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The purpose of the war is “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people.”

• Letter from General Sherman to Mrs. Sherman, July 31, 1862

“[H]ad the Confederates somehow won . . . they would have found themselves justified . . . in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.”

• Lee Kennett, Marching Through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman’s Campaign, p. 286.

“Distinguished military historian B.H. Liddell Hart observed that the code of civilized warfare which had ruled Europe for over two hundred years was first broken by Lincoln’s policy of directing the destruction of civilian life in the South.”

• Charles Adams, When in the Course of Human Events, p. 116.

In When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession Charles Adams wrote of how the first Geneva Convention on War took place in 1863, followed by three more, with the last one being in 1949.  The 1863 convention codified the laws of war as were understood at the time to say: 1) Attacking defenseless cities and towns was a war crime; 2) Plundering and wantonly destroying civilian property was a war crime; and 3) Only necessities could be taken from a civilian population, and they had to be paid for.  Some historians, Adams wrote, claimed that these laws were the laws of war for four centuries and that they were all broken by the Lincoln regime.  The lawlessness of the Lincoln regime, in other words, set the stage for the military atrocities of the twentieth century.

Most Americans have been taught to ignore the Lincoln regime’s war crimes by repeating Sherman’s CYA quip, “war is hell.”  But there is a clear historical record of rape, murder, torture, arson, and the bombing of civilian occupied cities by the Union army.  See for example War Crimes Against
Southern Civilians by Walter Brian Cisco; The Civil War by Shelby Foote; Union Terror by Jeffrey Addicott; and South Carolina Citizens in Sherman’s Path by Karen Stokes for starters.

There you will learn that there was so much murder, arson and theft in Missouri that vast sections of the entire state were uninhabited by the war’s end.  Entire towns, including my former town of Bluffton, South Carolina, were burned to the ground with every private residence set ablaze by U.S. Army “soldiers.”  The Union Army was an army of pyromaniacs, rapists, and thieves.

In August of 1863 Charleston, South Carolina was not defended by Confederate forces when a six-month bombardment of the city commenced, exploding more than 22,000 artillery shells in the city.  Unexploded shells were still being found a century later.

Sherman ordered the four-day bombardment of Atlanta in the Fall of 1864 when it was only occupied by women, children, infants, and elderly men, with his artillerists targeting homes where they spotted human habitation.  As many as 5,000 artillery shells rained down on Atlanta’s civilian population in a single day.  Corpses littered the streets, something that Sherman called “a beautiful sight.”  Thousands of surviving residents were homeless at the onset of winter.

Such war crimes were committed by Lincoln’s army, with his direction and full knowledge, for the duration of the war.  It is said that when the Prussian military invited Sherman’s sidekick, General Phil Sheridan, to present a lecture on the American way of war the Prussians – no shrinking violets – were shocked and disgusted by how he described the murder, rape, plunder, and arson that occurred under his command in the Shenandoah Valley.

Just three months after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia General Sherman was put in charge of the “Military District of the Missouri,” which was all land west of the Mississippi River.  His orders were to essentially wage a campaign of genocide against the Plains Indians, which he did for the next twenty-five years, killing some 45,000 of them, women and children included, and placing the rest in concentration camps called “reservations.”  In 1891, the year of his death, Sherman expressed his regrets that his army did not kill every last Indian.  He is famously associated with the genocidal quip, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.”  He did all this, he once said, “to make way for the [government-subsidized] railroads,” of which he was a major stockholder.

During the Philippine Insurrection (1889) the U.S. Army killed some 200,000 Filipinos, with some estimates that a million civilians were killed.  That was after the Spanish-American War also massacred thousands of civilians.

All of this was brought to mind when I recently ran across a 2010 book entitled Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947 by Thomas Goodrich.  (There is also a YouTube video, “Hellstorm: The Genocide of Germany”).  It is a hard book to read because it describes the results of the American way of war (imitated by the Russians, British, and Germans as well) combined with twentieth century military technology.

Goodrich starts by writing of how Hitler’s 1925 Mein Kampf promised to rid Germany of all “Jewish influence” if he were to ever obtain political power.  This naturally “alarmed Jews worldwide . . .”  Influential Jewish businessmen first organized an international boycott of the German economy and of course denounced the National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazis).  That quickly turned into what the organizer of the boycott called a “holy war” against “cruel and savage beasts,” i.e., all Germans.

Goodrich quotes Hollywood script writer Ben Hecht as writing that a “cancer” flourishes in the world in the form of “Germany, Germanism, and Germans.”  They are “murderers, foul and wanton,” said the Hollywood movie script writer.  “Germany must perish,” added Theodore Kaufman in a book of that title.  He argued that, after the war, “all German men and women should be sterilized” to eliminate the disease of “Germanism and its carriers.” The New York Times praised this as “A Sensational Idea” while the Washington Post labeled it “A provocative theory.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt made these calls for “extermination” and genocide official when he endorsed the so-called “Morgenthau Plan,” named after his Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau.  The plan called for the complete destruction of Germany after the war by the dismantling of all industry and the confiscation of massive amounts of land, among other things.  The plan estimated that the result would be death by starvation of some 50 million Germans.  Their hope was that “within two generations Germany would cease to exist.” When others expressed shock at such a barbaric proposal, Morgenthau snapped, “They asked for it.  Why the hell should I worry about what happens to their people?”  Morgenthau obviously wasn’t worried about what might happen to him in the afterlife.

Winston Churchill also endorsed the plan and, it goes without saying, so did Stalin.  Goodrich claims that Hitler considered the war to be a war against “Jewish Bolshevism” since “Lenin, Trotsky, and many other Russian [communist] revolutionaries were Jewish.”

Hellscape vividly describes the carpet bombing of civilian-occupied Dresden, Germany, where tons and tons of bombs were dropped by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the U.S. Airforce on the defenseless city.  Literally thousands of bombers dropped phosphorous bombs on the city, creating a hellish inferno that melted bodies almost instantly, literally broiling them alive.  The entire city was described as “one huge glowing wave.”  There were thousands of dead bodies everywhere and the stench of burnt, decaying flesh was nauseating, said survivors.  The animals in the Dresden zoo were incinerated along with everyone else caught above ground.

Knowing that people would flee to a large public park outside of the city the RAF dropped tons of high explosive bombs there.  American bombers followed up by strafing the civilians in the park with their machine guns.  This whole scene was repeated day after day as though the objective was to murder every last human being in Dresden.  Goodrich cites estimates of some 400,000 civilians killed in Dresden alone.

This mass murder of defenseless citizens was gleefully and fiendishly repeated in Hamburg and many other German cities near the end of the war when there was little or no military resistance.  “What had taken the German nation over two millennia to build, had taken its enemies a mere six years to destroy,” Goodrich concludes.

Goodrich writes of how Stalin considered Russian prisoners of war to be traitors since his order was to fight to the death.  The American authorities after the war helped Stalin enforce his rule with “operation keelhaul,” which returned thousands of Russian prisoners of war back to Stalin.  “[T]he entire Cossack nation had been delivered to the Soviets.  Within days, most were either dead or bolted into cattle cars for the one-way ride to Siberia” and slave labor.  Over five million Soviet citizens were returned to Stalin and “delivered to torture and slavery.”  General Eisenhower supervised all of this with a collection of concentration camps that held the prisoners before handing them over to Stalin.  Thousands of them were intentionally starved to death in the camps, writes Goodrich.

Stalin wasn’t the only newly-anointed slave owner.  “When France requested slaves as part of its war booty, Eisenhower transferred over 600,000 Germans east.”  And “like the Americans, the French starved their prisoners.”  Several hundred thousand prisoners in Great Britain “were transformed into virtual slaves” as well.  Eventually, “at least 800,000 German prisoners died in the American and French death camps” after the war.

One of the more sickening sections of Hellstorm is the description of the massive rape of German women and girls that occurred for several years.  I will spare the reader of the gory stories and details.  The Russians were the primary perpetrators, while American soldiers boasted that rape was not necessary; it was easy to bribe starving and destitute German women with a mere candy bar or a few slices of bread.  “A bit of food, a bar of chocolate, or a bar of soap seems to make rape unnecessary,” an American soldier is quoted as saying very matter-of-factly.  “By the summer of 1945, Germany had become the world’s greatest slave market where sex was the new medium of exchange.”

As I said, this is a hard book to stomach, but it is also a necessary book to read to understand the realities of the American way of war that was introduced the world in the 1860s and which, because of its “success,” was imitated by murderous tyrants – and their propaganda mouthpieces — the world over during the twentieth century.  War crimes and their “ends-justify -the-means” rationales are so routine today that propagandists for the current Israeli war of genocide in Gaza have nonchalantly advocated the “Dresdenizing” of Gaza and the subsequent murder of thousands of women, children, and infants.

The post The American Way of War appeared first on LewRockwell.

Acording to the ethnological/anthropological literature, our archaic ancestors would have nearly all been diagnosed with O.D.D. That’s “Oppositional Defiant Disorder.” That is, our distant relatives had serious “problems with authority” — in other words, they had problems with being told what to do.

Like this – – –

Briggs (1970:55-58) tells us in detail how religious services were conducted in iglus [igloos] and how Inuttiag (in the role of religious coordinator) tried at certain points to get his tiny congregation to stand. The community initially conformed, but then more and more people began to disregard his orders until the majority were ignoring him. At that point, he simply stopped trying to command them. –Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1999) p. 54

Is it a big deal to stand on cue during a church service? It was for our ancestors. But they were even more sensitive than that – – –

“Egalitarianism [among the !Kung of the Kalihari] is not simply the absence of a headman and other authority figures, but a positive insistence on the essential equality of all people and a refusal to bow to the authority of others …” (Lee 1979:457) quoted in (Boehm 1999:61) In fact to the !Kung, even just the arrogance of leadership amounts to a crime.

Such “oppositional” behavior was given a name in early America — Drapetomania — to explain why slaves, who lived an “idyllic existence” after all, would try to escape.

Such “problems with authority” were first diagnosed as a mental disorder in the Shrinks’ Bible, DSM III in 1980 as OD (Oppositional Disorder) and later, in 1987’s DSM III-R as full-blown O.D.D.

In fact, however, such so-called problems with authority are almost certainly reasonable, desirable — and genetic.

Because of the way we’ve been taught to think, however, this is hard for most of us to accept. Hollywood, John Wayne movies, cop shows, etc. but especially the hidden curriculum in government schools. One tell-tale result that shows up in our thinking as a result is, for example, the fallacy of the chief – – –

“There is a basic fallacy concerning Indian leadership of which nearly all are guilty. For purposes of discussion, we can refer to it as the ‘fallacy of the chief.’ Sometime in the pioneer era, we fell victim to the belief that the prevailing pattern of political organization among all American Indians was hereditary dictatorship; in other words, that a ruler from a particular lineage exercised unlimited power over a group of obedient subjects. … So ingrained is this belief that today the average tourist, when visiting an Indian reservation, is likely to ask ‘which one is the chief?’ … The North American Indians had ‘chiefs’ but often these were mere advisors and virtually never dictators. Except in emergencies, they had no power over the lives and property of their fellows.” –James E. Officer, Journal of American Indian Education, Volume 3 Number 1

And, from the “other” side – – –

“Before the white man came, we Indians had no chiefs. We had leaders, of course, men and women chosen by consensus for their wisdom and courage. The idea of a pyramidal hierarchy with a single person at the top was European. When whites first demanded to speak to a “chief,” my ancestors didn’t quite know how to respond. They pushed somebody out in front as spokesman–not necessarily the brightest or the bravest guy around, just someone willing to talk to the strangers and find out what they wanted in our country. But as far as the whites were concerned, he was our monarch, a sort of petty king, and therefore entitled to special privileges.” –Russell Means, Where White Men Fear to Tread (Los Angeles, Ca: General Publishing Group December 1996) p. 222

In fact, groups without permanent chiefs or leaders, that is without permanent established hierarchy, were first recognized in the late 19th Century by early ethnographers and anthropologists – – –

“With the help of Morgan (1877), scientific anthropology emerged in the nineteenth century as a robust but tiny discipline that faced the enormous task of explaining nonliterate cultures and their natural history to a world of urban literates.” … These small local groups [“bands” and “tribes”] had no leaders with any real authority; in contrast to the societies of their [sixteenth century] discoverers, every individual seemed to come and go just as he or she pleased. It became clear that when people live in small, locally autonomous groups, they are almost always “equalitarian.” … Strict equality was practiced with respect to political relations among adult males. Leaders were weak and merely assisted a consensus-seeking process when the group needed to make decisions (Knauft 1991)(Boehm 1999:30 & 31).”

And this strict political equality and no established hierarchy phenom wasn’t just an anomaly caused by chance observations of a few outside-the-box groups – – –

Modern anthropology therefore faced a dilemma. Politically equalized [egalitarian] bands and tribes had been found on every continent, so this anomaly could not be explained as some kind of local historical development. They were found in a bewildering array of ecological niches, so environmental influences did not seem to be a major determinant: egalitarians foraged, farmed, and herded animals. They also used many different residence and descent rules and a variety of kin terms. (Boehm 1999:30)

And further, this acephalous condition existed for several million years – – –

It is safe to say that with the advent of the Neolithic era most foragers became tribesmen. However, by no means did tribal societies always turn into chiefdoms [hierarchies -lrw]. Indeed the bulk of ethnographic descriptions on record today are of tribal societies whose egalitarianism extends back to the acquisition of domestication, and farther back into the Paleolithic era.” (Boehm 1999:90&91)

Contrast this “without much hierarchy,” “every individual seemed to come and go just as he or she pleased” situation in the “new world” with its contemporary hierarchical situation in feudal, monarchical England, culminating in The Statute of Artificers (1563) and The Act of Settlement (1662) which froze people (in the feudal version of the caste system,) to their parish (county), class, and job. [1]

So even as early as the 16th Century these acephalous (without heads) groups baffled and stunned more than just our anthropologists and ethnologists – – –

Politically, nations like the Arawaks–without monarchs, without much hierarchy–stunned Europeans. In 1516 Thomas More’s Utopia, based on an account of the Incan empire in Peru, challenged European social organization by suggesting a radically different and superior alternative. –James W. Loewen, LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME, (New York, NY: Touchstone 1996), p. 67<c:\usr\wp_docs\trolley\tribes~1\wk\03_hiera.wk></c:\usr\wp_docs\trolley\tribes~1\wk\03_hiera.wk>

And with that, we can jump forward and take a look at modern civilized man (and woman, etc.) – – –

Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, measured the human tendency to be what he calls “authoritarian followers.” Authoritarian followers are pretty much what they sound like. They’re folks who have strong tendencies to blindly follow asserted “authorities,” especially “official” authorities and adhere strongly to conventional notions. We might fantasize that in the extreme, these folks would stand on their heads if so cued by Inuttiag.

You can check yourself out with Prof. Altmeyer’s honed test starting on page 17 of the .pdf version of his thought provoking work, The Authoritarians.

According to this measure, the higher the score, the more likely you are to find yourself standing on your head in Inuttiag’s corner if so commanded. Here’s what Prof. Altmeyer found – – –

The lowest total possible [score] would be 20, and the highest, 180, but real scores are almost never that extreme. Introductory psychology students at my Canadian university average about 75. Their parents average about 90. Both scores are below the mid-point of the scale, which is 100, so most people in these groups are not authoritarian followers in absolute terms. Neither are most Americans, it seems. Mick McWilliams and Jeremy Keil administered the RWA scale to a reasonably representative sample of 1000 Americans in 2005 for the Libertarian Party and discovered an average score of 90.3. Thus the Manitoba parent samples seem similar in overall authoritarianism to a representative American adult sample. My Manitoba students score about the same on the RWA scale as most American university students do too.

Prof. Altmeyer explains the relevance like this – – –

Since [authoritarian] followers do virtually all of the assaulting and killing in authoritarian systems–the leaders see to this most carefully–we are dealing with very serious matters here. Anyone who follows orders can become a murderer for an authoritarian regime. But authoritarian followers find it easier to bully, harass, punish, maim, torture, “eliminate,” “liquidate,” and “exterminate” their victims than most people do. –pg. 58

And a little more troubling, Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist and researcher, devised a rather notorious experiment. He demonstrated that a “teacher,” who was, unknowingly, the actual subject of the experiment, would essentially electrocute the fake subject — who was good at feigning electrocution — when told to do so by a white-coated scientist authority figure – – –

The details of Milgram’s experiments are fascinating; but the upshot is that six out of every ten human beings will kill you if told to do so by a person they perceive as being in authority over them. They may have a great many qualms about it, and exhibit a tremendous inner resistance to it -the traumatizing effects on the participants was the excuse given for declaring such experiments “unethical” by the psychological community- but six out of ten will still do it, and so there is really little need to “wonder” about the Nazis or the Soviets any longer. –Hank Parnell, Forbidden Fruits of the Tree of Knowledge

And like this for example, a little closer to home – – –

“For what concerns me in this inquiry is not the public image of Anglo-American idealism that was shattered by the Dresden raid, but the crime against humanity which was perpetrated. That it was decided to bomb a city of no military value simply in order to impress Stalin. That a fire storm was deliberately created in order to kill as many people as possible, and that the survivors were machine-gunned as they lay helpless in the open –all this has been established without a shadow of a doubt. What remains is to ask how decent, civilized politicians enthusiastically approved such mass murder and decent, civilized servicemen conscientiously carried it out.” –R.H.S. Crossman, Apocalpse at Dresden, Esquire, November 1963

This was followed up by nuking Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki. As five-star general and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower nailed it, “…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

And then more recently there were the battles of Fallujah and then the gratuitous torture at Guantanimo Bay, Abu Grabe and the other “black” sites run by the United States Government during the Iraq so-called “War.” And currently (2023-2024 A.D.) the U.S. Government enabled on-going Zionist UN-declared genocide/massacre of over 40,000 native Palestinian men but mostly women and children. Etc.

And then there’s this: Although it normally takes about six years of vaccine testing to prove safety and only 22% pass the first hurdle, and although early results showed a completely unprecedented level of vaccine injury and death as reported by VAERS, whole populations allowed themselves to be “locked down” and injected with the deadly, inadequately tested, new mRNA technology COVID 19 vaccine and allowed their personal lives and economy to be completely disrupted for several years , all on the say-so of elected liars, bureaucrats, and certain white-coated authority figures.

It’s these sorts of things that tend to give native American song writer, poet, speaker and vocalist John Trudell a lot of coin when he suggests – – -

The Great Lie is that this is civilization. It’s not civilized. It has literally been the most blood-thirsty brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet. …Or if it does represent civilization, and that is truly what civilization is, then the Great Lie is that civilization is good for us. –John Trudell

Can we have the good without the bad?

With modern civilization sorely beset by hierarchy and authoritarian followers, the question is, what changed, morphed, and/or converted folks who wouldn’t even stand on cue for a church service into authoritarian follower lemmings who will electrocute fellow humans on demand, machine-gun civilians laying helpless in the open, torture prisoners, unnecessarily nuke entire cities, and allow themselves to be “locked down” and jabbed with an inadequately tested mRNA vaccine at the direction of elected liars, bureaucrats and white-coated authority figures?

How do YOU explain this?

In Parts II and III I’ll take a shot at a few answers and you can see if we agree.

HERE for updates, additions, comments, and corrections.

AND, “Like,” “Tweet,” and otherwise, pass this along!

The post How Do You Explain This? appeared first on LewRockwell.

This is getting just plain sick, and not in the good sense as the millennials use the term. With gold, the Dow and home prices at all-time highs, other US equity indices and cryptos near all-times highs, and a bubble in Mag 7 stocks more extreme that the 1999-2000 Dotcom Bubble ever was, the Fed is actually fixing to cut rates at its next meeting.

Giddy-Up! Or as the astute folks at Northman Traderdinged,

Now that our ‘restrictive’ monetary policy has brought asset prices back to 200% market cap to GDP and home prices are at their highest price levels ever let’s begin the next easing cycle and loosen financial conditions so we can safely embark onto the next asset bubble.

The very prospect of restarting the printing presses is testimony to both the Fed’s unremitting arrogance and its utter servility—witting or not—to the speculators, gamblers and entitled greedmeisters of Hedge Fund Land.

Of course, the impending September cut is supposedly a preemptive move to “get ahead of the curve” with respect to a softening labor market and economy. Yet that’s just the arrogance of it.

When has the Eccles Building ever been ahead of the curve? When has it ever had the clairvoyance to see more than a few weeks down the road or to even actually comprehend where the blooming, buzzing $28 trillion mass of the US economy, and the even more opaque $105 trillion global economy in which it is inextricably enmeshed, actually stood…..last week, last month or even last quarter?

A cogent testimony to the Fed’s inability to time its interest rate machinations was recently provided by Ryan McMaken. Almost without exception the recessions which inexorably follow the Fed’s exercises in “stimulus” are almost always underway when it belatedly begins one of its perennial rate-cutting cycles.

In fact, if anything, the fact that the Fed now plans to start cutting rates is one of the strongest recession signals we can get.

If we look back at the relationship between rate cuts and recessions, we see that in almost every case that recessions begin shortly after the Fed starts a cycle of rate cuts. The fed started cutting the Fed funds rate in 1989. Then we got the recession of the early 90s. In late 2000, the fed started the rate cuts again. We got a recession in 2001. The Fed did it again in late 2007. The recession began in December 2007, followed by a financial crisis several months later. This relationship even holds for the 2020 recession because even without COVID there would have been a recession in late 2020. The Fed had begun to ease the target rate in summer 2019.

Besides, why in the hell do they think that lowering the money market rates by a mere 100 or 200 basis points over the next six months in the context of an economy that is mired in nearly $100 trillion of public and private debt will make any difference at all with respect to output, jobs and sustainable income growth?

Do they really want over-extended businesses, households and governments all over America to borrow even more money and to increase their already extended leverage burdens even further?

Have they ever looked at the chart of combined US public and private debt below, and not become bothered about the relentless “direction of travel”, to appropriate Powell’s phrase at Jackson Hole.

Well, the “direction” of debt travel, and more importantly, the leverage ratio to national income (GDP) has been relentlessly skyward since Nixon did the dirty deed in August 1971. At the time, the total public and private debt stood at just $1.7 trillion (black line) and amounted to147% of GDP (purple line). The latter comprised a healthy, sustainable ratio that had more or less hovered around that level since 1870.

After 53 years of purely fiat central bank money and what Jim Grant calls the “PhD Standard, however, the total US debt today is up nearly 6o-fold to $99.2 trillion and the leverage ratio has soared to 351% of GDP.

Nor is the latter ratio just a case of gee wiz financial math. The 150% debt/GDP ratio on the eve of the Fed’s extended foray into bad money had previously prevailed through a century of economic thick and thin, wars, crises and numerous short-lived recessions prior to 1914. But growth and prosperity never got side-tracked or diluted, averaging more than 3.5% per annum for 100 years— even after you average in all the pre-1971 recessions and depressions, including the “Great Depression”.

Perchance there was some magic, therefore, in a financial arrangement that kept debt— especially government and household debt—tightly in check. Yet at the time-tested 150% of GDP standard, the total public and private US debt today would be just $42 trillion, not $99 trillion.

And that yields a number that no Fed head and Wall Street Keynesian cheerleader has ever even heard before—let alone ruminated about its implications. To wit, the US economy is now burdened with $57 trillion of excess debt relative to what would have prevailed under the gold-based sound money regime prior to August 1971.

As the man said, do ya think that might make a difference? Might that not help explain why productive investment, economic growth and living standard gains have slowed sharply, decade after decade in recent times?

Total US Public and Private Debt Outstanding And % Of GDP, 1954 to 2024

Apparently, when you have an open-ended remit to peg and manipulate money market interest rates at will, rate cuts become just like the proverbial carpenter’s hammer. That is, everything looks like a nail, and besides, cheap, cheaper and even cheaper money is cost free at the Eccles Building because it can be printed from thin air, as opposed to being derived from real money savings extracted from hard earned income.

In short, it’s so damn easy to print money and then deny, temporize and rationalize any resulting episodic inflation breakouts that contemporary Keynesian central bankers never have to wrestle with the three damning truths which undergird their destructive regime of monetary central planning. To wit—

• They are not adding to long-term growth and societal living standards, but subtracting from it by fostering dead-weight economic loss due to speculation, bubbles, malinvestments and deeply falsified pricing signals in the financial system.
• They do not smooth and ameliorate the business cycle booms and busts, but actually cause them by fueling credit-based financial bubbles on Wall Street which go bust and excess demand on main street which causes goods and services prices to rise artificially.
• They are not needed to supply “reserves” to the banking system because mandatory reserve requirements were completely abolished in March 2020. In basic respects, therefore, the Fed is the monetary appendix of the modern economy—it is a nearly vestigial organ.

Accordingly, the monetary elephant in the room ought to be damn obvious by now. In fact, history will someday show that via a breathtaking leap in mission creep, the tiny cabal of bankers, economists, Keynesians (we do not repeat ourselves), Wall Street wannabe’s and government apparatchiks who comprise the Federal Reserve Board, staff and regional branches insist on recklessly pursuing Mission Impossible.

That is to say, with the traditional “banker’s bank” functions of supplying reserves to member banks now long gone, they have arrogated to themselves the macro-managementmof the entire GDP by the week, month, quarter and even year. But that can’t be done, and does not need to be done.

When it comes to employment, incomes, business investment, housing starts and all the other dimensions of the GDP, the free market can do the job with alacrity. Twelve self-important fools sitting on the FOMC can’t even remotely hold a candle to the awesome capacities of free men (and women and theys) operating on the free market.

By contrast, the FOMC can’t even begin to fathom the moving forces and endless, intricate feedback loops which are dense-packed into the fully integrated $105 trillion global economy. Indeed, in today’s world the FOMC resembles nothing so much as a race-car driver roaring down the track with his windshield painted black.

So while the Fed accomplishes nothing useful or constructive, its recurring attempts to improve upon the free market’s level of employment and output or forestall recessionary contractions which its own actions have caused, does have one utterly baleful impact. To wit, it causes relentless inflation of financial assets, but most especially so-called “risk assets” traded in the stock market as either individual stocks, index funds or now thousands of sector ETFs, which have no economic purpose other than to provide the Wall Street casino with another line of slot machines.

In any event, upwards of 88% of risk assets are now held by the top 10% of households— a figure which has been rising inexorably ever since Greenspan fired up the printing presses in the basement of the Eccles Building during the infamous 24% stock market meltdown on Black Monday, October 19, 1987.

So if you want to know who the Fed is really working for, it is the 13 million wealthiest households depicted by the purple area in the chart below. But most especially it bestows its gift of asset inflation upon the 130,000 ultra-wealthy households which comprise the top 0.1%, as depicted in the black area, and which own nearly 25% of all equities and related risk assets.

Share of Corporate Equities And Mutual Find Shares Held By The Top 10% and Top 0.1% Of Households

Needless to say, when it comes to the Fed’s real job, it do get the job done. Since Greenspan launched the modern era of hybrid Keynesian/wealth effects based central banking in the late 1980s, the average net worth of households in the top 0.1% has risen from a bountiful $17 million in 1989 to a typical UN nation-sized $155 million as of Q1 2024.

That’s right. The real wages and net worth of the bottom 50% of households has been essentially stagnant since the late 1980s. But Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen and now Powell have seen fit to inflate the bejesus out of financial securities and risk assets, thereby causing wealth accretions at the tippy-top of the economic ladder that are literally unspeakable.

So did we say that the Fed resembles a vestigial organ?

Yes, we did, and one that is in dire need of a legislative surgeon.

Net Worth Per Household of The Top 0.1%, 1989 to 2024

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

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DANA BASH: “You’ve been Vice President for three and half years. The steps that you are talking about now, why haven’t you done them already?” KAMALA: “I’m very proud of the work we have done.”

She was speaking, you understand, but the main thing you noticed was the musical quality of her voice: sonorous, resonant, like one of the more obscure woodwind instruments, an alto clarinet or a basset horn, producing a sound like unto creamy dressing over the familiar word-salad of iceberg lettuce.

It would be ungentlemanly to bang on the particulars of Kamala Harris’s CNN interview performance, so I’ll proceed. The nocturne was 18-minutes long, all that survived from the 41-minutes CNN actually recorded, so you might wonder a little about the notes not played. The leitmotif throughout was “my values have not changed,” meaning, disregard any dissonance you might detect in the velvet honk of my voice. Mind the significance of the passage of time, not the music, Altogether, as nocturnes should, it had a soporific effect.

And now candidate Kamala Harris will go back to hiding on her campaign bus, which makes a different statement than, say, hiding in the basement a la “Joe Biden,” 2020. It’s the difference between going nowhere fast and going nowhere at all — though both concepts apply to the condition of the USA during the four years of “Joe Biden” (loved and revered by his comrades in the Party of Chaos, who threw the president under the very bus Kamala is hiding in).

Did you think Kamala would still be rising on the joyful billows of hot air that blew out of the Democratic Convention? Like so many of the magic tricks in the party’s repertoire, that one was a spoof of artificial levitation, to give the appearance of something holding up, like, say, the US economy, when there is actually nothing underneath. Nothing real, that is. What’s giving the economy its appearance of loft has been “Joe Biden” pouring government money into scores of party-connected NGOs as pure grift. The main effect of that is the inflation that everybody notices. Meanwhile, nobody gets hooked up to promised broadband and only eight EV charging stations get built for $7.5-billion allocated to the Department of Transportation.

The current prank, though, is to artificially pump-up Ms. Harris in the polls in the attempt to justify the coming ballot fraud to be executed two months from now, as engineered by election lawfare maestro Marc Elias, now on the Harris campaign payroll. That is, an effort to obviate any apparent discrepancies between actual poll numbers and harvested ballots flooding in at two o’clock in the morning on Nov 6.

As it happens, Ms. Harris’s poll numbers have begun to sink the past week, as the tactic of hiding the candidate from the press has backfired. As of August 29, Nate Silver has her chance of winning down at 42.7 to Mr. Trump’s 56.7. Voters have begun to notice that the candidate represents nothing except whatever happened the past four years in Biden-Land — which is to say, open borders, war for the sake of arms profiteers, flagrant censorship, inflation, cratering business activity, and overt DOJ political persecutions. Martin Armstrong, for instance, has estimated Kamala Harris’s true polling number in the ten percent range. Yikes.

So, what was the net effect of the CNN interview with Ms. Harris? It couldn’t have helped. They had to get her out of hiding, considering the significance of the passage of time in an election campaign. Even the in-the-tank news media was starting to complain about her holing-up on the bus. Dana Bash was surprisingly harsh at times when the veep confabulated about her plans to “fix” America’s problems, like asking, “Why haven’t you done that already?” The answer was the bizarre, “We can do what we’ve accomplished so far.” Roger that.

You’re probably wondering: how Mr. Trump will play this? He’d best be polite about it and assume that the voters can see and understand the obvious: that the Democrats have put up an especially inadequate candidate who can’t explain away the fiascos of the past four years. He doesn’t have to rub in so hard that it seems cruel. His own policy intentions are a quite clear alternative to four years of hoaxes, pranks, trips, gaslighting, and grift. Installing Ms. Harris without any input or votes from the party rank-and-file was about as desperate an affront to “our democracy” as anyone could imagine, like something straight out of the old Soviet politburo, picking an Andropov or a Chernenko. Mr. Trump should remind audiences of this at every opportunity if the Democrats keep yapping about “our democracy,” which seems to be all they’ve got.

Something is slip-sliding out there, perhaps the solidarity of the news media. Even The New York Times dissed Kamala Harris — Bret Stephens called her interview “vague and vacuous” the day after. One thing you have to give CNN credit for: they didn’t show a whole lot of Kamala Harris cackling in her trademark manner — to cover that mental vacuum. The cackle has been getting very mixed reviews, anyway, when you disconnect it from the fake “joy” trope. Maybe a laugh-riot is what’s in the missing 23-minutes that CNN edited out of the 41-minute recording.

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

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Many Catholics, on both sides of the political spectrum, continue to struggle with how to cast their votes in November. Some conservative Catholics struggle with the Republican Party’s changed platform and wonder if they can still vote for a Party that’s no longer pro-life. Some liberal Catholics struggle with the impact of excessive immigration on the urban poor and wonder if they can still vote for a Democratic Party that ignores it.

Several highly respected Catholic authors have written on the subject, and walking through their various perspectives provides us an opportunity to sort out and clarify the issues. In this article, I look at some of these perspectives, specifically ones by philosopher Edward Feser, theologian R.R. Reno, and commentator Kennedy Hall.

Let’s start with Dr. Feser. In his Catholic World Report piece titled “Donald Trump has put social conservatives in a dilemma,” he argues that the changes Trump made to the Republican Party’s platform constitute a complete betrayal of the pro-life cause and have turned it into what is now a moderate pro-choice Party. This creates a dilemma for social conservatives.

If they vote for Trump and he wins, they send the message that the Party’s position on abortion is secondary to other issues and that the Party can take their votes for granted even without a commitment to life, something Feser argues “would likely do positive harm, indeed grave and lasting damage, to the pro-life cause going forward and to social conservatism in general.” But if they don’t vote for Trump, they make it easier for the far more extreme Democrats to win, thereby consciously contributing to a greater evil. So, what’s a Catholic to do?

Feser answers the question by first outlining the gravity of the betrayal by Trump, arguing against the theory that it’s nothing more than political expediency. Trump went far beyond what Feser believes was necessary to win the election, not just toning down the right to life of the unborn but positively embracing their murder by supporting the abortion pill and IVF.

He also argues against the idea that Catholics can, in good conscience, vote for him based on his position on other issues. There is a hierarchy of issues in Catholic teaching: the sanctity of life and marriage take priority over issues like the economy and foreign policy. One cannot ignore the former because he approves of the latter.

Having demonstrated that, he then presents in the second half of his article teachings from then-Cardinal Ratzinger and then-Bishop Burke on what we must do when facing such a choice. In short, where our vote will make a difference in the outcome, we must vote for the lesser of two evils, but we must not do so without loudly voicing our opposition to the evil the Party stands for. Otherwise, we are complicit in that evil. Feser is adamant that voting for the lesser of two evils does not satisfy our moral duty: we must also make our protest of the evil known. To not do so would give scandal.

What does that mean then regarding how we should vote? It means, he concludes, that if you live in a swing state where your vote will affect the outcome of the election, you have a moral duty to vote for Donald Trump as the lesser of two evils, but if you live in a blue state where your vote doesn’t matter, your moral duty is to vote for a third-party candidate who is pro-life. This not only supports the pro-life cause, but it sends a message to the Republican Party.

For Feser, the key issue in the election is abortion and doing all we can to limit it, while also protecting the long-term political influence of the pro-life movement. Retaining this political power is essential, Feser argues; if it’s lost, social conservatives will “lose their ability to fight against the moral and cultural rot accelerating all around us.”

Reno, in his First Things article titled “The Republican Party Sidelines the Pro-Life Cause,” argues, as Feser does, that the Republican Party did not have to go as far as it did in the platform. He argues they failed to do the job of properly assessing what is possible. He gives a list of how the Party could have indicated continued support for the right to life of the unborn yet still defuse the Democrats’ ability to paint them as extreme on the abortion issue.

But unlike Feser, Reno argues that we need to be realistic in our demands from politicians. We are free to focus on principle and have an obligation to witness to the sanctity of human life, but they must deal with reality and have a duty to pursue realistic objectives. They must balance their principles with prudence.

He argues that it is “counterproductive moralizing to denounce politicians who refuse to promise what cannot be done.” For example, he argues that “for pro-life advocates to denounce politicians who are otherwise supportive of the cause of life, because they refuse to commit to banning mifepristone [to which a supermajority of Americans support legal access], is simply unrealistic.” We, too, must learn to balance principle with prudence.

He notes that “this is a confusing moment for pro-life politics. For decades, overturning Roe received most of the attention.” But now the issue moves to the states and the movement faces a new danger: “that our politicians will abandon us if we are not prudent and/or that we in our outrage, will abandon them.” He calls everyone to instead “meet this challenging moment with clarity and wisdom.”

Thus, for both Feser and Reno, the focus is on preserving and protecting the future of the pro-life cause and of retaining the movement’s influence in the Republican Party. We should not abandon them when political realities require them to compromise to win elections. Rather, we must be prudent, giving them our support but being vocal in our continued defense of the unborn and opposition to the evil of abortion.

Assumed by both authors is the belief that the way we bring about an end to abortion in America is through political action, especially through political action designed ultimately to affect public policy at the national level to make abortion illegal.

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In a stunning interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, former CIA Analyst Larry Johnson quotes high-level Israeli government officials as stating their concern that if Israel maintains its current warmongering ways, the Zionist State could disappear within one year. Johnson also describes the radical religious zealotry of many Israelis behind the nation’s infatuation with war. (A very similar zealotry exists within a majority of evangelical churches, by the way.)

Johnson also explains why the miscreant Benjamin Netanyahu will never end Israel’s wars: He knows that as soon as the war(s) ends, he will be arrested and tried for multiple criminal acts within Israel (not counting the international war crimes of which he is accused) and probably spend the rest of his life in prison. Bottom line: Netanyahu is purposely keeping Israel’s wars alive for his own personal self-preservation.

Here are some of the excerpts from Judge Nap’s interview with Larry Johnson:

Napolitano: Is Israel committing National Suicide, Larry?

Johnson: Sure appears that way. You know when you’re in a fight, and particularly in a war, the last thing you want to do is to be fighting a civil war, be warring against each other at home.

You’ve got the head of the military, basically the Israeli military, the IDF spokesman, coming out and opposing Netanyahu. You’ve got the head of Mossad opposing Netanyahu, and Mossad is like the Israeli version of the CIA. You have the Shin Bet, which is, I describe it as, it’s like the FBI with a CIA twist, because it’s really, it’s not so much a law enforcement outfit as it is a domestic intelligence/domestic security outfit. All of them are coming out and condemning Netanyahu. And Netanyahu in turn has been calling them cowards and weaklings.

And then in addition to that, you’ve got some very prominent members or former members of the Israeli Defense Force. There’s General Yitzhak Brik, he put an op-ed in Haaretz over the weekend. And, boy, he didn’t pull any punches. He came out and said that Israel, if it keeps on this path, it’s going to collapse within a year, that the country will come apart at the seams. [Emphasis added]

Napolitano: Well, some of this stuff that General Brik said is strategic, and some of it is personal. For example, he said of Prime Minister Netanyahu, “He has lost his humanity, morality, norms, values and sense of responsibility.” That’s about as harsh as you can get. He’s not talking about Netanyahu’s personality; he’s talking about his decisions to slaughter innocents and to use reservists and the IDF with which to do so.

Johnson: Right.

Napolitano: Does Netanyahu and his crew have an academic or theological guru, a rabbi, who preaches all of this at the same time he preaches blowing up mosques and busloads of Arabs?

Johnson: Yeah, not Netanyahu. Netanyahu, he’s all about power and taking care of himself. But the Smotrich and the Ben-Gvir, yes, this Rabbi Dov Lior, he’s been quite influential and quite extreme. So, there’s a religious dimension to this; we can’t discount that. I think the tendency is for many Western pundits not to delve into the religious aspects of this. But they’re real as far as these people are concerned. And that’s what’s driving them. I mean, part of their premise is that they actually have a covenant with God, and that that was established 3,000 years ago, and they have a right to this land, and they have the right to do whatever they need to do to eliminate those who are not chosen of God to live there. And so, when you take a religious belief like that and then translate it into policy, of course you can kill Palestinian children, because they’re just refuse in the way that you need to clear out.

And so that’s part of what has the head of Shin Bet so alarmed. And he said, “Look, I grew up in a family of Holocaust survivors, and, you know, we believed in never again.” But he goes, “My G-d, what I’m seeing coming out of these Jewish mouths about Jewish supremacy, and not just that, ‘Hey, we’re smarter, we’re more accomplished,’ but actually, ‘We are human beings; you are not human beings.’” He says that mindset is what alarms him, and that has taken hold among a big segment within Israel. That’s the danger.

Napolitano: Is this a majority view, this Messianic belief? “God the Father gave us this land, and we can crush and destroy any thing or any person who stands in our way. We can establish our own morality because we are the chosen.”

Johnson: Yeah, apparently. At least it’s over 50% now within Israel. And again, that number may go up as Israelis who were secular are leaving Israel, coming back to the United States, going to Europe, going to other places, because they don’t embrace that. As they leave, that means those who do believe that become a larger percentage of the population.

Note: Within a few months after October 7, it was well documented that over 500,000 Israelis had left Israel out of a total population of just over 9 million. But just yesterday, Col. Douglas Macgregor suggested to Judge Andrew Napolitano that Israel’s population today is 4½ to 5 million. If that’s true, it would mean that around half of the Israeli population has fled the country since Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza began.

The IDF are not killing guys that are decked out in body armor and carrying, you know, RPGs. They’re killing women and children by and large, and the images are appalling. They’re horrific. I mean, just in recent days, the actual pictures of babies burned. I mean it’s sickening. Babies missing chunks of their heads.

Now we heard the Israelis after October 7th talk about, “Oh, Hamas killed 40 children.” We’ve never seen a single picture; we’ve never heard a single name. But what’s coming out of Palestine is names and pictures that are horrific. And it’s establishing a reality. And this is taking a toll on these Israeli soldiers.

Napolitano: Netanyahu wants war! Netanyahu and his religious zealotry folks believe that this is the time God ordained for them to kill everybody that’s impeding them.

Johnson: The United States could put a halt to this immediately. You tell Netanyahu, “Okay, the military aid is done, and we’re cutting you off economically. You’re not going to get another drop until you sit down and do a serious negotiation with the Palestinians.”

Read this part of the interview again:

General Yitzhak Brik, put an op-ed in Haaretz [an Israeli newspaper] over the weekend. And, boy, he didn’t pull any punches. He came out and said that Israel, if it keeps on this path, it’s going to collapse within a year.

This Israeli general is not the first Israeli to say this. And he won’t be the last. Many Middle East experts are saying that Israel is on a path of self-destruction. If Col. Macgregor is correct in suggesting that half of Israel’s population has already fled the country, the only logical reason for such a massive and spontaneous exodus would be because they expect the State of Israel to soon collapse.

I urge readers to watch my three-message DVD on this very subject. These messages were delivered shortly after the start of the Israeli genocidal war against Gaza. The title of the DVD is End-Time Israel.

And the radical warmongering doctrines of Christian Zionism in America are basically the same as the radical warmongering doctrines of Jewish Zionism in Israel. The only difference is the Jewish warmongers are going to war in an effort to bring forth the Messiah, while Christian warmongers are going to war in an effort to bring back the Messiah. But both Christian and Jewish Zionists believe that God wants them to kill all of the Palestinian people in the name of their Messiah.

I ask my fellow evangelicals who are so enraptured (sorry for the pun) with Prophetic Futurism and who believe that Zionist Israel is Biblical Israel and that the land of Palestine belongs to Zionist Israel: Have you ever studied Romans Chapter Eleven without reading Scofield’s (or Ryrie’s or MacArthur’s) Zionist-inundated notes?

Here is what Romans Chapter Eleven really teaches about God’s chosen people and the land.

Beyond that, have you ever met a Palestinian? Have you ever spoken with a Palestinian Christian? Have you ever seen a Palestinian family? Have you ever met a Palestinian pastor? Have you ever worshiped with a Palestinian Christian congregation?

I have. I met hundreds of them when I traveled and spoke across Palestine.

And let me tell you that, on the whole, you will not find a more gentle, humble, gracious, peace-loving people anywhere on earth. Palestinian Christians put American Christians to shame! And while Palestinian Christians are being slaughtered, American Christians cheer for the slaughterers.

If the American people had endured one percent of what the Palestinians have endured under the heavy heels of Israeli occupation, they would have been in an all-out war decades ago.

But I digress.

Let’s go back to the Israeli general’s prediction that, if Israel continues on the same warmongering path, it could cease to exist within a year.

I believe Judge Napolitano was right when he said that, as long as Benjamin Netanyahu is prime minister, there will be no peace agreement, no stoppage of the war. And the truth is, the way the demographics of the Israeli population are shaping up, there would be no change to Israel’s war lust no matter who is prime minister. As many within Israel have said, Israel is a racist, apartheid state that is driven by the emotions of hate and Jewish supremacy.

And when you look at U.S. policies regarding Israel and Palestine, it matters little who is elected president or elected to Congress. Israeli money controls them all.

But my big question is for evangelical Christians: What are they going to do when Israel ceases to exist, as the Israeli general and Israeli Shin Bet chief predict? Everything they believe the Bible teaches regarding prophecy is Israel-based. EVERYTHING!

The “bless Israel and be blessed” doctrine. The Pre-Tribulation Rapture. The Antichrist. The Seven-Year Tribulation. The Second Coming. The Millennium. The Old Testament King David reigning again in Jerusalem. The “everlasting” Jewish nation. It’s all Israel-based. Most evangelical pulpits, most evangelical colleges and seminaries, most evangelical authors, most evangelical radio broadcasters and television broadcasters, most evangelical podcasters, and most evangelical publishers are immersed in Israel-based prophecy.

What are they going to do when God destroys godless Zionist Israel as He destroyed the apostate Old Covenant temple? And when I say destroy Zionist Israel, I’m not talking about the Jewish people; I’m talking about the Zionist government and state. For over one thousand years—before the Zionist state was created in 1948—Jews, Muslims and Christians in Palestine lived peacefully side by side. The creation of the Zionist state has led to nothing but the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people and has become nothing more than a breeding ground for war throughout the entire region.

I urge readers to read renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappe’s blockbuster book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

Without a Zionist state, what would evangelical pastors and professors teach about the End Times? What would millions of evangelical Christians and thousands of evangelical churches do?

Evangelicals are going to wake up one day and realize that everything John Darby and Cyrus Scofield told them about prophecy was a lie, that everything Dallas Theological Seminary taught them about prophecy was a lie, that every prophecy book they read was a lie, that every prophecy sermon they heard was a lie. What will they do on that day?

They will throw away Clarence Larkin’s charts. They will throw away Jerry Jenkins’ and Hal Lindsey’s books. And they will throw away John Hagee’s and Robert Jeffress’ prophecy DVDs. That’s what they will do.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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The other day I quite literally ran into a teenager (or rather the teenager ran into me) at our local grocery store.

Predictably, the teenager was looking down on her phone and using a combination of short, skipping, hopping steps and a fast walk to charge down the aisle, weaving between shopping carts and human beings, oblivious of the living, breathing world immediately beyond her phone. Her fingers were moving furiously across the phone which seemed to survive the very hard thrust of her fingers – and she was grimacing to herself.

I have only myself to blame, perhaps, since on that day (of all days), I decided to forgo the ubiquitous luxury of a shopping cart and walk into the grocery store at a brisk pace, to pick up just the bananas we needed. Never again will I venture forth into any grocery store without the protective shield of a shopping cart!

I did see the teenager dodging multiple carts, her curls bouncing into her eyes whilst she expertly held the curls back with intermittent swipes of one of her busy hands. For a brief moment however, no longer than the proverbial blinking of the eye, my gaze was averted from this charging bull (or cow). And BAM! Her phone and then her shoulder rammed into my right side.

“I’m sorry” I said through the pain, as she whizzed past. She did a half turn (as if in a waltz), barely looked up – and whirled past me, silent as a post, to the waiting gaggle of her friends (who seemed to welcome her by saying “no way,” “no way” “no way” again and again).  I marvelled at her multitasking skills – not only was she able to dodge multiple objects on her way to me, she could text, hold back her curls and ram into me, all within a few seconds!

I try never to say things like – “when I was your age;” or, “you have no idea what it was like when I was young;” or, “your generation needs everything handed to them;” etc. etc. I am willing to admit that this generation is in fact better than my own, in such things as their willingness to accept the disabled into their inner circles, to be colour blind in their acceptance of other human beings (and to display these magnificent virtues without fanfare and with a certain agnostic nonchalance).

But the loss of good manners is surely something I am entitled to comment on – since every day, I see the deleterious and decaying influence of the collective loss of one of our Christian civilization’s greatest gifts to the world.

It is not that other great civilizations are not good mannered. No doubt they would argue that manners like beauty lives in the eyes of the beholder. But the teaching of good manners as an institution of good upbringing in our homes was a well drilled exercise that started when we could barely walk and continued (with many corrections) until we were beyond the influence of our parents and elders. The institution of good manners in turn was built upon the values and ideas conveyed across the generations and centuries, in the pages of the New Testament.

I remember quite clearly when I was twelve or thirteen years old and my father and I hailed an elderly neighbour who was shuffling by slowly, in front of our home. “Hello Tom,” I said cheerfully – and immediately regretted it, as my father jerked my arm sharply down and hissed, “that is not Tom for you. That is Mr. Robertson!” Instinctively, I shouted out again, “Hello Mr. Robertson!” Mr. Robertson slowly turned and waved his hand – as if to acknowledge that he knew my father’s discipline and correction had been applied! What would my father have thought if he heard my sons refer my wife and I as “you guys!”

Even in the lawless North American wilderness which has been accurately portrayed in the Western motion pictures of the 1940s and 1950s, gentlemen routinely stood up when a lady entered the room; some even doffed their hats and hastily removed the pipes from their mouths and pointed them downward. As recently as when I was growing up (there I go again!), we would (unthinkingly) offer our seat on a full bus to a lady (young or old); the lady would smile, say “thank you,” and sit down on the seat we had vacated.

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As tourists complete their strolls to the White House from the east along Pennsylvania Avenue, they pass a relatively unremarkable, columned office building that overlooks Lafayette Square — oblivious that, behind its walls, bureaucrats are quietly inflicting poverty, illness and death on innumerable innocents around the world.

The Freedman’s Bank Building doesn’t house CIA or Department of Defense officials, but rather the US Treasury’s little-known Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Instead of orchestrating airstrikes or insurgencies, these bureaucrats impose mass suffering via economic warfare, collectively serving as the tip of the spear that is America’s ever-expanding economic sanctions regime.

The term “banality of evil” was coined by intellectual Hannah Arendt after she observed the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who, from his post atop the inscrutably-named Office IV B 4, oversaw the grim logistics of funneling Jews into German concentration camps.

Arendt said she was struck to find Eichmann “neither perverted nor sadistic,” but “terrifyingly normal.” Rather than a rabid ideologue or psychopathic antisemite, Arendt found herself observing a boring bureaucrat whose diligent performance of his assigned duties was largely motivated by a mere desire for career advancement. “The deeds were monstrous, but the doer – at least the very effective one now on trial – was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous,” Arendt later wrote.

Arendt’s characterization sparked great controversy. In subsequent decades, some historians have challenged her assessment of Eichmann, and philosophers have wrestled with her proposition that one can do evil without being evil.

Whatever the appropriateness of Arendt’s application of “the banality of evil” to Eichmann, it’s safe to say the individual employees of OFAC — mostly lawyers — similarly aren’t perceived by people around them as malevolent. If you live in the vicinity of the capital, an OFAC worker might be the congenial coach of your child’s soccer team or a friendly face at a volunteer event.

However, regardless of their personalities and sincere convictions that they’re engaged in public service, the stark reality is that many OFAC employees spend their workdays carrying out the mass victimization of people who’ve done no harm to the United States or its citizens. To paraphrase Arendt, these people may be quite ordinary, but their deeds are monstrous.

Considering, just for starters, the direct and indirect effects of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon’s Central Command has arguably caused the most 21st-century harm to innocents of any organization in the world. However, staffed with a mere 300 or so bureaucrats, OFAC is surely the leader on a harm-per-employee basis.

Sanctions are often perceived as a welcome alternative to war. In fact, they are merely a different form of war — one that can also produce dead bodies and misery on a grand scale, with the vast majority of the victims having no responsibility for their governments’ supposedly offending actions. (While sanctions are also deployed against terrorists and drug cartels, my focus here is on economic warfare waged against entire countries.)

The power of American sanctions springs from the US dollar’s domination of international trade and finance. As the Washington Post recently explained:

“To deal in dollars, financial institutions must often borrow, however temporarily, from U.S. counterparts and comply with the rules of the U.S. government. That makes the Treasury Department, which regulates the U.S. financial system, the gatekeeper to the world’s banking operations. And sanctions are the gate.”

Sanctions come in a variety of flavors, including the freezing of assets, barring of financial transactions, and blocking of exports or imports. There are also “secondary sanctions” aimed at non-American parties who dare to conduct business with a sanctions target.

Though they’ve long been part of the American arsenal, sanctions use rose sharply during the 1990s and exploded after 9/11 with the “war on terror” and the accompanying surge in US foreign interventionism and regime-change campaigns. In 2000, there were 912 designated entities; by 2021, there were 9,421.

Via the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, presidents have broad, unilateral power to impose sanctions to “deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security. The determination of what constitutes such a threat also rests in the president’s hands, and they unsurprisingly apply an expansive interpretation.

Sanctions can also originate in Congress. Eager to bolster their national security credentials and curry the favor of interest groups like pro-Israel organizations, legislators introduce them with abandon: In the 117th Congress that ended in January 2023, members introduced more than 350 sanctions bills.

“It is way, way overused, and it’s become out of control,” former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer Caleb McCarry told the Post, casting OFAC employees as victims. “They are good professionals who have all this political work being shoved on them. They want relief from this relentless, never-ending, you-must-sanction-everybody-and-their-sister, sometimes literally, system.”

Washington’s bipartisan sanctions compulsion surely causes OFAC employees some workplace stress and perhaps a few skipped happy hours. For countless innocents in targeted countries, OFAC-enforced sanctions cause everything from unemployment, ruined career aspirations, financial insecurity and poverty to depression, hunger, disease and death.

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This interview is also available on Rumble and podcast platforms.

Modern borders represent mere lines in the sand when understanding the deep history behind the forces that drew them. In the contemporary Middle East, nations such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and most notably Palestine, cannot be fully understood without delving into the region’s intricate past—especially the pivotal role of the Ottoman Empire’s influence. Eugene Rogan, the Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford, joins host Chris Hedges to discuss his book, “The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East,” and explain how the modern geopolitical makeup of the region came to be.

While not the sole source of all conflict in the modern Middle East, studying the Ottoman Empire is essential for understanding both the region and the European powers that dominated during that era. World War I, in particular, marked a pivotal moment in the formation of modern nation-states. Britain, Russia, and France emerged as key beneficiaries of the early 20th-century battles that reshaped global power dynamics.

Rogan provides an in-depth analysis of the complex relationships between monarchs, religious leaders, ambassadors, and consuls, highlighting their crucial roles in shaping the region’s historical developments. His detailed and thorough examination provides a clear picture of how the region evolved as a result of the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Rogan tells Hedges, “Britain had maintained that the preservation of the Ottoman Empire was in the best interest of the British Empire, that it was a buffer state that bottled up Russia, kept it out of the Mediterranean world, and that, were this Ottoman State to collapse, all that geo-strategic territory in the Mediterranean world would soon become the stuff of European rivalries that could lead to the next major European war.”

On the question of Palestine, Rogan notes, “Protestants in Britain, Catholics in France, Orthodox in Russia, all wanted a claim to the holy cities and the holy places of Palestine, and so Palestine was painted a kind of brown and internationalized.”

Rogan delves into the Zionist project, tracing its origins through collaboration with the British Empire and examining its evolving connection with the United States. He highlights the growing involvement of the U.S. in the region, which it thrusted itself into at the close of the 20th century and the dawn of the 21st.

Credits Host:

Chris Hedges

Producer:

Max Jones

Intro:

Diego Ramos

Crew:

Diego Ramos, Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges

Transcript:

Diego Ramos

Transcript

Chris Hedges: Welcome to The Chris Hedges Report. “The past is never dead,” William Faulkner writes in his novel Requiem for a Nun. “It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.” Perhaps nowhere, historically, is this truer than in the Middle East. The fall of the Ottoman Empire — which for six centuries stood as the greatest Islamic empire in the world — in the wake of World War I saw the victorious imperial powers, especially Britain and France, carve up the Middle East into protectorates, spheres of influence and colonies. The imperial powers created new countries with borders drawn by diplomats in the Quai d’Orsay and the British Foreign Office who had little understanding of the often autonomous and at times antagonistic communities they were attempting to herd into new countries. They sponsored the colonization by Zionist settlers from Europe in the land of Palestine, setting off a conflict that continues with savage intensity today in the occupied Gaza

and the West Bank. They propped up autocratic dictators and monarchs – their descendants still

ruling countries such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan — to do their bidding, crushing the aspirations

of democratic independence movements. They flooded, and continue to flood, the region with

weapons to pit ethnic and religious factions against each other in the great imperial game that

often revolved, and still revolves, around control of Middle Eastern oil. The heavy-handed

intervention in the Middle East, often based on false assumptions and a gross misreading of the

political, cultural, religious and social realities, later exacerbated by the disastrous interventions

by the United States, have led to over a century of warfare, strife and immense suffering of

millions. It is impossible to grasp the conflicts of today in the Middle East if we do not examine

the causes and roots. There are three books that are vital to this understanding, David Fromkin’s

A Peace to End All Peace: Creating the Modern Middle East 1914-1922, Robert Fisk’s The

Great War for Civilization and Eugene Rogan’s The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the

Middle East. We speak today with Eugene Rogan, the Professor of Modern Middle Eastern

History at the University of Oxford about his book The Fall of the Ottomans and the creation of

the modern Middle East.

Eugene Rogan: Well, first off, Chris, thank you so much for having me on, and it’s a real pleasure getting to have a little time to talk over the book with you. And, you know, as you rightly point out, it’s a book that had kind of family roots to it. It was a moment of exploration, having spent my career studying the Middle East and to better understand the Middle East of the 20th century, I was drawn into studying the Ottoman Empire, because all the origins of the modern Middle East can be traced back to the previous state that had ruled this area. So to answer your question, you know, the Ottomans first make their entry into the Arab world in 1516 and 1517, when they turf out the then ruling Mamluk Empire, based in Cairo. They had an empire that spanned all of Egypt, greater Syria and the Hejaz, Red Sea province of the Arabian Peninsula. And they were able to, you know, the Ottomans were able to draw on gunpowder technology to affect a total decimation of Mamluk ranks.

Mamluk’s knights in the old fashion, you know, they were trained in swordsmanship and in horsemanship, and they thought that real men fought like chivalric knights, and they found themselves up against real men with guns, and men with guns won. And that was to take the Middle East down the road of being part of what was then the largest, most successful Islamic empire in the world, and for a Europe or America that’s used to thinking of the West as dominant, I assure you that that Ottoman Empire was the most terrifying state in the whole of the Mediterranean basin, and was to remain so right through until the 18th century. Their last drive on a European capital would be in the 1680s when they laid their last siege to Vienna. So it’s just a corrective, you know, before we write this Ottoman Empire off and assume that it was slated to lose in the First World War, this was one very powerful empire that spanned three continents, and, you know, was basically the scourge of Europe right up until the 18th century. Chris, I assume you’d like shorter answers, rather than for me to go on with, great long speeches.

Chris Hedges: No, I’d rather that you go on. There’s no time constraint here.

Eugene Rogan: All right, very good.

Chris Hedges: So they get up to the gates of Vienna, but then they’re as you write, they’re rolled back. This is all before World War I. So the empire begins a kind of slow disintegration on the eve of the war, perhaps you can just explain what happened.

Eugene Rogan: Well, basically what happens is Europe takes off. I mean, the Ottoman Empire was a perfectly strong and viable empire in its own right, but it found its European neighbors taking off with two major developments. One is the enlightenment, and just the new ideas that spill into politics and how to organize a country better, more efficiently, better at raising tax money, and how to develop cities and whatnot. And then the other, of course, is going to be the Industrial Revolution. And those two developments, coming in the end of the 18th century, are going to impel Europe into a high gear that leaves the Ottoman Empire far behind. And in the 19th century, the Ottomans become increasingly aware that every time they go to the battlefield with their European neighbors, they’re losing and they’re losing territory. It starts with losing territory in the Crimea to Russia, they begin to lose territories to the Habsburgs in Vienna and the Ottomans begin to ask, what is it going to take for us to revitalize this one dominant empire?

And in the 19th century, they settled on a reform program. It spans the years 1839 to 1876, where they just try to affect a root and branch reform of the governments and the economy of the Ottoman Empire, so that they might be able to take advantage of the new ideas of the Enlightenment, the new technologies of industrial Europe, and re-emerge as a player and as a power. But by the time they reach the 20th century, the challenges the Ottomans are facing are almost insurmountable. The gulf between where they stand and where the European neighbors stood was almost unbridgeable. And you know, if you’re trying to buy the technology for your own development from your adversaries, it’s a game you’ll never win. You’ll never overtake Britain and France by trying to buy their own technologies or ideas, they’ll always keep you one step behind. And I think that’s where the Ottomans found themselves in the beginning of the 20th century, as they were sort of coming into their first real conflict of total war with the most powerful states of Europe in World War I.

Chris Hedges: And so on the eve of World War I, there are all sorts of independence movements in the Balkans, the Ottomans are pushed back. Maybe you can explain a little bit about how that happened, and they ultimately built an alliance with Germany. One of the interesting conflicts, of course, within the British government, was that it had been a cornerstone of British policy to essentially leave the Ottoman Empire intact. This is, you know, that battle is lost by the end of World War I, but so just get us up to the eve of the war.

Eugene Rogan: So among the ideas to come out of the European enlightenment, nationalism was to be one of those contagious. And for a multinational, multi-ethnic empire like the Ottomans, it was really an existential threat. Nowhere was that more apparent than in the Balkans. We’re starting with Greece’s uprising in the 1820s. You’ll have a century between 1820s Greece right up until Albania declares its bid for independence in 1913, where virtually every Christian majority territory of the Balkan Peninsula seeks its independence from the Ottoman Empire. All those are territories the Ottomans had conquered from the Byzantine Empire, going back to the 14th and 15th centuries and by the 20th century, you know, on the eve of war, they pretty much lost every last bit of their European territories except a little bit of Thrace, which is that little piece of Europe in modern Turkey, which Istanbul straddles. And, you know, in 1908 the reformists come back to power in a revolution which overturns Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who had, in many ways, tried to put the power right back into the Sultanate and take it away from government, the Young Turk Revolution 1908 reverses that.

It’s a moment where I think many in the Ottoman Empire believed there would be a process of renewal, particularly binding the Muslims of the Empire, recognizing the Balkans were a lost cause. But in the course of the first years after that revolution, the Ottomans were just hammered by a succession of wars. The Italians make a bid for Libya. They want their own patch of imperium in North Africa and invade the territory, to squeeze the Ottomans to finally give up on Libya, the Italians lean on their relations in Montenegro to rise in what becomes the First Balkan War. The Ottomans are thrashed in the First Balkan War of 1912 and then this is when they really lose most of their remaining Macedonian and Albanian and Thracian territories in the Balkans. And then there’s a second Balkan War in 1913 where the Ottomans take advantage of the Balkan states like Bulgaria and Greece and Serbia falling out among themselves over the division of loot, like so many thieves, and are able to reclaim the city of Edirne, and that little stretch of Thrace, as I said before, is still part of modern Turkey. So the Ottomans are just rocked.

By 1914, their economy was, you know, exhausted. They took $100 million loan from France to try and rebuild their economy. Their army was broken. They reached out to Prussia to help them rebuild the Ottoman army. And they needed to reach naval parity with their great adversary, Greece, and they reached out to the British for help with rebuilding their navy. They even commissioned two state of the art dreadnoughts from the Harland shipyards in Northern Ireland. So the Ottomans, by the time they reach 1914, have had enough with revolution and war. They’re counting on a period of calm and peace so they can try and rebuild their empire, their military, their navy, to withstand the challenges of the 20th century. But they just weren’t left much of a breathing period from that sort of autumn and spring of 1914 to the guns of summer in August of 1914.

Chris Hedges: And just a little footnote, Trotsky covered the Balkan War. His book’s actually very good, and then used whatever three or four months there to, after the Bolshevik Revolution, make him Minister of War. So one of the things about the Ottoman Empire is that it, and you make this point in your book about you know, once the war begins, is the diversity of nationalities, ethnicities, not just Shia and Sunni, but Christian, Yazidi, Kurdish, that incorporated, they played such a major role after the war when Sykes–Picot essentially when they redrew the maps and created these modern Middle States. But you also note that the battles in the Middle Eastern battlefields, you say, were often the most international of the war. Australians, New Zealanders, every ethnicity in South Asia, North African, Senegalese and Sudanese made common cause with French, English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish soldiers against Turkish, Arab, Kurdish, Armenian, Circassian and their German and Austrian allies.

I mean, that was one aspect of the war, which I didn’t know. The other was a point you make, for instance, on the I think it’s on the Gallipoli campaign, where you talked about how you could be on the Western Front, it could be dormant for months. That wasn’t true in places like Gallipoli. So talk a little bit about, and I think that when we see the creation of the modern Middle East, especially when the imperial powers went in, in order for their own ends, they started pitting these groups, ethnicities—and that’s my dog there, sorry— that these ethnicities, one against the other, but talk about that international aspect.

Eugene Rogan: Oh, it’s one of the most interesting things about studying the First World War from the perspective of the Middle East. I argue that it’s really the Middle East that turned a European conflict into a world war. If you look to what went on in both the Pacific Theater and in the African theater of the war, it really had nowhere near the depth of gravity of the First World War in the Middle East. And I think the expression I use in the book as I describe these battlefields with all these different nations and nationalities as a virtual sort of Tower of Babel, and that just meant that some of those battlefields were absolute chaos, and this gives rise to some funny anecdotes. You know, one of my favorites from Gallipoli was very early after the Allied landing in the beaches of Gallipoli, which went off very badly. They they found themselves coming up against deeply entrenched Ottoman forces who were waiting for them and mowed them down with machine gun fire, or else they found themselves trying to scale cliffs that their maps just hadn’t prepared them for. So they arrived often separated where soldiers and commanders were not together. Soldiers without commanders often really don’t know how to take initiative in the battlefield, and in one case, a group of brown men come up to British commanders and asked to, you know, meet their commanding officers. And so the lieutenants take them to the captains, and the captains take them to the major. And these guys maintain that they’re Indian soldiers looking for their colonel, and instead, they wind up capturing like five or six British officers, because those were Turks in disguise pretending to be Indian soldiers, taking advantage of the credulity of these confused Tower of Babel soldiers. So yeah, it’s an element of the First World War that, you know, you think about the battlefields of the Somme, you know, Germans and Frenchmen and Englishmen fighting against white men. That was not the Middle East. The Middle East was truly a battlefield of diversity.

Chris Hedges: Let’s talk a little bit about the Ottomans were kind of agnostic as to who their allies would be. They ended up, of course, aligned with Germany, almost by default. The Germans also sent quite a bit of money so the Ottomans could build their forces. But I think, as you said, the main concern was the preservation of the empire they had left. They didn’t, it doesn’t appear that they really cared at that point, which of the warring powers would ensure that. Is that correct?

Eugene Rogan: Well, I mean, if anything, there was a tendency to see Germany as a more reliable ally than either Britain or France. You’re dead right. On the outbreak of war, the Ottomans were willing to cut a deal with virtually any great power to enter into a defensive alliance and protect the territory from the fallout of war. They knew that in February of 1914, Russia’s government had passed policy that in the cloud of war or the fog of war, Russia would seek to take the city of Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, under Russian rule, as well as the vital straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. These are the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles themselves. This is a really important sea corridor for all of Russia’s exports, from Ukraine and Russia, to the Mediterranean world. And of course, you know, the coming war, it was going to be an important line of communications, were it open, between the Entente powers. So Russia had geo-strategic as well as cultural reasons for wanting to try and seize these Ottoman territories. And they wanted to make this bid because they’d seen how in two Balkan Wars, the Ottomans have proved quite weak. And I think Russia was worried that maybe the Greeks would get to Constantinople first, as protectors of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Russia really wanted Constantinople, the Hagia Sophia Basilica, and all of the Byzantine treasures to come to their credit.

So, you know, with these drivers, the Ottomans were very concerned to keep their longest standing rival, Russia, at arms length. And if they could have carved a deal with France, who, as I just said, had given the Ottomans, in the spring of 1914, a $100 million loan. Or the British, who, as I just said underwrote a mission to help rebuild the Ottoman Navy, and had commissioned, you know, dreadnoughts for the Ottoman navy. If they could have gotten the British or the French to sign a deal that would protect their lands against the Russians, they would have done it. But of course, there’s no way that the British or French were going to guarantee Ottoman territory against their ally, Russia. Germany, by contrast, had no territorial ambitions in the Ottoman Empire. They never colonized an inch of Ottoman land. The French had, the British had, the Russians had. And so, they were militarily strong. They were technologically strong, very ahead of most of European powers. And if you were taking a bet, if you were a betting man, Chris, in the opening days of summer war of 1914 you might well have thought that Germany was going to win that war. I think the Ottomans made a bid to go with Germany, in the hope that their bet would pay off and that they’d be among the victors being able to reclaim lands that they’d lost to the Balkan neighbors, or to Russia, or islands to Greece, having been on the winning side of the First World War in siding with Germany. But the question is, what did the Germans get out of making an alliance with a country that most of Europe really did see as the sick man of Europe? And I guess that’s the harder one to explain.

Chris Hedges: Well, the British certainly furthered that process by seizing the dreadnoughts.

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John O’Sullivan is one of the grand old men of literature-posing-as-journalism. Plus, if you want to start a newspaper from scratch, a big, national newspaper, like say, Canada’s putatively conservative National Post, you call John. He has worked everywhere of note.

John O’Sullivan is editor-at-large of National Review, editor of Australia’s Quadrant, founding editor of The Pipeline, and President of the Danube Institute. He has served in the past as associate editor of the London Times, editorial and op-ed editor for Canada’s National Post, and special adviser to Margaret Thatcher. He is the author of The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World

I am running short – 1-3 minute reads – excerpts from a new book, Against the Corporate Media, 42 Ways the Media Hates You – a book of essays to which I contributed, along with forty-one others on just what happened. It will be published on September 10th. My purpose is that you come away from this somewhat enlightened as to what the hell happened, and how a once respectable profession became seedy and dishonest. The book provides a clear direction towards root and branch reform. And perhaps you will buy the book.

Through the Revolving Door – How the Fourth Estate Vanished

An excerpt from Against the Corporate Media, coming Sept. 10 from Bombardier Books. “Through the Revolving Door: How the Fourth Estate Vanished,” by John O’Sullivan:

For most of my lifetime the balance of temperaments in newsrooms, both in America and the U.K., has been weighted—this is plainly not a scientific judgment—strongly toward the bohemian, rebellious, and creative, and away from the respectable, conformist, and administrative on something like 70 lines to 30 lines. That division strikes me today as a pretty good corporate personality mix if you want to produce a lively, controversial, and unpredictable newspaper, magazine, television, or internet current affairs program. It didn’t track too well with partisan political divides between liberals and conservatives—which was a good thing because it meant that the common journalistic mission could and sometimes did override politics and ideology. Most newsrooms had a liberal majority but relaxed ideological attitudes. Bohemian Tories were more popular than liberal ideologues, for instance, and the most significant question you could ask about any newsroom was “Does it have an esprit de corps?”

That had less to do with the administrative virtues—important though getting expenses paid on time is to basic morale—than with bold and courageous editorial leadership shown by people as different as Arnaud de Borchgrave in The Washington Times, Roger Wood on the New York Post, Andrew Neil on the London Sunday Times, and Colin Welch as deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph. All of them had the necessary buccaneering self-confidence to drive their papers to excel in challenging not only governments but also all the respectable people, institutions, opinions, and causes mired in groupthink and self-congratulation—whom the Brits summarize ironically as “the Great and the Good”—who exercise enormous social and cultural power but too often get a pass when criticisms are being handed out.

Though we didn’t all realize it at the time, the era from the early 1980s to the start of the century was a golden age of journalism financially, technically, and creatively. And that produced freer countries and better governments. Those active in the press of those days drew a high card in the lottery of life.

You really can’t hate them enough.

So, what went wrong? Many things, as we’ll see, but one unnoticed cause was that even in those glory days, journalism wasn’t a particularly good launching pad for a career in high society (in which, incidentally, there are many mansions, not only on Park Avenue but also in Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Washington, Los Angeles, and London). That didn’t sit well with the growing number of lawyerly minded and socially ambitious journalists who were entering the trade not as copy boys but as former editors of Ivy League papers on special entry programs. They wanted more, better, and earlier avenues to the top than were offered by the relatively few senior positions in major media corporations.

That was hard to fashion directly but what they found was a sidedoor—a revolving door in fact between government and the media and vice versa. Opening it allowed reporters, editors, and columnists to leave the media to serve in government, and politicians to exchange jobs on Capitol Hill for jobs in the newsroom, and a few especially ambidextrous people to go back and forth through it several times as their talents permitted, or the voters insisted.

Opening that door was an important moment in the decline of American journalism, after which the door’s locks were permanently removed and the traffic through it increased exponentially. And it happened publicly at a 1988 dinner at the Washington Press Club in honor of David Broder, The Washington Post’s political correspondent, who was well-regarded by all as a good man and a scrupulous reporter but neither a revolutionary nor a reactionary.

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Ever since1984 (after the CIA had become too well-known for setting up coups), America’s coup-machine has been the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), not the CIA. The U.S. coup that seized control over Bangladesh in August this year is a typical example:

The U.S. regime wanted to place an air-force base on a particular Bangladeshi island, because that location for such a base would endanger China’s national security and weaken China’s ability to protect itself from a U.S. invasion.

On 28 May 2024, the Indian Express headlined “China praises Bangladesh PM Hasina for refusing to permit foreign air base”, and reported:

China on Tuesday praised Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for her decision to deny permission for a foreign military base, commending it as a reflection of the Bangladeshi people’s strong national spirit and commitment to independence.

Without naming any country, Hasina, 76, on Sunday said that she was offered a hassle-free re-election in the January 7 polls if she allowed a foreign country to build an airbase inside Bangladeshi territory.

Hasina, ruling the strategically located South Asian nation since 2009, secured a fifth overall term in the one-sided election in January, which was boycotted by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by former prime minister Khalida Zia.

“If I allowed a certain country to build an airbase in Bangladesh, then I would have had no problem,” The Daily Star Bangladesh newspaper quoted Hasina as saying.

Replying to a question on Hasina’s remarks at a media briefing here, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, “China has noted Prime Minister Hasina’s speech, which reflects the national spirit of the Bangladeshi people to be independent and not afraid of external pressure.” Though the Bangladesh prime minister did not name the country that had made the offer to her, she emphasised that the “offer came from a White man”.

Mao said some countries seek their own selfish interests, openly trade other countries’ elections, brutally interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, undermine regional security and stability, and fully expose their hegemonic, bullying nature.

This U.S. coup culminated on 4 August 2024 when the democratically elected Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Ms. Sheikh Hasina, resigned and was flown out from a Bangladesh Air Force base into neighboring India, aboard a Bangladesh Air Force Lockheed Martin C-130J military transport plane, heading to UK, which Government informed her in-flight that her asylum-request would be denied, and, since India had already told her that she could have at least temporary asylum there, she landed in India, intending it to be only temporary.

On August 5th, India’s Express News headlined “Meet General Waker-Uz-Zaman, the man in charge of Bangladesh after PM Sheikh Hasina’s resignation”, presented video of the General’s 10-hour press conference, and opened their accompanying printed news-report:

After Sheikh Hasina resigned as the prime minister of Bangladesh and fled the country on Monday, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, the Chief of Army Staff, stepped forward to announce the formation of an interim government. Addressing the nation from a podium with the world’s media capturing every moment, he declared, “I’m taking all responsibility (of the country). Please cooperate.”

They noted: “His career includes two tours as a UN peacekeeper,” and, “He received his education at the Bangladesh Military Academy and pursued advanced studies at the Defence Services Command and Staff College in Mirpur and the Joint Services Command and Staff College in the UK. Additionally, he holds degrees in Defence Studies from the National University of Bangladesh and King’s College, University of London.”

The normal procedure for a U.S. coup is to appoint someone as a “caretaker” governmennt until a ‘legitimate’ head-of-state who is heavily dependent upon the U.S. Government can be installed.

On August 9th came this explanatory news report on whom the U.S. regime chose:

——

https://x.com/BrianJBerletic/status/1821871322676527203

https://archive.is/xSXvX

9 August 2024

Brian Berletic

@BrianJBerletic

Muhammad Yunus, just sworn in as head of Bangladesh gov following US-backed regime change, had begged the US to aid in changing Bangladesh’s laws on his behalf in 2009, according to US diplomatic cables.

Yunus was in regular contact with the US government through the US embassy as well as trips to Washington D.C.

In 2009, he asked the US to pressure PM Sheikh Hasina to reverse a law giving the gov control over choosing the chair of his bank; 

The US embassy agreed to pressure the PM & promised to “note the potential negative consequences ” for the gov of refusing to reverse the law; 

The same cable admits the US government supports Yunus in the context of challenging the ruling government;

Yunus was a US State Dept. Fulbright scholar, received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a Congressional medal, as well has having signed at least 1 letter circulated by the National Endowment for Democracy – all as part of building him up as the head of a potential client regime; 

Source: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09DHAKA469_a.html [also see this from 2007 when Yunus informed the U.S. Consulate in Kolkata of his “strong intent to plunge into the maelstrom of Bangladesh politics” — which information at that time was entirey private, unknown to the public — and, from that time forward, he sought the U.S. Government’s help to make him the leader of Bangladesh; and, now, 17 years later, the U.S. Government has delivered to him that prize].

11:29 AM · Aug 9, 2024

——

On August 11th, Economic Times and India Times bannered “Sheikh Hasina alleges US role in ouster, says could’ve remained in power if she surrendered sovereignty of Saint Martin Island”, and reported:

Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, now in India, accused the US of orchestrating her ousting over disputes regarding Saint Martin Island, which she claimed was to assert control over the Bay of Bengal. In a statement, Hasina justified her resignation to avoid further violence and urged Bangladeshi citizens not to fall prey to radical manipulation. She expressed sorrow over the ongoing violence and leadership killings in Bangladesh, reaffirming her commitment to the Awami League and her hope for the country’s future. Hasina also denied inciting student protests, claiming her words were misrepresented.

Former Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina who is currently in India has accused the USA of ousting her from power for not handing over [control] of Saint Martin Island that would have enabled them to have “sway over the Bay of Bengal” and cautioned Bangladeshi nationals not to get manipulated by radicals.

In a message conveyed through her close associates and made available to ET Hasina said, “I resigned, so that I did not have to see the procession of dead bodies. They wanted to come to power over the dead bodies of students, but I did not allow it, I resigned from premiership. I could have remained in power if I had surrendered the sovereignty of Saint Martin Island and allowed America to hold sway over the Bay of Bengal. I beseech to the people of my land, ‘Please do not be manipulated by radicals.”

“If I had remained in the country, more lives would have been lost, more resources would have been destroyed. I made the extremely difficult decision to exit. I became your leader because you chose me, you were my strength,” Hasina emphasised.

“My heart cries upon receiving news that many leaders have been killed, workers are being harassed and their homes are subjected to vandalism and arson…With the grace of almighty Allah I will return soon. Awami League has stood up again and again. I shall forever pray for the future of Bangladesh, the nation which my great father strived for. The country for which my father and family gave their lives.”

Referring to the quota movement and student protests, Hasina said, “I would like to repeat to the young students of Bangladesh. I have never called you Razakars. Rather My words were distorted to incite you. I request you to watch the full video of that day. Conspirators have taken advantage of innocence and used you to destabilise the nation.”

Hasina had to flee to Bangladesh on Monday and took refuge in India.

Before the quota movement Hasina in April had told parliament that America is pursuing a strategy of regime change in her country. “They are trying to eliminate democracy and introduce a government that will not have a democratic existence.” …

On 15 December 2023 Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suddenly said at a press briefing that if Sheikh Hasina comes to power in the next election, America will use all its powers to overthrow her government. She had warned that America will create a situation like the ‘Arab Spring’ [another NED operation] to bring about a chaotic regime change. It may be recalled that a decade ago in the Middle East the ‘Arab Spring’ was initially led by university, college, school students [a common NED method].

Presumably, St. Martin Island was the land which the U.S. regime was seeking in the May 28th news-story.

On that same day, August 11th, Brian Berletic at New Eastern Outlook headlined “What’s Behind Regime Change in Bangladesh”, and he documented that participating in this U.S. coup were: the U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh, NED, the BNP (main opposition Party to Hasina’s Awami League Party), Jammat-e-Islami (fundamentalist Sunni movement to turn Bangladesh into an Islamic state allied with Saudi Arabia and supporting the U.S. Government in international affairs), “Dhaka University’s political science department including Nahid Islam and Nusrat Tabassum, both of whom have their own profile on the US and European government as well as Open Society-funded Front Line Defenders database,” and who led their students to organize  the crowds to overthrow Hasina. “Its department of political science in particular, from which these ‘leaders’ emerged, regularly conducts activities with Western-centric organizations and forums. The department is staffed by professors involved in US government-funded programs, including the so-called ‘Confronting Misinformation in Bangladesh (CMIB) project’. This includes professors Saima Ahmed and Dr. Kajalei Islam, who both serve as part of the project’s head team alongside US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) grantees and US State Department Fulbright scholars.” And the AP was quoted, “A key organizer of Bangladesh’s student protests said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus was their choice as head of an interim government, a day after longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned.”

Ben Norton on August 15th, did a superb hour-long video, “Exposing US gov’t role in Bangladesh regime change: Why PM Sheikh Hasina was overthrown”, demonstrating how important for the U.S. regime its capture of St. Martin Island would be especially for choking off the supply of oil from the Arab nations to China, which is the world’s largest oil-importer. His video is also a comprehensive, and fully documented, history of the U.S. regime’s efforts, ever since 1975, to grab control over Bangladesh. He describes and documents how those efforts have finally succeeded.

In the immediate wake of America’s coup, the Yunus government is doing everything it can to discredit not only Hasina but her Party and her Administration. For examples, here are some recent headlines from India Times, Economic Times: “Interim govt chief Muhammad Yunus accuses Sheikh Hasina of destroying every institution of Bangladesh”, “Bangladesh interim govt revokes ousted PM Sheikh Hasina’s diplomatic passport”, “Bangladesh’s former textile and jute minister arrested in Dhaka”, and, “Bangladesh starts economic clean-up after Sheikh Hasina’s exit”.

The empire grows, by subversion, sanctions, coups, invasions, and in any way it can, even at the same time as it might also be shrinking elsewhere when independent Governments, such as Georgia now, steel themselves against the world’s only remaining voracious, world-conquest-demanding, imperialistic power. When Barack Obama and other American leaders have claimed that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation”, meaning that all others are “dispensable,” this is what they are saying — that the U.S. Government’s goal is a dictatorship over the entire world. It’s the core belief of neoconservatism, and no American billionaire opposes it; all of them, both the Democrats and the Republicans, fund only politicians who are neoconservatives.

However, the closer that this Government gets to achieving its objective, the more intensely the leaders of the nations that aren’t yet its colonies (‘allies’) will resist it. That’s why we’re again heading into very violent times, perhaps even into WW3 — because of this voracious destructive force, like the Nazis were before WW2.

Reprinted with permission from Eric’s Substack.

The post How America Perpetrates Its Coups Now: The Bangladesh Coup appeared first on LewRockwell.

 

 

di Richard Ebeling

Quando 100 anni fa, nel 1924, venne pubblicata la seconda edizione in lingua tedesca di The Theory of Money and Credit di Ludwig von Mises, era passato meno di un anno da quando le grandi inflazioni tedesche e austriache erano giunte al termine. Le enormi espansioni monetarie avevano spinto i prezzi in generale a livelli astronomici, portando con sé il caos sociale ed economico. Questi erano gli effetti dell'inevitabile “non neutralità” in cui gli aumenti dell’offerta di moneta vengono “iniettati” e introdotti nella società.

Durante gli anni della guerra le espansioni monetarie erano state utilizzate principalmente per soddisfare le esigenze fiscali dei governi imperiali tedesco e austriaco, affinché finanziassero le loro spese militari. Nel dopoguerra, tra il 1918 e il 1923, le stampanti monetarie furono scatenate per coprire le linee di politica e i programmi interventisti e assistenzialisti dei nuovi governi “democratici” nella Repubblica tedesca di “Weimar” e nella molto più piccola Repubblica d’Austria. L’irregolarità con cui i prezzi salirono, dato che alcuni salirono prima di altri sia in modo sistematico che non, distorse le strutture dei prezzi relativi e dei salari, determinando profitti in alcuni settori delle economie tedesca e austriaca e perdite in altri, influenzando inoltre i tentativi di utilizzo delle risorse, del lavoro e del capitale.

Un aspetto di questo processo inflazionistico fu quello che divenne noto come “risparmio forzato”, l’aumento dei prezzi di vendita prima dei prezzi degli input, in particolare i salari, che portò alla caduta dei redditi reali di molti lavoratori rispetto ai margini di profitto degli investitori e dei detentori di capitale. Si chiamava risparmio forzato perché portava a tentativi di investimenti di capitale maggiori di quanto sarebbe sembrato possibile e redditizio in un ambiente non inflazionistico. Questo processo contorto diventò evidente a causa della sua natura esagerata in un periodo di iperinflazione, quando i prezzi aumentavano di percentuali a tre cifre al mese. Il noto economista italiano, Costantino Bresciani-Turroni, e autore di The Economics of Inflation (1931), scrisse:

L’inflazione, e più in particolare l’“iperinflazione”, può essere paragonata a una lente di ingrandimento che permette di osservare distintamente molti dei fatti difficili da districare seguendo la sequenza degli eventi durante un normale ciclo commerciale. I cambiamenti nella struttura della produzione, determinati dall’inflazione, e più tardi dalla stabilizzazione monetaria [nel 1924], furono più evidenti in Germania. Durante il periodo dell'inflazione il sostanziale calo dei salari reali, che si tradusse in un “risparmio forzato” su larga scala, consentì di deviare le risorse produttive del Paese dalla produzione di beni di consumo a quella di capitale fisso. Ciò continuò finché le nuove emissioni di cartamoneta esercitarono una certa pressione sui salari reali.

Ma quando l’inflazione tedesca terminò nel novembre 1923 si scatenò una “crisi di stabilizzazione” in cui l’economia attraversò un’inversione di tendenza, con un calo del valore del capitale rispetto ai prezzi dei beni di consumo e un riequilibrio degli usi del lavoro, del capitale e dei prezzi per riflettere il nuovo contesto non inflazionistico. “Mi sembra” – conclude Bresciani-Turroni – “che questi fatti siano significativi come ’verifica induttiva’ della teoria Austriaca dei processi inflazionistici”.

Un altro aspetto della non neutralità della moneta, corrispondente al risparmio forzato, era quello del “consumo di capitale”, già sottolineato da Mises nel suo precedente libro, Nation, State, and Economy (1919), prima che si verificasse la peggiore delle inflazioni tedesche e austriache. Poiché i prezzi di vendita spesso superavano per un certo periodo di tempo i prezzi degli input (compresi i salari monetari), l’inflazione creava l’impressione di un aumento dei margini di profitto e ciò fungeva da incentivo affinché s'intraprendessero investimenti di capitale e si espandessero i livelli di produzione. Tuttavia quando le imprese private rientravano nei mercati delle risorse per continuare nuovamente i processi di produzione, spesso scoprivano che i prezzi dei fattori di produzione erano aumentati (con un ritardo) più dei prezzi che avevano permesso un guadagno precedente; di conseguenza i ricavi delle vendite a volte non erano sufficienti per acquistare tutti gli input necessari per continuare la produzione agli stessi livelli e a livelli più elevati, con l'incapacità di sostituire il capitale che era stato utilizzato nei processi di produzione.

Pertanto il capitale veniva “consumato”, determinando un calo delle capacità produttive dell’economia nel suo complesso. Tutti i “bei tempi” inflazionistici si rivelarono una grande illusione, con effetti disastrosi in una prospettiva più a lungo termine. O come lo espresse Mises in The Theory of Money and Credit: “L’inflazione aveva il grande vantaggio di evocare l’apparenza di prosperità economica e di aumento della ricchezza, di falsificare i calcoli fatti in termini di moneta e quindi di nascondere il consumo di capitale”.

Denaro e scelte nel presente rispetto a quelle future

L'altro aspetto importante dell'analisi di Mises sulla moneta e sul sistema monetario era il ruolo di mezzo di scambio nella relazione tra risparmio e investimento. Tutto il processo decisionale economico ruota attorno al problema di come utilizzare al meglio i mezzi a nostra disposizione per raggiungere i fini desiderati. Molte di queste decisioni implicano la scelta tra una varietà di alternative: devo usare qualcuno dei miei mezzi a disposizione per comprare oggi un cappello o una nuova maglietta? Ordino uova e prosciutto per colazione in un ristorante, o pancake con sciroppo d'acero? Devo leggere il giornale del mattino per la prossima mezz'ora, o guardare la mia sitcom preferita di 30 minuti sul mio servizio di streaming?

Ma altre decisioni ci impongono di fare scelte tra alternative nel corso del tempo: dopo aver conseguito il diploma di scuola superiore entro subito nel mercato del lavoro e inizio a guadagnare un reddito a tempo pieno per acquistare molte delle cose che vorrei avere nel presente? Oppure rinuncio a tutto o a parte di quel reddito per i prossimi quattro anni e vado al college per conseguire una laurea che mi aprirà le porte di una carriera che molto probabilmente mi porterà a guadagnare molto più reddito in futuro? Spendo tutto o la maggior parte del mio reddito da lavoro ora, oppure ne metto da parte una parte per iniziare ad accumulare un gruzzoletto per la pensione, o per metterlo da parte in caso di emergenze inaspettate?

Questi e molti tipi simili di scelte riguardano opzioni più vicine al presente o più lontane nel futuro. Si tratta di decisioni sulle preferenze temporali e di scelte tra alternative. Infatti le nostre decisioni sugli scopi per i quali utilizzeremo alcuni dei nostri mezzi disponibili nel presente includono sempre la scelta implicita di rinviare alcuni desideri di consumo oggi per qualche guadagno futuro (quando quel futuro potrebbe essere minuti, ore, giorni o anni di distanza da adesso). E come tutte le altre scelte, anche le decisioni sulle preferenze temporali vengono prese “al margine”, vale a dire, un po’ meno nel presente per avere un po’ di più in futuro.

Preferenza temporale, guadagni derivanti dal commercio e tasso d’interesse

A volte le persone hanno preferenze temporali diverse. Una persona ha meno mezzi a sua disposizione per un progetto che vorrebbe intraprendere nel tempo, il cui risultato desiderato non si vedrà fino a un certo punto nel futuro. Un altro individuo potrebbe essere disposto a rinviare l’utilizzo di alcuni dei mezzi a sua disposizione oggi per un fine desiderato domani, in particolar modo se esiste un incentivo finanziario affinché aspetti di utilizzarli fino a un momento nel futuro.

Nei vecchi cartoni animati di Braccio di ferro, Poldo diceva: “Ti pagherò volentieri martedì per un hamburger oggi”. Ma la persona a cui viene chiesto di aspettare fino a martedì per essere pagata potrebbe ragionevolmente rispondere: “Perché dovrei rinunciare a mangiare quell’hamburger io stesso oggi, o a non venderlo a qualcun altro disposto a pagarlo proprio adesso?” Allora Poldo dovrebbe chiedersi quanto potrebbe essere disposto a pagare in futuro per l’hamburger di oggi e quanto il proprietario di quell’hamburger vorrebbe essere pagato in futuro per rinunciare al proprio consumo, o al sovrapprezzo rispetto a quello di oggi, per far sì che valga la pena aspettare per essere pagato. Tal premio futuro rispetto al valore, o al prezzo attuale dell'articolo, è la base di un tasso d'interesse di mercato.

Il tasso d'interesse, in altre parole, come sostenevano gli economisti austriaci fin quasi dalle origini della Scuola Austriaca, è il prezzo dei beni futuri rispetto ai beni presenti. Naturalmente nell’economia di mercato i beni presenti non vengono scambiati direttamente con beni futuri, come in tutte le transazioni di mercato lo scambio è facilitato attraverso il denaro per superare le difficoltà e le “impossibilità” del baratto, dovute alla mancata coincidenza dei desideri o all’indivisibilità dei beni da comprare e vendere, o perché i beni offerti nel presente non sono necessariamente gli stessi beni che si riceveranno in futuro.

Il risparmiatore che consuma meno dell’intero reddito guadagnato presta al mutuatario una somma di denaro concordata. Il risparmiatore rinuncia nel presente alla sua domanda per particolari beni che altrimenti avrebbe potuto acquistare con i suoi soldi. Invece tale somma di denaro passa nelle mani del mutuatario per la durata del prestito ed egli domanda altri tipi di beni rispetto a quelli che avrebbe domandato il creditore. Risorse, lavoro e capitale (strumenti, attrezzature, macchinari) sono dedicati a diversi usi in quel periodo di tempo, il cui risultato sarà un bene finito o un prodotto di qualche tipo che il mutuatario prevede soddisferà una domanda futura e grazie a essa guadagnerà un profitto che giustificherà le spese sostenute e il pagamento degli interessi da corrispondere al creditore. Quando il prestito viene rimborsato, il creditore può prestare nuovamente quella somma di denaro e guadagnare ulteriori interessi, o spendere tutto o parte del capitale originale e degli interessi in cambio delle attuali richieste che desidera soddisfare.

Mantenere e aumentare il capitale attraverso il risparmio

Immaginate che ci sia un fornaio che possieda un forno con cui cuoce mille pagnotte di pane ogni giorno. Non importa quanto diligente possa essere il fornaio nel riparare e mantenere il suo forno, a un certo punto l’usura ne richiederà la sostituzione.

È necessario che alcuni nella società risparmino abbastanza affinché risorse, lavoro e altri tipi di capitale siano “liberati” dai consumi attuali e coloro sul lato della produzione possano averli per creare il forno sostitutivo. Solo in questo modo si può garantire la produzione di mille pagnotte al giorno.

Possiamo anche immaginare che le preferenze temporali di alcuni cambino e risparmino di più: richiedono meno beni di consumo nel presente e quindi liberano più risorse a fini degli investimenti. Consumando di meno e risparmiando di più, la maggiore offerta di risparmio sul mercato dei prestiti tenderebbe ad abbassare in modo competitivo il tasso d'interesse. Poiché quest'ultimo fenomeno abbassa, a parità di condizioni, i costi di produzione dei forni, il relativo produttore potrebbe prendere in prestito i risparmi aggiuntivi per creare ora due forni; potrebbe quindi offrirli entrambi al fornaio a un prezzo inferiore, un prezzo sufficientemente attraente da convincerlo a espandere la sua produzione giornaliera di pane.

Se la tecnologia dei forni non cambiasse, il fornaio, con due forni, potrebbe fornire ogni giorno duemila forme di pane a un prezzo unitario inferiore, determinando un aumento generale del tenore di vita. Pertanto il “sacrificio” di un mancato consumo in passato viene “premiato” con più beni da consumare in futuro. Sebbene presentato in modo molto semplificato, questo è, in sostanza, il modo in cui le società crescono economicamente e diventano più ricche in termini di beni desiderati.

Investimenti e struttura temporale della produzione

Tutti questi processi di investimento richiedono tempo e di solito attraversano diverse fasi di produzione. Possiamo immaginare che, dall'inizio alla fine, un simile processo attraversi cinque fasi per essere completato, ciascuna delle quali, tanto per fare un esempio, richiede un mese di tempo. Per semplificazione potremmo presumere che in ciascuna fase gli input (risorse, lavoro, utilizzo di beni strumentali) richiedano una spesa di $100. Possiamo inoltre supporre che ciascuna fase sia intrapresa da un'impresa separata, che vende la sua versione parzialmente completata del prodotto all'impresa successiva, fino a quando, alla fine del quinto mese, il prodotto è nella sua forma finita e pronto per la vendita a un acquirente interessato.

Il valore aggiunto in ciascuna fase ammonta cumulativamente a $500; se presumiamo che le decisioni imprenditoriali in ciascuna fase anticipino correttamente la domanda nella fase successiva, il prodotto finito verrebbe venduto per i $500 necessari al suo completamento. Se la domanda del prodotto da parte dei consumatori continua mese dopo mese, allora ciascuna di queste fasi di produzione deve essere in atto simultaneamente nel tempo. Se si vuole che questo prodotto venga consumato a maggio, la prima delle cinque fasi dovrà essere avviata a gennaio per poter passare attraverso le fasi rimanenti ed essere pronto per la vendita alla fine di maggio.

Se il prodotto viene richiesto anche a giugno, lo stesso processo deve iniziare nuovamente a febbraio, mentre il prodotto da vendere a maggio si trova attualmente nella seconda fase di questo processo di produzione. Se si desidera il prodotto anche a luglio, la prima fase deve iniziare a marzo, mentre il prodotto di maggio è contemporaneamente nella fase tre e il prodotto di giugno nella fase due. In altre parole, ogni prodotto pianificato per essere immesso sul mercato deve passare attraverso la propria linea temporale di produzione, simultaneamente con gli altri, periodo dopo periodo.

In ogni fase della produzione viene impiegata non solo manodopera, ma anche alcuni beni strumentali (macchine, utensili, ecc.) che, come il forno nell'esempio precedente, devono essere eventualmente sostituiti a causa di usura. In altri settori devono essere in corso progetti il ​​cui scopo è quello di pianificare e anticipare la domanda di quelle imprese che necessitano di beni strumentali sostitutivi; ciascuno di questi deve essere pianificato in anticipo in modo che abbiano attraversato le rispettive fasi di produzione e siano pronti per la vendita e l'installazione. Il tutto deve andare avanti in regolare coordinamento, con le forniture che devono soddisfare le richieste future in base all'anticipazione imprenditoriale di ciò che saranno le probabili condizioni future del mercato.

Tutta questa complessità sovrapposta e interdipendente di investimenti, produzione, offerta e domanda è tenuta insieme attraverso il sistema di prezzi competitivi. Questo sistema facilita i calcoli economici riguardanti i possibili profitti e perdite in circostanze mutevoli e il modo migliore per produrre ciò che gli altri vogliono al minor costo. Questo è ciò che consente a un sistema sociale sviluppato ed esteso (divisione del lavoro) di esistere e di coordinare le azioni di moltitudini di persone, le quali fanno affidamento su tutti quegli altri sconosciuti che creano beni e servizi desiderati. Da ciò deriva quell’aumento del tenore di vita che molti di noi danno per scontato, senza pensare agli assetti istituzionali sociali ed economici che lo rendono possibile.

Il sistema bancario come istituzione intermediaria che collega risparmio e investimento

La chiave di tutto questo è un sistema bancario che coordini la volontà dei risparmiatori di rinunciare al consumo corrente in modo che altri possano prendere in prestito ciò che viene risparmiato (e le risorse che il risparmio rappresenta) e intraprendano progetti di investimento che richiedono tempo e capitale. Il tasso d'interesse non è solo il prezzo intertemporale che porta in equilibrio le decisioni di risparmio e di indebitamento (come qualsiasi altro prezzo che coordina domanda e offerta). Funziona anche come un “freno” sugli orizzonti temporali dei progetti di investimento intrapresi, in modo che le attività di produzione in più fasi possano essere completate con successo (data l’accuratezza con cui gli imprenditori dal lato dell’offerta anticipano ciò che i consumatori vogliono e i prezzi che potrebbero essere loro offerti quando i beni nella loro forma finita saranno disponibili per la vendita).

Naturalmente errori e interpretazioni errate di particolari condizioni future del mercato non solo sono possibili, ma inevitabili in un mondo in cui tutti noi abbiamo una conoscenza tutt’altro che perfetta del futuro. Il problema a cui Mises si interessò erano i frequenti cicli di boom e bust, inflazioni seguite da recessioni o depressioni: disarmonie nel processo di mercato che incidono non solo su uno o pochi settori dell’economia in un dato momento, ma simultaneamente sugli squilibri dell’intera economia. La risposta, a suo avviso, va ricercata nelle qualità distintive dell’economia monetaria e dei sistemi bancari moderni.

Ogni volta che un prodotto viene creato e venduto sul mercato, la sua vendita rappresenta la domanda del venditore per altre cose che vorrebbe acquistare. Dopotutto, in un sistema di divisione del lavoro, ognuno di noi è specializzato in una linea di attività e utilizza ciò che produce come mezzo per pagare tutte le altre cose che desidera che altri individui producano. Perché altrimenti qualcuno dovrebbe dedicare tempo e fatica a produrre un articolo e portarlo sul mercato?

Ma il denaro trasforma quello che è uno scambio di baratto – un cappello scambiato direttamente con un paio di scarpe – in due transazioni: lo scambio di un bene con denaro e poi lo scambio del denaro guadagnato con qualche altro bene desiderato. Non è necessario che il cappello che produco e vendo sia destinato alla persona che ha le scarpe che desidero. Il produttore di scarpe potrebbe non aver bisogno dei miei cappelli, quindi li vendo a qualcuno che ne ha bisogno in cambio di denaro, anche se potrei non avere alcun interesse ad acquistare le magliette o i pantaloni che l'acquirente dei miei cappelli è specializzato a offrire sul mercato. Avendo guadagnato quella somma di denaro, ne utilizzo una parte per acquistare il paio di scarpe che desidero. O come scrisse Mises in The Theory of Money and Credit:

Chiunque vende merci ed è pagato con un assegno e poi lo utilizza immediatamente per pagare merci acquistate in un'altra transazione, non ha affatto scambiato direttamente merce con altre merci. Ha intrapreso due atti di scambio indipendenti.

Risparmiare e investire attraverso il denaro

Le peculiarità del sistema bancario moderno nel facilitare il coordinamento del risparmio e degli investimenti, sosteneva Mises, consentono una comprensione e un’analisi di come le cose potrebbero andare storte e determinare il ciclo economico, soprattutto nel contesto del sistema bancario centrale. Mises suggerisce una terminologia particolare per comprendere meglio il motivo per cui i sistemi bancari possono essere suscettibili alle fluttuazioni dell’intera economia. Il punto di partenza è quando i risparmiatori prestano denaro direttamente ai mutuatari interessati: ciò che viene prestato è una somma di denaro che rappresenta una quantità di potere d'acquisto sul mercato.

Essa viene trasferita al mutuatario e viene utilizzata per richiedere e indirizzare l’uso di risorse scarse nella produzione di particolari beni in cui il mutuatario desidera investire piuttosto che in quelli che sarebbero stati richiesti se il percettore di reddito originario avesse scelto di spenderla per il consumo corrente. Pertanto un parte delle risorse scarse invece di essere utilizzate, ad esempio, in più cene fuori nel presente, vengono liberate per essere utilizzate per quel secondo forno dell’esempio precedente, cosa che consente un aumento nella produzione del pane.

Se il sistema bancario si fosse evoluto in modo tale che solo il denaro risparmiato da alcuni fosse prestato ad altri, la connessione tra la rinuncia nel presente in cambio di più beni nel futuro sarebbe rimasta abbastanza stretta. Anche attraverso quel processo di scambio a due transazioni (beni scambiati con denaro e poi quest'ultimo scambiato con beni) sarebbe stato mantenuto un rapporto abbastanza stretto ed equilibrato tra le decisioni dei risparmiatori con quelle dei mutuatari per assicurare un coordinamento tra attività di consumo e di investimento coerenti con i mezzi limitati a disposizione delle persone.

Banconote e sistema bancario a riserva frazionaria

Uno degli usi e delle comodità del sistema bancario è quello di rendere possibile l’uso delle banconote emesse dalle banche stesse come diritti su somme di denaro-merce – oro e argento – depositate presso di esse come “sostituti del denaro” per le transazioni quotidiane invece dell’utilizzo diretto dei metlali lasciati in custodia. Se una banca avesse una buona reputazione di “fare sempre del bene” quando un detentore delle sue banconote richiede il ritiro della quantità di oro e argento rappresentati dalle banconote, quella banca avrebbe un maggiore margine di manovra nell’emetterle a coloro che vogliono accendere un prestito per qualche piano di investimenti.

Supponiamo che i clienti di una banca depositino $10.000 in oro e argento nei loro conti e per i quali vengono emesse banconote come crediti. Se questi fossero conti di risparmio, e se i direttori della banca fossero sicuri che i detentori di tali depositi non effettuerebbero prelievi significativi dai loro conti per, diciamo, due anni, allora quella banca potrebbe prestare quei $10.000 per due anni a coloro ritenuti “degni di credito”. Il nesso risparmio-investimento sarebbe mantenuto in un equilibrio ragionevolmente vicino tra domanda e offerta nell’uso di risorse scarse nel tempo.

Ma le banche hanno scoperto anche che, sulla base dei depositi di $10.000 in oro e argento, potevano concedere prestiti ai mutuatari significativamente superiori a tale somma. Ogni giorno ci sono clienti delle banche che effettuano nuovi depositi, mentre altri effettuano prelievi. Supponiamo che la banca impari dall'esperienza che, in media, coloro che detengono e utilizzano le loro banconote effettuano, al netto, solo prelievi in ​​oro o argento pari al 10% del totale delle passività in banconote della banca. Se i depositanti hanno $10.000 in oro e argento, quindi, è improbabile che richiedano più di $1.000 in denaro reale durante un particolare periodo di tempo.

La banca potrebbe emettere prestiti totali, sotto forma di banconote per $20.000. Se il modello di business di tale banca dovesse reggere, solo il 10% delle banconote in circolazione probabilmente verrebbe restituito per il rimborso, ovvero $2.000. Allo stesso modo se i modelli di depositanti e utilizzatori di banconote rimanessero gli stessi, la banca potrebbe emettere un massimo di $100.000 in banconote, di cui $10.000 rappresentano oro e argento effettivi; più $90.000 in banconote aggiuntive sarebbero emessi come prestiti a mutuatari presunti meritevoli di credito.

Mises usò il termine credito merce (o credito di trasferimento) per rappresentare i $10.000 in risparmi effettivi prestati a coloro ritenuti meritevoli di credito; definiva invece l'importo delle banconote in eccesso emesse da tale banca mezzo fiduciario, o credito in circolazione (o credito creato), cioè non coperto da oro e argento depositati come risparmi dai clienti della banca. Secondo Mises l’origine e le basi del rapporto risparmio-investimento venivano sbilanciate: il risultato sono progetti di investimento con strutture temporali di produzione incoerenti con i risparmi reali disponibili affinché possano essere portati a una conclusione proficua, o mantenere un profitto se completati prima o dopo l’insorgere di una crisi economica.

Una crisi economica nasce da questo tipo di squilibrio tra risparmio e investimento e quali Ludwig von Mises considerava i cambiamenti istituzionali necessari per prevenire o ridurre la probabilità che le sequenze del ciclo economico continuino saranno il tema della terza parte di questa serie.

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

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???? Qui il link alla Prima Parte: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/2024/08/ludwig-von-mises-e-la-teoria-austriaca.html

???? Qui il link alla Terza Parte: 

 

 

di Kane KcGun

Negli ultimi anni, dopo ogni conferenza Bitcoin, mi prendo del tempo per riflettere sui miei apprendimenti e sulle mie osservazioni. Cosa ho visto e cosa significa per il futuro di Bitcoin e del sistema finanziario?

Sfortunatamente, quest'anno, l'evento principale di Bitcoin è stato monopolizzato dai politici.

La loro presenza è stata così pervasiva da ostacolare il consueto rito di incontrare persone e imparare dalle sessioni in cui si parla di tutto ciò che riguarda Bitcoin. Da un lato non è esattamente una sorpresa che gli interessi politici si siano concentrati su Bitcoin; dall'altro è difficile vederlo utilizzato come strumento di persuasione.

Come accade in ogni grosso cambiamento, dobbiamo chiederci: qual è l'opportunità? Dov'è il segnale in mezzo al rumore?

Bitcoin è molto più di un “numero che sale”

In tutta onestà la narrativa del “numero che sale” è una delle idee più insensate in Bitcoin. Ciò non significa che lo spettacolo non possa continuare, ma la conferenza di quest'anno ha dimostrato che Bitcoin sopravvivrà più a lungo a qualsiasi scetticismo.

Bill Mill IV lo ha riassunto bene: “La maggior parte delle persone lavora per qualcun altro [...] anche se credete in Bitcoin e comprate per conto di qualcun altro, o se a uno dei vostri capi non piace, vi mette in una posizione decisamente difficile. Se va bene, e a qualcuno per cui lavorate non piace, riceverete una pacca sulla spalla a malincuore. Quindi tutto si riduce agli incentivi”.

Allora perché c’è tanta fiducia in Bitcoin? Tre cose:

1. La presentazione di apertura al Nakamoto Stage;
2. L’attenzione su Bitcoin come soluzione al nostro problema delle infrastrutture energetiche;
3. Edward Snowden, la cosiddetta quarta svolta e il potere dei cambiamenti di paradigma.

Padroneggiare il pensiero strategico

Ad aprire la conferenza sul palco principale è stato il discorso di Sophie von Laer:  Mastering Strategic Thinking & Leading Bitcoin Companies Effectively.

Ciò che risalta di più è che sembrava una preparazione psicologica per ciò che verrà e quali tipi di individui saranno reclutati per guidare la carica. Il discorso sembrava davvero un briefing di intelligence di alto livello. Anche se non posso dire con certezza se ciò fosse intenzionale, il tema è diventato sempre più evidente nelle ore e nei giorni successivi.

C'è stata una forte influenza da parte del governo durante tutta la Bitcoin 2024. Che si trattasse di Trump, uno dei numerosi politici, o di Edward Snowden, è stato ribadito che la rete Bitcoin sarà uno strumento fondamentale per i decenni a venire.

Le descrizioni di Sophie di un anticonformista strategico, della mentalità strategica, dei nuovi paradigmi e della necessità di disconnessione per raggiungere la connessione, erano molto predittive di ciò che sarà richiesto per il caos che stiamo vivendo (ovvero, la cosiddetta quarta svolta).

I suoi pensieri su come programmiamo e condizioniamo i leader hanno delineato un'aspettativa per i bitcoiner che collaboreranno con le forze politiche.

L’idea di “pensare non solo ai propri bisogni ma a quelli di chi vi circonda” avevano una certa carica morale, basata su principi unificanti rispetto alla divisione alimentata dall'attuale manuale D(iversità) E(guaglianza) I(inclusione).

• Piano Strategico  = miglioramento continuo ed evoluzione

• Alleanza strategica  = ci vuole un villaggio, una tribù

“Conoscere l'intersezione delle cose che accadono intorno a voi”

• Resilienza adattativa  = gestire il cambiamento in modo efficace

“Una cultura che favorisce il cambiamento in atto”

• Psicologia positiva  = concentrarsi sulle cose che fanno bene nella vita

“Una cultura che pensa insieme diventa più coerente. Abbiamo molto lavoro da fare in base alla posizione in cui ci troviamo oggi”

Gli assi della strategia comprendono la resilienza adattativa: “Il periodo di riposo dopo il cambiamento vi consente di diventare ciò che desiderate. Qualcuno si adatta molto bene in questo periodo”. Una inquadratura o un avvertimento? In ogni caso era decisamente appropriato sia per Bitcoin che per i bitcoiner in questo momento di cambiamento di paradigma.

Bitcoin: una soluzione per le infrastrutture energetiche

Al di là della politica il ruolo di Bitcoin nel rinnovamento dell’infrastruttura energetica statunitense è stato uno degli argomenti principali della conferenza. Il tema ricorrente era che siamo ancora all’inizio di questo nuovo paradigma.

Il senatore del Tennessee, Bill Hagerty, ha sottolineato molto bene nel suo discorso che il dopoguerra riguardava l’espansione delle persone, dei beni e dell’uso dell’energia negli Stati Uniti. Per continuare a sostenere tutta questa crescita, abbiamo bisogno di maggiore efficienza energetica. E, nel mezzo della crescita economica e della crescente domanda di energia, ci sono i soldi.

I miner Bitcoin forniscono soluzioni sia alle sfide monetarie che a quelle energetiche. Aiutano a bilanciare il consumo di energia e, cosa ancora più importante, a generare entrate per le società di servizi pubblici acquistando energia in eccesso che altrimenti andrebbe sprecata. Come ha affermato Harry Sudock: “Le entrate curano tutto”.

Quale modo migliore per risolvere un problema energetico se non con macchine che possono accendersi e spegnersi, bilanciando facilmente la nostra rete stressata?

Queste macchine forniscono entrate durante periodi che altrimenti non sarebbero redditizi. Inoltre offrono la flessibilità di essere spente durante i picchi di consumo energetico, evitando il consumo di energia scarsa.

La nostra economia moderna fa affidamento su tecnologie avanzate e man mano che andremo avanti avremo bisogno di aggiornamenti e ottimizzazioni significativi per la nostra infrastruttura energetica, le nostre reti e le nostre server farm. Ognuna di queste tecnologie ha una componente energetica esponenziale. Bitcoin è l’unica soluzione che calcola sia il denaro che l’energia in forma esponenziale.

Edward Snowden: “Votate, non unitevi a una setta”

Il punto più importante di Snowden è stato gettare acqua fredda sulla parata politica. Ha tentato di riportarci un po' con i piedi per terra offrendoci diversi promemoria sul fatto che nessuno dei due partiti politici è nostro amico, poiché vogliono solo convincere i bitcoiner ad amarli. Citando comportamenti passati, ci ha esortato a rimanere cauti con questa citazione:

«In ogni Paese del mondo, credo, l'avarizia e l'ingiustizia dei principi e degli stati sovrani, abusando della fiducia dei loro sudditi, hanno gradualmente diminuito la quantità reale di metallo che era originariamente contenuta nelle loro monete.»

~ Adam Smith

Edward ci ha ricordato che durante il corso della storia le tecnologie sono state progettate per avvantaggiare “loro”, organizzazioni e politici. Questa prospettiva rende più facile immaginare un futuro in cui la privacy diminuisce con la stessa rapidità con cui possiamo connetterci, considerando i sei gradi di separazione.

Ha accennato brevemente al dilemma morale che dobbiamo affrontare, ricordandoci che il nostro sistema interno è rotto a causa della rottura del denaro stesso. Con l’interferenza politica potremmo aver avviato una nuova versione dello stesso gioco, ma con nuove regole. In questo gioco dovremmo essere tutti pronti a prendere decisioni difficili.

Tra le tante citazioni illuminanti fatte da Snowden, ho pensato che valesse la pena ricordare queste due: “Siamo in competizione costante e raramente collaboriamo raramente. Dobbiamo cambiare la situazione”. “Internet è rotto perché le istituzioni competono contro l’individuo e quest'ultimo contro un altro individuo”.

Peter Theil ha fatto riferimento all'idea alla base della prima citazione nel suo libro Zero to One e la seconda citazione ha offerto spunti potenti sulla situazione che stiamo osservando svolgersi sotto i nostri occhi.

Mettere tutto insieme

Il messaggio è stato chiaro durante tutta la Bitcoin 2024: siamo diretti verso un cambio di paradigma e si ritiene che la tribù Bitcoin abbia i leader che daranno forma alla cultura del nostro futuro.

Bitcoin è ormai mainstream. È ancora all'inizio della fase di adozione, ma la rete Bitcoin sarà uno strumento cruciale per il nostro futuro.

Il modo in cui verrà modellato e il ruolo di Bitcoin nel nostro sistema finanziario dipenderanno da quale fazione otterrà il controllo e da come sceglierà di utilizzarlo. Sarà una risorsa e un mezzo per ricostruire la nostra infrastruttura energetica obsoleta, o sarà solo un altro dispositivo di controllo? Solo il tempo ce lo dirà.

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

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di Jeffrey Tucker

La grave ondata di inflazione negli Stati Uniti – che si riflette in molti Paesi del mondo – è stata messa in moto nella prima settimana del marzo 2020, come gran parte delle altre emergenze ancora in corso. Ci vollero due settimane affinché venisse annunciato il lockdown, il che indica che molto stava già accadendo dietro le quinte. La Federal Reserve decise in un batter d'occhio di fornire un'enorme liquidità al sistema, pochi giorni dopo che il CDC informò la stampa nazionale sui lockdown, di cui l'amministrazione Trump allora non sembrava sapere nulla.

La gozzoviglia fiscale e monetaria è durata solo per un certo periodo. Dopo l’insediamento del nuovo presidente arrivò anche la scadenza della prima tornata di conti, continuata fino a oggi, cancellando rapidamente il valore degli assegni piovuti dal cielo che sembravano avessero reso tutti improvvisamente ricchi senza lavorare.

Dopo due anni e dopo 10 mesi di conseguente calo del potere d’acquisto, insieme a interruzioni delle catene di approvvigionamento, la FED ha iniziato a preoccuparsi e a rialzare i tassi d'interesse dallo 0%. Una strategia, questa, progettata per assorbire la liquidità in eccesso che era stata iniettata direttamente nelle vene della vita economica. L’azione della FED ha rallentato, ma non ha posto fine a ciò che aveva scatenato.

Normalmente tassi più alti ispirerebbero nuovi risparmi, soprattutto perché era la prima volta in quasi un quarto di secolo che il solo risparmio di denaro era un mezzo per fare soldi più velocemente di quanto il denaro perdesse valore. Ciò non è accaduto, perché le finanze delle famiglie erano ridotte e tutto il reddito discrezionale è stato reindirizzato verso il pagamento delle proprie pendenze economiche. Oggi circa il 40% degli intervistati afferma di riuscire a malapena a sopravvivere, mentre l'acquisto di una casa è fuori questione.

Eccoci quattro anni e sei mesi dopo, e cosa sentiamo? Da un lato ci viene detto che il problema dell’inflazione è in gran parte risolto, anche se vi sono numerose prove che ciò non è vero. Non abbiamo nemmeno una lettura verificabile di quanti danni siano stati arrecati al valore del dollaro. Si dice che sia intorno al 20%, ma questa cifra include un'ampia gamma di imprecisioni ed esclude molte delle categorie di acquisti che sono aumentate di più (come i tassi d'interesse). Di conseguenza non conosciamo realmente la pienezza del problema. Potrebbe il dollaro aver perso il 30 o addirittura il 50% o più del suo valore in quattro anni? Aspettiamo dati migliori.

Tutti i portavoce ufficiali affermano che il problema è in gran parte scomparso e ciò rende particolarmente curioso che proprio questa settimana il candidato in testa nei sondaggi per la presidenza, Kamala Harris, abbia annunciato il sostegno al controllo dei prezzi a livello nazionale sui generi alimentari e sugli affitti. Se fosse disposta a farlo, sarebbe altrettanto disposta a espanderli a qualsiasi categoria di beni o servizi.

Nonostante affermi che si tratta della “prima” imposizione di una cosa del genere, ha torto: il 15 agosto 1971 il presidente Richard Nixon impose un congelamento di 90 giorni su tutti i prezzi, salari, affitti e interessi; furono inoltre istituiti nuovi comitati di controllo sia per i salari che per tutti i prezzi. Anche allora si trattò di soli 90 giorni per “appiattire la curva”.

L’amministrazione fece fatica a tirarsi indietro da questa linea di politica e la reintrodusse nuovamente nel 1973. Fu completamente abrogata solo nel 1974. Novanta giorni si trasformarono in tre anni, proprio come due settimane si sono trasformati in due anni.

Ciò che Nixon fece ai suoi tempi fu in risposta a un’emergenza. Le richieste sull'oro necessitavano di un cambiamento nella politica monetaria e, soprattutto, la chiusura della finestra dell'oro, mentre i controlli sui prezzi erano progettati per sostenere la sua posizione politica nei sondaggi. Fu costretto a scegliere tra ciò che sapeva essere giusto e ciò che pensava avrebbe rafforzato la sua popolarità. Scelse quest'ultima.

Nixon scrisse quanto segue nelle sue Memorie:

Mentre lavoravo con Bill Safire al mio discorso quel fine settimana, mi chiedevo come sarebbero stati i titoli: Nixon agisce coraggiosamente? O Nixon cambia idea? Avendo parlato fino a poco tempo prima dei mali insiti nel controllo dei salari e dei prezzi, sapevo di espormi all’accusa di aver tradito i miei principi o nascosto le mie reali intenzioni. Filosoficamente, però, ero ancora contrario al controllo dei prezzi, anche se ero convinto che la realtà oggettiva della situazione economica mi costringesse a imporlo.

La reazione del pubblico al mio discorso televisivo fu estremamente favorevole. Sulle reti il 90% dei telegiornali era dedicato a questo tema e gran parte dell'attenzione era concentrata sul brillante briefing che John Connally aveva tenuto durante la giornata. Da Wall Street le notizie erano buone: quel lunedì alla Borsa di New York vennero scambiate 33 milioni di azioni e la media del Dow Jones guadagnò 32,93 punti.

Chiunque avesse un cervello rimase inorridito dallo svolgersi di quegli eventi, dubitando della loro legalità e prevedendo con grande precisione l'imminente disastro: carenze e confusione di massa. Alla fine l'inflazione tornò a ruggire.

Nixon lo sapeva, ma agì comunque in quel modo. Difese quella decisione nelle sue memorie anche se affermò che la sua linea di politica era sbagliata. Provate a dare un senso a questo:

Cosa ha raccolto l’America dalla sua breve avventura con i controlli dei prezzi? La decisione del 15 agosto 1971 di imporli era politicamente necessaria e immensamente popolare nel breve periodo, ma alla lunga credo che fosse sbagliata. I nodi arrivano sempre al pettine e c’è stato un prezzo indiscutibilmente alto per la manomissione dei meccanismi economici ortodossi [...] abbiamo ritenuto necessario allontanarci dal libero mercato e poi faticosamente ritornare a esso.

Quindi eccoci qua: la razionalità è passata in secondo piano rispetto all’opportunità politica. Nixon era nel panico, anche Kamala lo è? Continuano a dirci che l’inflazione si è raffreddata al punto da essere quasi scomparsa. Perché, allora, vuole imporre controlli sui prezzi a livello nazionale? Forse dietro la facciata pubblica si nasconde il panico? Forse si tratta solo del desiderio di un potere esecutivo estremo su tutto il Paese fino ai cereali per la colazione? È impossibile saperlo.

È troppo anche per il Washington Post: “Quando il vostro avversario vi definisce 'comunista', forse è meglio non proporre controlli sui prezzi?”

Uno strano effetto del discorso attuale sul controllo dei prezzi è quello di incentivare i proprietari ad aumentare gli affitti ora, prima che i nuovi controlli entrino in vigore dopo la loro eventuale entrata in vigore. Questo è forse il motivo per cui stiamo iniziando a vedere contratti di affitto con canoni mensili più bassi a 7 mesi anziché a 12 mesi. A partire dal prossimo anno l’affitto delle abitazioni non potrà essere aumentato più del 5% annuo. Negli ultimi 4 anni gli affitti sono aumentati in media dell'8,5% all'anno, il che significa che la differenza deve pur venire da qualche parte.

Nel breve periodo potrebbe derivare da un aumento degli affitti; nel lungo periodo dalla riduzione di comfort, riparazioni e servizi di ogni tipo. Quando l'attrezzatura della palestra si rompe o la piscina chiude per la pulizia, potreste dover aspettare molto tempo prima che venga riparata, se non mai. L’esperienza di New York City – o sotto l’imperatore Diocleziano nell’antica Roma – mostra esattamente quali risultati: carenze, deprezzamento di proprietà e servizi, e chiusure di imprese.

Ciò che è profondamente preoccupante nell'esperienza di Nixon è che lui sapeva che era sbagliato e lo fece comunque; ciò che è ancora più preoccupante nel caso di Kamala Harris è che non è chiaro se lei sappia che sia sbagliato. Forse questo non sorprenderà quelli di noi che ricordano il passato più recente in cui i funzionari sanitari agivano come se l’immunità naturale non esistesse, come se non avessimo terapie per le infezioni respiratorie, come se le mascherine funzionassero e come se due settimane di chiusure globali avrebbero risolto la situazione.

Sembriamo condannati a vedere ripetersi gli stessi vecchi errori in una spirale di follia: dalla stampa di denaro all’inflazione e al controllo dei prezzi, così come dalle quarantene alla cattiva salute, alle perdite di istruzione e alla demoralizzazione della popolazione. Possano gli dei salvarci da altre esperienze simili prima che sia troppo tardi.

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

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Natural law is often regarded with suspicion by social scientists because they conceptualize human nature, and increasingly even the nature of animals, as a social construct. In their view there is no essential human nature by reference to which we can decide what is in the best interests of society. They argue that we must instead adopt an aspirational approach, by constructing a better and fairer world for the planet, and by discovering what is best for society through a process of scientific experimentation. From that perspective notions of “right” and “wrong” are nothing more than majority opinions ascertained through democratic debate and agreement, and it would be hopelessly arbitrary and subjective to decide right and wrong by reference to some “higher” law called the law of nature.

In The Ethics of Liberty, Murray Rothbard rejects these perspectives, arguing that the skepticism with which natural law is generally regarded is entirely misguided. Rothbard observes that,

Among intellectuals who consider themselves “scientific,” the phrase “the nature of man” is apt to have the effect of a red flag on a bull. “Man has no nature!” is the modern rallying cry and typical of the sentiment of political philosophers today was the assertion of a distinguished political theorist some years ago before a meeting of the American Political Science Association that “man’s nature” is a purely theological concept that must be dismissed from any scientific discussion.

Legal positivists are particularly keen to extinguish the idea that law is based on moral principles. Similarly, many utilitarians evaluate law based on its consequences for society, not based on morality. The debate in the UK about decriminalizing “assisted suicide” is an example of the desire to avoid theological or moral influences in debating law reform. It is no longer a crime in the UK to commit or attempt to commit suicide, so there is no law to prevent anyone committing suicide should they wish, but anyone assisting another to commit suicide risks being prosecuted for the crime of “encouraging or assisting suicide” under the Suicide Act 1961 or even, in serious cases, the crime of homicide. Thus, decriminalizing assisted suicide would establish that it is not unlawful to assist suicide, and supporters of assisted suicide argue that “moral” considerations should not enter the decriminalization debate.

The biblical edict, “Thou shalt not commit murder,” for centuries sufficed for many people as an explanation of why murder is forbidden. It has therefore long been assumed that any argument that murder is “wrong” in the moral sense must necessarily be a religious principle. This explains why any attempt to introduce “moral” arguments into the assisted suicide debate is then treated as an inappropriate attempt to introduce theology into the law. Religious principles are, of course, only binding on their own followers, therefore, in a secular age, it is deemed preferable to say that murder is illegal and that the reason one must not commit murder is that the law prohibits it.

In this example, reformers in favor of decriminalization dismiss their opponents’ arguments as “moral” arguments, insisting that only arguments that can be justified without stating that assisted suicide would be “wrong” in the moral sense would constitute a valid objection to their proposals. But the strongest arguments against legalizing assisted suicide that are advanced by disability groups and by professional bodies including the World Medical Association are moral arguments, even though they are patently not religious. Moreover, supporters of legalization themselves use moral arguments to support their case, chiefly that we ought to respect an autonomous choice to kill oneself and obtain assistance to do so, and that society has a moral duty to end suffering. Hence, the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, observed that whether to decriminalize assisted suicide is the “the great moral and legal problem of our times.”

Conflating morality with religion, in an attempt to exclude moral arguments from public debate, is therefore mistaken. The view that something is “morally wrong” is not, in itself, a religious view. The fact that many people are religious and may base their personal moral principles on their religion does not mean that all moral principles are based on religion. Nor does it mean that secular moral principles should be understood as a Dawkinsian-style “cultural religion,” in which religious views are adopted for cultural reasons with the deity conveniently excised. After all, one need not be religious to embrace the Christian edicts, “Thou shalt not steal” or “Thou shalt not commit murder,” and it is this sense that Richard Dawkins could, without contradicting himself, express his admiration for Christian principles despite being an atheist:

“Perhaps to the surprise of many, Richard Dawkins, famed “New Atheist” of yesteryear, in a recent radio interview called himself a “cultural Christian.” He was quick to clarify that he is “not a believer” in the actual teachings of Christianity, but nonetheless told the interviewer “I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense.”

This leads many wrongly to assume that reference to moral principles is some sort of “cultural theology” in which divine principles are adopted without explicit reference to the divine. They fail to appreciate the clear analytical distinction between moral principles and religious edicts.

Reason and rationality

Against that background, Rothbard’s analysis of natural law may be understood as part of a natural law tradition that attempts to identify principles of natural law based purely on reason, entirely distinct from principles derived from “divine law.” Rothbard rejects the idea that “natural law and theology are inextricably intertwined.” In his view, natural law based on reason is not a set of subjective religious or ideological opinions, but a set of objective principles derived from human nature.

Nor is natural law a set of cultural norms comprising religious principles with the deity conveniently expunged in the Dawkinsian sense. Rothbard rejects the claim that, through the natural law, “God and mysticism are being slipped in by the back door.” He is clear that natural law, in the tradition he draws upon, is “purely rationalistic and non-theological” and he insists on the “absolute independence of natural law from the question of the existence of God.”

The principles of natural law are not derived in any way from theological principles, but by an independent process of “reason and rational inquiry.” Natural law in this tradition emphasizes “the ability of man’s reason to understand and arrive at the laws, physical and ethical, of the natural order.” Rothbard explains that “the instrument by which man apprehends such law is his reason – not faith, or intuition, or grace, revelation, or anything else.”

The natural order, in which human nature must be understood and contended with, is therefore central to Rothbard’s account of the natural law. Natural law is based on reality, including the reality of human nature, and rejects the modern social-scientist notion that reality is a social construct which can be anything people choose it to be. Rothbard quotes Thomas E. Davitt:

If the word “natural” means anything at all, it refers to the nature of a man, and when used with “law,” “natural” must refer to an ordering that is manifested in the inclinations of a man’s nature and to nothing else.

Rothbard emphasizes that nature is by no means a “mystical” or “supernatural” idea, but refers to the attributes of things that can be identified by observing cause and effect: “The observable behavior of each of these entities is the law of their natures, and this law includes what happens as a result of the interactions” – referring here to the interactions that occur “when these various things meet and interact.” In that sense, being manifested in human nature, the principles of natural law are universal and objective.

The fact that natural law is universal matters greatly. It explains why human beings from different tribes and nations can learn from one another and avoid each other’s mistakes. By reference to the principles of natural law, derived through reason and rationality, we can ascertain what is objectively good or objectively bad for society. Natural law principles do not reflect the nature of a particular man, or a particular group, nation, culture, or race of men, nor anybody’s subjective opinions and preferences, but reflect the essential nature of human beings. As Rothbard puts it, “Man’s reason is objective, i.e., it can be employed by all men to yield truths about the world.”

Rothbard’s aim in drawing upon the natural law is to formulate a coherent theory of liberty based on private property. But there is more – he also sheds light on the steps people must take to choose which ends to pursue and how they can achieve good and morally just outcomes. As Rothbard explains, “For the ends themselves are selected by the use of reason; and ‘right reason’ dictates to man his proper ends as well as the means for their attainment.”

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

The post Natural Law and Rothbardian Liberty appeared first on LewRockwell.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. launched his campaign for President of the United States in April 2023 as a Democrat, like both his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, and his father. Shunned by President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), he opted to quit (in October) the Democratic Party and campaign as an Independent. Then last week he gave a speech to the media titled “RFK Jr. Address to the Nation: Full Disclosure,” where he announced his decision to stop his campaign and support Donald Trump in his campaign for a second term as President of the United States.

In his moving 6,150-word address, RFK Jr. explains why he left the Democratic Party:

“I left that Party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become the Party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big AG, and big money.”

He laments the fact that “democracy… has become little more than a slogan for our political institutions, for our media, and for our government, and most sadly at all, for me, for the Democratic Party.” He says:

“My uncle and my father both relished debate. They prided themselves on their capacity to go toe to toe with any opponent in a battle of ideas. They would be astonished to learn of a Democratic Party presidential nominee who, like Vice President Harris, has not appeared in a single interview or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days. This is profoundly undemocratic. How are people to judge when they don’t know whom they are choosing? And how can this look to the rest of the world?”

RFK Jr. considers the DNC’s pick of Vice President Kamala Harris a poor choice to succeed an enfeebled Joe Biden. He views her as an especially poor role model for advancing democratic processes and being the leader of the free world, saying:

“The DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Kamala Harris based on nothing. No policies, no interviews, no debates, only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly-produced circus… [And] there in Chicago a string of Democratic speakers mentioned Donald Trump 147 times just on the first day. Who needs a policy when you have Trump to hate? In contrast, at the RNC convention, President Biden was mentioned only twice in four days.”

In the speech, Robert Kennedy tells us that three great causes drove him to enter the presidential race, which then persuaded him to leave the Democratic Party and run as an Independent, and finally to switch his support to President Trump! They are: 1) free speech; 2) the war in Ukraine; and 3) the war on our children.

Free speech in America is being greatly threatened by the “government’s censorship industrial complex,” as RFK Jr. puts it. For the representatives of the media networks attending his speech, he tells them:

“Your institutions and media made themselves government mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power.”

Robert Kennedy and Donald Trump view the war in Ukraine the same way: They see, as RFK Jr. puts it that: “Ukraine is a proxy in a geopolitical struggle initiated by the ambitions of the US neocons for American global hegemony.” And furthermore:

“The reckless neocon project of extending NATO to encircle Russia is a hostile act. The credulous media rarely explain to Americans that we unilaterally walked away from two intermediate nuclear weapons treaties with Russia and then put nuclear missile systems in Romania and Poland.”

He also points out that President Biden has stated that “his objective in the war was regime change in Russia.” Instead, “our moral authority and our economy are in shambles, and the war gave rise to the emergence of BRICS, which now threatens to replace the dollar as a global reserve currency.”

RFK Jr. makes this telling point:

Last summer, it looked like no candidate was willing [1] to negotiate a quick end to the Ukraine war, [2] to tackle the chronic disease epidemic, [3] to protect free speech and our constitutional freedoms, [4] clean corporate influence out of our government, or [5]  defy the neocons and their agenda of endless military adventurism. But now one of the two candidates [Harris and Trump] has adopted these issues as his own, to the point where he has asked to enlist me in his administration. I’m speaking, of course, of Donald Trump.

He is not overstating the problem when he says that America’s chronic disease epidemic has become far worse than most Americans realize, as these facts show:

→ The U.S. is 79th in health outcomes, behind even Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Mongolia.

→ Two-thirds of American adults and children now suffer from chronic health issues, whereas 50  years ago that number was less than1 percent.

→Now 74 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, including 50 percent of our children.

→Half of Americans have prediabetes or type two diabetes, and pediatricians find that now 1/3rd of children they see are diabetic or prediabetic.

→The CDC says that autism rates in children is now 1 in 36 (it is 1 in 22 in California!),

whereas the autism rate 70 years ago was 1 in 10,000!

→Now 18 percent of American teens have fatty liver disease, which used to affect only late-stage alcoholics.

→Cancer rates are skyrocketing in both the young and old.

RFK Jr. cites these findings to show how bad America’s chronic disease epidemic has become, findings that Casey Means, M.D. and her brother Colley Means corroborate in their bestselling book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health (2024). This book, written by two widely respected food safety advocates and published May 13, 2024, is a best seller. And it turns out that both Donald Trump and  Robert Kennedy had each independently sought advice from Collen Means for dealing with America’s chronic disease epidemic before Kennedy and Trump considered forming a political partnership.

So what is causing such widespread suffering? RFK Jr. names two culprits: ultra-processed foods and toxic chemicals in our food, medicines, and the environment, which include Pesticides; food additives; pharmaceutical drugs, like Ozempic–for obesity and costs $1,500 a month, and toxic waste. Speaking for both Donald Trump and him, Kennedy says:

“We’re going to bring healthy food back to school lunches. We’re going to stop subsidizing the worst foods with our agricultural subsidies. We’re going to get toxic chemicals out of our food. We’re going to reform the entire food system. And for that, we need new leadership in Washington. Because unfortunately, both the Democrats and the Republican parties are in cahoots with the big food producers, Big Pharma and Big AG, which are among the DNC’s major donors.”

RJK Jr. has announced that he will be on the campaign trail helping Donald Trump get reelected for a second term as President of the United States.

Notes:

A transcript of this speech by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., “RFK Jr. Address to the Nation: Full Disclosure,” given on August 23, 2024, in Phoenix, AZ, is available Here.

A 12-minute Video of RFK Jr. voicing his support for Donald Trump, given at a Trump rally later that day in Glendale, AZ, is available Here.

My article, “Trump: Our Only Hope for Escaping World War III,” published March 9, 2016, on LewRockwell.com, is available Here.

My article, “Facing Nuclear War,” published April 6, 2024, on LewRockwell.com, is available Here.

The post RFK Jr. and Donald Trump: a Good Fit appeared first on LewRockwell.

Friends,

Fifty years later this remains one of, if not the most, insightful presentation on the Israeli and Jewish soul and heart as manipulated, sabotaged, disfigured and murdered by Zionist’s evil. Do take the time to read it, ponder it. I know of no piece authored by anyone in the Church in 2024 that matches it spiritual profundity, historically validate prophetic power and courageous truth telling.

Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

A TRAGEDY BEYOND CALCULATING:

The State of Israel Has Become The Tomb of The Jewish Soul.

A talk given by Daniel Berrigan, S.J on Oct. 19, 1973, shortly after he completed his parole in a federal sentence for acts of nonviolent resistance against the Vietnam war. The speech was printed that month in American Report, a publication of Clergy and Laity Concerned, the anti-Vietnam War Organization.

I come before you this evening, as a non-expert in every field of human expertise, including the subject you have invited me to explore. I wish to include also in my field of inexpertise my own religious tradition; I am a non-expert Christian, by any conceivable standard.

This admission is in the interests of both clarity of mind and of moral conduct. I am interested, as a Christian, in one thing only; in so simple a thing as sane conduct in the world. The experts in my tradition, the theologians, the biblical scholars, and by and large, the hierarchy, go in another direction than mine. “Sane conduct” (whatever that means) is taken for granted; what really counts is the jot and tittle of the tradition, or its worldly prospering, or its honorable reception among peoples. Sane conduct is taken for granted; are not Christians by definition sane, in touch with the truth, destined to share infallibly in their reward?

I say no. The exemplary conduct of expert Christians, as indeed of most experts in human disciplines is to fiddle while the world burns. Hardly sane! A kind of lethal fatalism, looks equably upon combustible human flesh, shrugs its shoulders the better to nestle the violin, and coax from its entrails the immortal (and irrelevant) stroke.

Sane conduct in the world. Let me explain. I do not believe it is the destiny of human flesh to burn; and for that I am in trouble, as are my friends, to this day. I do not believe that a violin concerto, however immortal in execution, is the proper comfort to offer a napalmed child. I believe that the fiddler should come down from the roof, put his violin aside, take up his extinguisher, raise a cry of alarm, break down the intervening door. I believe that he should on occasion of crisis destroy property in favor of human life.

You see, I am a heretic in a consuming and killing culture, as well as in a complicity church.

These are troublesome statements; but do not call them naïve, or shrug them off as generally accepted by the civilized; or, in the presence of scholar, as irrelevant. Do not say: it is of course the generals who light fires, we deplore that. I answer: Most scholars, most priests, most Jews, most Arabs, while they wo Telegram Founder Pavl Durov Arrested – unCensored Speech
By Helena Glassuld prefer some less horrendous sight than the burning flesh of children, are not seriously shaken in their style of mind, their taxpaying, their consumerism, their spiritual, economic, or political complicity, by such “incidents.”

I begin in so odious a way because I do not wish to narrow our question so sharply as to exclude ourselves from its orbit. I do not wish to take us off the hook, even while I wish to say something unequivocal about one instance of cruelty, racism, murder, as political tools.

It is of course scarcely possible to open the moral question of Israeli or Arab conduct today, without exciting the most lively passion, and risking the most serious charges. A war is underway. We are assured by the Israelis, and by most of the Jewish community throughout the world, that the war is a war of survival. We are assured just as vehemently by the Arabs that the war is one of expansion and aggression by Israel.

Moreover, the interests of the super powers are deeply imbedded in Near Eastern soil. Those interests include western oil contracts, and, East and West, an impalpable element of outreach, something hard to define, a cold war afflatus perhaps, something called an “ideological sphere of influence.” In any case, both East and West are shoring up their interests with that most concrete and bloody proof devotion: arms, and more arms.

Certainly these facts must be respected, if this evening and the days to follow are to be more than an exercise in national or racial or religious frenzy. A ceasefire has been offered by Egypt; something unprecedented in the history of this conflict. Moreover, the terms of the ceasefire seem reasonable and clear of Arab arms-rattling. The offering includes a declaration of de facto respect for the existence of Israel, a de facto state; it asks for a return to the boundary lines which existed before the 1967 War, and some justice for the Palestinian people.

Suicidal Adventure

In the seriousness and sanity of the ceasefire offer, therefore, I believe that events themselves are helping set the stage for a fruitful study. In supporting the Egyptian proposal, I hope to answer those who would make the present war into an Israeli spasm of survival. Nothing of the sort. Or those who would make the critics of this war, into proponents of Israeli extinction. Nothing of the kind. Or those who would make critics of the united states, into supporters of the Soviet Union; nothing of the sort.

In calling attention to this proposal I am simply urging that attention be paid to the first sane option that has arisen in the course of this suicidal adventure. Indeed there are no sides worth talking about tonight. There are indeed immense numbers of people whose lives and rights are being violated, degraded and denied. Any real solution will take into account these peoples: the Palestinians—a people without a country; the Israelis—a people in danger; the Arab nations—a people invaded. How carefully one must proceed on these matters if he is not to worsen an already tortured situation. I endorse the Egyptian ceasefire proposal while opposing many aspects of the Egyptian regime, and of the Sheikhdoms, and of Jordan and Syria. We must take into account their capacity for deception, which is remarkable even for our world. We must take into account their contempt for their own poor, a contempt that would be called legendary if it were not horrifyingly modern. We must take into account their willingness to oil the war machinery of the superpowers making them accomplices of the American war criminals. We must take into account their cupidity masked only by their monumental indifference to the facts of their world. no, I offer no apologia tonight for the Arab states any more than I do for Israel.

I do not wish to begin by “taking sides”; nor indeed to end by “taking sides.” I am sick of “sides”; which is to say, I am sick of war; of wars hot and cold; and all their approximations and metaphors and deceits and ideological ruses. I am sick of the betrayal of the mind and the failure of compassion and the neglect of the poor. I am sick of foreign ministers and all their works and pomps. I am sick of torture and secret police and the apparatus of fascists and the rhetoric of leftists. Like Lazarus, staggering from his grave, or the ghost of Trotsky I can only groan: “We have had enough of that, we have been through all that.”

Thus this evening, and my presence here. When I received the invitation some months ago, I winced. Another crisis? If the nerve ends of Israelis and Arabs were raw, so were mine. More; why should I enter their back yard on a cleanup project when my own, America, was a moral shantytown? And the war broke; and I winced again; and very nearly begged off. Then a better, second thought occurred; something like this. If it was important to speak up while the peace, at least a relative peace, held—then why not when a war broke? Indeed, did not the need for dispassionate and reasonable courage increase, while the guns were cutting down whatever rational exchange remained alive? If the first casualty of war was the truth, might it not be important to prevent, at least on one scene, that mortal casualty from occurring?

Human Community

I do not wish to heap conflict upon conflict. If I seem to concentrate upon the conduct of Israel, it is for reasons, which to me at least, are profound, of long pondering and finally inescapable. It is not merely because my government, which has brought endless suffering to the world, is supporting Israel. It is not merely because American Jews, as well as Israelis, have in the main given their acquiescence or their support to the Nixon ethos. The reasons go deeper, and strike harder; they are lodged in my soul, in my conception of faith and the transcendent, in the vision Jews have taught me, of human conduct in a human community.

I am (to put the matter as simply as I know how), I am paying an old debt tonight. It is a debt of love; more properly, a debt of outraged love. I am a western Christian, in resistance against my government and my church. That position, as I read it, makes me something very like a Jew. It is of that uneasy circle, ever changing, widening, contracting, including, excluding, that I wish to speak. I am a Catholic priest, in resistance against Rome. I am an American, in resistance against Nixon, and I am a Jew, in resistance against Israel. But let me begin.

A common assumption exists in the West, buttressed by massive historical and religious argument, to the effect that Israel is exempt from moral criticism. Her people have passed through the gentile furnace; how then shall the goy judge the suffering servant? And is not the holocaust the definitive argument for the righteousness of this people, heroically determined to begin again, in a promised land, that experiment in survival which so nearly went awry, so often, under such constant assault at our hands?

Mean of Love

In such a way, bad history is mightily reinforced by bad faith. The persecutor is a poor critic. His history weighs on him; like a bad parent, he alternates between cruelty and indulgence, without ever striking the mean of love.

In such a way, Christians yield to Israel the right to her myths; to indulge them, to enlarge them, to live by them, even to call them biblical truth. If the Jews are indeed the people of promise, and Israel the land of promise; then it must follow that God has willed the two to coincide. The means? They are swallowed up in the end, they disappear into glory. And if the means include domestic repression, deception, cruelty, militarism? And if the classic refugee people is now creating huge numbers of refugees? And if technological warfare has become the instrument of expansion, and pre-emptive warfare the instrument of so called peace? And if this people, so proud, so endowed with intelligence, so purified by suffering, sends its military missioners into every part of the world where minority people are bleeding under the heel of jackboots? Israeli military advisers in Iran, Israeli military advisers in Ethiopia? And if these advisers (that cruel euphemism under whose guise America kindled the Viet Nam holocaust) are sought and hired because Israelis have become as skilled in the fashioning of espionage and violence as ever were their oppressors? Are such means as these swallowed in glory? Or do they stick in the throat of those who believe, as Judaism taught the world to believe, “Thou shalt not kill”?

I started to say something about my own church, and I proceed to talk about Israel. I did so advisedly. I did so because today my church has helped Israel exegete her own texts—wrongly, harmfully, as I believe. My church has helped Israel in that project of the settler state—whether of South Africa or Israel or the United State—which is to seek a biblical justification for crimes against humanity.

For a Christian who is trying to understand and live by his own tradition, the confusion of bible and imperialism in Israel represents an altogether unique tragedy. We in the U.S.A. learned to bear the filthy weight of South African religious violence, even while we abominated it. We learned to survive the filthy weight of American religious violence, even while we abominated it. In both cases, we tried to separate out the corrupt cultural elements from the truth of a tradition, and to live by the latter. We learned to do this, because we knew at least something of the history of Christianity, in both its criminal and saintly aspects.

But you must understand our horror, our sense of impoverishment, almost our sense of amputation. For while we had known criminal Christian communities, and suffered at the hand of our own renegades, and seen Viet Nam assaulted in the name of Christian civilization—we had never known a criminal Jewish community. We had known Jewish communities that were a light to the gentiles, that were persecuted, all but erased, that remained merciful, eloquent, prophetic.

But something new was occurring before our eyes… the Jews arose from the holocaust, a cause of universal joy, but the Jews arose like warriors, armed to the teeth. They took possession of a land, they exiled and destroyed old Arab communities, they (a minority) made outsiders of those who were in fact, the majority of citizens. Then, they flexed their muscles; like the goyim, the idolaters, the “inhabitants of this earth,” like Babylon and Egypt and Assyria; like those kingdoms which Israel’s own prophets summoned to judgment, Israel entered the imperial adventure. She took up the imperial weapons, she spread abroad the imperial deceptions.

In the space of 25 years, this metamorphosis took place. The wandering Jew became the settler Jew; the settler ethos became the imperial adventure. More, the thought of Nietzsche, of Camus and Fanon was vindicated; the slave became master, and created slaves. The slave master created a “shadowy other.” Israel had emerged from the historical shadows determined to take her place in the company of nations; an ambition no decent conscience could object to. But the price of her emergence was bitter and heavy; and it continues. That price indeed, neither Israel nor ourselves have yet counted up. But we do know a few of the human items who have been placed on the block of Israeli hegemony. They include some one and a half million refugees, whom Israel has created in the process of creating herself.

Coinage of Israel

And let us not hesitate to state the price in Israeli coinage. Something like this; not only a dismal fate for foreign and indigenous victims, but the failure to create new forms of political and social life for her own citizens. The coinage of Israel is stamped with the imperialist faces whose favor she has courted; the creation of an elite of millionaires, generals and entrepreneurs. And the price is being paid by Israel’s Oriental Jews, the poor, the excluded, prisoners. Do we seek, analogies for this “sublime adventure of return”? They are not hard to come by. But they do not exist, alas, in the dreams of Zionist rhetoricians; they exist rather in the real world, where Zionist violence and repression joins the violence and repression of the great (and little) powers; a common method, a common dead end.

It is entirely logical for instance, that Russia, which crushed the Czechs, is now in the process of crushing the Ukrainians, and bottling the brains of political dissidents on the shelves of psychiatric morgues. It is entirely logical that the U.S., which determined to crush the Vietnamese, also spent a considerable part of the ‘60’s “mopping up” political dissidents at home. Imperialism has no favorites; it freezes all it touches. It is thus not to be wondered at that torture has been applied to Israeli citizens as well as to suspect Palestinian terrorists. It is logical that Israeli workers are exploited, even while the indigenous peasants are rooted out and their villages destroyed. Logical too, that racist ideology which brought the destruction of the Jewish communities at the hands of the Nazis should now be employed by the state of Israeli, fostering the myth of the “barbarian Arab,” and of Israel the “sublime expression of the liberation of the Jewish people.”

If only a people could know itself! If only a people could stand back from the welter of claim, the barrage of propaganda, the blood myths of divine election, the rhetoric which assures it that its case before history is unique and virtuous and in fact unassailable! If that could happen, Israel would see, as indeed some of her own resisters, some of her own victims, some of her own friends, do see; that she is rapidly evolving into the image of her ancient adversaries. That her historic adventure, which gave her the unassailable right to “judge the nations,” has veered off into an imperial misadventure; that she carries in the world, the stigmata of the settler nation; that she is ranged not at the side of those she once stood with, and succored and protected from extinction; the poor, the despised, the victims of the powers of this world.

Sacred Books

No. she has closed those books, her sacred books. Her prophets shed no light upon her politics. Or more exactly to the point, she has not passed from a dispossessed people to a democratic state, as she would claim; she has passed from a dispossessed people to an imperial entity. And this (I say it with a sinking heart) is to the loss of all the world; to her own loss, and to the loss of Palestinians, and Americans, and Jews in the diaspora, and Jews in Russia, and the Pope in the Vatican, and Vietnamese, and Cambodians, and South Africans, and Chileans. For it is of moment to us all (I almost said of supreme moment) that Jews retain their own soul, their own books, their own vivid sense of alternate paths to the light, so that Jews might be the arbiter and advocate of the downtrodden of the earth.

On the scales of the spirit, as the nations are finally judged, it is a tragedy beyond calculating, that the State of Israel should become the repository, and finally the tomb, of the Jewish soul. That in place of Jewish compassion, Israel should legislate armaments and yet more armaments. That in place of Jewish compassion for the poor and forgotten, Israel should legislate evictions, uprootings, destruction of goods, imprisonment, terrorism. That in place of Jewish peaceableness, Israel should legislate a law of expanding violence. That in place of Jewish prophetic wisdom, Israel should launch an Orwellian nightmare of double talk, racism, fifth-rate sociological jargon, aimed at proving its racial superiority to the people it has crushed. My sense of loss here is something more than academic.

Let me say this; when an American is resisting the murder of the Vietnamese people, one of his chief sources of strength is the conviction that around the world, there exists a spiritual network of those who have put their lives to the same resistance. A network of conscience. One is joined in this way, to Blacks and Cubans and Brazilians and Chileans and so many others, who have made it their life’s work to create a better method than murder for dealing with human conflict. Now at any moment of my struggle, in the underground or in prison, did resisters such as I take comfort from the conduct of the state of Israel? Could we believe the rhetoric that she was packaging and huckstering in the world? I must answer no, in the name of all. Rather than being comforted, I was tempered and sobered. I knew that I must take into account two bitter facts about Israel: 1) that if I were a conscientious Jew in Israel I would have to live as I was living in America; that is, in resistance against the state. And 2) the reaction of Israel to my conscience would be exactly the reaction of the United States; that is to say, I would either be hunted by the police, or in prison.

Which brings me to a reflection nearer home; the American Jewish community and the Viet Nam war: by and large, that community’s leadership, I stress leadership, fervent in support of Israel, was also fervent in support of Nixon. It was a massive support indeed; and it did not gather in a political vacuum. Nixon is a political manipulator of great astuteness; religion and religious interests are part of the fulcrum he exerts on world events. So he was able to mute the horrific facts of the Viet Nam war in light of Jewish concern for the wellbeing of Israel. The plain fact was that Mrs. Meir wanted Phantom jets and Nixon wanted re-election. Another fact was also plain, if of less moment to either party; in Nixon’s first term alone some six million Southeast Asians had been maimed, bombed, displaced, tortured, imprisoned or killed. This was one of those peculiar facts which must be called free-floating; it was a statistic, it did not signify. To put the matter brutally, many American Jewish leaders were capable of ignoring the Asian holocaust in favor of economic and military aid to Israel.

Those of us who resisted the war had to live with that fact. The fate of the Vietnamese was as unimportant to the Zionists in our midst as was the state of the Palestinians. But I venture to suggest that it is not merely we, nor the Vietnamese who must live with that fact. So must Israel. So must the American Jews.

If there is an ultimate hope in all this one must, of course, pay tribute to the great majority of the Jewish community which refused the bait offered by Nixon, and peddled by their own leaders. Their acute and legitimate concern for Israel never became a weapon against Vietnamese survival. They refused that immoral choice offered them by a leader who would make a price of the safety of one people, the extinction of another. As you may recall, the American Jewish community rejected that choice, and for that we must honor them.

Ceaseless Rage

I cannot but reflect how strong is the irony of this occasion; a Jesuit priest speaking of the sins of Israel. A member of the classic oppressor church calls to account the historic victims of Christian persecution. History has spun us about, a game of blind man’s bluff. In America, in my church, I am a Jew. I am scarcely granted a place to teach, a place to worship, a place to announce the truths I live by. I stand in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to pray for the victims of our ceaseless rage, I stand in front of the White House. And a question arises from both powers; how shall we deal with this troublesome Jew?

How does a Jesuit, a member of the church elite, come to such trouble? How does the son of the oppressor come to be oppressed? Even while the oppressed, the Zionist, the state of Israel, becomes the oppressor? I can offer only the clumsiest of clues.

The power of the Jew, as indeed the power of the priest, arises from the questions which his life raises. It comes from no other source. It cannot come from adherence to the power of this world. When the priest becomes the civil servant of the Papal State, he loses his true dignity, he becomes a secular nonentity. His passion for justice is blunted, his sense of the sufferings of the world grows dim and abstract. And the same holds for the Jew.

And I venture, for the Arab. Human life today, if it means anything, is meant to raise a cry against legitimated murder. Our lives are meant to be a question mark before humanity, whether we are Arab, Jew, or Christian. When a Zionist or American Catholic or an Arab Apologist loses that momentous dignity, he becomes a zero, his soul is torn in two. Let Amos Kenan, the Israeli writer, speak the bitter truth: “I believe that Zionism came to establish a shelter for a persecuted people, and not to persecute other people. Even when facts strike me in the face and prove to me ex post facto that Zionism was nothing but a useful tool to deprive the Palestinian Arab people of their homeland, I will stick to the lie.”

Let him stick to the lie. But let him also know, the lie sticks to him. It sticks in the throat, it sticks to the very soul. To the point where a Christian must continue to ask of Israel those questions which Israel proscribes, ignores, fears. Where indeed are your men of wisdom? Where are your peacemakers? Where are your prophets? Who among you speaks the truth to power? Where are the voices that abhor militarism, torture, bombing, degrading alliances with the great powers? Israel knows the answers. She has dealt with “this people,” who are her truest people. Her peacemakers, her men of truth and wisdom, are dispensed with, are disposed of. They have neither power nor voice in the affairs of the Israeli state. Many of them are in prison, or hounded from the scene, living in exile. They are equivalent to Palestinians; no voice, no vote; non-persons.

Savage Triumph

These are among the most sorrowful facts of the world we live in. Israel, that millennial dream, belonged not only to Jews, but to all of mankind—it belonged to me. But the dream has become a nightmare; Israel has not abolished poverty and misery; rather, she manufactures human waste, the byproducts of her entrepreneurs, her military-industrial complex. Israel has not written justice into law; she has turned the law of nature to a mockery, creating ghettoes, disenfranchised peoples, exiles, hopeless minorities, cheap labor forces, Palestinian migrant workers. Israel has not freed the captives; she has expanded the prison system, perfected her espionage, exported on the world market that expensive blood ridden commodity, the savage triumph of the technologized West; violence and the tools of violence.

In Israel, military might is increasingly both the method and the goal of political existence. Her absurd generals, her military junk, are paraded on national holidays before the narcoticized public. The model is not the kingdom of peace, it is an Orwellian transplant, taken bodily from Big Brother’s bloody heart. In Israel, the democratic formula is twisted out of all recognition; the citizens exist for the well-being of the state; it follows, as the imperialist corollary, that that measure of terrorism and violence and murder is applied to dissidents, as shall guarantee the “well-being of the state,” as the ominous phrase is understood by those in power.

Who will save us from such saviors? I venture to say; neither Egypt nor Libya nor Syria nor Al Fatah nor Golda Meir nor General Dayan; neither Migs nor Phantom jets nor nuclear skills. After such saviors do the gentiles lust.

The present course, I suggest, leads to the same dead end for both sides. The settler state and the long settled state, both are in mortal danger, daily increasing, of metamorphosing into slave states, clients of the fascist super powers. At home, a slave mentality is progressively created; the reduction of rights of citizens, slave labor forces, slave wages, the domination of slave masters, politicized police, the militarization of national goals and policies.

Then the same process is in internationalized. Such a nation inevitably becomes the instrument of great-power politics. It serves as a foreign military for one or another of the world powers, to that purpose everything is mobilized, including the truth itself. To demobilize the truth may be one useful way of putting our task. Other terms occur; to demilitarize the truth, to demythologize it. In any case, to snatch the truth from its betrayers and belittlers. I wish you well in the task.

Dear Friends, my concluding words are addressed especially to the Arab peoples. My argument with you is also made in a spirit of love and even deep concern. You have suffered greatly from colonialism and colonization and your demand for justice and self-determination deserved more attention than it has received.  Yet my central argument with you is ultimately my argument with the Jewish people, in the sense that both of you have ignored your own symbols and history. But in different ways. Israel has betrayed her exodus by turning it into military conquests. And the Arabs have often betrayed their resistance to rhetorical violence and blind terrorism. The question of the weekend is: What else can we do?

Some two or  three years ago Eqbal Ahmed suggested, I believe, at one of these meetings, a massive and worldwide reversal of symbols on the part of the Palestinian people. If I understand him correctly he was saying something like this: What if the Arabs throughout the world would raise a great cry and implement their cry after the manner of Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez? What if your cry became “let my people go?”

The post Violent Zionism – The Tomb of Jewish Souls appeared first on LewRockwell.

German equipment visible in Kursk has raised old ghosts, and consolidated awareness of the hostile western intentions toward Russia. “Never again” is the unspoken riposte.

War propaganda and feint are as old as the hills. Nothing new. But what is new is that infowar is no longer the adjunct to wider war objectives – but has become an end in and of itself.

The West has come to view ‘owning’ the winning narrative – and presenting the Other’s as clunky, dissonant, and extremist – as being more important than facing facts-on-the ground. Owning the winning narrative is to win, in this view. Virtual ‘victory’ thus trumps ‘real’ reality.

So, war becomes rather the setting for imposing ideological alignment across a wide global alliance and enforcing it via compliant media.

This objective enjoys a higher priority than, say, ensuring a manufacturing capacity sufficient to sustain military objectives. Crafting an imagined ‘reality’ has taken precedence over shaping the ground reality.

The point here is that this approach – being a function of whole of society alignment (both at home and abroad) – creates entrapments into false realities, false expectations, from which an exit (when such becomes necessary), turns near impossible, precisely because imposed alignment has ossified public sentiment. The possibility for a State to change course as events unfold becomes curtailed or lost, and the accurate reading of facts on the ground veers toward the politically correct and away from reality.

The cumulative effect of ‘a winning virtual narrative’ holds the risk nonetheless, of sliding incrementally toward inadvertent ‘real war’.

Take, for example, the NATO-orchestrated and equipped incursion into the symbolically significant Kursk Oblast. In terms of a ‘winning narrative’, its appeal to the West is obvious: Ukraine ‘takes the war to into Russia’.

Had the Ukrainian forces succeeded in capturing the Kursk Nuclear Power Station, they then would have had a significant bargaining chip, and might well have syphoned away Russian forces from the steadily collapsing Ukrainian ‘Line’ in Donbas.

And to top it off, (in infowar terms), the western media was prepped and aligned to show President Putin as “frozen” by the surprise incursion, and “wobbling” with anxiety that the Russian public would turn against him in their anger at the humiliation.

Bill Burns, head of CIA, opined that “Russia would offer no concessions on Ukraine, until Putin’s over-confidence was challenged, and Ukraine could show strength”. Other U.S. officials added that the Kursk incursion – in itself – would not bring Russia to the negotiating table; It would be necessary to build on the Kursk operation with other daring operations (to shake Moscow’s sang froid).

Of course, the overall aim was to show Russia as fragile and vulnerable, in line with the narrative that, at any moment Russia, could crack apart and scatter to the wind, in fragments. Leaving the West as winner, of course.

In fact, the Kursk incursion was a huge NATO gamble: It involved mortgaging Ukraine’s military reserves and armour, as chips on the roulette table, as a bet that an ephemeral success in Kursk would upend the strategic balance. The bet was lost, and the chips forfeit.

Plainly put, this Kursk affair exemplifies the West’s problem with ‘winning narratives’: Their inherent flaw is that they are grounded in emotivism and eschew argumentation. Inevitably, they are simplistic. They are simply intended to fuel a ‘whole of society’ common alignment. Which is to say that across MSM; business, federal agencies, NGOs and the security sector, all should adhere to opposing all ‘extremisms’ threatening ‘our democracy’.

This aim, of itself, dictates that the narrative be undemanding and relatively uncontentious: ‘Our Democracy, Our Values and Our Consensus’. The Democratic National Convention, for example, embraces ‘Joy’ (repeated endlessly), ‘moving Forward’ and ‘opposing weirdness’ as key statements. They are banal, however, these memes are given their energy and momentum, not by content so much, as by the deliberate Hollywood setting lending them razzamatazz and glamour.

It is not hard to see how this one-dimensional zeitgeist may have contributed to the U.S. and its allies’ misreading the impact of today’s Kursk ‘daring adventure’ on ordinary Russians.

‘Kursk’ has history. In 1943, Germany invaded Russia in Kursk to divert from its own losses, with Germany ultimately defeated at the Battle of Kursk. The return of German military equipment to the environs of Kursk must have left many gaping; the current battlefield around the town of Sudzha is precisely the spot where, in 1943, the Soviet 38th and 40th armies coiled for a counteroffensive against the German 4th Army.

Over the centuries, Russia has been variously attacked on its vulnerable flank from the West. And more recently by Napoleon and Hitler. Unsurprisingly, Russians are acutely sensitive to this bloody history. Did Bill Burns et al think this through? Did they imagine that NATO invading Russia itself would make Putin feel ‘challenged’, and that with one further shove, he would fold, and agree to a ‘frozen’ outcome in Ukraine – with the latter entering NATO? Maybe they did.

Ultimately the message that western services sent was that the West (NATO) is coming for Russia. This is the meaning of deliberately choosing Kursk. Reading the runes of Bill Burns message says prepare for war with NATO.

Just to be clear, this genre of ‘winning narrative’ surrounding Kursk is neither deceit nor feint. The Minsk Accords were examples of deceit, but they were deceits grounded in rational strategy (i.e. they were historically normal). The Minsk deceits were intended to buy the West time to further Ukraine’s militarisation – before attacking the Donbas. The deceit worked, but only at the price of a rupture of trust between Russia and the West. The Minsk deceits however, also accelerated an end to the 200-year era of the westification of Russia.

Kursk rather, is a different ‘fish’. It is grounded in the notions of western exceptionalism. The West perceives itself as tacking to ‘the right side of History’. ‘Winning narratives’ essentially assert – in secular format – the inevitability of the western eschatological Mission for global redemption and convergence. In this new narrative context, facts-on-the-ground become mere irritants, and not realities that must be taken into account.

This their Achilles’ Heel.

The DNC convention in Chicago however, underscored a further concern:

Just as the hegemonic West arose out of the Cold War era shaped and invigorated through dialectic opposition to communism (in the western mythology), so we see today, a (claimed) totalising ‘extremism’ (whether of MAGA mode; or of the external variety: Iran, Russia, etc.) – posed in Chicago in a similar Hegelian dialectic opposition to the former capitalism versus communism; but in today’s case, it is “extremism” in conflict with “Our Democracy”.

The DNC Chicago narrative-thesis is itself a tautology of identity differentiation posing as ‘togetherness’ under a diversity banner and in conflict with ‘whiteness’ and ‘extremism’. ‘Extremism’ effectively plainly is being set up as the successor to the former Cold War antithesis – communism.

The Chicago ‘back-room’ may be imagining that a confrontation with extremism – writ widely – will again, as it did in the post-Cold War era, yield an American rejuvenation. Which is to say that a conflict with Iran, Russia, and China (in a different way) may come onto the agenda. The telltale signs are there (plus the West’s need for a re-set of its economy, which war regularly provides).

The Kursk ploy no doubt seemed clever and audacious to London and Washington. Yet with what result? It achieved neither objective of taking Kursk NPP, nor of syphoning Russian troops from the Contact Line. The Ukrainian presence in the Kursk Oblast will be eliminated.

What it did do, however, is put an end to all prospects of an eventual negotiated settlement in Ukraine. Distrust of the U.S. in Russia is now absolute. It has made Moscow more determined to prosecute the special operation to conclusion. German equipment visible in Kursk has raised old ghosts, and consolidated awareness of the hostile western intentions toward Russia. ‘Never again’ is the unspoken riposte.

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

The post The Western Way of War – Owning the Narrative Trumps Reality appeared first on LewRockwell.

For months, we have been discussing the concerted effort of Democrats to bar challengers to President Joe Biden from primary ballots and block third-party candidates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Cornel West from appearing on the November ballots. As both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris insisted that “Democracy is on the ballot,” their allies sought to deny the ability of voters to cast their ballots for other candidates. Now, a state judge has issued a stinging denial of the effort of Democratic officials to block West from the Michigan ballots.

Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson helped lead the effort to prevent citizens from being able to vote for West in Michigan.

Judge James Robert Redford issued the ruling days after West was kicked off the ballot due to technical issues.

West issued a statement: “Victory in Michigan! We brought thousands of voices to the table, and the court listened, rejecting the Democrats’ technical challenges. This is a win for democracy and for every person fighting for truth, justice, and love. Onward!” He is running with Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah.

Democrats are still pushing to strip them from the ballots in other states to prevent voters from having a choice in the election.

Another such effort failed in Maine recently.

The press and pundits have been largely silent about this effort despite the glaring contradiction with the campaign rhetoric of the DNC on saving democracy from imminent destruction.

The media does not appear at all alarmed or critical of the effort to limit democratic choice. The Washington Post stated clinically “Democrats are taking third-party threats seriously this time.” Taking it seriously appears to mean using legal means to keep them from the ballots.

It is true that the main political parties have challenged qualification signatures and paperwork in the past. However, the reports indicate a systemic effort geared toward reducing the choices for voters. What is striking is that this is coming from democratic groups and the DNC, which are raising money on the “save democracy” narrative.

The contradiction is spellbinding. On the same sites promising to oppose the third party candidates, the DNC and other groups push the narrative that only the Democrats are working to protect the right to vote.

The Post reports that Democrats have studied the Hillary Clinton campaign and vowed not to allow third party candidates to drain away millions of voters as they did in 2016.

This well-funded campaign to block other candidates is continuing. It was cited by Kennedy as one of the reasons that he pulled out of the race and endorsed former president Donald Trump.

West is now a threat with independents looking for an alternative to Trump and Harris. West has long been a charismatic figure in academia. Decades ago, I was his editor on what may have been his first law review publication as a young, rising divinity professor at Princeton.

One does not have to support Trump, West, or the other third-party opponents to find this effort repulsive. While some of us have challenged that hyperbolic claim that this “may be our last election,” the one thing that may not be on the ballot is choice, if the self-appointed defenders of Democracy have anything to say about it.

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.

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