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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

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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.

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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.

John Lisle website

The post The CIA and Drugs appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

Libertarian Canadian attorney/podcaster Viva Frei called the murder of Charlie Kirk a preemptive presidential assassination. Frei reposted actor James Woods’ post on X that the TPUSA founder was destined to be the US president. Although Kirk would not be eligible age-wise to be president until the 2032 election, I think this is true. He delivered several million Gen Z voters to President Trump, the deciding factor in his victory.

I don’t think there’s any doubt it was a preemptive presidential assassination. https://t.co/TipT3WqzxL

— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) November 28, 2025

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The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) was patting itself on the back with gusto last week in publicizing it is prosecuting alleged drug kingpin Zhi Dong Zhang upon his extradition from Mexico. The prosecution is a really big deal in the US government’s effort to win the war on drugs according to the assertions of several government employees in the DOJ press release.

In reality, the hoopla is just more “blah, blah, blah” in support of a destructive drug war that continues to cause much harm while failing to achieve its stated objectives including the reduction of drug use and threats to safety.

“The defendant stands accused of running a global enterprise that pumped massive quantities of cocaine, fentanyl, and methamphetamine into our communities and laundered millions in narcotics proceeds,” said US Deputy Attorney General Todd W. Blanche in the press release. Further commented Blanche, “His return to the United States is a major step in dismantling a network that has fueled addiction, violence, and death.”

US Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. seconded Blanche’s assessment that Zhang is a drug kingpin whose prosecution is a big deal in the US government’s drug war. Nocella stated, “As alleged, the defendant is a leader of one of the most prolific drug trafficking and money laundering organizations in the world who, together with his co-conspirators, imported thousands of kilograms of narcotics, including cocaine and methamphetamine, into the United States and other countries.” The prosecution of Zhang, further stated Nocella, “will hold him responsible for the great harm he has caused.”

US Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg jumped in with a similar assessment regarding the prosecution. He is quoted in the press release commenting that “Zhang’s transnational network was allegedly intricate, well-coordinated, and well-funded” and that “through the great work of dedicated law enforcement agencies and valued cooperation from our international partners, Zhang’s poison pipeline has been shut off.”

Police involved in the case similarly commented in the press release. Ricky J. Patel of Homeland Security Investigations asserted that the arrest of Zhang “marks a decisive blow against the ruthless criminal enterprises responsible for flooding our streets with cocaine, meth and deadly fentanyl.” Robert J. Murphy from the Drug Enforcement Administration claimed that the arrest of Zhang “represents a critical milestone in a long-running investigation into an alleged high-level narcotics trafficker with international reach.” Further pledged Murphy, “We will continue to follow the evidence and the money until the leadership of these organizations is dismantled.”

For someone with limited familiarity with the US drug war, these statements may be convincing that a major victory in the “war” is being accomplished that will lead to a diminishing of drug use and problems associated with it. However, the truth is very different. People who have followed the US war on drugs know that the comments of the various government employees in the press release are just a bunch of “blah, blah, blah” that can be ignored. Been there, done that. The US government has indicted and convicted many kingpins over the decades without it reducing drug use, helping drug users, or making America safer or more free. Rather, these and other enforcement efforts encompassed in the drug war have contributed to increased dangers for drug users and have, as libertarian communicator Ron Paul has been arguing for decades, made America more dangerous and less free while failing to reduce the supply of drugs.

In his February of 2014 Future of Freedom Foundation editorial “Yawn. Another Big Drug Bust,” Jacob G. Hornberger laid out the logic and history of why it is wrong to think that the arrest, indictment, incarceration, or killing of a drug kingpin, be it Zhang last week or another such as Joaquin Guzman Loera at the time Hornberger wrote his editorial, will do anything to help the American people. “[B]usting a big drug lord or some drug gang reaps nothing but a lot of publicity for the drug warriors,” concluded Hornberger. It instead is part of a larger effort — the war on drugs — that causes many harms that people wrongly blame on drugs.

The path to a better America, concluded Hornberger, is to dispense with the whole drug war. It is also, wrote Hornberger, the path to getting rid of drug lords and drug cartels:

The irony is that there is but one way to put every single drug lord and drug cartel out of business immediately. It’s not by cracking down on them. That’s what drug legalization would do. The drug lords and drug cartels could not compete against private firms operating in legal free market. They’d be out of business the minute drugs were legalized.

Unfortunately, however, the drug warriors simply will not embrace this solution to the drug war. They’d prefer to continue going the same route they have followed for more than 40 years, including having those much-ballyhooed drug busts.

The drug warriors will continue with their preening as supposed heroes so long as enough people believe the bogus claims. That is why it is important that people who know the harm brought by the drug war spread that knowledge and respond to the drug warriors’ boasts of “successes” with counterargument, condemnation, and ridicule. Then may come a day when the drug warriors recede from power and this terrible “war” finally ends.

This article was originally published on The Ron Paul Institute.

The post The DOJ is Prosecuting a Drug Kingpin, Blah, Blah, Blah appeared first on LewRockwell.

Yesterday, a thing happened, and because I did not immediately post about this thing that happened, some angry internet person complained about what he believes to be my hypocrisy or my indifference as to this thing that happened.

Ordinarily I strive to ignore angry internet people, but sometimes they inspire entire essays, and this is one of those times. You want me to post about the thing, butthurt internet person? Okay, I’ll post about the thing.

You may not like what I’m going to post, but I’m going to post it anyway, because now I need to get all of this off my chest.

The thing that happened, is that an American living in Berlin had his house raided by the police and his computer confiscated, all because he published a book with a swastika on the cover:

A court had previously convicted the same man for tweeting the cover art from this selfsame book with the selfsame swastika.

Things like this happen because Section 86a of the German criminal code forbids disseminating the slogans and symbols of “unconstitutional organisations,” and the swastika is one such slogan or symbol. 86a is a stupid outdated law and it needs to go away because nobody deserves to be prosecuted or investigated for propaganda offences, however personally abrasive, politically misguided and intellectually lazy he may be.

I’ll say that again even more clearly, lest you mistake me:

What authorities are doing to this man is wrong and he doesn’t deserve this. He doesn’t deserve this even though he’s demonstrated incredible imprudence in this instance and in others too. He doesn’t deserve this even though he is himself eager to accuse me and others of imaginary National Socialist tendencies, much like the German speech police themselves. And he doesn’t deserve this even though he is on record approving of Section 86a of the German criminal code, the very law that is being used to persecute him. However much he may challenge our sympathy, however incurably myopic his beliefs, this man doesn’t deserve what is happening to him.

At the same time, you need to know that my posting about this stuff isn’t going to stop it. I don’t have any answers here, and I don’t have any power either. It’s not like the more words Eugyppius throws at this problem, the harder the job of the speech police will be. These guys actually seek out publicity; they’re proud of what they’re doing. Here they are having a laugh about it on American national television:

Nevertheless, I’ve posted and posted and posted and posted about speech repression in Germany, so angry butthurt internet people will have to forgive me for being a little late to respond to the all-hands-on-deck outrage alarm in this particular case.

What is happening to our American friend in Berlin is bad but it’s also pretty middle-of-the-road as far as German speech harassment goes. Lots of Germans have been punished much more heavily for doing much less, and I’ve carefully catalogued almost every single case that has made it into the press over the years.1 As far as I know, I’m the only person doing this in English at all. Most speech police victims don’t get any write-ups in the Atlantic. Matt Taibbi doesn’t give them interviews and Die Zeit could care less about them.

So I’m really, sincerely sorry that an American got caught up in this stupid shit. Germany has become a scary and unpredictable place because it is ruled by hapless insecure morons who can’t handle even the mildest criticism. Our well-meaning antiracist liberal is not being singled out for unusual repressions; everybody in Germany who types things into the internet, whether he realises it or not, exposes himself to this selfsame risk. I’ve rearranged many aspects of my life to account for this risk. I try not to spend more than a few weeks in the same place, I avoid all real-life events associated with my online persona, and I wake up every morning at 5am to ensure that I’m logged out of everything and that all of my devices are powered off in advance of any 6am police raid to seize my electronic devices. (It’s not that bad, I use this time for some pleasant early-morning reading.)

From its inception in 1949, the Federal Republic has always had illiberal speech laws. The state has become particularly repressive since Covid, but the authoritarian streak is not new. When I lived in the United States, these illiberal aspects of the German state occasionally came up in conversation. My American colleagues regarded them as mild curiosities, as potentially regrettable but also understandable in light of German history. In this their assessments mirrored those of our American friend, who spoke as follows during his speech crime trial in January 2024:

Hopkins underscored that he was all in favour of the law in question. “I like this law. I don’t want Nazis to wave swastika flags in the streets of Berlin. I am a free speech absolutist, but I make an exception in this case to account for Germany’s particular history.” He said that it had been obvious that he had used the swastika in his tweets to oppose Nazism, to oppose totalitarianism and to warn his readers about it. He then asked the court that, if it had to convict him, to at least admit that his prosecution was about him opposing pandemic measures and not to fight people who sympathise with the Nazis as per the actual spirit of the law. In his well worded — if overly long — statement, he alleged pretty openly that the court would be working as part of a totalitarian system, and not in the name of democracy, if it were to convict him.

The narrow point to make here, is that 86a specifically is not the statute that keeps Nazis off Berlin streets. The German state has other tools for that. 86a has a much broader purpose, namely to prevent the normalisation of symbols and slogans associated with “unconstitutional organisations.” There have been no misunderstandings here; the Berlin prosecutors have not mistaken our American for a neo-Nazi. They have simply identified him as a swastika normaliser, because his use of the swastika did not make his rejection of the symbol immediately apparent. That’s dumb, but it’s the same standard applied in many other cases too. Below, I’ll talk about the big-picture strategy behind prosecutions like this, because obviously not even the German state is that interested in wholly suppressing the defunct trappings of Nazi propaganda. The narrow motivations of Berlin prosecutors are simpler, and we can get those out of the way right now. There is just a lot of pressure to prosecute as many internet speech crimes as possible in current-year Germany. The game is to maximise the numbers and go after everybody they can because they believe the internet is a bad dangerous place and they want people to invest less of their lives in unapproved online discourse. Berlin prosecutors also seem to have a personal, punitive agenda in this case, which explains the totally unnecessary raid and device seizure. Probably they’re assblasted over the negative publicity our American generated in the course of his first trial. We’ve seen these kinds of prosecutorial vendettas before, for example in the case of Stefan Neihoff.

Of course the broader point to make here is about the wisdom of laws preventing “Nazis” from “wav[ing] swastika flags in the streets of Berlin” more generally, because while 86a isn’t the precise wrench for this bolt, it is part of a bigger statutory (and constitutional) toolkit that includes this among its purposes. Aside from a few thousand totally irrelevant lunatics – no few of whom are probably federal agents – there are no longer any self-proclaimed Nazis in Germany. As long as these laws are on the books, they are therefore an invitation for the state to go out and find people whom state agents deem to be Nazis because they believe their words and opinions are worthy of repression. The state decides here – not me, not any American satirist, and not anybody else. It could be that 90% of the time, you agree that these hypothetical flag-wavers need to be tried for political crimes. Otherwise, you just have to accept that the state is going to go after people whose speech and opinions you’d prefer to see protected. That is the expense of defensive democracy. Speech crime prosecutions for sarcastic use of the swastika, the stress of living in this retarded police system, the fact that they can come after you for anything – all of these are what you have to pay for the extravagance of a law that you believe may disadvantage your imaginary political enemies.

This brings us to the Nazi Cult. To justify the repression of its critics, the state must withdraw National Socialism from its historical context and reconstruct this defunct party and ideology as a timeless spectre haunting the Federal Republic. Anything the state doesn’t like or that state actors find threatening or merely unpalatable or tiresome must be forced into the Nazi mould. Thus Nazism becomes a plastic thing, infinitely malleable, reconstructed and adjusted in the moment according to whatever it is establishment politicians, leading media pundits and NGO activists don’t like. “Racism” makes you a Nazi, opposing mass migration makes you a Nazi, voting for the AfD makes you a Nazi, Euroscepticism might make you a Nazi, and opposition to regime side projects like the energy transition or pandemic prevention makes you various flavours of “denier,” which is analogous to denying the Holocaust, which is what Nazis do. Our dyspeptic American is an eager participant in the Nazi Cult; he too sees Nazis everywhere, and in this way he feeds the cult that is presently causing him so much trouble.

Read the Whole Article

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President Donald Trump threatens to hang military officers who have the audacity to tell their troops not to obey unlawful orders. Trump called them ‘traitors’ and suggested they be locked up.

The president just crossed the Rubicon. Formerly his language was amusing TV banter. Now, after these threats, he has gone way too far. Americans should be alarmed.

I enlisted in the US Army in 1969 to become an infantry officer and served in Vietnam. At the time, I foolishly thought this colonial war was just part of our American way of life.

In basic and advanced infantry training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, we were educated in the military code of conduct, the legal system underlying the conduct of soldiers.

The most important single lesson that I vividly recall was the order to refuse any orders seen as illegal – that is, in violation of US law and the Geneva Conventions. This command did not come out of the blue. It was promulgated as a result of the Nuremburg Trials after World War II in which much of the senior German elite was found guilty of war crimes, and many sentenced to death.

Most of the German officials and soldiers being tried for assorted war crimes claimed they were simply following orders from senior commanders. That is why the Nuremburg prosecutors developed the idea of sweeping aside the senior officer command defense.

The Nuremberg Trials were in many ways legalized revenge on a defeated enemy. Particularly so when the victorious allies included the US Air force and RAF who had killed millions of civilians in Europe and Japan, and the Soviets who had killed millions more innocent civilians.

Nuremburg was a gigantic kangaroo court, and legalized revenge killings. But the one good thing that came out of it was the rejection of the “I was only following orders” defense. All wars are a crime, but this new statute slightly reduced some of the horrors and murder involved.

President Trump now wants to sweep this protection away because he feels his regal authority powers have been challenged. This is a violation of our constitution and laws. Just as illegal, it raises the constitutional ban on bills of attainder, an act whereby the government singles out an individual for a particular crime and prosecutes him without a proper trial.

This column has long said that all presidents should be military veterans. It’s too bad Donald Trump managed to evade military service (just when I was serving my country) or he would have a better understanding of this important issue and the legal and customary restraints imposed on his noble office.

Reprinted with permission from EricMargolis.com.

The post Trump Has Gone Too Far With Threats Against Our Former Military Personnel appeared first on LewRockwell.

If recent years are any indication, this year we’ll be treated, yet again, to a smattering of articles about the supposed politics behind Thanksgiving, and how the bad guys (whether on the left or right) are opposing all things decent by refusing to celebrate the holiday in a way that promotes the correct political agenda. On one side are the leftists who feel compelled to use Thanksgiving as an extension of Columbus Day, in which we’re all reminded that it’s a bad thing to steal from indigenous tribes. One the other side are the conservatives who insist on making Thanksgiving into a day celebrating a national origin story. July 4, it seems, isn’t enough for them.

Unfortunately, both of these efforts at hijacking the holiday for political battles refuse to go away. Fortunately, it appears that the vast majority of Americans don’t care, and most plan to enjoy the holiday in the way it has been enjoyed for about 150 years: as a celebration on domestic life and economic prosperity.

The Evolution of Thanksgiving 

As a holiday, Thanksgiving has gone through several different forms. As described in James Baker’s study of the holiday, Thanksgiving: The Biography of An American Holiday, there had been a variety of Thanksgiving traditions practiced throughout the US, but few of them closely resembled the Thanksgiving we now know today.

Moreover, the activities people adopted to commemorate the holiday changed significantly over time. According to Baker, in the holiday’s early years, it served as ”the Puritan stand-in for Christmas (a holiday they rejected as noncanonical and pagan), an early winter time for feasting and pious hope before the long, dreary months of cold and privation to follow.”

While a large meal was often had at the celebration, the holiday was mostly religious in character. The “highlight” of the day was a long, stern sermon, presumably from a Calvinist clergyman.

The holiday had long been celebrated in New England and other regions as a sort of harvest festival, but it did not commonly involve any narratives about Pilgrims. That sort of thing was reserved for “Forefather’s Day” which had its own commemoration in New England on December 21. Needless to say, the rest of the country — especially those with little connection to New England — did not enthusiastically celebrate the establishment of the Plymouth Colony.

Indeed, the use of tales about the Pilgrims’ “first Thanksgiving” did not become a widespread practice until the 1900s. It was a complete invention of the public schools which then, as now, spent precious little time on academic skills in favor or concentrating on endless hours of busywork and cultural indoctrination. According to Baker:

[T]he inculcation of those Thanksgiving images in generations of schoolchildren was probably a major factor behind the ultimate success of the Pilgrim Thanksgiving iconography. This familiar cycle was not an important part of American education before the end of the nineteenth century. There had been earlier holiday activities for kids and children’s books such as Hamilton’s Red-Letter Days in Applethorpe (1866) that explained the basis for holiday observances, but the complete subsumption of the civic calendar into the school curriculum was the result of a new progressive approach to education that paralleled the contemporary impulse to create new holidays for everything from labor and flags to birds and trees. This grammar school adaptation of civic ritual not only exposed students to the lessons of “Americanism” but also turned traditional holiday stories such as that of the Pilgrims into children’s fare.

By the time the public schools were turning the holiday into a day about Pilgrims, though, the annual rituals of Thanksgiving — which persist to this day — had been established quite independently from the political agenda. Far from being a national day to celebrate “forefathers” or the Plymouth Colony, Thanksgiving had already become a celebration of domestic life and family fun.

The Rise of Thanksgiving as a Domestic, Consumer-based Holiday 

In her history of Victorian America, The Feminization of American Culture, Ann Douglas explains the transformation that took place as US culture moved away from the hard-nosed theology and philosophy of the 18th century, and toward something quite different.1 Baker notes:

As Ann Douglas has demonstrated, the middle-class women involved in this “domestic revolution” found ready allies among the liberal clergymen of the era, who had been deprived of the political and social clout of their established Puritan predecessors. Laying claim to the social conscience of their generation, they instituted a regime of “sentimental” values in place of the old Enlightenment no-nonsense rationality and the tough-minded, aggressive Calvinist theology of the previous era.

This domestic revolution that Douglas describes went hand-in-hand with the rise of Victorian culture in the United States. It combined with the new economy of mass production and mechanization to help create the nostalgic, sentimental, and consumption-fueled event we now think of as the Thanksgiving holiday in practice. The meal, the family gathering, and the domestic setting for celebration that are all now familiar were established in this Victorian period. The biggest change over the years has been the addition of football – first viewed in person and then on television – as an additional family activity.

The prosperity of the second half of the 19th century made it possible. Although the Gilded Age is today badmouthed as an era of working people suffered as Robber Barons ran factories with an iron fist, it was during this period that countless Americans were able to move out of poverty, and into the middle classes for the first time.

These changes made it easier for families to create a domestic experience with all the trimmings that Victorians valued — and which are now hallmarks of the standard American Thanksgiving celebration. Not only was food becoming more affordable for many, but more Americans could afford more and better versions of silverware, china, clothing, and furniture. They could afford more building supplies for nicer homes, and — as was happening in Europe as well — more workers could afford to actually take some time off to enjoy recreational team sports, a day at a park, and other pastimes.

Thanksgiving was no longer a religious holiday — in which Americans contemplated complex theological truth — and much more so a holiday of consumption, recreation, and the domestic life of home and family.

This new phenomenon of buying mass-produced goods to augment one’s domestic enjoyment expanded into the early 20th century, so that by the 1920s, Thanksgiving was looking more and more like a holiday geared around buying things.

Baker continues:

A new holiday event emerged in the 1920s—the Thanksgiving Day parade. Strictly speaking, Thanksgiving parades are not about Thanksgiving at all but Christmas, yet they do provide a Thanksgiving Day activity that is enjoyed by millions of Americans in person or on TV. … The first Thanksgiving parade was put on by the Gimbel Brothers Department Store in Philadelphia on November 25, 1920. It consisted of fifty people, fifteen cars, and a fireman dressed as Santa Claus who marched in the parade and then entered the Gimbels Toy Department by a ladder. The central feature of the Gimbels Thanksgiving Parade, like all similar parades, was the “official arrival of Santa Claus” in his most marketable guise as patron saint of holiday commerce.

Of course, department stores were themselves a creation of Victorian culture, first in England, and later in the United States. In terms of economics, they offered a higher standard of living for their customers and they offered many goods not available anywhere else. And what goods they did have were often at lower prices than at smaller stores. On a cultural level, the department stores were important as well. They offered unprecedented freedom for women who could use the department stores as a safe place to meet with others in public places, unescorted by men. Employment at these stores also offered many young women an escape from farm work and factory work. And, of course, for the primary managers of the household budget — which is what many middle class Victorian women were — department stores offered a new, clean, and comfortable place to do business.

Thus, it’s no wonder that our modern practice of Thanksgiving is so wrapped up with the Victorian version of the holiday. It sprang from the 19th-century spread of consumer goods — and the social freedoms that came with them. The Thanksgiving that we know, and which most of our grandparents knew, is a an apolitical holiday formed around the modern world of relative plenty made possible by the modern industrialized economy.

Don’t expect any of these facts to stop the crusaders who will try to ruin the holiday with lots of talk about “the first Thanksgiving” and whether it was a Holy Meal or a prelude to genocide. For 150 years, Thanksgiving has really been about sitting around with friends and family, and eating a very large meal. This is one thing we shouldn’t let the culture warriors take away from us.

—

1 I examine Douglas’s book at greater length in my book Commmie Cowboys, and note how the post-world-War-II Western film was a rejection of the domestic, bourgeois lifestyle that had been promoted during the Victorian era in America. 

The post Thanksgiving: A Celebration of Domestic Life appeared first on LewRockwell.

It should be damn obvious that the current blistering AI bubble is setting up Wall Street, the US economy and Trump-O-Nomics for a thundering bust. The AI frenzy has now gotten so out of kilter that fully $140 billion or 76% of the $184 billion gain in real GDP during the first half of 2025 was accounted for by feverishly surging investments in AI-oriented GPUs, network gear, server farms and data centers.

Moreover, this AI investment surge, which is expected to annualize to more than $425 billion in 2025, has been on a literally explosive growth trajectory. According to Grok 3, the comparable annual AI investment spending levels for 2022, 2023 and 2024 in the US were $104 billion, $179 billion and $250 billion, respectively. That is, the projected 2025 annual rate of AI spending will be up by 4.1X from just three year ago.

Of course, when you back out this AI investment explosion from the overall US investment spending numbers, what’s left is pretty punk. To wit, non-AI investment in US equipment and intellectual property in the fourth quarter of 2024 totaled $2.586 trillion, which figure rose by only $31.9 billion as of Q2 2025. So the annualized rate of gain was just 2.4% during the 2025 first half—a level far below the 12.2% annual gain in the AI-swollen BEA figure for total US equipment and intellectual property (first line) investment.

In short, what is propping up the entire main street economy is an immense speculative surge in AI investment spending that isn’t remotely sustainable because it’s based on a fevered stock market bubble, fueled by the Fed’s printing presses. And for want of doubt, let us remind what the real GDP and its major components looked like during the first half of 2025, excluding the AI investment eruption.

Annual Rate Of Change, Q4 2024 to Q2 2025:

• Real consumption spending (PCE): +1.54%.
• Government sector: -0.54%.
• Housing construction: -3.10%.
• Exports:-0.90%.
• Imports:+1.20%.
• Equipment and intellectual property investment, less AI: +2.40%.
• Business structures: -1.56%.
• Total Real GDP Less AI: +0.38%

So the question recurs. What happens when (not if) the AI bubble crashes. The sheer certainty of the latter is due to the fact that the runaway stock market is generating so much artificial capital that the AI-oriented hyperscalers are operating straight out of the playbook of the late 1990s dotcom bubble. That is, they are injecting huge amounts of capital into start-ups, smaller customers and linked vendors in their supply chain eco-systems, thereby enabling the latter to buy from these same high flyers massive amounts of chips, network equipment, other gear and software for data centers and server farms. NVIDIA, Microsoft etc. can then report soaring sales and stupendous profits. That is, until the bubble finally bursts.

Needless to say, today’s AI spending eruption starkly parallels the fiber optics and telecom network spending frenzy during the dot-com bubble (late 1990s to early 2000s). Back then, telecom companies vastly overbuilt fiber-optic networks to meet booming anticipated internet demand, fueled by speculative valuations and easy capital. When soaring demand projections failed to materialize, many fiber suppliers, telecoms and network equipment suppliers ended up in bankruptcy or suffered severe stock price declines.

For want of doubt, here is a review of the major fiber-optic suppliers and related telecom equipment companies that were central to the dot-com era’s investment boom and which also experienced bubble-scale stock price surges—only to crash spectacularly between 2000–2002. These firms supplied fiber cables, networking gear and infrastructure for the internet backbone.

Corning Incorporated…was a leading global supplier of optical fiber and cables, which were critical for telecom networks. Its stock peaked at $113 per share in September 2000 on the back of a doubling of revenues from $3 billion in 1998 to nearly $8 billion during the June 2001 LTM period. Thereafter, of course, revenues cratered back to $3 billion by December 2003, while the modest $550 million of net income that had been posted in 1999 plunged to nearly a $6 billion loss by the March 2003 LTM period. While Corning Inc. ultimately survived, the dotcom crash caused its employment level of 40,000 in 2000 to plunge to 20,000 by December 2003, while its capex level $2.1 billion per year at the peak fell to just $280 million by September 2003.

JDS Uniphase…was the dominant provider of fiber-optic components (e.g., lasers, transceivers) for network equipment. Its market cap hit $153 billion in 2000 on peak sales of $4 billion, thereby reflecting an absurd 38X market cap-to-sales multiple. During the following year sales plunged by 35% and the company was forced to book a $56 billion net loss which included $45 billion of goodwill write-downs on its extended string of over-priced acquisitions. Thereafter sales fell to less than $2 billion by 2002 before its remnants were merged into successor companies.

Lucent Technologies…was the Western Electric division spin-off in 1995 from AT&T. On the back of its monopoly supplier position in the Ma Bell system, Lucent had become the nation’s dominant supplier of telecom equipment, including fiber-optic systems and switches. Its stock peaked at $84 per share after its pre-spin-off revenues nearly doubled to $38 billion by FY 2000. But when the tech bubble collapsed, revenues plunged to less than $16 billion, which generated huge losses and a 99% crash of its high flying stock to $0.55 and an eventual bankruptcy filing. Subsequent to its bankruptcy filing its remnants were acquired by Alcatel in 2006 after heavy losses.

Nortel Networks…was a key player in fiber-optic networking gear and telecom infrastructure. Its market cap reached $400 billion in 2000 based on peak annual revenues of $30 billion, again implying a still absurd market cap-to-revenue ratio of 13X. By the time of its bankruptcy filing in 2009, when its assets were mostly liquidated, revenues had dropped by 92% to $2.4 billion.

Ciena Corporation….. supplied optical networking systems for long-haul fiber networks. The company’s stock hit $151 per share in 2000 and then fell to less than $5 by 2002 on the back of collapsing financials. Thereafter, the company required more than a decade to recover by focusing on optical transport products.

Global Crossing…..built and operated transoceanic fiber-optic networks. It was valued at $47 billion in 1999 before falling to less than $70 million. Upon filling for bankruptcy in 2002, its remnants were acquired by Level 3.

Level 3 Communications…was another major fiber-optic network operator and bandwidth provider. Its stock peaked at $132 per share in 2000. After dropping to $1 in 2002, it was reorganized in bankruptcy and later acquired by CenturyLink (Lumen).

In short, during the 1998–2000 boom telecoms were spending about $100 billion annually on fiber cables and internet infrastructure, expecting exponential internet growth. Suppliers like Corning and JDS Uniphase saw revenue spikes but overcapacity led to a crash when the hordes of dot-com start-ups and internet users failed. Consequently, global fiber-optic demand fell about 80% from the 2000 peak, with $2 trillion in market cap erased across telecoms and their suppliers.

Needless to say, the crash in the telecom/internet capex sector left a huge hole in overall US fixed investment in business equipment and intellectual property. In constant 2003 dollars, business investment (excluding structures) had climbed by 33% from a $930 billion annual rate in Q3 1996 to a peak of $1.250 trillion by Q3 2000.

Yet by Q1 2003 total US capex in equipment and intellectual property had dropped by more than $200 billion. That is to say, when you take a -16% bite out of real capital investment even government stimmy spending is hard pressed to keep total GDP above the flat-line.

Of course, the associated drop in the stock market capitalization was even more dramatic. The aggregate value of the S&P 500 peaked at $12.7 trillion in March 2000, but then plunged by $5.2 trillion or -41% to $7.5 trillion at the September 2002 bottom.

Likewise, during the Great Recession collapse of 2008-2009, the S&P 500 peaked at $13.5 trillion in June 2007 and then fell by $6.6 trillion or –49% to $6.9 trillion at the March 2009 bottom.

But here’s the thing, today’s market cap of the S&P 500 is both far higher than in these earlier crashes, but also far more concentrated in the top 10 names, consisting heavily of the AI high flyers. Thus, at the present time fully 41% of the total S&P 500 market cap is accounted for by just 10 stocks, as we itemize below.

On the other hand, the level of market capitalization exposed to a potential meltdown of the AI bubble is an order of magnitude higher. The S&P 500 market cap recently weighed in at $56 trillion, representing another $4 trillion gain from the chart line shown below as of a few weeks ago.

Accordingly, the S&P 500 market cap is now 4.4X larger than it was at the dotcom peak and 4.2X larger than on the eve of the Financial crisis. Were the impending AI bubble crash to come in at an average of the two prior stock market meltdowns, a -45% plunge would shave $25 trillion of value from the stock market.

We think there is every chance in the world that the top 10 stocks which now account for 41% of the total S&P value will experience thundering meltdowns in the quarters ahead, taking the entire stock market with them. The degree of over-valuation is simply out of this world, starting with NVIDIA Corp which despite its recent tick down is still capitalized at $4.6 trillion or 28X LTM sales.

This valuation is just plain bonkers, even if AI turns out to be the greatest invention since sliced bread. Critics note that 2025’s estimated $475 billion of global AI capex dwarfs actual AI- based revenues, which amounts to $3-5 billion at best. That is to say, there is as of yet no return on capital investment in sight, thereby risking a similar “dark pool” of unused capacity that plagued the telecom world after the dot-com crash.

Needless to say, a collapse of the AI high flyers would also have a thundering impact on capex spending for equipment and intellectual property, which is the only thing holding real GDP above the flat-line. Again, the current scale tells you all you need to know:

• Dot-Com Crash: Capex of $1.189 trillion in Q4 2000 dropped by –$136 billion or -11.4% by Q1 2003.
• Financial Crisis: Q1 2008 peak spending for equipment and intellectual capital of $1.457 trillion, plunged by -$245 billion or nearly -17% by the Q1 2009 bottom.
• AI Boom: The current annualized run rate of equipment and intellectual property spending of $3.316 trillion is so extreme that it could readily drop by 20% in a downturn—especially given that AI spending of $425 billion this year represents an 100X gain since 2022. Yet a 20% reduction would result in a -$650 billion investment spending plunge—-a figure way off the charts of prior history.

US Fixed Investment Spending For Equipment and Intellectual Property, 1996 to 2025

It goes without saying that a $650 billion decline in capital spending would also plunge the already struggling US economy deep into the recessionary drink, and do so at a time when there is no policy margin for error. That is to say, fiscal policy is already tapped out with $38 trillion of public debt and the Fed’s printing presses have already implanted 40 year high inflation in the price level of the US economy.

We’d say that what is coming down the pike, therefore, does not look much like the ballyhooed Golden Age the Donald and his MAGAphones so foolishly expect.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

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