati di questa manipolazione del mercato sono evidenti: l'Eurozona ha continuato ad aumentare i deficit nazionali. L'effetto disciplinare delle penalizzazioni sui tassi di interesse è svanito: la BCE è diventata una macchina per stampare moneta, con il controllo politico che ha soppiantato la disciplina di mercato.

L'operazione di salvataggio ha raggiunto l'apice con il leggendario “whatever it takes” di Mario Draghi, il quale segnalava che la BCE avrebbe garantito la solvibilità di quegli stati membri fortemente indebitati.

Da allora la BCE ha svolto il ruolo di “puntellatore”, prestatore di ultima istanza per tutti i Paesi dell'Eurozona, molti dei quali hanno abbandonato la responsabilità fiscale. La decisione di Draghi ha privato il mercato obbligazionario della sua integrità, minando il suo ruolo di meccanismo di controllo.

Assurdità “fatte in casa dalla BCE”

Bruxelles ha trasformato la BCE in una pompa di denaro per la sua campagna ideologica contro il libero mercato e la sovranità nazionale. Dal finanziamento di assurdi progetti climatici alla costruzione di un'economia di guerra europea, la BCE monetizza il debito crescente, con il contributo della Commissione europea: il prossimo bilancio di Bruxelles ammonta a circa €2.000 miliardi, gran parte dei quali finanziati tramite l'emissione di eurobond, contando sull'intervento della BCE in caso di esitazione del mercato.

La BCE è tutt'altro che indipendente. Poche banche centrali si sono sottomesse alla politica in modo così completo. L'eredità della Bundesbank tedesca, conservatrice e focalizzata sulla stabilità, è ormai svanita.

Cortine fumogene e manipolazione mediatica

La politicizzazione monetaria europea ha permesso all'ecologismo socialista di Bruxelles di radicarsi nonostante le ricadute economiche. Tassi di interesse manipolati e garanzie statali hanno prodotto la più grande economia zombi del mondo, fatta eccezione per il settore immobiliare cinese. Le risorse scarse vengono dirottate verso progetti improduttivi, congelando l'Eurozona nella stagnazione.

Gli avvertimenti della Lagarde nei confronti della FED sono solo distrazioni. L'Europa si trova ad affrontare crescenti pressioni sul debito sovrano, con la Francia sull'orlo della crisi. Gli strumenti della BCE devono essere pronti, poiché nessuno sa quando il mercato tirerà fuori il cartellino rosso.

Mentre gli Stati Uniti proseguono la riforma monetaria, deregolamentano l'economia e riducono le tasse, l'Europa rimane in una paralisi normativa. La BCE perpetua la spirale del debito socialista con iniezioni di liquidità sempre nuove. Stiamo assistendo a un crollo al rallentatore, mentre i politici europei non riescono a sfuggire alla trappola ideologica che si sono creati da soli.

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

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Writes Bill Madden:

We didn’t threaten Nigeria because they are killing Christians, we threatened them because they are killing the dollar.

 

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Writes Bill Madden

This lady provides a comprehensive analysis of how our wealthiest families allow us to pay most of the taxes considering gross income.  She didn’t mention the very obvious fact that our wealthiest families have the ability to “influence” our politicians and bureaucrats so that laws are written to accommodate their desire to continually increase their wealth. 

Our wealthiest families are major stockholders of Corporate America who use corporate money to “influence” everybody and everything posing as an obstacle to their pursuit of more wealth.  We subsidize the large corporations with our purchasing and their gifts of corporate welfare.  When they need more money, the oligopolistic competitive environment allows them to simply raise their prices.

She seemed to brush over the family tax-free foundations which hold enormous family wealth to minimize the taxes on dividends, interest and capital gains.  She didn’t mention tax-free offshore accounts which minimize any tax exposure for increases in wealth to zero.  She also didn’t mention the special tax provisions for our wealthy hedge fund managers where they are taxed at a much lower rate because, I assume, they make too much money.

There are many smart individuals with great ideas on increasing the concept of fairness in our country but nothing will ever be changed as long as our government is controlled by super-rich families enjoying the wealth transferring from us to them.  Venezuela is a fine example.  Hugo Chavez kicked Corporate America out of Venezuela and they have been trying to get back in ever since.  It’s to the point that we now have the “Peace President” blowing up boats near Venezuela suspected of running drugs while completely ignoring the Mexican drug cartels and the cocaine shipments flowing from other South American countries.  The regime change in Venezuela is because, with socialism, governments own the productive capacity and not the super-rich owners of Corporate America. 

In essence, our government is going to war with Venezuela using B.S. justification just to placate some of our richest campaign contributors.  That’s control of the country!

 

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The 28-point so-called ‘peace plan’ – written as a putative legal treaty – will strike any experienced reader as an amateur production.

So, now we have the details of the 28-point so-called ‘peace plan’ which Ukrainian Parliamentarian Goncharenko has provided claiming it to be a translation from the original.

The text – written as a putative legal treaty – will strike any experienced reader as an amateur production, hinging, in several parts, on ‘subsequent discussions’ and on ‘expectations’.

That is to say, much is left ambiguous, vague nor firmly nailed down. Such a plan would, of course, be – in the round – unacceptable to Moscow (although they may not disavow it outright). Even so, the plan has aroused fury and pushback in Europe. The Economist (reflecting the Establishment view) calls the paper “a terrible American-Russian proposal … which checks off many of [Russia’s] maximalist demands and adds a few more”.

The Europeans and Britain want Russian capitulation, pure and simple.

The point here, which Moscow makes clear, is that Kirill Dmitriev – Steve Witkoff’s interlocutor in the drafting – does not represent President Putin, nor Russia. He has no official mandate whatsoever.

Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov curtly states:

“There are no formal consultations between Russia and the U.S. on the settlement in Ukraine; but contacts exist. Maria Zakharova stated that “the Russian Foreign Ministry has received zero official information from the U.S. about any alleged ‘agreements’ on Ukraine that the media is enthusiastically circulating””.

“Moscow’s position is that Russia is open to dialogue only within the ‘boundaries of its stated principles’, and the U.S. has not, as of yet, offered anything official that could serve as a starting point”.

So what is going on? Two politically inexperienced ‘non-envoys’ have had conversations, and out of these talks have stitched together some apparently speculative proposals. It is not even clear whether Dmitriev had a nod of assent for his talks with Witkoff in the U.S. in October, or whether he was acting on his own initiative. Russia’s Foreign Ministry is disavowing any knowledge of the content of these extensive discussions. It would be extraordinary if Dmitriev was keeping nobody in Moscow in the loop.

In any event, President Putin has sent his own riposte to the flood of stories circulating in the western media (based on leaks to Axios apparently deriving from Dmitriev):

Dressed in military uniform, Putin visited the command post of Battlegroup West on the front line, where he simply stated that the Russian people “expect and need” results from the Special Military Operation (SMO): “The unconditional attainment of the goals of the SMO is the main objective for Russia”, he said.

Putin’s response to the U.S. therefore is clear.

It looks then as though this discussion document written from the American perspective was conceived as a classic ‘bait and switch’ exercise. Secretary Rubio has repeatedly said that he doesn’t know “whether Russia is serious about peace – or not”:

“We’re testing to see if the Russians are interested in peace. Their actions – not their words, their actions – will determine whether they’re serious or not, and we intend to find that out sooner rather than later … There are some promising signs; there are some troubling signs”.

So, the proposals likely have been a ‘set up’ to test Russia. For example, they ‘test’ Russia in multiple areas:

“It is expected … that NATO will not expand further, based on dialogue between Russia and NATO, but mediated by the U.S.; Ukraine will receive ‘reliable security guarantees’ [undefined]; the size of Ukraine’s armed forces will be ‘limited’ [sic] to only 600,000 men; the U.S. will be compensated for these guarantees; should Russia invade Ukraine, [then] in addition to a decisive coordinated military response, all global sanctions will be reinstated, recognition of new territories and all other benefits will be revoked; the U.S. will cooperate with Ukraine on joint reconstruction … and operation of Ukraine’s gas infrastructure, including pipelines and storage facilities”.

“The lifting of sanctions [on Russia] will be discussed and agreed upon gradually and on an individual basis”.

“$100 billions of frozen Russian assets will be invested in U.S.-led reconstruction and investment efforts in Ukraine. The United States will receive 50% of the profits from this undertaking; Russia will legislatively enshrine a policy of non-aggression toward Europe [no mention however, of any reciprocity by Europe].

“Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk will be recognised de facto as Russian; Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will be frozen along the line of contact, which will mean de facto recognition along the line of contact; Russia renounces other annexed territories”.

This paragraph effectively amounts to a ceasefire – not a peace settlement – with recognition being only de facto (and not de jure):

“This agreement will be legally binding. Its implementation will be monitored and guaranteed by a Peace Council headed by President Trump”.

“Once agreed, the ceasefire will enter into force”.

This set of proposals is not likely to be accepted by the Europeans, Russia or even Zelensky. Their purpose is to dictate a completely new start-point to any negotiation. Any Russian concessions stipulated in the text will be ‘pocketed’ by the U.S., whilst the rug will be pulled on Russia’s ‘stated principles’. The pressures on Russia will escalate.

In fact, escalation has already begun. Coinciding with publication of the proposals, four long-range U.S.-supplied and targeted ATACMS were fired deep into Russian pre-2014 territory at Voronezh, which is where Russia’s over-the-horizon strategic radars are situated. All were shot down, and Russian Iksander missiles immediately destroyed the launch platforms and killed the 10 launch operators.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has threatened yet more sanctions for Russia, and Trump has indicated that he is ok with Senator Lindsay Graham’s 500% sanctions proposal for those trading with Russia – provided that he, Trump, has complete discretion over the new sanctions package.

The overall aim to these proposals clearly is to corner Putin, and push him off his fundamental principles – such as his insistence on eliminating the root causes to the conflict, and not just the symptoms. There is no hint in this paper of any recognition of root causes [expansion of NATO and missile emplacements] beyond the vague promise of a “dialogue [that] will be conducted between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States, to resolve all security issues and create conditions for de-escalation, thereby ensuring global security and increasing opportunities for cooperation and future economic development”.

Blah, blah, blah.

It seems that escalation is ahead. Russia will need to consider how to militarily deter the U.S. effectively, yet without starting up the steps of the escalatory ladder to WW3.

The balance between deterrence and keeping a door open to diplomacy is a fine line – Too great an emphasis on deterrence may (counter-productively) only incite a countervailing ratchet up the escalatory ladder by an adversary.

Whereas too much emphasis on diplomacy, may well be perceived by an adversary as weakness and invite an escalation of military pressures.

The Witkoff-Dmitriev proposals may (or may not) have been well intentioned, but the keepers of the deep architecture of global redemptio equitis are unlikely to allow Russia to preserve its ‘contrarian’ values.

Kirill Dmitriev, it appears, may have been ‘suckered’.

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

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