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As we related in our book, The Courage to Face COVID-19, just before Dr. McCullough departed to Washington D.C. for his Senate testimony on November 19, 2020, he had a disturbing conversation with his church pastor, Andrew Forrest.

“We don’t understand what’s happening in our world,” McCullough explained. “My YouTube videos about early treatment were taken down, and then my planned WebEx conference with an Australian MP about treatment was hacked. Now my hospital administrators are acting like I’m out of line for accepting a U.S. Senator’s invitation to testify about the disease. It’s as though, for the first time in history, our medical system is opposed to caring for the sick. What on earth is going on?”

Andrew wasn’t at all surprised.

“There are times when evil prevails over good in a large way,” he said. “We know from the dark periods of history that this has happened before, and now it’s happening again. What you describe is Satan working in the hearts and minds of people, sowing fear, confusion, and anger. All you can do is keep trying to do good until it turns the tide. For your Senate speech, your message must be joyous and happy and clear, uncluttered by negative emotion. That way you will let the light of God shine forth in this darkness.

At the time Dr. McCullough told me this story, I thought that Pastor Forrest was being melodramatic. Surely, I thought, what he was describing was ordinary human fear and stupidity, and not the work of a supernatural being—a malevolent spirit called “Satan.”

Since then, I have been increasingly drawn to the conclusion that Pastor Forrest was onto something.

Even if one rejects the idea of the devil as a supernatural spirit that actually exists, a rational and impartial observer will still marvel at how large masses of humans will suddenly—as if infected with a spiritual contagion—participate in an irrational and highly destructive enterprise.

In researching my forthcoming book, Mind Viruses: America’s Irrational Obsessions, I examined how the “Devil” has been depicted in literature going back to the Bible.

The Greek word for devil, diábolos, means “the one who divides.” The English word “diabolic” comes from the Greek verb diabollein, which means “to tear apart.”

In addition to “tearing apart,” the devil is also often portrayed as a “destroyer.” In Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles famously introduces himself as follows:

Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles was entsteht
Ist werth daß es zu Grunde geht;

I am the spirit that constantly negates!
And rightly so; for everything that comes into being,
Deserves to be destroyed;

This morning, I thought of this famous German play when I read the news that Germany has rejected Russia’s offer of a non-aggression guarantee for EU & NATO. The German government wants to escalate.

In recent years, ranking members of the U.S. and E.U. governments have asserted that Russian President Vladimir Putin is hellbent on reconstituting something like the old Soviet empire in Eastern and Central Europe. We are told that Putin aspires to occupy Berlin just like the Red Army did with the fall of the Third Reich in 1945.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov refuted this claim last week at the Third Minsk International Conference in Belarus. He stated that Russia would be happy to enter into a non-aggression pact. As he put it.

We have repeatedly said that we had, and have, no intention to attack any current NATO or EU member. We are ready to enshrine this position in future security guarantees for this part of Eurasia.

Germany rejected Lavrov’s offer out of hand. This was in keeping with NATO’s rejection in the fall of 2021 of Russia’s proposal for a Ukrainian neutrality deal. As NATO secretary Jens Stoltenberg told the EU Parliament in a video-recorded statement.

In the autumn of 2021, Russia actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what they sent us, and that was a precondition for not invading Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

Given the resounding success of the Austrian neutrality deal of 1955, which resulted in Red Army withdrawing from the country and respecting Austrian neutrality ever since, it was obvious to me that an Austrian-style neutrality deal was by far the best arrangement for Ukraine.

I know about Austrian neutrality because I lived in the country for a total of fifteen years. Neutrality has been an enormous blessing for Austria and was a key reason for Vienna’s cosmopolitan, open, laid back atmosphere until 2020, when the Austrian government was captured by the globalist gangsters who ran the pandemic response.

If the West had accepted the Russian proposal for a Ukrainian neutrality deal, and the Russians subsequently violated it, then the West would have had a clear casus belli. Consider the extreme irrationality of what was implied in the rejection of Ukrainian neutrality, which can be expressed as follows.

We cannot accept Russia’s proposal for Ukrainian neutrality because if Russia later violates it, we will have to go to war with Russia. It’s better to go to war with Russia now instead of risking the possibility of having to go to war with Russia later.

This was the same diabolic “logic” that was applied during the pandemic, when hospitalized COVID-19 patients were denied ivermectin because—according to hospital administrators—taking ivermectin could be “dangerous.” As one brave nurse put it in a video about this atrocity,

How could trying ivermectin be worse than dying of COVID-19?

The assertion “Vladimir Putin aspires to conquer Europe” resembles the following false and contradictory propositions that have long been a feature of public discourse in the West.

• The Earth is burning up from human induced climate change, even though there is much evidence that the earth has, at various times in the past, been much hotter than it is today. After insisting for decades that the earth would become uninhabitable due to human-induced climate change, Bill Gates recently proclaimed that it wouldn’t. This may have something to do with the fact that he is going to need a hell of a lot more electrical power to get a return on his recent, massive investments in A.I.
• Race is an essential feature of one’s identity, and racism is systemic. This became evident to millions during the U.S. presidency of Barack Obama, a black man who somehow persuaded racist America to elect him president.
• White Nationalists pose a major threat to American society, even though though they have no money and occupy no notable positions in the government, military, media, education, the entertainment industry, or the financial industry.
• American society contains many minority victim groups. Individuals who identify with these groups should be given preferential treatment and be promoted to positions of power so that the powerful people who appointed them can signal their virtue.
• Sexual ‘orientation’ is an essential feature of one’s identity, and one should express this in public—unless one is ‘cisgender’ and ‘heteronormative’ in one’s sexual ‘orientation.’
• Donald Trump is a fascist in league with Vladimir Putin. A U.S. president must seek war with Russia instead of seeking peaceful and cooperative endeavors that would benefit both the American and Russian people. Peace is war.
• SARS-CoV-2 must be contained with lockdowns, masks, and social distancing, even though—as Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell correctly pointed out in March 2020—the virus had already spread far beyond being contained.
• Early treatment for COVID-19 must be suppressed at all costs. It’s better for patients to die in hospital instead of taking FDA-approved drugs for early home treatment to avoid dying in hospital.
• Policemen are agents of systemic racism; George Floyd was martyred by one. Everyone must stay at home to prevent the spread of Covid unless they wish to participate in a BLM riot.
• Everyone must get the COVID-19 vaccine, even if they have already had the illness, and even though the vaccine doesn’t stop infection and transmission. Adolescent males are not at a significant risk of vaccine-induced myocarditis, even though thousands have been diagnosed with vaccine-induced myocarditis—a side effect officially acknowledged by the CDC.
• Gender dysphoria is common among minors and should be medically treated with hormones and surgery, even though it is has long been generally recognized that minors do not have sufficient awareness and judgement to make major irrevocable decisions, and are not allowed to consume alcohol until they are 21-years old.
• Though modern medicine can ‘transition’ or ‘reassign’ a human from one sex to the other, there is no such thing as ‘biological’ sex. That said, ‘transitioning’ from one’s ‘assigned’ sex to the other requires receiving high doses of hormones and surgeries that cost millions of dollars.

All of the above assertions—which are Articles of Faith among tens of millions in the West—are false. In my forthcoming book Mind Viruses: America’s Irrational Obsessions—I examine the origins of these false propositions and the powerful people who have propagated them.

In the case of Russia, it is the U.S. government that has sought a military confrontation, and not the other way around. While the U.S. government continues to insist it is forbidden for Russia to deploy military forces against Ukraine to protect Russian national security, the U.S. government is currently preparing for possible military action against Venezuela on the grounds that the Venezuelan government is injuring U.S. national security.

This kind of conduct recalls the famous rhetorical question, “Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the plank in your own eye?”

Since 2014 at the latest, U.S. military-intelligence complex has systematically baited Russia to invade Ukraine with the aspiration that Russia would sink into an Afghanistan-style quagmire. As Hillary Clinton put it in a Feb. 2022 MSNBC interview with Rachel Maddow.

Remember, the Russians invaded Afghanistan back in 1980. It didn’t end well for the Russians…but the fact is, that a very motivated, and then funded, and armed insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan.

Clinton didn’t stop to think that the collateral damage to the Ukrainian people would be astronomical. She also didn’t stop to think that the U.S. funded and armed Mujahideen—guys like Osama bin Laden who didn’t serve the U.S. very well after their adventure in Afghanistan.

As for what would happen to the Ukrainian people and Ukrainian soldiers, it was clear from Clinton’s interview that she hadn’t given them the slightest thought. Her affect and statements reminded me of how Edmund Burke characterized the Jacobins in his essay, Reflections on the Revolution in France:

They have perverted in themselves and in those who listen to them all the well-placed sympathies of the human breast.

The hard-hearted lunatics who run U.S. and E.U. foreign policy are delighted for the Ukrainians to fight Russia to the death of every Ukrainian man. Some Ukrainian soldiers have realized that this is happening, and they have recorded videos of themselves expressing despair as they are sent to a certain death on the front. Yesterday I saw such a video and it instantly brought me to tears.

Another conspicuous feature of the guys who run the U.S. and E.U. is their habit of accusing people of doing what they themselves are doing and aspiring to do. Psychologists call this “projection,” and it is a common habit among psychopaths.

A historical irony—perhaps even a paradox—lies at the heart of our current state of affairs in the West. When I was in graduate school I read a lot of literature about Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Dostoevsky’s Demons and Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita depict the devil visiting Russia and possessing its spirit. The latter novel inspired Mick Jagger to write “Sympathy for the Devil,” with the sinister lines.

Stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Tsar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank, held a general’s rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank

I wonder if, after destroying Russia between 1917-1991, the Devil departed that ruined country and took up residence in the West, which he found easy to possess because our Cold War victory resulted in us becoming arrogant, ignorant, and complacent.

We in the West have long been in the habit of assuming that we are the good guys, but are we really?

Is it possible that—for all their faults—the Russians are now the defenders of Western Civilization, while our leaders in the West are its destroyers?

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post Are the U.S. and E.U. Governments Satanic? appeared first on LewRockwell.

On the surface Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York supports my contention that American democracy  has become  riven with faction and left-wing ideology and has become dysfunctional.  See this.

Mamdani’s agenda of rent freezes, city-run non-profit grocery stores, more taxes on the rich, free subways, reduced police presence, and the rest of his promised handouts to the unproductive brings the redistributive character of US democracy to the breaking point at which the productive leave a city where public safety is declining along with the rewards to work and responsible behavior.

Will we see “Escape from New York” or on the other hand, perhaps Mamdani is just a political opportunist riding the rise of the woke era to personal riches from the kickbacks from the New York building trades’ profits from building his affordable public housing to fill the role of private-supplied housing blocked by Mamdani’s rent controls.

America’s founding fathers were aware of the dangers of faction that democracy brings, and they were aware of the tendency of mobs to seize property and of the tendency of females to make emotive instead of rational decisions.  To hinder and to delay the impact of these destabilizing tendencies, the founding fathers restricted democracy to the judgment of male property owners.

As years passed the protective shields that made democracy functional were removed.  The appointment of US senators by state legislators to insure that the senators represented their states and not the interests of national lobbies that provide campaign funds was removed, and the Senate, like the House, became subject to demagogic elections often determined by slander, fraud, and vote-buying.  Weak men gave in and bestowed the vote on women.  It made little difference for a long time, because men still predominated in societal institutions.  But as Helen Andrews reports, in the US all societal institutions have now been feminized. See here.

The goal of excluding “toxic males” from societal decision-making has largely succeeded.  The replacement of men by women has dramatically reduced the birth rate in all Western societies. As women choose career over motherhood, calls intensify for more non-white immigration to fill the gap from the declining white birth rate.  If this trend continues, white ethnicities will disappear, as Jean Raspail predicted they would.  It seems that my generation and perhaps the one that followed are the last to experience life in the context of Western civilization.

Over the course of my life I have watched the decline in the legal protections of defendants, and I have watched the rise of status-based privileges push aside equality under law.  See, for example, my books, The Tyranny of Good Intentions and The New Color Line.  These books had enthusiastic reviews from the right people and places, but failed to slow down, much less halt, the collapse of American society into disunity and status-based law.

New York, once the financial capital of the world, has fallen, according to the narrative, to the communist agenda of an immigrant-invader from Kampala, Uganda.  But perhaps that is only Mamdani’s pose assumed in our woke era to gain  access to wealth that comes from the political award of contracts.  Regardless, the electorate’s choice of Mamdani shows a complete change in outlook and a Democrat Party that has moved outside the American tradition.

I remember when the Democrats’ political constituency consisted of the poor and the working class, now disparaged as “the Trump deplorables.”  Today the Democrats’ political constituency is college-educated women and weak men who have accepted their subordination in the interest of a career.  Whereas once Democrats focused on confiscating income and wealth from the successful (who were referred to as “fortunate”) and redistributing it to the unsuccessful (called “less fortunate”), they now confiscate the earnings and wealth of citizens to support immigrant-invaders.   This and other such word tricks pushed the questions of merit and citizenship out of the picture.  For women the issue was one of the caring against the hard-hearted. See here. 

Today Democrat political constituencies are focused on redistributing the incomes of American citizens to illegal aliens.  Not only do Americans who support themselves also support 42 million Americans who do not or who are gaming the system, they also support the 14 million immigrant-invaders that the Obama and Biden regimes policy of open borders imported into America.

While these devastating trends were developing, Wall Street and corporate executives exported American manufacturing jobs to Asia and Mexico, thereby dismantling the ladders of upward mobility that had made the US an opportunity society.  Today the focus of the Democrat Party is on opportunity for immigrant-invaders.  Democrats fight tooth and nail to prevent the federal government from deporting illegals.  Indeed, Democrats want illegals to have voting rights, and Democrat judges have ruled that proof of citizenship is unnecessary in order to vote.  Essentially, Democrats have no conception of the United States as a nation.  Indeed, they are hostile to those who think that citizenship and the US Constitution have meaning, dismissing both as tools of white supremacists.

Where liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and leftists went horribly wrong was in assuming that government was an independent institution.  The liberal-left imagined government as a moral institution that redistributed ill-gotten wealth from those who stole it to the deserving poor from whom it was stolen.  The conservative-libertarian contingent saw government as a threat to private property, merit, and individual freedom.  No one saw if for what it is:  an instrument for political and material interests to use to further their agendas and their fortunes.

The “public interest” is a false narrative.  No one serves any such interest.  Government is a privatized institution that serves private interests.  It is fought over because it can bestow on favored factions the incomes of others.  The Party in control gets to hand out the money.  That is the only important issue.

Today in America the welfare class supported by the work force is 25% of the size of the work force. If the Democrats win the battle over illegals, and Obama and Biden’s 14 million illegals are added to the 42 million welfare class, those dependent on the incomes of the work force rise to one-third the size of the work force.

With the advent of AI and robotics, the outlook for working Americans seems bleak.  If the unemployment from AI predicted by experts is accurate, most of the US work force will be without jobs.  Who then supports the welfare class enlarged by illegal immigration?

Elon Musk said that the advent of AI brings with it communism as the earnings of AI will have to be redistributed to the population in order that people will have the money to sustain their lives by purchasing the products of AI produced goods and services.

What we seem to be facing is a social revolution brought by technology.  There is very little awareness and discussion of this massive challenge to human society.  If it comes upon unprepared populations, the result will be chaotic, especially in the Western World where white ethnicities are demonized as racists and exploiters of people of color.  The white populations will be the first to be exterminated in order to reduce the claim on resources.

In the Democrat mind, freedom today means the suppression of freedom.  Freedom of speech is racist and hurtful. Freedom of protest and association is a plot for insurrection if it is done by aversive racists.  Family values are suppressive of women.  Citizenship is non-inclusive.  A common language, mores, and history are suppressive of multiculturalism and diversity.  Nothing that once defined an American is acceptable in the era of wokeness.

For all practical purposes, the USA is being erased.

The post The Times They Are a-Changin appeared first on LewRockwell.

The American people are being misled into believing that:

• Everyone in the world hates us
• Major powers such as Russia and China want to defeat us militarily

And

• The answer is to create an autarkic state and maintain a military capable of intervening decisively almost anywhere in the world.

To this end our government has adopted an unsustainable policy of massive military spending, interventions all over the world, and erecting trade barriers with the rest of the world, even our friends and allies. Not only is this policy unsustainable (it is bankrupting the nation), but it is unnecessary and even harmful.

First of all, the world is not hostile to us. The rest of the world, including Russia, China, and even Iran, admire us. But they do not want us to interfere in their affairs. In other words, they do not want us to judge right and wrong for their actions, as if we were wise Solomons and paragons of virtue ourselves. And they do not want us to try to rig the world’s financial and economic relationships to garner spoils for ourselves and to punish those who deign to object. A good example is the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline that I have no doubt was planned if not executed by our security forces. The rationale is that we do not want our allies to become dependent upon cheap Russian energy. They want us to believe that the fact that making these self-same allies dependent upon our much more expensive liquefied natural gas is just a coincidence.

Secondly, we are told that any economic success by China is just a plan to defeat us. For example, becoming a leader in rare earth metals extraction and processing, an industry that takes a decade or more to build, is just a giant plot to make us dependent upon the Chinese so that they can blackmail us by threatening to “cut us off” unless we do their bidding. Supposedly it isn’t possible that the Chinese are better at foreseeing future demand and taking the steps to meet that demand. The same with robotics, microchips, you name it. Furthermore, we are told that it is wise to build a strong military that can project power anywhere in the world, but the Chinese are warmongers when they attempt to expand their military capabilities to protect their homeland. In other words, if we do something it’s simply a wise precaution. If the Chinese do the same it’s another example of their march to conquest.

Thirdly, in just a few short months of his presidency, President Trump has abandoned eighty years of enlightened trade policy that sought to lower and even eliminate barriers to world trade. The free trade rationale, still the mainstream consensus among economists, is that trade mitigates war and makes everyone wealthier. Frederick Bastiat’s dictum that “When goods don’t cross borders, armies will” has been brushed aside as another example of countries trying to defeat us by providing us with goods we wish to buy. This economic fallacy is reinforced by another; i.e., that when a nation sells more to us than we sell to them, the resulting trade deficit somehow harms us and must be countered by high tariffs. This is economic nonsense and is leading the world to another, perhaps even more destructive, Great Depression, and, per Bastiat, possibly war.

A Better Policy

The solution is simple but requires convincing the electorate. (Forget trying to convince the elite political class. Their sole purpose is to reward big business and big labor in order to maintain their lock on power, whether Democrats of Republicans.) First of all the US does not need a huge military empire. This does not mean that the US is abandoning its allies. Rather, our military empire foments tensions unnecessarily, actually making us and our allies less safe. Furthermore, it creates moral hazard, an economic term that can be applied to international security guarantees; i.e., that nations who believe that the US will backstop them for every petty and not so petty disagreement with their neighbors are less likely to listen to their neighbors’ perhaps legitimate complaints and negotiate to lower tensions. Disputes are elevated to major crises, often with the now tired claim that the “other side” is just like the Nazis in 1938 and must be opposed with maximum military force NOW!

The world needs economic leadership to reduce trade barriers, which will unite the peoples of the world rather than isolate them. Free markets allow the wonders of specialization to improve the lives of all the peoples of the world, just as specialization improves the lives of individuals. Few of us grow our own food, weave cloth to make our own clothes, or construct, plumb, electrify, etc. our own homes. Likewise, the US should not rig the economy to force us to buy more expensive, lower quality goods locally rather than internationally.

The Enabling Role of Fiat Money

The mechanism which enables governments to spend beyond their citizen’s means is fiat money; i.e., money that is unanchored to gold and can be produced in vast quantities at the click of a Federal Reserve Bank computer button. Were the dollar anchored to gold, increased spending would have to be funded from increased taxes or borrowing honestly in the bond market. The bond market would force up interest rates, denying business needed capital funds. The alternative is very unpopular tax increases. Of course, governments propagandize the electorate that monetary expansion is not only necessary but beneficial! “Why, money printing provides the capital funds required by business!” But a quick retort is that to believe that nonsense one must believe that counterfeiters provide the same beneficial liquidity to the economy as Fed money expansion. Counterfeiters manufacture money out of thin air, just like the Fed. Why prosecute the former and lionize the latter?

The Four Pillars of a Prosperous Economy

1. Sound money
2. Reduced government spending
3. Reduced regulation of all manner of life
4. Lower taxes

This was the Republic Party platform in 1980. Vice Presidential candidate George Herbert Walker Bush explained the benefits of this policy at a campaign address on the steps of the Capitol Building in Springfield, Illinois. I was there. This well articulated policy must be presented again to the American people as a legitimate alternative to the warfare/welfare state.

The post An Alternative American Creed appeared first on LewRockwell.

The recognizable ancestor of the Israel Defense Forces is not the Marquis De Sade, a mere sexual deviant, but your common serial killer with added pathological paraphilia, and the ability to industrialize the scale of his crimes. ~ ilana

As I had remarked before, patterns of arousal—the commingling of serial killing and sex—are tied to psychopathy. The psychopathic fusion of lust and murder appears endemic among Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers.

Honed in rendition torture camps, sexual violence has become the coin of the Greater Israel realm. A glimpse into Sde Teiman, a torture rendition camp in Israel proper, revealed to the world that Israel has de facto systemized the practice of anally rupturing the bowels of Palestinian prisoners, most detained without charge.

Marquis de Sade, whose name is used to denote things sexually bent, was no murderer. The recognizable ancestor of the IDF is not the Marquis De Sade, a mere sexual deviant, but your common serial killer with added pathological paraphilia, and the ability to industrialize the scale of his crimes.

Paraphiliacs are said to enjoy exhibitionism or masochism or sadism, “in which sexual gratification is derived from activities or fantasies that are generally regarded as atypical or deviant. A paraphilic disorder is present when it causes … “actual or potential harm to others.”

After de Sade came out in Sde Teiman, “rape in the name of God” had become part of the settler and soldier lexicon of crime. From the West Bank, legendary British journalist Peter Oborne has filed detailed dispatches exposing Israel’s torture camps, into which thousands of young Palestinian men are disappearing, only to emerge unrecognized, physically deformed and mentally damaged. (Watch “EXPOSED: Israel’s Secret Torture Camps.”) “Nukhba” prisoners, the Israeli devils dub them.

The habitual infliction of rectal rape on Palestinian men has joined the crimes of genocide, the making and mass-marketing of online snuff films featuring murdered Palestinians, and the commission of extra-judicial assassination the globe over. These practices are de facto legal in what passes for law in the Israeli thugocracy.

As televised vignettes at July’s end showed, the Israelis, a “bizarre specimen of moral laxity”—the 1728 words of Southern gentleman William Byrd—had been openly rationalizing the need to codify in law the rape of Palestinian hostages. From Knesset members to the distinguishably dumb panelists who festoon that country’s tv networks, “Israeli media’s coverage of the rape of Palestinian [hostages] shows support for sexual violence in service of genocide.”

By the Middle East Monitor’s telling, “A Gaza detainee allegedly sexually abused by Israeli soldiers at Sde Teiman … suffered ‘a ruptured bowel, a severe injury to his anus, lung damage and broken ribs’ as a result of the immense torture he was subjected to by Israeli occupation soldiers. …One of the nine Israeli soldiers arrested for abusing him was released without charge. Deliberations about the other eight are continuing.” As far as I know, none has been charged.

Like Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the rape in Sde Teiman was captured on camera. Watch! Have an emesis dish close by.

According to Truthout.org, the Knesset, at July’s end—Israel’s lawmakers, no less—was debating whether or not sexual abuse à la de Sade Teiman was a legitimate tactic for Israeli soldiers. (International law considers sexual violence by soldiers to be a war crime.) Members of the Israeli government have also defended the soldiers, claiming it is wrong for the government to charge the [rapist] reservists.

To its patsy press, the AP, “The Israeli military had said, in July of 2024, that “it was holding nine soldiers for questioning following allegations of ‘substantial abuse’ of a detainee at a shadowy facility where Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians since Oct. 7.”

Next, via Democracy Now’s account, “A right-wing mob, including members of the Knesset, broke into two Israeli military bases in an effort to prevent Israeli military police from detaining the nine soldiers who were under investigation for gang raping a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman facility.”

When they are not fantasizing and embellishing about mass rape by their enemies (read Ali Abunimah’s “Debunking ‘Screams Before Silence,’ Sheryl Sandberg’s 7 Oct. ‘mass rape’ film”), and raping Palestinian prisoners—the Israel Defense Forces, and Israel’s other policing agencies, in conjunction with the societal structures that support them, are striving to codify their de facto daily criminal conduct in law.

In both word and deed, Israelis have systematically and systemically agitated for the legal right to gravely mistreat their enemies, justifying the twisted sensibilities of their military and a plurality of their countrymen.

The canvassing I conducted in May of 2024, “The Jewish State Is Genocidal, But Is Israeli Society Sick, Too?”, was seconded by Oren Ziv of the +972 Magazine (“A riot for impunity shows Israel’s proud embrace of its crimes“). Ziv correctly elucidates that “the support of Israeli political leaders, including some members of the Knesset who participated in the [pro-rape] riots, and the apathy of the military police, all indicate that those protesting against the soldiers’ [rape] charges are ‘the face of the state,’ expressing what are ‘mainstream’ views in Israeli society.”

Mainstream approval in Israel of genocide, rape, and snuff-film production explains why one of the reservist rape perpetrators, like so many members of the Israeli security establishment, proudly pleads his case on a YouTube video. In Israel, he is a patriot. Crime is SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for the Israeli army. Yes, do not dub a first-degree felony a “war crime.” A crime is a crime is a crime. A criminal is a criminal. A serial killer, state or lone actor, must be stopped (although it’s too late for that) and punished.

Across the occupied territories, the Israel Security State summarily detains people absent due process, often deploying rape as a weapon to shame traditional men and women, and it loots and demolishes their homes. You see, Lockean homesteading principles, by which Palestinians have come to own ancient land, flouts the Israeli Administrative State. The Israel security forces commonly also steal Palestinian money at checkpoints, as Middle East Eye editor Daniel Hearst has attested in conversation with award-winning journalist Chris Hedges. Both veteran reporters vouch for the veracity of the shakedown routines.

Silver-tongued Israelis and their Hasbara office at Foggy Bottom (The US Department of State), continue to deny this existential Palestinian reality, framing it as outlier cases. The “most moral military in the world” will investigate … itself.

But Israel is a lattice of lies.

A deception embedded deep in this lattice of lies is that, contrary to most criminal enterprises and individuals, a spectacular democracy like Israel has the absolute ability to investigate itself. Indeed, a report authored by the aforementioned +972 Magazine, “for the human rights group Yesh Din, shows how the main role of Israel’s military law-enforcement system is to maintain the appearance of internal accountability in order to shield itself from external criticism.” (“How Israel plans to whitewash its war crimes in Gaza“)

In this case, the greater goal of Israel’s legal apparatus and jurisprudence is to fend off charges of genocide and war-crimes in international courts of law. Be mindful, then, that any investigation ever launched or any arrests made by Israeli authorities are symbolic, cursory and inconsequential, part of a well-established strategy to safeguard the greater criminal enterprise.

Essentially, expect the Jewish State’s stooges to be trotted out to huff and puff indignantly at the very notion that a manifestly lawless thug of a state, whose justice system is complicit in minting maniacal laws in support of unfathomable thuggery and cruelty, is incapable of investigating itself. Antisemitism.

Ultimately, Israel has become adept at narrative, at manufacturing mantras about its unsurpassed morality, this, as it is mired in illegality and criminality. (Read my own analysis of how Israel and its courts “CO-OPT HUMAN-RIGHTS LAW,” in the essay, “Defending Gaza (II): Israel Engaged In The Mother Of All Performative Contradictions: Denying Genocide, While Committing Genocide, Effectively Asserting A Right To Genocide”.)

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La traduzione in italiano dell'opera scritta da Wendy McElroy esplora Bitcoin a 360°, un compendio della sua storia fino ad adesso e la direzione che molto ptobabilmente prenderà la sua evoluzione nel futuro prossimo. Si parte dalla teoria, soprattutto quella libertaria e Austriaca, e si sonda come essa interagisce con la realtà. Niente utopie, solo la logica esposizione di una tecnologia che si sviluppa insieme alle azioni degli esseri umani. Per questo motivo vengono inserite nell'analisi diversi punti di vista: sociologico, economico, giudiziario, filosofico, politico, psicologico e altri. Una visione e trattazione di Bitcoin come non l'avete mai vista finora, per un asset che non solo promette di rinnovare l'ambito monetario ma che, soprattutto, apre alla possibilità concreta di avere, per la prima volta nella storia umana, una società profondamente e completamente modificabile dal basso verso l'alto.

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(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/bitcoin-e-costruito-per-durare-come)

Bitcoin è uno dei sistemi distribuiti più robusti nella storia dell'umanità. Per sedici anni ha funzionato blocco dopo blocco, con solo due interruzioni nei primi anni, gestite con grande rapidità dagli sviluppatori, reattivi non appena si sono manifestate. A parte questo, ha continuato a funzionare producendo un blocco circa ogni dieci minuti senza interruzioni.

Questa affidabilità ha fissato un punto di riferimento per gli utenti di Bitcoin, incoraggiandoli a considerarlo un sistema completamente inarrestabile. Per molti, Bitcoin ha già vinto, e il mondo si sta rendendo conto di questa realtà. “Bitcoin è inevitabile”, come direbbero molti.

Questo non significa che sia letteralmente inarrestabile, ma ci sono possibili eventi che potrebbero causare danni ingenti o interruzioni alla rete, se si verificassero. Oggi analizzeremo alcuni di questi esempi e vedremo come potrebbero svilupparsi.

Intervento dello stato

Bitcoin rappresenta un serio enigma per i governi di tutto il mondo sotto diversi aspetti. Innanzitutto funziona come un sistema che consente ai pagamenti mondiali di fluire da un utente all'altro, indipendentemente dai confini o dai controlli finanziari.

Ma sebbene gli stati non possano impedire al sistema Bitcoin nel suo complesso di continuare a funzionare, possono introdurre normative che influiscano sui suoi partecipanti. Per interrompere realmente la rete Bitcoin stessa, gli stati dovrebbero perseguire i miner che aggiungono nuovi blocchi alla blockchain per far progredire il sistema.

Ciò era già accaduto nel 2021, quando il governo cinese aveva vietato il mining di Bitcoin. Quasi il 50% dell'hashrate era andato offline, mentre i miner cinesi iniziavano a migrare verso il resto del mondo.

La rete continuava a funzionare.

Nello scenario peggiore, il governo cinese avrebbe potuto imporre la confisca dell'hardware di mining. Ciò avrebbe permesso al PCC di controllare tutti quei miner, i quali avrebbero potuto essere impiegati per sferrare un attacco del 51% alla rete. Ma ciò non è accaduto. Anche se fosse stato adottato l'approccio confiscatorio, anziché limitarsi a imporre un divieto al mining, sarebbe stato altamente improbabile riuscire ad attaccare la rete, data la complessità del coordinamento tra i collaboratori.

Ad esempio, uno dei luoghi in cui sono migrate grandi quantità di hashrate è stato l'Iran. All'epoca circolavano molte voci su miner che corrompevano funzionari militari iraniani per far passare le loro macchine alla dogana e farle entrare nel Paese.

Se gli stati tentassero di sequestrare attrezzature di mining e chiudessero le frontiere impedendone la spedizione a livello internazionale, la possibilità di corrompere funzionari governativi o di contrabbandarle illegalmente sarebbe molto concreta, dato l'incentivo finanziario a farlo. Affinché un simile sequestro rappresenti un rischio esistenziale per la rete stessa, uno stato dovrebbe essere in grado di sequestrare oltre il 51% dell'hashrate attivo della rete. Basterebbe che una percentuale sufficientemente piccola riuscisse a superare i confini per garantire che ciò che resta da sequestrare non superi la soglia del 51% e che la rete rimanga sicura.

Con l'ulteriore decentralizzazione dell'hashrate in tutto il mondo, la possibilità che un'azione del genere possa rappresentare un rischio per Bitcoin stesso continua a ridursi. Sebbene rimanga una possibilità, più stati sarebbero tenuti a cooperare per realizzare una simile mossa, minore è la probabilità che un evento del genere si verifichi. La resilienza di Bitcoin continua a risplendere, come dimostrato empiricamente dalle azioni del PCC nel 2021.

Guasti nella rete elettrica

I miner di Bitcoin non possono funzionare senza elettricità. In fin dei conti sono dei computer, quindi questa è una realtà ovvia. Questo rappresenta un grosso rischio per i miner che dipendono dalle infrastrutture di produzione e distribuzione di energia.

Molti disastri naturali possono causare interruzioni di corrente e problemi alla rete. Uragani, incendi boschivi, eventi meteorologici estremi come le ondate di freddo possono interrompere l'infrastruttura elettrica. Un esempio lampante di tali eventi che hanno avuto un impatto sull'hashrate si è verificato in Texas durante la tempesta invernale Uri nel 2021. La portata di questi eventi non rappresenta un rischio sistemico diretto per la rete Bitcoin. L'interruzione dell'energia elettrica in Texas, anche con circa il 30% dell'hashrate della rete localizzato all'interno dello stato, non causerebbe l'interruzione o la distruzione della rete Bitcoin.

Come dimostrato nel 2021, durante il divieto cinese al mining, nonostante circa il 50% dell'hashrate della rete fosse andato offline in un lasso di tempo incredibilmente breve, la rete ha continuato a funzionare. Certo, l'intervallo di tempo tra i blocchi è aumentato drasticamente e ha causato un forte aumento delle commissioni di transazione per confermarle rapidamente, ma la rete stessa ha continuato a funzionare ed elaborarle senza interruzioni.

Anche se immaginassimo un evento di portata molto più ampia, come una massiccia tempesta solare che interrompesse l'erogazione di energia elettrica a metà del pianeta, l'altra metà continuerebbe a funzionare. I miner situati in quella metà del globo continuerebbero ad andare avanti, a confermare le transazioni e la rete continuerebbe a funzionare senza problemi per metà del pianeta. Anche le persone nella metà del globo senza elettricità, purché abbiano conservato un backup fisico della loro seed phrase, avranno comunque accesso ai propri fondi ogni volta che l'elettricità verrà ripristinata, o potranno raggiungere un luogo con una rete elettrica funzionante.

Per uccidere Bitcoin bisognerebbe togliere l'energia elettrica praticamente a tutto il pianeta, altrimenti continuerà a spuntare fuori da qualche parte finché non verrà ripristinata l'alimentazione e potrà “rigenerarsi” espandendosi di nuovo in tutto il mondo.

Interruzioni di Internet

Sebbene Internet sia composto da protocolli decentralizzati in modo simile a Bitcoin, l'infrastruttura alla base è di proprietà principalmente di grandi multinazionali e stati (di nuovo, in modo simile all'infrastruttura di Bitcoin, come i miner). La proprietà di questa infrastruttura è ancora relativamente distribuita tra molti attori a livello mondiale, ma non ha lo stesso grado di distribuzione di un sistema altamente decentralizzato come una rete mesh.

Esistono ancora punti di strozzatura e colli di bottiglia piuttosto ampi che, se interrotti o attaccati, possono causare un grave degrado dell'affidabilità e della funzionalità. Quasi tutti si connettono a Internet tramite un Internet Service Provider (ISP); questo mercato è dominato nella maggior parte del mondo da una manciata di grandi provider in ogni regione. Non c'è molta scelta tra i provider e questo rappresenta un grosso punto di strozzatura per le persone che interagiscono con Internet. Se un ISP filtra o nega l'accesso e non c'è un altro provider tra cui scegliere, siete nei guai.

Allo stesso modo la possibilità di parlare con qualcuno dall'altra parte del mondo è dovuta alle grandi reti “dorsali” gestite dalle grandi aziende e ai cavi in ​​fibra ottica sottomarini lungo i fondali oceanici. Questi cavi rappresentano punti di strozzatura altamente centralizzati per le comunicazioni tra diversi Paesi e continenti. Se gli operatori iniziassero a filtrare le informazioni che li attraversano, o se qualcuno dovesse fisicamente recidere i cavi stessi, ciò potrebbe causare un'enorme interruzione del traffico internet mondiale.

Cosa si potrebbe fare concretamente se si verificasse una di queste due situazioni? Se un ISP iniziasse a filtrare il traffico Bitcoin verso gli utenti, i nodi di questi ultimi verrebbero disconnessi dalla rete. La trasmissione delle transazioni potrebbe essere impossibile, a seconda di quanto l'ISP filtri il traffico, ma il resto della rete continuerebbe a funzionare. Servizi come il feed satellitare di Blockstream esistono e una transazione Bitcoin è un dato così piccolo che qualsiasi connessione momentanea a una rete non filtrata sarebbe sufficiente per trasmettere i pagamenti.

Anche interruzioni su larga scala delle connessioni tra Paesi o regioni equivalgono a una semplice irritazione nel grande schema delle cose. Supponiamo che un Paese come la Russia abbia la connessione Internet con il mondo esterno completamente interrotta. Se i miner russi non chiudessero a loro volta, la blockchain si dividerebbe in due catene separate perché i miner all'interno e all'esterno della Russia non riceverebbero i blocchi degli altri. Ogni volta che quella connessione venisse ripristinata, il gruppo di miner che aveva minato una catena più lunga “sovrascriverebbe” quella più corta, cancellando le transazioni avvenute sull'altra catena più corta.

Esiste anche un'alta probabilità che un chainsplit del genere non si verifichi nemmeno in una situazione come quella descritta. Il servizio satellitare di Blockstream offre un modo per gli utenti, anche senza connessione Internet, di continuare a ricevere blocchi in tempo reale dal resto della rete. Questo, in combinazione con gli uplink satellitari (che non sono così semplici da bloccare), o persino con i ripetitori radio, potrebbe consentire ai miner russi di continuare a minare una singola blockchain con il resto della rete anche in caso di interruzione.

Ancora una volta, la resilienza di Bitcoin può trovare una via d'uscita.

Conclusione

Bitcoin non è invincibile, o inarrestabile, ma è incredibilmente resiliente di fronte a interruzioni o attacchi avversari alla rete. È stato letteralmente progettato per funzionare in questo modo. L'obiettivo principale delle reti decentralizzate è quello di essere robuste di fronte a minacce e interruzioni, e Bitcoin ha raggiunto sorprendentemente questo obiettivo progettuale.

Il mondo ha assistito, e continuerà ad assistere, a eventi distruttivi di incredibile portata. Che si tratti di eventi meteorologici o cosmici, atti di sabotaggio, guerre intenzionali, o semplicemente di regolamentazioni governative, Bitcoin è già sopravvissuto a molti di questi eventi. Molto probabilmente continuerà a sopravvivere a tutto ciò che gli verrà scagliato contro in futuro.

Non è invincibile, ma è resiliente. Il tipo di evento, o disastro, che servirebbe per mandare Bitcoin offline in modo permanente sarebbe di una portata talmente distruttiva che, nell'improbabile eventualità che ciò accada, ci troveremmo tutti di fronte a problemi ben più gravi della semplice cessazione del funzionamento di Bitcoin.

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

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di Michael Peterson

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/cosa-ho-visto-nellargentina-di-milei)

Il recente accordo di swap da $20 miliardi tra Argentina e Stati Uniti sottolinea il delicato equilibrio tra riforme economiche e la vitale necessità di liberalizzazione. Il mese scorso si è verificata un'improvvisa corsa al pèso argentino, alimentata da una serie di battute d'arresto politiche, tra cui le elezioni provinciali di Buenos Aires in cui i peronisti hanno vinto molti seggi al Congresso. A seguito di questo tumulto, la Banca Centrale Argentina ha bruciato oltre $1 miliardo in soli due giorni per mantenere il tasso di cambio entro la fascia di oscillazione sostenuta dal governo federale.

Poco dopo il presidente Javier Milei si trovava a New York per concludere un accordo con il Segretario al Tesoro statunitense, Scott Bessent, per quello che si sarebbe rivelato un efficace piano di salvataggio, volto a prevenire l'improvvisa impennata del pèso. Sebbene i critici considerino la richiesta di sostegno di Milei un punto debole, stabilizzare il pèso argentino è essenziale per far avanzare il suo programma di austerità nella seconda metà del suo mandato.

Infatti l'Argentina è sull'orlo della trasformazione, spinta dalle coraggiose riforme del suo presidente libertario Javier Milei. Non era dai primi anni '90 che la nazione assisteva a cambiamenti politici così rapidi. Dopo aver trascorso quasi un mese in Argentina quest'estate, ho osservato un Paese pieno di potenziale, ma appesantito dai suoi fardelli storici.

Il partito La Libertad Avanza di Milei ha portato avanti importanti riforme di mercato, ottenendo risultati sorprendenti. L'inflazione annuale, che era salita al 289% quando è entrato in carica, è scesa sotto il 40%. All'inizio del 2025 l'Argentina ha fatto registrare il suo primo surplus fiscale in 14 anni e i tassi di povertà sono scesi dal 53% di inizio 2024 al 31,6% entro la metà del 2025. Questi risultati segnano un netto distacco da decenni di cattiva gestione economica.

Tuttavia il progresso dell'Argentina è ostacolato da un retaggio di politiche peròniste alimentate dal controllo burocratico e da interessi particolari. Gli sforzi di Milei per liberalizzare l'economia incontrano una forte resistenza da parte dei sindacati e dei burocrati, i quali considerano le sue riforme una minaccia alla loro esistenza. La liberalizzazione del mercato, come ho fatto notare in precedenza, è molto più facile in teoria che in pratica. Storie di successo come Polonia e Cile, che si sono trasformate in fiorenti economie di mercato, sono eccezioni. Ci sono riusciti ristrutturando le istituzioni per proteggere i diritti di proprietà e liberare il potenziale umano. L'Argentina, nonostante la sua ricchezza di talenti e risorse, fatica a seguire l'esempio.

Le università del Paese, tra le migliori dell'America Latina, producono laureati altamente qualificati in grado di trainare la crescita economica. Ciononostante una fitta rete di normative ne soffoca il potenziale e limita il capitale umano, spina dorsale della prosperità. In città come Córdoba, dove ho trascorso gran parte del mio tempo, questa tensione è palpabile. L'industria dei taxi, ad esempio, ha fatto pressioni per vietare servizi di ride-sharing come Uber, eppure gli autisti operano in violazione di queste leggi. Questa ricerca di rendita, radicata nelle politiche di Perón di metà Novecento, continua a soffocare l'innovazione e l'imprenditorialità.

La crescente pressione dei dipendenti pubblici per rafforzare il finanziamento delle pensioni ha raggiunto un punto di svolta. Dopo la sconfitta del Partito Libertario alle elezioni provinciali del mese scorso, il Presidente Milei ha ceduto, approvando una legge per aumentare gli stanziamenti per pensioni, invalidità, sanità e istruzione. Sebbene i compromessi politici siano inevitabili, gruppi di interesse radicati continuano a esercitare un'influenza sproporzionata sulla politica elettorale argentina. Per contrastare questo fenomeno, gli argentini devono dare priorità alle riforme di base, partendo dal livello locale ed estendendosi alla governance provinciale. I leader di ogni schieramento dovrebbero promuovere una cultura di apertura e libera impresa per guidare un cambiamento significativo.

Ad aggravare le difficoltà di Milei, un recente scandalo ha gettato un'ombra sulla sua amministrazione. Presunte fughe di notizie audio coinvolgono sua sorella e principale collaboratrice, Karina Milei, in un sistema di corruzione che vedrebbe centinaia di migliaia di dollari pagati per contratti farmaceutici. Le accuse, legate a Diego Spagnuolo, ex-capo dell'Agenzia Nazionale Argentina per la Disabilità, hanno fornito agli oppositori di Milei – in particolare al partito perónista Fuerza Patria – argomenti per spingere per un ritorno alle politiche di spesa elevata che hanno alimentato l'inflazione oltre un decennio fa.

Nel suo libro del 1981, Structure and Change in Economic History, il premio Nobel Douglass North introduce il ruolo dell'ideologia nella trasformazione economica. North sosteneva che gli individui modificano le proprie prospettive ideologiche quando le esperienze contraddicono le proprie convinzioni. Affinché l'Argentina abbracci mercati più liberi, le sue istituzioni – governo, industrie e società civile – devono impegnarsi in modo credibile a proteggere i diritti di proprietà e a promuovere la libertà individuale. Senza questi ingredienti, le riforme rischiano di rimanere superficiali.

Le sfide dell'Argentina riflettono la domanda centrale di North: come possono le nazioni passare dalla stagnazione economica alla prosperità? L'amministrazione Milei non deve solo approvare riforme, ma anche garantire che le istituzioni in tutta la società riflettano un impegno per la libertà. La resistenza dell'industria dei taxi a Córdoba è solo un esempio di come gruppi di interesse radicati ostacolino il progresso. Questi gruppi – che spaziano dall'agricoltura all'energia, dai trasporti all'istruzione – perpetuano un sistema che privilegia il clientelismo rispetto alla concorrenza.

Come sottolinea Nikolai Wenzel nel suo saggio sulla storia economica dell'Argentina, gli alti e bassi del Paese sono legati alle sue istituzioni. Dall'ascesa di Perón negli anni '40, il coinvolgimento del governo è cresciuto, soffocando l'iniziativa privata. L'elezione di Milei, alimentata da un'ondata di sentimento liberale classico, ha rappresentato un guanto di sfida per questo status quo. Eppure, come sottolineano economisti come North, Joel Mokyr e Deirdre McCloskey, la riforma istituzionale non consiste solo nell'emanare leggi, ma nel creare una cultura che premi l'imprenditorialità e dia potere agli individui.

I risultati di Milei sono significativi, ma un cambiamento duraturo richiede più che semplici vittorie politiche. L'Argentina ha bisogno di una svolta sociale verso l'innovazione e la deregolamentazione, dove gli individui siano liberi di perseguire le proprie ambizioni. La McCloskey dimostra che la prosperità economica vive quando le società abbracciano il “duplice cambiamento etico di dignità e libertà” per le persone comuni. Il futuro dell'Argentina dipende dall'integrazione di questi valori oltre la sfera politica.

Le accuse di corruzione contro Karina Milei minacciano di indebolire questa visione. Difendendo la sorella, Milei rischia di erodere la sua credibilità come riformatore. Se vuole consolidare la sua eredità, affrontare queste accuse con decisione – potenzialmente rimuovendo Karina dal suo ruolo privilegiato – dimostrerebbe il suo impegno per le riforme e la trasparenza. Senza un'azione del genere, l'opposizione potrebbe guadagnare terreno, vanificando i progressi compiuti.

L'enorme potenziale dell'Argentina è frenato dal suo passato perònista. Le riforme di Milei gettano solide fondamenta, ma il percorso verso un'economia di mercato fiorente richiede un'azione incessante da parte di tutta la società, dalla base alla Casa Rosada. L'Argentina deve abbracciare una più ampia cultura di innovazione e iniziativa individuale, abbattendo le barriere che impediscono la crescita. Solo allora la nazione abbandonerà la strada verso la schiavitù e imboccherà la strada verso la prosperità. 

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

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Since the beginning of the Progressive Era (1900-1920) the dominate ideology or world view of the professional managerial class of court intellectuals, opinion leaders and editorial directors of the elite mainstream regime media, bureaucratic functionaries and staff of the administrative state, the federal judiciary, members of Congress, and those persons who comprise the top echelon of the military industrial complex and the deep state, has been a synthesis of what has been described as corporate liberalism or proponents of the welfare-warfare state.

The outstanding economist/historian Murray N. Rothbard used the term “corporate liberalism” in his works, particularly in his historical analyses of the Progressive Era and the New Deal, to describe a political-economic system involving a collusive partnership between Big Business and Big Government. 

A key source for this concept in Rothbard’s work is his posthumously published book The Progressive Era (2017), and the idea is also discussed in The Betrayal of the American Right and his essay “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty”. 

Key Points of Rothbard’s View on Corporate Liberalism:

Definition: Rothbard defined “corporate liberalism” as an ideology and movement, championed by certain big business leaders, to establish a strong, centralized state that would regulate the economy in a manner that served their interests, in contrast to a genuine free market.

Historical Context: He argued that during the Progressive Era and the New Deal, corporate elites, in the name of “reform” and “anti-corruption,” sought to cartelize industries and gain state power and perquisites.

Mechanism: This was achieved through government regulations, appointed committees, and centralization of power, which restricted competition and increased the power of insulated bureaucrats and special interests allied with big business.

Ideological Deception: Rothbard contended that this system was deceptively presented under the ideology of “free enterprise,” while in reality, it was a form of state capitalism.

The “Establishment” Consensus: He viewed the post-WWII consensus, including Cold War interventionism, as the triumph of “corporate liberalism”. 

The Progressive Era saw the birth of the cult of efficiency, with the new administrative state’s apolitical credentialed experts gingerly guiding public-policy instead of the archaic rule of political bosses and their ethnic urban political machines. Or, at least that was what was supposed to happen according to Progressives such as Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, Robert LaFollette, Jane Addams, Richard Ely, Lincoln Steffens, Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson.

The insightful attorney and political analyst Robert Barnes in a recent “daily brief” at VivaBarnesLaw.Locals.com brilliantly encapsulated this reality of elite rule in America.

“Charles Murray’s Coming Apart was like a sequel to the brilliant book The Big Sort. Lived experience now varies as widely and wildly as ever: working class Americans see, feel, and remember a very different narrative of life than the professional-managerial upper middle class who govern us. Who is this class? Those with certifications or licensures, college or more degrees, in a job that manages others. They dominate those with a post-college degree especially. They claim the right to govern others due to those degrees and certifications and licenses, as the credentialed class claims credibility from those credentials.

“Consider what is typical or atypical of this professional managerial class. Most spent their lives amongst other upper middle-class professionals. Quite literally. Their neighborhoods were professional class dominated neighborhoods. No risk of a Mr. Rogers’ or Mr. Robinson’s neighbor. Their schools were professional class dominated institutions. Their churches or organizations are professional class dominated. Their cultural outings are usually professional class dominated. Their parents and siblings and cousins were professional class dominant. They often never lived in a small town. They often never employed in a working-class occupation involving physical labor. They often never served in the grunt units of the military. They know few firemen, cops, or frontline workers. They never experienced poverty or dramatic loss of status. They don’t own guns, smoke or dip tobacco, or even ever walked on a factory floor or construction site. Evangelicals are freaks to them. Swamp people means neither DC nor the excellent reality series; it’s those folks who live in the scary backwoods.

“They see their status as deserved, as they define deserts by professional class standards: approval from teachers in school, and approval from authority figures in life, measured by grades, degrees, credentials, licenses, and public acclaim from approved authority figures. Their over-achieving, teacher-pet mindset surrounded themselves often with like-minded individuals, often not even knowing the kids for whom school was not a match.

“Now, add to that surrounding themselves with other professional class sources of information: medical “experts” approved by the state, judges in courts of law, professional politicians in representative government, professionalized credentialed journalists in big institutional media, and teachers of themselves and their children. Of the professional class, by the professional class, for the professional class. Then add to that censorship of dissident opinions, deplatforming dissidents, taking away their licenses, removing their credentials, defaming their reputation, and picking friends by political alliance and allegiance.

“Middle America ain’t like these folks. For many in the professional class, all of the following is absent: Pickup trucks, cheap beer, old school action films, proud patriotism, all kinds of fishing and hunting, chain restaurants, the local Kiwanis or Awanas more than art galleries and lefty parades, riding the dog, dream vacations to Dollyworld or Branson still await, folks smoke (and not just weed), work that might require a uniform, friends and family in protective services at the grunt level of police, fire, medical, or military.

“In other words, we are governed by an insular elite acculturated and educated to intellectually incestuous intersectionalism at the moral and practical effect of disastrous public policy. Any platform of change must do all it can to reallocate political capital from the professional managerial class to the people as broadly as achievable. Populism provides part of that answer to any problem: reallocate power to the people whenever and wherever you can.

The post The Elite Who Governs Us appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ginny Garner:

Lew,

Attorney Baron Coleman broke the story about all the Google searches of people and places associated with the Charlie Kirk assassination from IP addresses in Israel and Washington DC months before the TPUSA founder was murdered, indicating foreknowledge of the tragic future event. Coleman is effective because not only is he smart and accurate but he presents his case in a humorous manner. Watch Coleman in 10 minutes demolish the official narrative claiming lone tranny-loving gunman Tyler Robinson killed Kirk.

The post The Charile Kirk Assassination FBI Official Narrative Demolished in 10 Minutes appeared first on LewRockwell.

Lew,

Vice President JD Vance confirmed Charlie Kirk tried to persuade him (and President Trump) to stay out of a war with Iran or anywhere in the Middle East. Note the poster here on X has an avatar with a black and white photo likeness of a young Murray Rothbard and that’s his username as well as the year of the American Revolution. 

We now have confirmation from JD Vance that Charlie Kirk was contacting the White House to push against the US getting drawn into a protracted war in the Middle East against Iran [on behalf of Israel]. I know a lot of people who wouldn’t have liked that. pic.twitter.com/6o6Oph26GB

— Murray (@Rothbard1776) October 30, 2025

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All of us here know that taxation is theft. The government takes part of what you earn and gives it to other people. If this isn’t theft, what is? Murray Rothbard showed this better than anyone, as I explained in my column a short time ago. In brief, ““For there is one crucially important power inherent in the nature of the State apparatus. All other persons and groups in society (except for acknowledged and sporadic criminals such as thieves and bank robbers) obtain their income voluntarily: either by selling goods and services to the consuming public, or by voluntary gift (e.g., membership in a club or association, bequest, or inheritance). Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion, by threatening dire penalties should the income not be forthcoming. That coercion is known as ‘taxation,’ although in less regularized epochs it was often known as ‘tribute.’ Taxation is theft, purely and simply, even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.”

Unfortunately, there are “court intellectuals” who think that theft is all right, and in this week’s column I’d like to discuss some of the drivel they put out. When you hear these ideas, you will probably think that nobody could take such stuff seriously, but these people are in deadly earnest. Here is what Rothbard says about the court intellectuals: ““It is instructive to inquire why it is that the State, in contrast to the highwayman, invariably surrounds itself with an ideology of legitimacy, why it must indulge in all these hypocrisies. The reason is that the highwayman is not a visible, permanent, legal, or legitimate member of society, let alone a member with exalted status. He is always on the run from his victims or from the State itself. But the State, in contrast to a band of highwaymen, is not considered a criminal organization; on the contrary, its minions have generally held the positions of highest status in society. It is a status that allows the State to feed off its victims while making at least most of them support, or at least be resigned to, this exploitative process. In fact, it is precisely the function of the State’s ideological minions and allies to explain to the public that the Emperor does indeed have a fine set of clothes. In brief, the ideologists must explain that, while theft by one or more persons or groups is bad and criminal, that when the State engages in such acts, it is not theft, but the legitimate and even sanctified act called ‘taxation.’”

One of these arguments is from the most influential political philosopher of the past century, John Rawls. He says that equality is the default position. Everybody should have the same income. However, he soon modifies this. He realizes that we respond to incentives. If unequal incomes are allowed, this might turn out to be to everybody’s advantage. To insist on absolute equality, even if this left everyone worse off, would be cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Rawls proposes his famous difference principle, which says that all inequalities must be to the advantage of the least well-off group. Suppose that someone objects that the difference principle is unfair. “If I am talented and am able to earn more than most people, why should my income be limited to what turns out to be best for the worst off? Don’t I have the right to benefit from my superior talents?” Rawls’s theory does not rule out the competitive pursuit of excellence. But he believes individuals cannot justifiably complain if they don’t get all the benefits from their superior achievement.

Rawls says that people don’t deserve to get the rewards of these talents. Aaron Judge earns millions of dollars because he is a great baseball player. Yet his abilities do not stem from any special virtue on his part. He was just lucky that, by some combination of heredity and environment, he ended up with superior skills.

Rawls has ignored something that should be obvious. It’s obvious to those of us here. This is that people have a natural right to what they earn. Even if Rawls is right about people being lucky, it doesn’t follow that the government can take away part of what you earn and give it to the poor. (And of course, he’s wrong that people don’t deserve what they earn. If you have talent, you still have to work hard to earn a lot of money. If that isn’t desert, what is?) If you choose to help the poor, you’re free to do so, but it’s up to you. The best defense of natural rights is Murray Rothbard’s great book The Ethics of Liberty.

I’d now like to turn to another attempt to justify taxation and show you how to answer it. These leftists don’t say, as most leftists do, that property rights aren’t absolute: you don’t have the right to keep all that you own, if the government’s exactions are devoted to a good purpose. Quite the contrary, they adopt a much more radical stance. You are not giving away anything at all to the government when you pay taxes, since you own only what the law says you do.

They are very direct on this point. Here is what they say: “If there is a dominant theme that runs through our discussion, it is this: Private property is a legal convention, defined in part by the tax system; therefore, the tax system cannot be evaluated by looking at its impact on private property, conceived as something that has independent existence and validity. Taxes must be evaluated as part of the overall system of property rights that they help to create. . .. The conventional nature of property rights is both perfectly obvious and remarkably easy to forget . . . We cannot start by taking as given . . . some initial allocation of possessions— what people own, what is theirs, prior to government interference.”

An example quickly discloses the authors’ fallacy. Suppose that the government banned free speech. Against those who claimed that this violates people’s rights, advocates of the  ban replied in this way: “Don’t you see the obvious conceptual error that underlies your protest? ‘Free speech’ is a legal category. People have no independent liberty of speech, apart from what a particular legal system grants them. Your opposition is absurd.”

They admit that there is a strong objection to their position, namely that it makes us all slaves of the government. They admit that their view “is likely to arouse strong resistance” because it “sounds too much like the claim that the entire social product really belongs to the government, and that all after-tax income should be seen as a kind of dole that each of us receives from the government, if it chooses to look on us with favor.”

They shrink from the full implications of their position, because they know people won’t stand for the outright assertion that they are slaves of the state. How is this tension in their presentation to be resolved? I suspect that in practice they would not deviate very far from the total subordination of property rights to the state. They consider endowment taxation, in which people are taxed, not just on their income, but rather on their potential to generate revenue. Someone who abandoned a multi-million-dollar business career in order to become a Trappist monk might on the endowment account be taxed as if he continued to receive his former high income.  They wind up rejecting this monstrous proposal, though not on the grounds that it compels people to work.

To reject the proposal because it compelled people to work would put them suspiciously close to a famous argument, advanced very effectively by Robert Nozick, that income taxes are like forced labor. Of course they cannot accept this libertarian view; They say that “we may assume that this argument is not dispositive against taxation of earnings.” Since taxation is acceptable—this we know a priori—no argument that holds it illegitimate is right. But then we cannot reject endowment taxation if we reason in a way that would also condemn the income tax. “[T]here is no intrinsic moral objection to taxing people who don’t earn wages.” We can maintain that endowment taxation is “too radical” to put into effect because the public won’t accept it; but we cannot reject it in principle. Let’s do everything we can to remind people that taxation is theft and get rid of the income tax!

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It is an absolute fact that the American Dream is denied American Workers because a bribed, corrupt, and terrified Congress gave the resources to the Zionist Jewish Lobby aka Deep State aka Parasitic Super-Rich Ruling Class. The Zionist Jewish lobby is the acknowledged leader of the associated criminal groups. Our economic problem is that our public resources are spent on unconstitutional Communist programs, Foreign Aid, and Foreign Deployment of troops and unconstitutional functions. These produce nothing positive and are inflationary. The unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank prints the unlawful Fiat Currency out of thin air.

Members of Congress are the most despicable of all criminals because they took a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, and sold out the Republic for money. I have written several times that the solution to our problems is simple. The United States can’t be invaded because of our oceans. We can only be defeated by Weapons of Mass Destruction or from within. Therefore, we have no legitimate security interest in any country but our own. All of our foreign expenses produce only wars, death and hatred of the United States. Of course the Jewish lobby et al. gets rich at our expense.

We should terminate all Foreign Aid and Foreign Deployment of Troops. NATO is a scam on America because Europe can’t defend us with reciprocal defense from possible invasions. Giving Foreign Aid to Israel is a scam because it is not an ally to support with resources for a common benefit; there is none. Performing regime changes in foreign countries is always a loser for everyone except the Deep State, et al.

The savings from the termination of Foreign Aid, Foreign Deployment of Troops, Regime Change agendas, and the Private Federal Reserve Bank, when added to savings from following the Constitution, will fund the American Dream for working Americans and put us on track for a really great unheard-of lifestyle.

As an economist, at this time I don’t have the numbers to prove what an Economic Miracle would occur if you more than doubled the real income of citizens, which I believe would be the minimum result of these advocated changes.

The Democrats are a Communist party and their every effort is  focused to convert us into a country of Brainwashed Slaves surviving in dangerous sub- standard Stack-and-Pack Housing, dependent on public transportation, receiving little education, minimum wages, and a diet with poor health care. Why else would they bring in over 20 million Illegal Invaders to destroy us, knowing they destroyed Europe? At a minimum, the Illegal Invaders, if not deported, would give Democrats (aka Communists) political control of the United States and a Revolutionary Army with a Minimum ten-to-one numerical advantage over the United States Military. Can you say Draft?

The Democrat’s Illegal Invaders are Parasites on our people. CIS estimated that 69% benefit from one or more welfare programs. A bankrupting 39% used Medicaid. Illegal Invaders reduce available resources for citizens, increase political control of Democrats, and participate in Insurrections leading to Civil War.

President Trump has an active program with ICE to round up and deport Illegals, but it is not comprehensive enough and has deported less than 10% of Illegals, which means they will destroy our country. Democrats are using the Illegals to start a Civil War, and it has already started.

I have always been a supporter of President Trump, but that will no longer be true if he refuses to end Foreign Aid, Foreign Deployment of Troops, Regime Change objectives, and the Private Federal Reserve Bank. Of course, he must also follow the Constitution and use Deadly Force to counteract Deadly Force used by Communist Insurgents. He must stop insurrections and arrest the organizing funders before it morphs into Civil War. The American people will not long tolerate Communist-directed attacks without shooting back.

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“In spite of all the rhetoric, we will go deeper in debt, the Fed will print more money, and the value of the dollar will continue to plummet.” – Ron Paul

Never in history have the economic and political structures been so manipulated by those who are responsible for their safekeeping; never has so much been at stake, in so many countries, and facing collapse, all at the same time.

The great majority of people in the First World recognise that the world is passing through an economic crisis. However, most are under the impression that there are some pretty smart fellows running the show and all they need to do is tweak the system a bit more and we’ll return to happy days.

Not so. The “smart fellows” who are in charge of fixing the problem are in fact the very same people who created it.

Understandably, this a hard concept for most people to even consider, let alone accept, as the very idea that those in charge of the system might consciously collapse it seems preposterous. So, we might wish to back up a bit here and present a very brief history of the system itself, in order to understand that the eventual collapse of the economic system was baked in the cake from the very beginning.

Creating a Central Bank

From the very earliest days of the formation of the American republic, bankers (along with inside help from George Washington’s secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton) sought to create a banking monopoly that would create the country’s currency and become the central banking system.

The first attempt at a central bank was a failure, and strong opponents, including Thomas Jefferson, prevented a second central bank for a time. Later, further attempts were made by bankers and their political cronies, and each central bank was either short-lived or defeated in its planning stages.

Then, in 1913, the heads of the largest banks met clandestinely on Jekyll Island, Georgia, to make another try. Having recently lost yet another bid to create a central bank, due to the public’s understandable concern that the big bankers were already too powerful, a new spin was placed on the idea. This time, they decided to present the idea as a government body that would be decentralised and would have the responsibility of restricting the power of the banks.

However, the new bill was in fact the same old bill, with a new title and some minor changes in wording. But this time, it would be presented by the new president, who was a liberal.

The president, Woodrow Wilson, had in fact been handpicked by the banks. The banks then scuttled their own conservative party’s candidate, got the Democrat Wilson elected, then installed a secretary of the Treasury whose job it would be to ensure that the Federal Reserve was created.

The bill was widely supported by the public, even though, in truth, it was not a federal agency, but a privately owned conglomerate, controlled by the banks. Neither was it a reserve. It was never intended to store money; it was intended to give the biggest bankers control of the economy. They followed the central principle of uber-banker Mayer Rothschild: “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.”

From the start, the new institution peddled itself as the protector of the people’s interests, but it was quite the opposite. Its purpose from its inception was to control the economy and the government by controlling the issuance of the currency. In addition, it was to be a system of taxation.

Typically, a population accepts a certain amount of direct taxation but has its limits of tolerance. Yet, the bankers understood that a less direct method of taxation was infinitely more profitable and infinitely safer from criticism.

Inflation as a Profit System

Inflation was not always the norm. At one time, prices were relatively static from one generation to the next. But the Federal Reserve touted the idea that “controlled” inflation was in fact necessary for a prosperous economy.

Of course, the greater the debasement of the currency through inflation, the more the central bankers profited. But at some point, the currency would have lost virtually all its value and it would be time for a reset. The currency would need to collapse and a new one created.

And so, the Fed set about its hundred-year programme of continuous inflation. Although there have been periods of lower inflation (and even deflation), the programme stayed more or less on course, and now, its hundred-year life has all but ended: the dollar has been devalued almost 100%.

And so, we find ourselves at the day of reckoning. The economic crisis we are now facing (not only in the US; it will be felt, to a greater or lesser extent, worldwide) is not a mere anomaly that we need to “push past”. It’s a systemic crisis. It’s been created by design and the system must collapse.

Of course, the central banks are in the process of protecting their interests, to make sure that, whilst this will be a major economic calamity, they themselves will continue to profit. The damage will be borne by the general public.

This began in earnest in 1999, with the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, allowing banks to create a massive, reckless mortgage spree. It was backed by the government’s “too big to fail” policy that guaranteed that, when the banks predictably became insolvent as a result of the loans, government would bail them out. (And by “government” we mean “the taxpayer”; it was he who picked up the bill for the banks’ recklessness.)

The next step in getting ready for the collapse is an all-out effort to confiscate the wealth of the public. This can be seen in the effort to push investors away from solid forms of wealth protection such as gold and silver and into stocks, bonds and bank deposits. More recently, we’ve seen the emergence of an effort to end the use of safe deposit boxes and a push to end the use of paper currency in making transactions.

The end objective is to force as much money as possible into deposits in banks, then take it. The US, EU and a few other countries have passed confiscation legislation, allowing the banks carte blanche to confiscate and/or refuse to release deposits.

Of course a reset of these proportions will not be without its fallout. The public will be horrified at the outcome, at the realisation that the very institutions they thought had been created to protect them had never been intended to serve their interests at all.

Once they realise that the world’s greatest Ponzi scheme has been foisted on them, they will be hopping mad and justifiably so. Those who had not had the foresight to internationalise themselves, to remove themselves as much as possible from the system, will most certainly want to get even in some way.

And this makes clear why governments, particularly that of the US, are working so hard to create a police state. Unless a totalitarian state can be created, those who are presently taking the wealth may not be able to fully realise their objectives.

The coming train wreck is no accident. It has long been planned. That the “smart fellows in charge” will somehow save the day is therefore a vain hope indeed.

It’s still possible to back out of the system, but it’s getting more difficult every day. The window is closing.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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Last week U.S. President Donald Trump published a confused tweet about nuclear testing:

…  Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis.  …

Some media panicky wrote that Trump had ordered to detonate nuclear warheads.

I disagreed with that interpretation:

All nuclear warheads the U.S. has are under the control of the Department of Energy. It is the sole agency that can do test explosions of nuclear warheads. The nuclear delivery vehicles which are used to deploy the war heads are under the control of the Department of Defense (or ‘Department of War’ as Trump calls it).

Trump said “Because of other countries testing programs” and “start testing … on an equal basis” both in reference of nuclear delivery vehicle tests of other countries.

Trump thereby likely meant to order the DoD to test its nuclear delivery vehicles, just like Russia has recently done. He did not order the DoE to test nuclear war heads.

The testing of nuclear delivery vehicles, like intercontinental missiles, is a routine that has been done every year since those exist.

It is nothing to panic about.

On Sunday the Energy Secretary confirms that no nuclear explosions are involved (archived):

The nuclear testing ordered by President Trump will not involve nuclear explosions, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday, adding that the testing would involve “the other parts of a nuclear weapon” to ensure they are working properly.

Mr. Wright’s comments came four days after Mr. Trump made the declaration that he was ordering the U.S. military to resume nuclear testing “on an equal basis” with other countries, raising the specter of a return to the worst days of the Cold War.

“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are systems tests,” Mr. Wright said in an interview on the Fox News show “The Sunday Briefing.” “These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call noncritical explosions.”

Noncritical or subcritical explosion test are those where, for example, the chemical explosives which, within a nuclear warhead, are supposed to initiate the nuclear fission are tested for their stability. That is, like testing the wiring of a warhead detonator, routine stuff which every country that has nuclear weapons does on a regular basis.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory is where the U.S. is doing these tests:

Subcritical experiments allow researchers to evaluate the behavior of nuclear materials (usually plutonium) in combination with high explosives. This configuration mimics the fission stage of a modern nuclear weapon. However, subcrits remain below the threshold of reaching criticality. No critical mass is formed, and no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurs—there is no nuclear explosion.
…
Although subcrits don’t create self-sustaining nuclear reactions, in many ways, they harken back to the days of full-scale nuclear testing. Since the 1992 moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing, subcrits have provided valuable data related to weapons design, safety, materials, aging, and more. This information helps scientists determine if America’s nuclear weapons will work as intended.

These experiments are legit even under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. They are, just as I had said, no need to panic.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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Even if an AI program advises selling everything and walking away from the market for five years, how many of us would take this advice?

Only those who experienced the heady euphoria of the late 1990s dot-com bubble in tech stocks know what the shift from “can’t lose” confidence to “can’t win” surrender feels like. The chart below illustrates this emotional cycle of confidence rising and fading as bubbles inflate and deflate.

Though we like to tell ourselves we’re rational investors, animal spirits are the driving force in euphoric bubbles where our beliefs direct our decisions: we come to believe that we’re smarter than the cautious dummies, that the technological revolution underway has plenty more room to run, that policies supportive of stocks have been refined and institutionalized to the point they’re rock-solid foundations, and so on.

Though the chart doesn’t go back to the 1870s bust or the 1930s Great Depression, the cycle played out in those eras, too. The process of confidence fading is painfully long, as the rewards of “buying the dip” have been so generous and reliable that we naturally assume any decline will be brief.

When the recovery we anticipated rolls over and reaches new lows, we’re sure the authorities will “do whatever it takes” to reinflate the markets, but authorities don’t actually have god-like powers; their powers only appeared god-like because conditions favored their interventions.

Every new low hurts, but we’re still confident that the market fundamentals are intact, authorities have plenty of policy bazookas they can launch, and the recommendations of Wall Street analysts to “buy the dip” are encouraging.

(Those trading in the 2000-2002 era recall Wall Street analysts touting dot-com stocks that had fallen from $80 to $40 as “strong buys,” meanwhile the stock finally bottom at $4. Following the “buy” recommendation yielded a 90% loss.)

We attribute any run of bad luck to over-confidence rather than misjudgment of the entire market and economy: OK, we blew the last few trades, but we can get our mojo back.

In the years this process takes to exhaust itself, inflation is eating away at nominal stock prices. As the third chart illustrates, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) finally returned to its 1966 peak above 1,000 in 1973, that didn’t mean investors were made whole; inflation had consumed 37% of the value of their stock holdings. To be made whole, DJIA would have to reach 1,370, not 1,000.

The real losses were even bleaker the next time the DJIA again closed above 1,000 on October 12,1982. Investors who held their index portfolios from the peak in 1966 to 1982 lost two-thirds of the purchasing power of their investment. They would not be made whole until the DJIA rose well above 3,000.

The trend that pops out of this long-term chart is that each new peak of household assets invested in stocks is higher than the previous peak. What will the nominal valuation of stock indices be when the percentage of household assets invested in stocks falls from 45% to 15%? What will the purchasing power of the money invested be (i.e. adjusted for real-world inflation) at that point?

Read the Whole Article

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A new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that nearly 5% of U.S. physicians left clinical practice in 2019, representing a 40% increase in just six years.

It confirms what every practicing doctor already knows: America’s physicians are burning out, checking out, and getting out, with female physicians and those in rural areas being the most likely to exit.

The study, conducted by Rotenstein and colleagues from Yale, UCLA, and UCSF, examined over 700,000 physicians who treated Medicare patients and found that doctors caring for older, sicker, and poorer patients were more likely to leave the profession. Although the paper is descriptive rather than prescriptive, the message is clear — the medical profession is hemorrhaging.

Medicine has become the only profession where the customer isn’t the patient, the boss isn’t the doctor, and the computer always wins.

The reasons for this mass departure aren’t mysterious; they’re baked into the system.

For many doctors, it’s death by a thousand clicks. The modern doctor’s day is no longer defined by caring for patients but about feeding the bureaucratic beast. Electronic health records were promoted as time-savers, but they quickly became time thieves.

For every hour of patient care, physicians spend nearly two hours on documentation and desk work. None of it enhances health care, but all of it keeps lawyers and administrators satisfied. Sacrificed are evenings with family, replaced by late-night charting marathons to satisfy billing requirements.

Then there’s malpractice anxiety, the ever-present sword of Damocles. Roughly one in three physicians has faced a lawsuit at some point in their career. Even in states with tort reform, a single bad outcome or an opportunistic attorney can bring years of stress and financial burden.

The result is “defensive medicine,” where tests and referrals are ordered not because patients need them but because lawyers might. There is also the psychological stress. Any physician who has been sued, whether the case had merit or not, carries that scar forward. Every future patient becomes a potential plaintiff.

Add to that decreasing reimbursements and increasing costs. Medicare physician payments have fallen 33% since 2001 after adjusting for inflation, while practice expenses have risen 59% during the same period.

Insurers set payment rates that barely cover overhead, while inflation, staffing shortages, and mandatory technology upgrades push expenses higher. Independent physicians, those who still see medicine as a calling rather than a corporate job, are selling out to hospitals.

According to the AMA, “The share of physicians working in private practices in 2024 was 42.2 percent, a decline of 18 percentage points from 60.1 percent in 2012.” In other words, less than half of doctors remain in private practice.

Private equity’s involvement in medicine has surged. Their approach is straightforward: Acquire practices, increase productivity, cut expenses, and sell for profit. For doctors, this translates to more metrics, less independence, and ongoing pressure to see more patients in less time. The outcome isn’t about efficiency — it’s corporatized medicine, where healing becomes a profit center and burnout a rounding error.

Blue Cross Blue Shield now uses AI algorithms to cut payments to doctors they believe are overcharging for their most complex patients. Yet politicians face no such “adjustments” for their own ongoing fiscal malpractice.

Surveys reveal that approximately 45% of U.S. physicians currently report symptoms of burnout, and 1 in 5 doctors plan to leave clinical medicine within the next two years.

Read the Whole Article

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Stories about killer robots, machine-augmented heroes, laser weapons and battles in space – outer or cyber – have always been good for filling cinema seats, but now they have started to liven up sober academic journals and government white papers.

However, war is about much more than combat or how we fight. Is the sensationalism of high-tech weaponry blinding us to technology’s impact on the broader social, political and cultural context that determines why, where and when war happens, what makes it more or less likely, and who wins?

Consider artificial intelligence (AI). The potential for developing lethal autonomous weapons systems grabs headlines (“killer robots!”), but the greatest impact of AI on conflict may be socially mediated. Algorithmically-driven social media connections funnel individuals into trans-national but culturally enclosed echo-chambers, radicalising their world-view.

As robots relieve humans of their jobs, some societies will prove better prepared than others in their use of education and infrastructures for transitioning workers into new, socially sustainable and economically productive ways to make a living. Less prepared nations could see increasingly stark inequality, with economically-excluded young people undermining social stability, losing faith with technocratic governance, and spurring the rise of leaders who aim popular anger at an external enemy.

Looking beyond individual technologies allows us to focus on the broader and deeper dimensions of the transformation coming our way. Professor Klaus Schwab, chairman and founder of the World Economic Forum, argues that the collapse of barriers between digital and physical, and between synthetic and organic, constitutes a Fourth Industrial Revolution, promising a level of change comparable to that brought about by steam power, electricity and computing.

Something that makes this revolution fundamentally different is how it challenges ideas about what it means to be human. For instance, neuroscience is teaching us more about our own fallibility, and also just how ‘hackable’ humans are. As science continues to uncover difficult truths about how we really operate, we will have to confront basic assumptions about the nature of human beings. Whether this deep transformation will reinforce or undermine a shared sense of human dignity, and what effects it will have on our relationship with organized violence, remain open to question.

The experience of past industrial revolutions can help us begin to search for answers about how this will transform the wider context of international security. In the first industrial revolution, deposits of coal and iron ore were one factor determining the “winners” in terms of economic and geopolitical power.

Today, new modes and artefacts of industrial production will also change demand patterns, empowering countries controlling supply and transit, and disempowering others. Progress in energy production and storage efficiency, for instance, is likely to have profound consequences for the petro economies and the security challenges of their regions. Although the set of natural resources critical to strategic industries will change, their use as a geo-economic tool will probably be repeated.

For instance, this is widely thought to have happened when, in the midst of a maritime dispute with Japan in 2010, China restricted export of “rare earths” that are critical for computing, sensors, permanent magnets and energy storage. With ever more commercial and military value embedded in the technology sector, such key materials will be deemed “critical” or “strategic” in terms of national security, and be subject to political as well as market forces.

The 19th Century Industrial Revolution showed how technological asymmetry can translate into geopolitical inequality – in the words of Hilaire Belloc’s poem ‘The modern traveller’, spoken by a European about Africa: “Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim Gun, and they have not”. (The Maxim Gun was the first recoil-operated machine gun).

What will be the Maxim Gun of our time? Who will have it, and who will not? In the 20th Century, the “haves and have-nots” of the nuclear weapons club membership became the major determinant of the post-war global order, and – as seen in the cases of Iran and North Korea today – this continues to be relevant. Stealth technology and precision guided missiles used to impose a “new world order” in the early 1990s showed how the gap in military capability separated the United States from others, sustaining its leadership of a “unipolar” order.

According to the current US deputy secretary of defence Robert Work, “There’s no question that US military technological superiority is beginning to erode”.

History can only tell us only so much. There is a need for fresh thinking about the implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution for international security.

Strategic de-stabilisation

1. Waging war may seem “easier”. If increased reliance on machines for remote killing makes combat more abstract from our everyday experience, could that make it more tolerable for our societies, and therefore make war more likely? Those who operate lethal systems are ever more distant from the battlefield and insulated from physical danger, but this sense of advantage may prove illusory. Those on the receiving end of technological asymmetries have a stronger incentive to find other ways to strike back: when you cannot compete on a traditional battlefield, you look to where your adversary is vulnerable, such as through opportunistic attacks on civilians.

2. Speed kills. “The speed at which machines can make decisions in the far future is likely to challenge our ability to cope, demanding a new relationship between man and machine.” This was the assessment of US Major General William Hix at a conference on the future of the Army in October 2016. The speed of technological innovation also makes it hard to keep abreast of new military capabilities, easier to be misled on the actual balance of power, and to fall victim to a strategic miscalculation. The fact that some capabilities are deliberately hidden just makes it harder. Because offensive cyber capability relies so much on exploiting one-off vulnerabilities, it is difficult to simultaneously demonstrate and maintain a capability. Once a particular vulnerability has been exploited, the victim is alerted and will take steps to fix it. General Hix again: “A conventional conflict in the near future will be extremely lethal and fast, And we will not own the stopwatch.”

3. Fear and uncertainty increase risk. The expectation that asymmetries could change quickly – as may be the case with new strategic capabilities in areas like artificial intelligence, space, deep sea and cyber – could incentivise risk-taking and aggressive behaviour. If you are confident that you have a lead in a strategically-significant but highly dynamic field of technology, but you are not confident that the lead will last, you might be more tempted to use it before a rival catches up. Enhanced capacity to operate at speed puts security actors into a constant state of high alert, incentivises investment in resilience, and forces us to live with uncertainty. Under these conditions, war by mistake – either through over-confidence in your ability to win, or because of exaggerated threat perception – becomes more likely.

4. Deterrence and pre-emption. When new capabilities cause a shift in the balance between offensive and defensive advantage – or even the perception of such a shift -, it could increase the incentives for aggression. For example, one of the pillars of nuclear deterrence is the “second strike” capability, which puts the following thought into the mind of an actor contemplating a nuclear attack: “even if I destroy my opponent’s country totally, their submarines will still be around to take revenge”. But suppose swarms of undersea drones were able to track and neutralize the submarines that launch nuclear missiles? Long-range aerial drones can already navigate freely across the oceans, and will be able to fly under the radar deep into enemy territory. Such capabilities make it possible in theory for an actor to escape the fear of second-strike retaliation, and feel safer in launching a pre-emptive strike against aircraft in their hangars, ships in port, and critical infrastructure, with practically no chance of early warning. Indeed, cyberattacks on banks, power stations and government institutions have demonstrated that it is no longer necessary to fly bombers around the world to reach a distant enemy’s critical infrastructure without early warning. The idea of striking a `knockout blow` may come to seem feasible once more.

5. The new arms race is harder to control. One of the mechanisms for strategic stability is arms control agreements, which have served to limit the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. When it comes to the multiple combinations of technology we see as a hallmark of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, one of the obstacles to international agreement is caused by uncertainty about how strategic benefits will be distributed. For instance, the international community is currently debating both the ethics and practicality of a ban on the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems. One of the factors holding this debate back from a conclusion is a lack of consensus among experts about whether such systems would give an advantage to the defender or the attacker, and hence be more likely to deter or incentivize the escalation of conflict. Where you stand on the issue may depend on whether you see yourself as a master of the technology, or a victim. Another obstacle to imposing control is the wider cast of players –

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With last November’s election, the conservative Right in this country secured a massive victory. Donald Trump won the presidency handily, the GOP gained control of both the House and the Senate, and the Democratic Party was in disarray, with no one to bring them back to prominence. It appeared clear that the nation could look forward to years of Republican dominance.

That’s not so clear anymore, because a schism threatens to tear apart the Right, one whose epicenter lies not in America but in Israel.

This rift has been brewing for years, especially since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel; the latest flashpoint occurred last week when Tucker Carlson interviewed provocateur Nick Fuentes. The actual content of the interview became irrelevant; the real argument was over Carlson giving a “platform” to a man many on the Right consider a neo-Nazi antisemite. But what escalated the internal fight was a video by Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation (which is known to be pro-Israel). In it, he did not condemn Carlson, although he made clear that he rejected antisemitism and abhorred many of the views expressed by Fuentes over the years. Roberts encouraged discussion of the issues rather than fostering a cancel culture on the Right. It was a reasonable and balanced statement, so of course people online freaked out.

And when I say “freaked out,” I’m not exaggerating. People were literally comparing Roberts’s video to the early days of Nazi Germany, saying statements like his (which, remember, explicitly condemned antisemitism) were the first steps to a new Holocaust. Pro-Israel conservatives tripped over themselves to condemn Roberts—and, most importantly, made sure to be seen condemning him.

The standard argument one hears whenever anyone criticizes Israel—or even allows criticism to be made without condemnation—is “this is how the Holocaust began.” To permit even the slightest criticism is to invite mass evil. Now, because it’s necessary these days in these debates, let me make something explicit: I do believe the Holocaust happened and was one of the worst evils ever perpetrated by man. Millions of innocent Jews were slaughtered in the most cruel and evil ways. Faithful Catholics of the time, such as Dietrich von Hildebrand, Servant of God Therese Neumann, and St. Maximilian Kolbe understood this in the moment and rightly resisted the Nazi regime. We absolutely don’t want to go back, as the saying goes.

Yet the way many seek to avoid another Holocaust is too simplistic and may even be counterproductive. It’s true that the Holocaust happened because the Jews were historically scapegoated and unfairly criticized and attacked. Few in early 1930’s Germany defended them as the scapegoating was intensified. But does that mean that no criticism of modern Israel, no matter how mild, should be allowed? I see three possible outcomes of such a policy.

The first possibility is that stifling any and all criticism of Israel prevents another Holocaust, just as supposedly intended. Criticism could escalate to attacks and full-fledged scapegoating, so by nipping the problem in the bud, the ultimate tragedy is averted. But that’s not the only possible outcome of this strategy.

A second, and more likely, possibility is that by refusing to allow even legitimate criticism of Israel, resentment grows against its protected status, leading to more, not less, antisemitism. People begin to wonder why Israel—and Jews in general—are considered off-limits, and frustration caused by this artificial boundary becomes fuel for antisemitic conspiracies. This, in fact, is exactly what is happening now.

A third possibility, which can happen in conjunction with the second, is that due to its impunity, Israel has license to commit gravely evil acts without fear of consequences. If Israel truly has unconditional support from America, then any and all limits are removed in its efforts to achieve its political goals. And since Israel, like every nation, is ruled by sinful men, it’s likely those men will cross moral lines if given free reign to do so. And this also is happening now, as all objective observers acknowledge.

Thus, by awarding Israel with a protected status in order to prevent another Holocaust, pro-Israel conservatives excuse current evils and increase the likelihood of causing what they purportedly seeks to prevent.

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The post The Growing Conservative Schism and How To Avoid It appeared first on LewRockwell.

In Wednesday’s episode of The Peter Schiff Show, Peter responds to the Fed’s latest rate cut, laying out why the Fed’s attempts to normalize policy have failed and how that failure ripples across markets, housing, and wages. He walks listeners through the permanence of the Fed’s bloated balance sheet, what that means for mortgage-backed securities and rate expectations, why gold still matters as a sanity check, and how market concentration and inflation interact with workers’ hopes for higher pay.

He opens by returning to an argument he made years ago about the Fed’s inability to unwind its interventions, calling out past assurances that now look impossible to keep in 2025:

Back then I said there’s no way that the Fed is going to reverse this, that this is a monetary roach motel the Fed checked in, and it ain’t never checking out. Well here we are now in 2025 and the balance sheet is 6.7 trillion, and the Fed says we’re not making it any smaller. Which proves that Ben Bernanke lied or just was completely incompetent if he actually believed what he was saying. I at least was smart enough to know that what he was saying was impossible.

Peter then explains one technical but consequential detail about how the Fed is handling its holdings, and why that nuance matters for the housing market rather than being a small bookkeeping change:

Also what the Fed mentioned is that to the extent that bonds mature they will continue to roll over the principal. But if it is a mortgage backed security that matures the Fed won’t roll that over into more mortgage backed securities. It will roll it into treasuries. And so this instead of helping the housing market a lot of people thought that hey if we stop quantitative tightening it’s going to really help the mortgage market because the Fed won’t be selling mortgage backed securities. Well they’re not going to be buying them either.

He also breaks down the market’s reaction and what Jerome Powell’s comments mean for rate-cut expectations, noting how quickly investor bets can shift and why many still cling to hopes for a December cut:

Now before today’s announcement a December cut was virtually a lock. And so now the odds have gone down considerably, although it’s still favored. Now it’s a bit surprising that the markets didn’t react even more negatively to Powell basically rug pulling a December rate cut when the markets are pretty much banking on that. So I think maybe a lot of people believe that we’re still going to get a cut in December. I would put myself in that camp.

To show how distorted market prices can become when policy is loose, Peter points to the extreme concentration in today’s stock market and the absurdity of a single company approaching the total value of entire national exchanges:

Especially considering that today, Nvidia not only hit a new all-time record high, Nvidia now has a market cap of over $5 trillion, $5 trillion. To put that into perspective, there are only three countries in the world that have a total stock market capitalization. That means all the publicly traded stocks in the entire country. There’s only three countries where the whole stock market is worth $5 trillion, the United States and China, and the third one is Japan.

Finally, Peter tackles the perennial hope that policymakers can engineer higher wages to catch up with past price inflation, explaining why you can’t reliably inflate your way to prosperity without creating a self-defeating cycle:

So in other words, he wants more inflation so that people can get higher wages to afford the higher prices that resulted from the inflation of the past. But of course, the policies that he is pursuing to increase wages will also increase prices. So it’s going to be like a dog trying to catch his own tail. It’s never going to happen.

This article was originally published on SchiffGold.com.

The post Dog Chasing His Own Tail appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Donald Trump announced that he is preparing the U.S. military to potentially “wipe out” Islamic terrorists who are killing and kidnapping thousands of Christians each year.

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” Trump wrote Saturday on Truth Social.

“I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians!”

Asked Sunday whether he might use military force in the country, the most populous in Africa, Trump affirmed he was not ruling out the possibility.

“Could be, I mean, a lot of things — I envisage a lot of things,” he told journalists. “They’re killing the Christians and killing them in very large numbers. We’re not going to allow that to happen.”

Trump raised the alarm on Friday about the “mass slaughter” of Christians in Nigeria, declaring it a “country of particular concern,” a designation reserved for governments who perpetrate or tolerate “particularly severe violations of religious freedom,” such as that of China, Pakistan, and North Korea.

In his Friday Truth Social post, Trump announced he was tasking Congress with investigating the threat Christians face in Nigeria.

“The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other Countries. We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!

Best-selling rapper Nicki Minaj praised the message from Trump on Saturday, decrying religious persecution.

“Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude,” Minaj posted to X. “We live in a country where we can freely worship God. No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion.”

“Numerous countries all around the world are being affected by this horror & it’s dangerous to pretend we don’t notice,” she continued. “Thank you to The President & his team for taking this seriously,” the rapper added. “God bless every persecuted Christian. Let’s remember to lift them up in prayer.”

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz thanked Minaj, who has a massive following, for speaking out in support of persecuted Christians and invited her to the U.S. Embassy in New York to discuss the matter, an invitation she said she would be “honored” to accept.

A 2025 Global Christian Relief (GCR) Red List report has found that Nigeria is the most dangerous place for Christians in the world. The report detailed how most of the killings in Nigeria occur in northern states governed by Islamic sharia law, where Christians “often live in remote villages in semi-arid landscapes, making them particularly vulnerable to attacks.”

The ongoing violence against Christians in the country has been so frequent that it has been denounced by international observers as a “genocide,” including by secular liberal Bill Maher.

“This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza. They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country,” he recently said while talking with GOP Congresswoman Nancy Mace.

Violence against Christians in Nigeria intensified after 1999 when 12 northern states adopted Sharia law. The rise of the terrorist group Boko Haram in 2009 also intensified Christian persecution. The group famously kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls in 2014; 87 of them are still listed as “missing.”

From 2009 to 2022, over 50,000 Christians had been killed in the country, an Open Doors report found, and the violence has since escalated. A 2024 report found that more than 8,000 Nigerian Christians were killed and thousands more were abducted in 2023, including dozens of priests, making it the bloodiest year on record for Islamic attacks against Christians in the country.

There were 3,100 Christians killed and 2,830 Christians kidnapped in Nigeria in 2024, far more than other countries in the same year, according to the latest Open Doors World Watch List. Attacks continue to spread southward from the Muslim-majority north, displacing families, destroying homes, and burning churches and schools.

Anja Hoffman, executive director of the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe, told LifeSiteNews contributor Jonathon Van Maren that the Nigerian government’s inaction enables the epidemic of violence.

A key factor in this ongoing crisis is impunity,” Hoffman told Van Maren. “Government and security services frequently fail to respond. Although President Bola Tinubu’s 2023 election raised hopes for stronger protection, meaningful change has not materialized. Security forces remain under-resourced, prosecutions are rare, and many local authorities deny a religious motive, making justice elusive.”

Recent attacks in the country have seen the abduction and even murder of Catholic priests and seminarians. In a July press release, the Diocese of Auchi in Edo State reported that several gunmen attacked the Immaculate Conception Minor Seminary, killing one security guard and kidnapping three seminarians.

The incident marks the second time the seminary was attacked within a year. On October 27, 2024, assailants attacked the seminary and attempted to abduct two seminarians. In a courageous act, Father Thomas Oyode, the seminary’s rector, offered himself in their place. As a result, Oyode was held captive for a total of 11 days before being released.

This article was originally published on Lifesite News.

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