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Christine Grady, a bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the wife of Anthony Fauci, was fired during the restructuring at the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

I don’t think she will miss the high salary she earned. The Faucis are worth an estimated $11.5 million.

The post Fauci’s Wife Fired appeared first on LewRockwell.

And sixteen other fascinating speakers at our Revisionist History of War conference in Auburn, Alabama, May 15-17, 2025.  Here’s a short clip of Col. Macgregor.

The post Come to the Mises Institute and Meet Colonel Douglas Macgregor appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Good News: Photo Voter ID Wins BIG In Wisconsin! appeared first on LewRockwell.

. . . on April 26 at the Arizona Biltmore for our Mises Circle on the topic of “Our Enemy: The Bureaucracy.”  I will discuss some of the key insights about the evils of government bureaucracy by Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, while Tom Woods and Dr. Malone will discuss their dealings with the covid bureaucrats along with their books Psywar: Enforcing the New World Order, and Tom’s Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania.

The registration fee is $120 and $100 for Mises Institute members and includes a catered lunch.  See you in Phoenix!

The post Join Tom Woods, Dr. Robert Malone, and Myself in Phoenix . . . appeared first on LewRockwell.

____________________________________________________________________________________

di Jeffrey Tucker

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/la-festa-dei-partiti-e-finita)

L'amministrazione Trump, spinta dal Department of Government Efficiency e dall'Office of Personnel Management, ha inviato e-mail a tutti i dipendenti federali con una normale richiesta di presentare cinque attività svolte nell'ultima settimana.

È un compito facile, ci vogliono 5 minuti. Nel settore dei servizi questo è del tutto normale, persino di routine. Fare l'inventario della forza lavoro è la norma per qualsiasi nuova dirigenza nel settore privato.

Stranamente è scoppiato un impeto di indignazione tra la classe degli esperti. I sindacati stanno preparando cause legali e il panico e la frenesia sono palpabili. A quanto pare nessun nuovo presidente ha mai fatto nulla del genere prima, nessun democratico che creda nel buon governo e nessun repubblicano che presumibilmente diffidi della burocrazia.

Qualcosa di drammatico ha colpito Washington. Non riguarda solo Trump.

Il partito che ora controlla il ramo esecutivo degli Stati Uniti è un terzo partito costruito sui cadaveri dei due partiti esistenti. Di nome è repubblicano, ma si tratta solo di consuetudine dato che ora è stato quasi preso in consegna da estranei che avevano poca o nessuna influenza all'interno del partito un decennio fa.

Quasi tutti i personaggi di spicco ora al potere, incluso Trump ovviamente, ma anche Musk, Gabbard, Kennedy, Lutnick e molti altri, per non parlare degli elettori stessi, sono rifugiati dal Partito Democratico. Le coalizioni sono cambiate radicalmente, i blocchi di voto sono migrati e i dibattiti politici e le priorità non sono più come quelli di qualsiasi periodo dalla fine della Grande Guerra.

Gli occupanti hanno lasciato un Partito Democratico che era ed è impegnato a consumarsi con frenesie rousseauiane su questioni di cui la maggior parte delle persone non si preoccupa o altrimenti è contraria. L'establishment del Partito repubblicano, tuttavia, non li ha mai accolti; erano odiati e contrastati a ogni passo.

La migrazione di Kennedy

Per comprendere la straordinaria velocità e traiettoria di questa creazione di un terzo partito all'interno della struttura di due, pensate che non erano passati nemmeno due anni da quando Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stava per la prima volta pensando di candidarsi alla presidenza come democratico.

Le condizioni erano uniche. Aveva guadagnato un seguito enorme per il suo coraggio durante la crisi sanitaria, opponendosi ai lockdown, esprimendosi contro la censura e le violazioni dei diritti, e poi condannando l'imposizione di vaccini che non avevano portato alcun risultato alla salute pubblica.

Nel 2023 Biden era impopolare e nemmeno credibile come capo dell'esecutivo, figuriamoci come candidato per un secondo mandato. Il pensiero del team elettorale di Kennedy all'epoca era che una sua corsa per la nomination democratica avrebbe costretto a primarie aperte e avrebbe potuto riportare il partito alle sue radici, lontano dal totalitarismo woke e verso i valori politici di suo padre e suo zio.

In teoria, tutto ciò sembrava plausibile. I suoi primi raduni erano eventi affollati e i soldi piovevano. I volontari si arruolavano per lavorare per la sua campagna elettorale. I primi annunci pubblicitari apparsi erano nostalgici di un tempo perduto, un'America prima della distruzione della cultura civica che arrivò con l'assassinio di suo zio nel 1963. La cornice e persino la musica della sua campagna riflettevano tali temi.

Se qualcuno poteva aggiustare i democratici, era sicuramente Kennedy con una vita di attivismo ed esperienza in contenziosi contro l'acquisizione aziendale delle agenzie governative, oltre a una più recente campagna per i diritti umani e la libertà di parola. La presunzione qui era che i democratici avessero una base di sostegno a cui importasse ancora di tali valori, ma le sue intenzioni si sono scontrate con i meccanismi della leadership del partito.

Voleva sfidare Trump per la presidenza e la base della sfida era piuttosto ovvia. Dopotutto è stato durante la supervisione di Trump che sono iniziati i lockdown e che è stato schierato l'apparato legale che ha portato alle iniezioni obbligatorie. È stato Trump a dare il via alla crisi economica con stimoli fiscali più espansione monetaria. Come questione empirica, aveva presieduto la peggiore invasione dei diritti di qualsiasi presidente nella storia.

Era la situazione in cui si trovavano le cose solo due anni fa. Quando è diventato ovvio che non ci sarebbero state primarie aperte, Kennedy è stato tentato da una corsa da indipendente. Il problema più immediato: il sistema è impostato solo per due partiti e non vogliono competizione. Ciò non era così scontato con Kennedy, il quale attingeva equamente da entrambi i lati, quindi tutti coloro che avevano potere volevano che fosse escluso.

L'altro problema è l'innegabile logica delle elezioni in cui il vincitore prende tutto. Secondo la Legge di Duverger, tali concorsi tendono a essere impostati su due sole scelte. Questa logica non si applica solo alla politica, ma a tutti i sistemi di voto. Se offrite agli ospiti di una festa la possibilità di votare per la cena, ma la maggioranza prevarrà sulla minoranza, tutti passeranno immediatamente dal votare per ciò che gli piace al votare contro il cibo che odiano di più.

Per qualche strana ragione questo schema di voto strategico raramente viene menzionato, ma è una realtà della politica statunitense. Gli elettori vanno contro il candidato che temono di più e per la persona che credono possa vincere per prevenire il peggior risultato possibile. Nel caso di Kennedy, quindi, significava che non importasse quanto le persone lo amassero, avrebbero finito per sostenere Biden o Trump in ogni caso.

Durante l'estate questa logica si è imposta pesantemente sulla campagna elettorale di Kennedy, anche se Trump ha dovuto affrontare forti ostacoli da parte dello Stato profondo più un tentativo di assassinio, cosa che ha rievocato il profondo trauma familiare in Kennedy. Ciò ha innescato discussioni tra i due che hanno portato a un riallineamento storico in politica.

Durante queste discussioni Trump è stato franco su ciò che era accaduto durante il periodo Covid. La sua amministrazione gli aveva mentito, soprattutto quegli esperti che gli erano stati assegnati per dire che quel virus era un'arma biologica con una possibile cura sotto forma di un nuovo vaccino. Con grande riluttanza e solo per un periodo di tempo limitato approvò ciò che tutti, compresi i familiari e gli esperti, gli dicevano di fare.

Per quanto riguarda l'operazione “Warp Speed”, Trump l'aveva sempre considerata una spinta aggressiva per una soluzione. Fonti internazionali e nazionali indicavano l'idrossiclorochina come una terapia praticabile, e così ne ordinò la distribuzione di massa.

Era inconcepibile a quei tempi che la burocrazia più profonda non solo avrebbe rimosso questo farmaco e altri dalla distribuzione, ma avrebbe persino generato falsi studi che mettevano in guardia contro di essi, il tutto nel tentativo di promuovere il nuovo prodotto farmaceutico. Trump fu sicuramente stupito nel vedere questi eventi svolgersi in un modo che non poteva controllare.

A tale proposito, sia Trump che Robert F. Kennedy Jr. concordarono sui pericoli per la salute americana provenienti da una varietà di fronti, tra cui quello derivante dall'uso eccessivo di prodotti farmaceutici. Trump ha appreso dall'esperienza di Kennedy in materia, e non solo su questo ma anche sui mali delle agenzie infiltrate da agenti malevoli, della censura e della manipolazione della cultura pubblica in generale da parte dello Stato profondo.

Non si sarebbero mai trovati d'accordo su questioni di petrolio e gas, ovviamente, ma anche su questo argomento Kennedy era stato spinto dagli anni del Covid a riconsiderare la presunta scienza alla base del cambiamento climatico, in particolare quella che raccomandava una maggiore sofferenza umana come mezzo per risolvere una presunta minaccia esistenziale.

Potremmo non conoscere mai appieno ciò che è accaduto in quei due giorni, ma quelle discussioni hanno cambiato la storia, riunendo due potenti forze nella cultura americana che erano state a lungo separate dall'etichetta di partito e dall'identità tribale: il nazionalismo borghese contro il liberalismo borghese di Whole Foods. Come abbiamo scoperto, avevano un nemico comune.

Ora Kennedy è il nuovo capo della Salute e dei Servizi Umani nell'amministrazione Trump e sta ora intraprendendo il più grande tentativo di rimettere in carreggiata l'establishment di Washington sin dai tempi di Andrew Jackson. Il suo obiettivo è quello di capovolgere l'intera nave di stato, industria e scienza, allontanandosi dalla falsità e dalla corruzione industriale derivanti da un unico focus sulle malattie infettive verso un nuovo focus sulle malattie croniche con soluzioni prevalentemente naturali. Un compito a dir poco erculeo.

La migrazione di Musk

Elon Musk è la terza forza all'interno di questo triumvirato di leadership del nuovo partito. Prima del 2020 era un investitore e imprenditore politicamente convenzionale. Per lo più si associava al partito predefinito delle élite, i Democratici. Poi sono arrivati ​​i lockdown. È stato l'unico grande leader aziendale negli Stati Uniti, e probabilmente in tutto il mondo industrializzato, che si è pubblicamente alzato in piedi per protestare. Ha detto che avrebbe preferito dormire sul pavimento della sua fabbrica piuttosto che chiuderla; ha rifiutato gli obblighi di vaccinazione in tutte le sue aziende; ha ritirato Tesla dalla California e l'ha trasferita in Texas; ha trasferito tutte le sue registrazioni aziendali nel Delaware.

Nel 2023 era un uomo cambiato, consapevole della minaccia del cosiddetto Leviatano, e si è immerso profondamente nella letteratura anti-statalista. Ha affrontato battaglie sull'ideologia woke e questo ha reso completa la sua trasformazione intellettuale. È entrato nella stagione politica con una nuova consapevolezza: mentre un tempo considerava la burocrazia fastidiosamente necessaria, ora la vedeva sempre più come la fonte di una tirannia incontrollata.

A un certo livello l'incontro tra Trump e Musk, come quello tra Trump e Kennedy, era del tutto improbabile. Musk considerava il suo più grande successo come uomo d'affari l'aver dato il contributo più potente all'energia pulita, avendo spezzato il monopolio automobilistico e prodotto in serie la prima auto elettrica commercialmente valida. Trump, d'altro canto, aveva giurato di smantellare i sussidi alle auto elettriche e aveva chiesto la deregolamentazione di petrolio e gas. Allearsi con Trump significava dover mettere a rischio anche l'agevolazione fiscale per i consumatori di veicoli elettrici.

Ma era pronto a questo perché, come Kennedy, si era convinto che la civiltà occidentale stessa era a rischio a causa di un Leviatano che aveva mostrato i denti nel modo più brutale durante gli anni del Covid. Il suo motivo per acquistare Twitter per $44 miliardi era quello di smantellare il cartello della censura che era stato creato per far rispettare i lockdown e promuovere i vaccini. Una volta acquistato ha scoperto l'entità del controllo governativo, lo ha sradicato e ha scatenato la libertà di parola negli Stati Uniti.

Anche in questo caso, Musk ha condiviso questa preoccupazione con Kennedy e Trump. Tutti e tre si sono uniti sulle questioni cruciali: il disperato bisogno di frenare e schiacciare il potere e la portata dello stato amministrativo. Questa è una questione che attraversa sinistra e destra, democratici e repubblicani, liberali e conservatori e tutte le altre categorie tradizionali.

La migrazione della Gabbard

A questo proposito c'era anche l'aspetto della sicurezza nazionale in cui decenni di “guerre infinite” alimentate dai neocon avevano generato risentimento e fallimento all'estero, portando così Tulsi Gabbard dai Democratici alla parte di Trump, insieme ad altri come Pete Hegseth che vedevano le tradizionali preoccupazioni militari aver ceduto il passo all'ideologia woke che Musk disprezzava e che Kennedy trovava profondamente corrotta.

I loro interessi coincidevano con la rivolta contro il globalismo in generale, il quale aveva assunto la forma di infinite guerre impossibili da vincere, rubinetti incontrollati di aiuti esteri, saccheggi dei contribuenti sotto forma di sussidi a sindacati internazionali di ONG, oltre al crudele utilizzo dell'immigrazione come strumento di manipolazione elettorale. È stato il punto sull'immigrazione a innescare la spinta populista per il nuovo nazionalismo, accogliendo nuovi rifugiati dai settori anti-guerra di sinistra e destra.

Lo stesso Donald Trump ha sperimentato una migrazione tutta sua. Mercantilista industriale fin dalle sue prime dichiarazioni pubbliche, ha gradualmente sviluppato un antistatalismo di fatto una volta che il suo primo mandato è stato sovvertito dall'interno e poi ha dovuto affrontare un'inaudita guerra nelle aule dei tribunali e persino tentativi di assassinio per fermare il suo secondo mandato. Quando ha detto al Libertarian Party che questa guerra legale lo rendeva un libertario nello spirito, stava dicendo la verità. Una volta che è diventata una questione personale, si è effettivamente rivoltato contro lo stato e tutte le sue opere.

Questi sono tutti percorsi tortuosi ma hanno avuto un'enorme influenza sulla mente della popolazione sulla scia degli anni del Covid, screditando la classe dirigente e preparato la strada per un modo completamente nuovo di gestire il governo e la vita pubblica. Data la cultura dei meme del nostro tempo, questo nuovo partito ha assunto vari nomi, prima MAGA e poi MAHA e poi DOGE (in omaggio alla famosa meme coin).

MAGA/MAHA/DOGE non è esattamente il nome più orecchiabile per il nuovo partito al governo, ma è molto più accurato di Repubblicano, per non parlare di Democratico. Si tratta di un nuovo partito formato dai gusci screditati dei due partiti esistenti che hanno perso la fiducia della popolazione nel corso di decenni di malgoverno, culminati in un tentativo di padroneggiare le esigenze del regno microbico.

In senso kuhniano, il crollo del paradigma ortodosso (governo da parte di agenzie amministrative) è stato completato nel 2023, preparando la strada alla coalizione pre-paradigmatica di questi personaggi affascinanti, sostenuti da movimenti popolari che si rispecchiano in molti altri luoghi e che generalmente navigano sotto la bandiera del populismo. Ed ecco il fatto cruciale: questi leader hanno la loro portata, influenza e potere perché le cause che rappresentano sono diventate più mature con una popolazione completamente stufa del malgoverno degli esperti.

Questi sono tempi nuovi e altamente promettenti, poiché il vecchio subisce uno smantellamento misericordioso e qualcosa di completamente nuovo prende il suo posto. Troviamo le radici dell'ideologia dello stato amministrativo nelle opere di Woodrow Wilson, e bastano pochi minuti di lettura delle sue fantasie su come la scienza e la costrizione avrebbero forgiato un mondo migliore per capire che era solo questione di tempo prima che l'intero esperimento andasse in frantumi.

Ci è voluto più di un secolo, ma quel giorno è finalmente arrivato: il paradigma è cambiato. Nonostante tutto il disordine e la frenesia, tra cui il caos, la confusione e i tradimenti, i nostri tempi offrono l'opportunità di riaffermare un principio fondamentale dell'Illuminismo, ovvero che le persone stesse dovrebbero avere un ruolo influente nel plasmare il funzionamento del sistema sotto il quale sono costrette a vivere.

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

Supporta Francesco Simoncelli's Freedonia lasciando una “mancia” in satoshi di bitcoin scannerizzando il QR seguente.

Thanks, John Smith. 

AP News

The post Israeli troops killed 15 Palestinian medics and buried them in a mass grave, UN says appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Need To Know News

The post Musk’s AI Company Acquires X, Accesses and Shares 600 Million Users’ Data With Israeli Company appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

News Target

The post England and Wales: New Law Targets White Christian Males appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Ginny Garner.

What the hell is going on? Trump has turned into Biden? Mercilessly, relentlessly bombing Yemen and aggressively seeking a new war with Iran. Why doesn’t Trump at least meet with the Iranian leaders, as he did North Korea’s? Why doesn’t he educate himself a little and learn about… https://t.co/v4u6kI6I5Q

— Oliver Stone (@TheOliverStone) March 31, 2025

The post Oliver Stone: Trump Has Broken Campaign Promise To Be Peace Candidate appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

Political activist and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell continues to organize Americans to lobby state election board personnel to get rid of electronic voting machines. Problems with these machines have been known since at least 1988 when the New Yorker magazine published the article “Counting Votes” by Ronnie Dugger and Roy Saltman released his report “Accuracy, Integrity, and Security in Computerized Vote-Tallying.” James and Kenneth Collier’s 1992 book “Votescam: The Stealing of America” provided many more facts on the topic. 

From Lindell:

“In their report, ‘We do not trust voting computers’ showed how the system
worked, what software they had created for it and gave details on how one
could get complete and undetected control of the election results if one had
access to the devices before the elections, even for a brief period. The
report also showed that radio emanations for the systems could be received
at a several meter distance giving the possibility to find out how people
voted. when we had the evidence to melt those machines down! 

The next elections in the Netherlands will use paper ballots and red pencil,
a method that provides transparency and that is now used in several
countries of Europe and in the US where a paper copy of each vote is
required. In Ireland, the use of the voting machines is stopped due to
serious questions regarding their security and the UK election council
intends stopping all electronic voting pilot projects that had been carried
on during the last years. In Germany doubts have arisen regarding their use
as well. In France, serious problems occurred during the pilot electronic
voting in spring election, the system having been considered a disaster. A
petition for the preservation of the paper voting was issued on that
occasion.” 

This was 2007. Instead of our country listening to the known problems with machine voting from other countries who were documenting and reporting these problems, our states began to buy up machines as fast as possible! Then we are told machines are the best, the safest and will deliver “gold standard elections”.  That could not be further from the truth!  

The Netherlands had only used the machines for 10 years at that time and made the decision to go back to paper ballot elections and a red pencil to count. It’s that simple.  

We have over complicated a process that wasn’t meant to be so messy and confusing! The simplicity of casting your paper ballot, having your ballot counted and then tallied manually by a person is the least expensive, and most honest path forward.  

We have one year until the mid-term elections begin. We need your support more now than ever! We continue to fight for our vote to count and the end of electronic voting machines until we secure our election platforms! 

The post Electronic Voting Machines Need To Go appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

Gateway Pundit

The post Elon Musk Announces He’s Receiving 17,000 to 18,000 Death Threats Daily from the Far-Left appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Politico

The post Where’s the gold? Germany’s conservatives sound the alarm over reserves in the US appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

CNN News

The post Trump administration concedes Maryland father from El Salvador was mistakenly deported and sent to mega prison appeared first on LewRockwell.

On March 25, six masked federal agents seized a Turkish graduate student on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. Rumeysa Ozturk—who was wearing a hajib—is a Fulbright scholar working on a doctorate at Tufts University.

She was abducted and vanished into the maw of the federal prison system. The Trump administration ignored a federal court order and took Ozturk from Massachusetts to Louisiana federal detention facilities.

But the Trump administration knew Ozturk had criticized the government of Israel a year earlier, enough to seal her doom according to the latest iron-fisted political correctness dictates. She co-authored one piece for the Tufts student newspaper criticizing the university’s refusal to divest from Israel despite “credible accusations of…. indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson justified the takedown: “DHS and ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated.” Ozturk never mentioned Hamas in her op-ed. Ozturk has not been linked to any campus protests at Tufts or elsewhere. The feds have failed to reveal any evidence Ozturk supports Hamas. She simply co-wrote an opinion piece. As the New York Post noted on Friday, DHS “alleged that Ozturk was a supporter of Hamas but has yet to provide any evidence to that effect.” On Friday evening, federal judge Denise Casper blocked the Trump administration from deporting Ozturk and ordered the administration to respond by Tuesday to Ozturk’s legal challenge (now aided by the ACLU) to her detention.

The video of the arrest spurred tidal waves of online cheering. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about the case while traveling in Guyana, he justified revoking Ozturk’s visa:

If you apply for a visa… and you tell us that the reason you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds but because you want to participate in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos—we’re not giving you that visa.

Rubio added: “It’s crazy—stupid, even—for any country to let people in who say, ‘I’m going to your universities to riot, take over libraries, and harass people.’ We gave you a visa to study and earn a degree—not to become a social activist tearing up our campuses.”

Rubio promised: “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas.”

Is criticizing a foreign government now considered proof of lunacy in the White House? Does the Trump administration consider op-eds to be a weapon of mass destruction?

The First Amendment doesn’t specify that it only applies to people that the White House approves. Former ICE Chief of Staff, Deborah Fleischaker, slammed the targeting of Ozturk as “a First Amendment violation. ICE had a policy in place that said that First Amendment activity was not to be the basis of enforcement action. That’s not why you enforce.”

Has the Trump administration gone full Nixon barely two months after the inauguration? In 1973, Nixon White House aide, Tom Charles Huston, lamented in congressional testimony the tendency of the FBI “to move from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.”

The Nixon administration’s systemic paranoia led it to launch preemptive attacks on its suspected opposition, from secretly searching psychiatrists’ offices to bugging the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate. Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 did not save him from the exposure of the cover-up of White House crimes.

The Trump administration is demanding that universities provide the feds with details on the  “national origin/ethnicity/shared ancestry” of students who were involved in protests that were allegedly antisemitic. Is the Trump administration going to require colleges to conduct DNA tests to determine the precise amount of Arabic, Turkish, or Iranian pedigree of suspects? Lawyers suggested that the “list was meant as a tip sheet that the administration might use to target or deport foreign students who participated in protests,” according to the Washington Post. One lawyer predicted a “witch hunt” would result from such lists.

Trump policymakers have a simple solution to end the protests: prohibit some universities “from having any foreign students if it decides too many are ‘pro-Hamas,’” according to senior Justice and State Department officials. One senior Justice Department official told Axios:

What you’re going to see in the not-too-distant future is the universities that we can show that we’re not doing anything to stop these demonstrations in support of Hamas — or encouraged enrollment by activists —  we can stop approving student visas for them, and they can no longer admit [any] foreign students.

American history demonstrates that persecution that starts with foreigners often snowballs into targeting American citizens. Three months after the 9/11 attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft proclaimed in congressional testimony: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and…give ammunition to America’s enemies.” In other words, critics were traitors—regardless of how many civil liberties Ashcroft actually destroyed. And the definition of pernicious speech continually expanded. In 2004, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, stumping for President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign, told audiences: “Political criticism is our enemy’s best friend.”

To subvert freedom of speech after 9/11, it wasn’t necessary for the feds to formally nullify the First Amendment. One of the nation’s most prominent pundits, Michael Kinsley, admitted in 2002 that he had been listening to his “inner Ashcroft”: “As a writer and editor, I have been censoring myself and others quite a bit since September 11.” Kinsley conceded that sometimes it was “simple cowardice” that sparked the censorship. I experienced plenty of such cowardice from editors after 9/11 and long beyond.

The Ozturk case provides an opportunity to clarify the meaning of free speech in American life.  Five years ago, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, some progressive prosecutors acted as if looting and burning were simply free speech on amphetamines.  The legal impunity that protestors received helped spur widespread carnage and billions of dollars of property damage.

Few Americans would object to deporting foreign students who destroy property or physically assault other people. But Ozturk was merely guilty of using words that are detested by the current administration. Are Trump’s policymakers using the same “guilt by association” standard the Biden administration used to persecute anyone near the Capitol on January 6, 2021? Biden’s Justice Department acted like anyone who merely “paraded without a permit” near the Capitol that day was guilty of insurrection and deserved a harsh prison sentence. Is any criticism of Israeli policy  now the legal and moral equivalent of insurrection?

More than 30 Democratic members of Congress sent a letter on Thursday to Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding information on the case in which the video “looked like a kidnapping.” But what if the Trump administration believes itself entitled to kidnap anyone who espouses an idea it disapproves? And what will be the next opinion to sanctify broad daylight federal kidnappings?

The post First They Came for the Op-Ed Writers appeared first on LewRockwell.

A war with Iran would be 10 to 15 times worse than the Iraq War in terms of casualties and costs… And we would lose. We would undoubtedly lose…. Retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

There has been much discussion about the relocation of B-2 bombers to Diego Garcia in anticipation of a potential conflict with Iran… However, the B-2 excels primarily against small, unsophisticated, and impoverished nations equipped with outdated air defense systems. …In short, the B-2 is a sophisticated tool for intimidating weaker adversaries but is largely ineffective against modern Integrated Air Defense Systems (IADS). Mike Mihajlovic @MihajlovicMike

Recent reports and satellite imagery indicate a significant buildup of US military assets at Diego Garcia, a strategic base in the Indian Ocean. The Pentagon has deployed seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers (capable of carrying nuclear payloads) numerous C-17 transport planes, ten KC-135 refueling tankers, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, and two carrier groups to locations where they can be used in a preemptive attack on Iran. The unprecedented buildup coincides with recent threats by President Donald Trump regarding Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. On Friday, Trump delivered another ominous warning to Iran during a briefing at the White House. He said:

Iran is very high on my list of things to watch. … We will have to talk it out or very bad things are going to happen to Iran…. My big preference is that we work it out with Iran, but if we don’t work it out, bad, bad things are going to happen to Iran.

The increase in warnings along with the deployment of B-2 bombers has caused a stir among analysts, many of who now believe that Trump is planning to target Iran’s nuclear facilities with “low yield” nuclear bunker buster bombs that are designed to penetrate and destroy underground, fortified facilities. If that action were to take place, Iran would be forced to launch massive retaliatory attacks on US and Israeli bases, naval assets, critical infrastructure and oil facilities across the Middle East. And, if those attacks were able to inflict significant damage on US or Israeli targets, then we could see a rapid escalation to a nuclear war, a scenario that seems more likely now than ever before. This is an excerpt from an interview with former weapons inspector Scott Ritter:

…seven B-2 bombers have been deployed from Whitman Airforce base in the United States to Diego Garcia. This is an unprecedented deployment. And they are matched with 10 KC-31 Tankers; that’s what’s needed to launch an attack against a target like Iran. This is something that should wake people up because there is real potential for conflict….The fact is there are B-2 bombers, there are Ohio class submarines, there are nuclear weapons attached to each of these weapons systems; nuclear weapons that have been built for the sole purpose of attacking targets like these that exist in Iran. … I am simply stating the fact that the Trump administration has a nuclear posture attached to a nuclear employment plan that will use nuclear weapons in a conflict against Iran, and we can’t pretend that that doesn’t exist. Scott Ritter; minute 5:40

It’s worth noting, that the Trump administration is on the verge of launching a war on a country that poses no national security threat to the United States, nor does it threaten US interests in the region. Iran’s only crime is that it occupies a piece of real estate in a region where Israel is determined to be the dominant power. That means Iran’s military capability must be significantly diminished by Israel’s favorite pit-bull, the United States. To that end, wealthy Zionists filled Trump’s campaign coffers during the last presidential election knowing that Trump’s vast popularity would be useful in advancing the Israeli agenda. The primary goal of that agenda has always been the obliteration of Iran’s military capability so that Israel can emerge as the as the regional hegemon unopposed. Trump is merely playing the role for which he was chosen. Here’s more from Ritter:

Scott Ritter—When Trump was president last time (2016) he redid the Nuclear Posture Review and the Nuclear Employment Guidance. And the Nuclear Employment Guidance is the war plan. The war plan was rewritten so he could launch nuclear strikes on Iran. So we’re ready to launch strikes on Iran today, the plan was implemented… we have the weapons, we’ve identified the targets ….

Question—What was rewritten?

Scott Ritter—You need specific weapons-types…. We do now have a new nuclear “low yield” bunker busting bomb that will penetrate and destroy the facility with minimal fallout (We have similar nukes on Trident submarines in the region that can be used in a decapitation strike on Iran) We are ready to go to war against Iran. We have already made that decision; the plan exists.

Question—So what you’re telling me is that, if Iran develops a nuclear weapon…

Scott Ritter—We will strike, and they will be annihilated… They’ll never know what his them, and they’ll never recover from it.... The American plan will not kill tens of millions of Iranians, but it will kill tens of thousands of Iranians, destroy the nuclear infrastructure, and set Iran back forever. The alternative for Iran is to negotiate away their nuclear (program) Scott Ritter

This is why Ritter is so worried. He seriously believes that Trump is planning to preemptively attack Iran’s nuclear sites which would set the dominoes in motion triggering a nuclear war. To me, this seems like a reasonable concern, but, surprisingly, Ritter’s analysis has ignited a firestorm among a number of his supporters online who have (overnight) turned into some of his most vicious critics. Here’s a short clip from a post by Sony Thang@nxt888 that has been widely circulated on X:

Scott… Let me tell you plainly: If the U.S. uses nuclear weapons against Iran—even “tactical” ones—the spell breaks. Forever. The myth of Western restraint dies in the open. The lie of rules-based order evaporates in radioactive dust….

China won’t wait to be next. Russia will tighten its alliance with Tehran. The Global South will turn its back for good. And every nation not under Washington’s boot will know the truth: if you don’t arm yourself, you will be annihilated.

That’s not proliferation. That’s inevitability.

You say, “Only one nation walks away.”

No, Scott.

No one walks away from nuclear war. Not cleanly. Not economically. Not morally. But let’s entertain your scenario.

Iran is wiped out. Oil hits $500 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz is a graveyard. The global economy implodes—not just Europe and Asia, but the dollar itself, because trust dies when empire burns its last moral pretense.

And here’s the part your Pentagon fantasies never compute: It’s not just bombs that bring nations to their knees. It’s legitimacy. Once lost, never regained.

And the U.S.? Already staggering from endless wars—it won’t rise from the ashes of another charred country. It’ll sink into them.

You claim you “assess the world as it is”?

Then look again. The American empire is not ascending.

It’s cornered. It’s flailing. It’s threatening annihilation not out of strength, but fear. Fear that the world it dominated is slipping away. Fear that Iran refuses to kneel. And fear that history, which you once claimed would hold America accountable, is no longer on your side.

So, keep listing your bombers, your submarines, your low-yield fantasies. Because beneath all that steel and strategy lies a single truth:

You’ve already lost the moral war.

And when that goes? Everything else follows. Sony Thang

The overall thrust of these critiques is a tacit objection to any move by Iran to compromise (or negotiate) with the Trump administration. This is generally perceived as “caving in” to the evil empire. (which, in many respects, is true.)

It’s worth noting, that Iran is not currently in violation of The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) nor has it been in the past. In fact, Iran has willingly complied with numerous additional protocols and confidence building measures (that were never imposed on any other country) all aimed at allaying fears that it was secretly developing nuclear weapons. But as Tulsi Gabbard confirmed recently, and former CIA Director William Burns before her; Iran does not have nukes, is not building nukes, and has not broken its agreements under the NPT. The whole matter is a mendacious confection concocted by powerful Zionists and their media collaborators who want to destroy Iran in order for Israel to become the dominant power in the Middle East.

It’s also worth noting the dishonest way this crisis has been presented to the American people. The public has been led to believe that Trump is trying to prevent nuclear proliferation when, in fact, the administration is demanding that Iran abandon its ballistic missile program as well.

On March 23, 2025, on Face the Nation, Trump advisor Mike Waltz stated bluntly that Trump’s demands include the dismantling of Iran’s “strategic missile program”. But Iran’s ballistic missiles do not violate any international law nor are they banned under any treaty obligation. Trump is simply ordering Iran to surrender the means by which it defends itself or face military action by the US. Is that a reasonable demand?

No, it is national suicide. And, once again, the origin of this insanity is Benjamin Netanyahu who has consistently urged the U.S. to take stronger action against Iran’s missile capabilities. (Israel’s agents in Congress introduced the MISSILES Act in July 2023 to codify U.S. sanctions on Iran’s missile and drone programs, citing Israel’s security. At the same time, Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign has included “missile-related entities”…”credited to Netanyahu’s input.”)

In short, Iran is being asked to willingly disarm itself so Israel can do to Iran what it is currently doing to Syria and Lebanon. Why would they do that?

They won’t. They will open back-channel communications with Trump’s envoys and continue to comply with their treaty obligations but eventually Trump will order air-strikes on nuclear targets in Iran signaling the beginning of the war. And that will pit America’s out-of-date weapons cache up-against Iran’s state-of-the-art ballistic missile systems that will—as Will Schryver opines—expose American weakness, not reinforce the widespread mythology of untouchable American strength.

The reasons for this are easy to understand. Following last year’s tit-for-tat missile attacks between Israel and Iran, a fantastical narrative emerged that Israeli air strikes on Iran were successful while Iranian missile attacks on Israel failed to do any significant damage. But nothing could be further from the truth. Israel’s air campaign was sharply rebuffed by Iran’s advanced multi-layered air defense systems while the vast majority of Iran’s long-range hypersonic ballistic missiles cut-through Israeli vaunted air defense systems striking targets without interference.

How do we draw these unusual conclusions?

By checking the documented accounts of what actually took place. For example, consider this early account of Israel’s October 26 attack by former intelligence officer Alastair Crooke:

Question—Did Israel cause any meaningful damage to Iran in its attack on October 26?

Alastair Crooke—No, but something significant did happen, because the attack was supposed to lead off with the destruction of the air defense systems…. what they call SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) The aircraft was supposed to destroy the air defenses in Iraq, Syria and Iran so the second and third waves would come in with conventional weapons to destroy the targets that had been selected for them. But the second and third wave could only enter Iranian airspace if it was safe for them to do that. (if the air defenses had been properly suppressed) Now what happened (although we don’t know precisely) is that those second and third waves never happened. We got into the first wave and the Israelis said “That’s it, we’re finished. It’s over. We won and it’s a great success.”

What seems to have happened is that the Israeli aircraft with their long-range missiles to destroy the air defense systems never got closer than 70 kms to Iran, too far for their missiles to lock on to the air defenses because they needed the signals to lock onto. …The key thing they said—and this is from Israeli sources—“We’ve discovered an unknown air defense system over Tehran province.” So what seems to have happened is that they (the Israeli aircraft) were being locked onto by another air defense system so they were frightened to go ahead and they scrapped the attack. They then simply released their long-range missiles (Most of these missiles are guided by GPS and the Russians are highly adept at jamming GPS.) But …this unexplained air defense system, was possibly a Russian air defense system that can attack stealth fighters like the F-35s. … If you have a missile that has a radar capacity that is able to identify a stealth fighter, then the whole idea of the attack on Iran seems to have collapsed….

All the conventional bombers carrying conventional weapons wouldn’t go into the area because it was too dangerous, it was not a secure area. The airspace was dominated by air defense that threatened the stealth fighters themselves.

This has huge geostrategic implications if this is what in fact happened…. You see, there was a three-phased plan; and when the plan was scuppered, they just announced the plan as if it had happened. “We’ve succeeded. We flew over Tehran; we suppressed their air defenses, we bombed targets and we destroyed their missile capacity.”

It’s just hype. It’s not true. Judging Freedom, Alastair Crooke, YouTube

Keep in mind, Crooke’s account is just one of many accounts that relay the same basic facts and the draw the same basic conclusions. And those conclusions, as we stated earlier, are linked to “Iran’s advanced multi-layered air defense system that can counter any potential Israeli attack on the homeland.”

In short, there is no evidence that either Israel or the United States have the ability to effectively penetrate Iran’s air defense system and destroy the targets they need to obliterate to win the war.

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The Right- both “awake” and in conservative slumber- are still rejoicing over Donald Trump’s glorious election to a second term as president. He won every swing state, we are told repeatedly. Or is it battleground state? I get confused. I guess either one works. Think Hamas and Hezbollah.

Trump certainly seemed like a winner at first, bull rushing around with autopen in hand, writing executive orders and breaking the china. But what exactly has changed? Well, the stock market has collapsed. This is almost exclusively due to Trump’s ass backwards policy of implementing- or constantly threatening to implement- tariffs on other countries. That would be fine, and a good way to protect American industry. Except that our industry is gone. Shipped offshore. Outsourced for cheaper foreign labor, under NAFTA and other disastrous trade deals. You have to build new factories, and start actually making products again, so you can provide domestic competition to imports. Obviously, that should be done before you place any tariffs on anyone. What Trump is doing is a bit like what we saw in Alice in Wonderland; sentence first, verdict afterwards. Unless your goal is to crash the market.

So, while Republicans brag, beat their chests, and chant “USA! USA!” repeatedly, the seemingly tamed “Woke” Democrats continue to rest on their laurels. And, when the occasion calls for it, to win again. They always win. Trump signs a long overdue executive order, abolishing birthright citizenship. A typical federal judge, using the never constitutional power of Judicial Review, simply overturns it. Trump waits for “his” Supreme Court to help him out and declare it constitutional. “His” Supreme Court has rarely been on his side. Virtue signaler extraordinaire Amy Coney Barrett never is. Yeah, let’s wait for “our” Supreme Court. That’s what “democracy” is all about. Getting the right unelected judge, or group of unelected judges, to decide important issues. Thomas Jefferson tried to warn against this, when John Marshall simply usurped the checks and balances and created the all powerful judiciary.

What the MAGA faithful should be learning is that you can’t govern exclusively by executive order. Theoretically, Trump should have easy sailing in getting his ideas passed into law. After all, Republicans are a majority in both houses of Congress. But as is very obvious, most Republicans are RINOs and will never support any actual “America First” policies. Even if you get all members of the “Freedom Caucus” on board, the average Republicuck is going to side with the establishment. Every time. Sure, you have the great Thomas Massie, suddenly widowed after his interview last year condemning the influence of AIPAC, but Trumpenstein has decided that the best Republican in Congress must be defeated for reelection. Meanwhile, the Giant Orange Man has once again endorsed his golfing buddy, macho Lindsey Graham, for yet another term in the Senate. Why do you think I call him Trumpenstein?

So, the MAGA people have Trump’s fiery rhetoric. They have the fact that he won all the swing states. Or all the battleground states. They believe that during his first term, he created “the strongest economy in this country’s history.” I mean, it’s only been eight years or less. Are MAGA memories really that short? Trump has made all kinds of fanciful proposals regarding taxes. Apparently Congress just voted down his plan to stop taxing tips. That was thanks to the Democrats. Party of the little guy. I believe they approved eliminating taxes on overtime, but this apparently applies only to federal workers. Do any of them work overtime? Do any of them even put in their scheduled forty hours a week? But Trump will still brag about this incredible accomplishment. He’ll just leave out the part about it applying only to those who’ll never need it. Like the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free slaves in the North.

The Democrats, my old party, are gearing up to go full clown show. Front and center is the lovely Jasmine Crockett, our first really, really ghetto member of Congress. Now, she grew up in a decidedly non-ghetto environment, which is the case with all of our non-upwardly mobile “representatives.” You may have seen tape of her speaking the King’s English as well as the average White boob. But when she dons the persona of Ghetto Girl, she suddenly sounds like one of Snoop Dogg’s side bitches. She keeps it all too “real.” Recently, she derided Governor Greg Abbott of Texas as “governor hot wheels.” This was a tasteless barb aimed at the fact Abbott is confined to a wheelchair. Predictably, Ghetto Girl refused to apologize, claiming nonsensically that she was referring to Abbott’s practice of shipping illegals to other states. Remember the furor over Trump waving his arms in a spastic way, supposedly making fun of the disabled?

Ghetto Girl also was recently quoted, during her non-apology over the Abbott remarks, as saying that “we should punch,” becoming the first known elected political leader in America to endorse physically striking someone you disagree with. Well, it’s really just an extension of “punch a Nazi in the face,” which every poor “marginalized person” applauds. The Democrats’ other new political star is none other than ESPN talking head Steven A. Smith. If you haven’t watched Smith’s act- and it is definitely an act- it consists of very loud shouting, misuse of big words, and continuous racial idolatry. That is Jason Whitlock’s term for playing the perpetual victim card, claiming that everything and everyone is “racist,” and that you, as an ill educated buffoon who has nonetheless recently signed a $100 million contract to spew out predictable “Woke” talking points, are in fact somehow a victim of “racism,” too.

Smith is just as much as advocate of physical violence, of might makes right, as the lovely Ghetto Girl is. He has become embroiled in a truly theatrical, contrived “feud” with NBA star Lebron James, and let everyone know recently that he would most assuredly have thrown a punch at Lebron if he had “laid hands” on him. Steven A. is a really, really tough guy. Just like Jasmine Crockett is really, really ghetto. Jason Whitlock destroyed Steven A.’s fake background with some real journalistic research. He proved conclusively that Steven A. lied about his college, maybe even his high school basketball career. As Whitlock says, Steven A. is a pathological liar. Which I suppose alone makes him qualified for a political career. And the mainstream Right is actively promoting Steven A. as a credible politician. Sean Hannity has him on regularly. Meghan Kelly and Patrick Bet-David sing his praises.

Trump signed an executive order outlawing DEI practices in government. I don’t know that he has this power, but he signed such an order. Recently, my own Fairfax County school board voted 16-0 to implement “gender studies” for elementary students. That sounds pretty “DEI” to me. I guess they didn’t get Trump’s message. Furthermore, I guess voters don’t mind paying these petty tyrants to not educate their children, because none of them appear to have been voted out. The same thing is going on in neighboring Loudon County, epicenter of the angry parent protests, where the “Woke” school board still reigns with unbridalled power. As I said at the time, if we can’t effect change at this kind of local level, we can’t effect change. Either most parents with young children want them to be subjected to insane Tik Tok teachers changing their pronouns, or they aren’t counting any of their votes.

As I stress consistently, we can only “win” anything by coming together. By using the only real weapon we have, which is a tremendous advantage in numbers. If you’re not an insane virtue signaling parent, go to your school board meetings, and if you are too afraid to speak up, at least stand behind the brave parents who do. If those lonely moms and dads just had a big group cheering them on, the corrupt board members wouldn’t be able to cavalierly have them thrown out by the always compliant police officers there. Is it really that hard to get angry about your children being subjected to gay pedophilic pornography like Gender Queer? To be read to by hairy, half-naked men pretending to be female strippers? For White parents to object to their kindergartner being guilted over the real and imagined transgressions of his ancestors? If you can’t get outraged about this kind of lunacy, what would it take to outrage you?

So the “Woke” Left, while seemingly on the ropes, is employing some kind of updated Rope a Dope on the Right. And it’s just as scripted and contrived as Muhammad Ali’s strategy once was. Trumpenstein is hitting them with haymaker flip flops and Hall of Fame level trolling. I’m looking to see any real improvements. I’m still waiting for the first politician to do anything that results in a positive impact on my life. I drive around and I don’t see less people. I guess they aren’t dying off from the vaccine in my area. I guess the illegals haven’t been rounded up in my area. Maybe the lovely Kristi Noem can come stand in front of our local prison and tease the sex-starved prisoners, like she did with the mega prison in El Salvador. There were supposedly vicious gang members behind bars in the background, but they seemed really tiny. Kristi needs to get her green screen people more training. And stop wearing $50,000 Rolexes.

The even lovelier Rep. Anna Paulina Luna told Fox News (who else) that she has been made aware of film being withheld by NBC, which supposedly shows patsy Lee Harvey Oswald standing “next to the vehicle,” in her words, at the time of the shooting. I hope she isn’t clumsily describing the so-called Prayer Man, an indistinct figure in the rear doorway of the Texas School Book Depository Building. Some contend that the figure is Oswald, which would of course all by itself prove that he didn’t shoot Kennedy. She also described conferring with Oliver Stone, who is set to testify before her committee. That should be interesting viewing, although she really should have sought out the humble community college dropout who now has seniority on just about everyone else in the JFK assassination research community. Although, of course, that would have instantly discredited me in the eyes of some.

The Woking Dead appear to be losing all the time. Look at the horrific remake of Disney’s classic Snow White. Although person of color Rachel Zegler did everything she could to discredit the film before anyone saw it, it still managed to hit the theaters. For like a week or so, before flaming out spectacularly. Zegler has to be seen and heard to be believed. Her incantation of “Weird! Weird!” evoked memories of the best of late medical examiner D. Wayne Carver’s press conference discussing the Sandy Hook case. Although the remake of Snow White will experience perhaps a record loss at the box office, Disney CEO Bob Iger doesn’t care. He has already slammed the criticism as politically inspired. He has no regrets about casting an obnoxious, batshit crazy leading lady who not only isn’t White, but proudly anti-White. To play a character who was named for her translucent white skin.

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When I was in graduate school I read all of the literature on how European revolutionary doctrine had destabilized Russia in the late 19th century. This process culminated with the Bolsheviks—animated by the crude doctrine of Marxism-Leninism—unleashing hell on the country. The bibliography is vast, and I suspect that few Americans or Englishmen alive today have read many of these books.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin was a young man, he participated in this corrupt system as an intelligence agent stationed in Dresden between 1985 and 1990, where he apparently worked with the Stasi—the German Democratic Republic’s horrible secret police.

However, there are many indications that, at some point after 1991—or perhaps even during his KGB service—he had something akin to a Damascene Moment in which he saw that the secular state religion he served was corrupt.

I have never met Putin and I know nothing about his character. However, according to Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin, who is said to be Putin’s intellectual and spiritual advisor, Putin has genuinely rejected the Marxism-Leninist doctrine of his youth.

Here it should be noted that the West has always struggled to understand the Russian mind, which Churchill famously described as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside and enigma.”

Dugin’s Russian brand of conservatism would doubtless strike most people in the West as strange and politically incorrect. I sense that some of this thinking can be traced back to Dostoevsky’s 1871 novel Demons, about young Russian revolutionaries who has been possessed by European secular-socialist ideology.

For all of Russia’s own corruption and problems, the country nevertheless presents a fascinating counterbalance to many of the incredibly stupid, destructive, shallow, and childish cultural and political currents in the West.

One of my best friends is a Russian who, because of his family’s Jewish ancestry, was allowed to leave the Soviet Union in a deal struck between Reagan and Gorbachev. His family settled in Vienna, where he grew up. After studying math at Cambridge, he returned to Moscow, where he lived for a few years and experienced what he described as “the time of my life.” He understood as well as anyone all the country’s problems, but he nevertheless found most Russians to be extremely friendly and funny.

Especially refreshing for him was the conspicuous absence of Cultural Marxism and other doctrines that have poisoned the American and English university systems. He also developed an inordinate fondness for Russian women and—despite the extreme anti-Russian sentiment with which he must now contend in his current home in London—he continues to maintain a great relationship with his Russian girlfriend. Understandably so—she is a lovely and intelligent girl.

I mention this because I was appalled by the recent New York Times report (The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine) that the CIA and the U.S. Department of Defense have provided all of the sophisticated weapons and targeting that have enabled the Ukrainian military to kill up to 700,000 Russians.

I believe the totality of circumstances indicates that the U.S. government and the CIA have, since 2014 at the latest, persistently and systematically baited Russia into taking military action against Ukraine to counter the U.S. de facto takeover of the country—a takeover with objectives and activities that are relentlessly hostile to Russia right on its doorstep. An exceptionally educated friend who grew up in Ukraine completely agrees with this assessment.

My own experience in Russia has been limited to visiting St. Petersburg, founded by the Russian Czar Peter the Great in 1703. Vladimir Putin was born in St. Petersburg, and I suspect that at least part of him shares the the Russian’s Czar’s fascination with European culture. His story reminds me of Mausolus, a ruler of what is now western Anatolia (in Turkey) in the Persian Empire between 377-353 B.C. While Mausolus had a reputation for being a stalwart ruler of Persian cultural and political sensibilities, he became deeply involved through military action in Greek affairs. Ultimately he seemed to become a greater lover of Greek culture than most Greeks, especially where art and architecture were concerned.

Since 2022, I have frequently told anyone who would listen that the United States should adopt a policy of recognizing that Russia has legitimate economic and security interests. The majority of people with whom I have spoken have accused me of being a “Putin Apologist” or “Putin Stooge” and they have asked me why I would trust Vladimir Putin.

My response has always been, “Why should I trust Joe Biden, Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, and Olaf Scholz?”

Indeed, it seems to me that, since around the year 2008, pretty much everything we’ve heard emanating from Washington D.C., London, Paris, and Berlin is dubious at best, and mostly a lie. Most of the policies implemented by Europe’s elites have been detrimental to the working and middle class citizenry of Europe. Germany’s insane “Green Energy” policies have been a total disaster for its skilled manufacturing sector—until recently the envy of the West—and its insane immigration policies have been a disaster for public safety and the security of German women.

In recent years, the government of Great Britain has repudiated the nation’s long and venerable tradition of free speech. Nowadays the UK is a place in which Big Brother is Watching and severely punishing those who violate the state’s growing restricted speech code. A couple of years ago, British comedian and author, Konstantin Kisin (who was born and raised in Russia and is a strong critic of Vladimir Putin) pointed out that in one recent year, 400 people had been arrested in Russia for things they said on social media. In same year, 3,300 people were in arrested in the UK for things they said on social media. This is, it seems to me, is absolutely shocking.

Yesterday came the news that Marine Le Pen was banned from the next presidential race because of an accounting irregularity. The charges reminded me of similar law-fare tactics the Democrat Party used against Donald Trump.

Since 2020 in the West, we have experienced COVID-19 mRNA vaccine mandates, censorship, and the banning of political opposition.

Considering this, I pose the following provocative question: Could it be that—for all of its faults—the Russian nation is now something like a defender of Western Civilization from the militant barbarians who have taken over the politics and culture of the West?

Before readers respond with comments, I hope they will bear in mind that I am NOT asserting this to be true, I am merely asking the question. It to me that asking provocative questions is the first step to opening up serious thought and inquiry about a complex and difficult subject.

This originally appeared on Focal Points – Courageous Discourse.

The post Is Russia Now the Defender of Western Civ? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”—James Madison

It’s no joke: America is becoming a Constitution-free zone.

Little by little, our rights are being whittled down in the name of national security.

Where do you draw the line?

How much tyranny will Americans tolerate in the name of national security?

At what point does this slippery slope of power grabs lead to dictatorship?

Will we let border police trample on the rights of everyone they encounter, including legal residents and citizens? Turn a blind eye when men, women and children are forcibly detained by gangs of plainclothes agents and made to disappear? Will we accept a national ID card that enables the government to target individuals and groups it deems undesirable? Will we tolerate AI-powered surveillance cameras and drones that track us more effectively than they protect us? Will we censor ourselves, fearing that any expression of dissent will mark us as anti-government?

Will we abandon the constitutional principles our founders fought for? This is the bargain the police state demands of us.

Take immigration, for example.

President Trump wants us to believe that the nation’s security is so threatened by illegal immigrants that we should tolerate roving bands of ICE and border patrol agents disregarding the Constitution at every turn.

But these government agents aren’t just disregarding it—they’re trampling it with the blessing of the man who swore to “preserve, protect and defend” that very same Constitution.

First Amendment rights to free speech, assembly, and protest. Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Fifth Amendment guarantees of due process. Sixth Amendment protections ensuring a right to legal counsel. Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishments. Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection under the law.

All of these and more are being imperiously swept aside in the Trump Administration’s pursuit of an America “for Americans and Americans only.”

Trump has invoked wartime powers under the Alien Enemies Act to justify the expulsion of illegal immigrants, whom Trump has likened to terrorists, killers, criminals, and enemies of the state.

However, with national security being used as a pretext to strip away rights on a larger scale than just criminals, the individuals targeted by the Trump Administration’s overreach represent a broader cross-section of American society: immigrants, both documented and undocumented, who live and work in the mainland of the United States. (It is estimated that undocumented immigrants paid nearly $97 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022, contributing $59.4 billion to the federal government, including payments for federal income tax and federal social insurance such as Social Security, Medicare and Unemployment Insurance. In other words, they are paying for entitlement programs for which they do not receive benefits.)

Individuals whose visas allow them to legally reside in the U.S. are also being rounded up and made to disappear without due process.

The reports of how these round-ups are being carried out—with ambushes on city streets, in broad daylight, at the hands of masked, plainclothes officers, and without any charges being levied, court hearings or defense attorneys notified—are beyond chilling.

Some are being targeted based on their nationality. Some are being racially profiled. Some are being classified as criminal based solely on the fact that they have tattoos. Some, like Abrego Garcia, are being mistakenly snatched up and deported to private prisons in foreign countries, beyond the physical reach of U.S. courts.

As Garcia’s attorney warned, the Trump Administration seems to have adopted the mindset that “the government can deport whoever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want, and no court can do anything about it once it’s done.”

And then there are the scientists, doctors, academics and students who are being rounded up because at some point they voiced their concerns about the mounting death toll in Palestine.

With the Trump Administration now equating even the perception of antisemitism as terrorism, that puts anyone in the government crosshairs who even dares to suggest that the killing of civilian women and children in Palestine is wrong.

For example, Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk wrote an op-ed calling for the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel. That’s all it took for her to be placed on the government’s enemies list, stripped of her visa without warning or notice, surrounded on the street by a small army of masked agents, and whisked out of state to a detention center 1500 miles away without any family or friend knowing her whereabouts.

These arbitrary roundups and deportations are not just violations of the Fifth Amendment’s due process protections. They also trample the First Amendment’s right to free speech and assembly, particularly for those who speak out against government policies.

These actions are not limited to just immigrants or perceived enemies—they extend to anyone daring to challenge the status quo. Whether it’s activists, academics, or everyday citizens, being targeted for political expression is an assault on the very essence of free speech.

In this way, these round-ups represent the beginning of the slippery slope, leading not just to arbitrary detentions and the expansion of private prisons as an extension of the police state but to an eventual authoritarian regime where dissent is suppressed, and constitutional rights are discarded.

This is not just happening at the southern border.

These round-ups are increasingly occurring in cities like New York, Boston, and northern Virginia, with many U.S. citizens also being swept up in warrantless searches, surveillance, and overreach from federal and local law enforcement.

Where once the nation’s border constituted a thin line, it is becoming an ever-thickening zone dominated by authoritarianism and an utter disregard for the rule of law.

This zone impacts millions of Americans who have never been near a border—citizens who live in everyday places, like urban and suburban areas, yet are subject to government overreach.

As journalist Todd Miller explains, that expanding border region now extends “100 miles inland around the United States—along the 2,000-mile southern border, the 4,000-mile northern border and both coasts… This ‘border’ region now covers places where two-thirds of the US population (197.4 million people) live… The ‘border’ has by now devoured the full states of Maine and Florida and much of Michigan.”

Nearly 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, or 197.4 million people) now live within that 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.

In this authoritarian reshaping of America, no one is safe, not even in their own homes.

The government’s ever-expanding, Constitution-free zone translates to greater numbers of Americans being subject to warrantless searches, ID checkpoints, transportation checks, and even surveillance on private property far beyond the boundaries of the borderlands.

From facial recognition software to mass data collection, surveillance technology is being used to monitor immigrants and ordinary citizens alike who are not suspected of any crime.

With Trump considering plans to turn a portion of the southern border into an expansive military installation policed by active-duty troops, we’re going to see even more of these assaults on our freedoms. As Trump promised after Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil was arrested because of his anti-war activism, “This is the first arrest of many to come.”

Miller explains:

“In these vast domains, Homeland Security authorities can institute roving patrols with broad, extra-constitutional powers backed by national security, immigration enforcement and drug interdiction mandates. There, the Border Patrol can set up traffic checkpoints and fly surveillance drones overhead with high-powered cameras and radar that can track your movements. Within twenty-five miles of the international boundary, CBP [Customs and Border Protection] agents can enter a person’s private property without a warrant.”

Across the nation, local police forces are becoming militarized extensions of federal agencies like CBP and DHS, routinely receiving federal funds and training to act as armed enforcers of national security policies. By the time you add the military into that equation, you’ve got all the necessary ingredients for martial law.

The CBP, with its more than 60,000 Customs and Border Protection employees, supplemented by the National Guard and the U.S. military, is an arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a national police force imbued with all the brutality, ineptitude and corruption such a role implies.

Just about every nefarious deed, tactic or thuggish policy advanced by the government today can be traced back to the DHS, its police state mindset, and the billions of dollars it distributes to local police agencies in the form of grants to transform them into extensions of the military.

As Miller points out, the government has turned the nation’s expanding border regions into “a ripe place to experiment with tearing apart the Constitution, a place where not just undocumented border-crossers, but millions of borderland residents have become the targets of continual surveillance.”

In much the same way that police across the country have been schooled in the art of sidestepping the Constitution, border agents have nearly unlimited discretion to stop, search, interrogate and arrest anyone they “suspect,” based on arbitrary factors such as:

• Driving an unusual vehicle.
• Passengers appearing “suspicious.”
• Having a dusty or modified car.
• Avoiding eye contact or looking too long at an officer.

These arbitrary and broad criteria make it easy for any citizen to be targeted without just cause, turning everyday travel into a potential confrontation with law enforcement. In other words, anything goes when it comes to the police state’s justifications for undermining our rights.

These troubling developments at the borders are just one part of a broader erosion of constitutional rights that has been underway for decades in the name of national security.

When we look back at history, we see a consistent pattern of political power grabbing in the name of national security. From the Alien and Sedition Acts to the War on Terror, the price of security is always paid by our freedoms—and each step we take brings us closer to a system where those in power determine the limits of our liberty by using national security as an excuse to curtail fundamental freedoms.

Fast-forward to the present, and Donald Trump capitalized on this historical pattern by claiming that the only way to keep America safe from dangerous immigrants was to build an expensive border wall, expand the reach of border patrol, and enlist the military to “assist” with border control.

Continuing this trend, Joe Biden sent thousands of active-duty troops to the southern border, in anticipation of more than 10,000 illegal crossings per day—reinforcing the military presence and fortifying the unchecked power at the border.

And now Trump is doubling down on everything he and his predecessors have done to fortify this unchecked power.

This pattern of exploiting national security fears for authoritarian control has continued into the present day with Trump’s immigration crisis becoming a pretext for greater control, a strategy to stoke fear and justify authoritarianism.

Yet despite the propaganda coming from the White House, the looming problem is not so much that the U.S. is being invaded by hostile forces at the border, but rather that the U.S. Constitution is under assault from within by a power-hungry cabal at the highest levels of power.

Before long, the only Americans qualified to live freely in Trump’s America will be those who march in lockstep with the Deep State’s dictates, and even absolute compliance is no guarantee of safety.

It used to be that the Constitution was our only reliable safety net, but that is being systematically dismantled.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the government is now the greatest threat to our safety, and there’s no border wall big enough to protect us from these ruffians in our midst.

The answer to this growing tyranny begins with us—“We the people.”

The Constitution should not be negotiable. Freedom is not negotiable.

You want to make America great again? Start by making America free again.

This originally appeared on The Rutherford Institute.

The post The United States of Tyranny: America Is Becoming a Constitution-Free Zone appeared first on LewRockwell.

The upheaval we are witnessing with Trumpism affects the United States, its national relations, and the domestic politics of its allies. It may seem strange that European leaders would criticize the President of the United States for his policies at home, in violation of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of a foreign country. However, while they do not suffer from his reforms at home, they are enduring the unspeakable consequences they provoke at home. These are only just beginning.

The period we are experiencing, with the rapprochement between the United States and Russia, is shaking up the global political scene. In doing so, all intergovernmental institutions are being disrupted. It appears that some of them responded to an unofficial objective, which everyone was careful not to state publicly, but which has not stood the test of time. Others were pursuing actions contrary to their official objectives, which was not a problem when all their members were in agreement, but seems unbearable today. Ultimately, multilateralism, as it was practiced, was anything but multilateral.

The G7 and NATO are already broken

The political coordination of the “West” was ensured by the G7, a series of meetings at all levels, which developed a common discourse. However, during the virtual meeting of heads of state and government on February 24, 2025, US President Donald Trump refused to sign the final communiqué and threatened his partners with leaving the G7 if they published it without his agreement  [ 1 ] .

For the past month, G7 meetings have been taking place without the United States. Thus, during the virtual meeting of national security advisers on March 28, in which Ukraine was involved, the American Michael Waltz did not participate  [ 2 ] .

It is clear that there is no longer any political coordination from the “West.” Consequently, there is no longer any military coordination either.

The French and British, initially in competition, then by mutual agreement and consultation, have launched a series of meetings of allied heads of state and government. They seek to ensure the continent’s security under the French and British nuclear umbrellas. But, as it stands, this idea cannot work because the problem has been poorly framed.

Indeed, for the moment, they interpret the events as a shift of the United States’ armies from Europe to the Far East, while President Trump seeks to put an end to the “American Empire”, both by ideology – he is a Jacksonian  [ 3 ] – and by necessity – he is managing the debt crisis  [ 4 ] -.

In the allies’ hypothesis, it would be enough to increase the military spending of each to compensate for the US withdrawal, whereas, if it is a question of the end of “American imperialism” as I maintain, it is not so much the budget of the Atlantic Alliance as its mode of organization that is in question. Washington no longer wishes to assume command of the whole, but simply to show the way.

However, while European states and their Canadian, Australian, Korean, and Japanese allies all obeyed the United States, they did not get along with each other. The history of the European continent is an endless series of rivalries, conflicts, and wars, with the sole exception of the Roman Empire. At the time, populations submitted to Rome to protect themselves from invasions. After its fall, the Vikings and Mongols pillaged the continent. The empires of Charlemagne, Charles V, Napoleon, or Hitler never knew peace. Today, no imminent danger is forcing Europeans to unite. Hence the invention of a supposed Russian threat, as if the “Red Army” were preparing to parade on the Champs-Élysées.

Two weeks ago, on March 19, the RAND Corporation, the US military-industrial lobby, suggested creating a “European Deterrence Council” with France, the United Kingdom and other key European states such as Germany and Poland  [ 5 ] . However, strategic nuclear weapons cannot be a means of deterrence in the absence of strong conventional armies. However, none of the Europeans have any, the current French and British armies are not intended to defend their territories, but to project themselves into neo-colonial operations, mainly in Africa.

NATO’s enormous resources are compromised. All it takes is for the United States to stop sharing its own resources for nothing to work. Their battlefield intelligence is essential to the operation of the weapons they have purchased. Furthermore, if they do not wish to be involved in a conflict, they will have to block the use of the heavy weapons they have sold, from armored vehicles to aircraft. What was designed to contain the adventures of some allies is now stifling them all.

Moreover, the same problem will arise with the heavy weapons sold by France and the United Kingdom, which have also all been equipped with inhibitors. Paris and London will also have to block them when, after the defeat of Ukraine, Poland attempts to recover Eastern Galicia and Hungary recovers Transcarpathia. And what will become of NATO when Romania attempts to recover Moldova?

National and intergovernmental institutions reveal their true faces

At the helm of the Department of Economic Efficiency, Elon Musk is slimming down the US bureaucracy. Public opinion is listening as he reveals the Biden administration’s mismanagement. As a libertarian, Musk is content to shrink the federal government. But behind this fight, President Trump is destroying, piece by piece, all the budgets of “American imperialism.” He has revoked most of USAID, the so-called humanitarian aid agency that served as a front for the CIA. He is also attacking the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the two agencies that legally provide grants to extend the CIA as part of the “Five Eyes” (i.e., cooperation between Anglo-Saxon secret services). Every day, we discover new agencies with obscure activities that extended “American imperialism” around the world. The latest, the small US African Development Foundation, located near the White House, barred DOGE agents from entering its premises, which it had guarded with its own police officers. Its employees holed up like madmen so that no one could discover their purpose.

All NGOs and political parties around the world that the US federal government subsidized will have to find new sources of funding or close.

I can’t resist telling you how, among allies, this system is crumbling to its foundations. For example, the French NGO Reporters Without Borders, which claims to defend “the right of every human being to have access to free and reliable information,” is in reality a CIA agency. It refused to defend me when I was threatened and had to leave France. However, President Trump has just shut down propaganda radio and television stations. Without any qualms, Reporters Without Borders has joined forces with Voice of America employees to sue the US administration and demand the reinstatement of the station’s so-called “journalists.”

Or again, the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, linked to the French Socialist Party, has gradually allied itself with CIA pseudopods. Today, it employs, for example, Rudy Reichstadt, founder of Conspiracy Watch, already heavily subsidized by France. While claiming to be a supporter of the Munich Charter, which specifies the rights and responsibilities of journalists, this figure has described us, in nearly 300 articles, as “forgers,” without ever indicating how we have falsified reality.

The collapse of these Washington-subsidised NGOs and political parties corresponds to the awareness that the European Union is reproducing this system. This includes agencies comparable to USAID, USIP and NED. While all experts have long known that the EU subsidises NGOs to speak well of it and others to denigrate its opponents, the extent of its propaganda is only now being discovered. The Hungarian Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) has just published a study by Thomas Fazi on EU propaganda subsidies  [ 6 ] .

We learn, for example, that the EU has launched programs to “combat the Eurosceptic discourses already spread by autocratic elites” (RevivEU) or to “denationalize European engagement” (EU TURN 2025); programs that add to the funding of cronies, such as the Robert Schuman Foundation to combat “Eurosceptic and national-populist mythology” or the European Policy Centre to speak well of international migration and ill of Russia.

We already knew, from studies by the European Centre for Law & Justice (ECLJ)  [ 7 ] , that the European Court of Human Rights, far from being an impartial tribunal, was the preserve of the employees of the speculator George Soros. We now know that the European Union, far from being an administration that respects the diversity of its members, manipulates its budget against its “citizens”.

We have not yet reached the stage of slimming down the European Union and the Council of Europe, but there is an awareness of the corruption of the Brussels bureaucracy and the Strasbourg justice system.

Conclusion

The multilateralism we have known within the institutions of the “West,” the G7 and NATO, persists, but is paralyzed. These organizations will quickly disappear in their current form. To continue, they will have to radically change their form.

Similarly, the so-called “civil society,” far from being the emanation of citizens as a complement to democratic institutions, now appears to be riddled with hybrid organizations working behind the scenes for States, without the knowledge of their citizens and against them.

—

[ 1 ]  “  France, unable to cope with the shock of Donald Trump  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , February 25, 2025.

[ 2 ]  “  Andriy Yermak Held a Conversation with National Security Advisors to G7 Leaders  ”, Presidency of Ukraine , March 28, 2025.

[ 3 ]  “Misinterpretations of the evolution of the United States”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , First part January 28, 2025, Second part February 4, 2025.

[ 4 ]  “  Is Donald Trump managing the possible collapse of the “American empire”?  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , March 11, 2025.

[ 5 ]  “  Nuclear Deterrence: Can Britain and France Take on America’s Role in Defending Europe Against Russian Aggression?  », Rand Corporation , March, 19, 2025.

[ 6 ]  The EU’s propaganda machine: How the EU funds NGOs to promote itself , Thomas Fazi, March 2025.

[ 7 ]  NGOs and ECHR judges (2009-2019) and The Impartiality of the ECHR – Problems and Recommendations (2023), Grégor Puppinck, European Centre for Law and Justice.

The post Will Intergovernmental Institutions Withstand the End of the ‘American Empire’? appeared first on LewRockwell.

According to- Melissa Lin: Increased risk of security breach: A cashless society may bring about increased risks to personal and national security. From a personal security standpoint, the risks we already experience when we lose credit cards or our phones would only be exacerbated in an environment without paper currency.

Cash is one of the last man-made means of protection that he or she has against governments that have grown to a degree of power that they never had before.

The Dangers of a Cashless Society

There are two predominant dangers that come with a cashless society, and just about every negative that you can think of due to such will fall into one of these two groups:

1. Denial of purchasing power
2. A complete loss of anonymity

Denial of Purchasing Power

A cashless society is a controlled society. If everything must go through an online banking or credit card process, then you have just lost virtually all control over what you buy.

Anything that is not politically sanctioned(guns, ammo, body armor, helmets, particular books, particular website premium subscriptions, political donations, etc.) could very easily be vaporized overnight.

This, of course, would drive the makers and holders of such products into a black market to barter their goods, and this in turn would be responded to by the use of overwhelming government force. This will come in the form of Stryker vehicles, concussion grenades, snipers, and men with automatic rifles and body armor.

Don’t believe me? Read FA Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. Totalitarian governments must resort to force simply for the sole reason that people will naturally refuse to comply with widespread theft of their own goods. This force will only continue to grow in its usage.

Totalitarians do not accept blame for their own economical failures. The state is the end of all things to them, and as such, the end justifies the means – no matter how terrifying such a means may be.

A Complete Loss of Anonymity

Once cash is abolished everywhere, your attempts at any form of anonymity will be destroyed.

You already have an amazing amount of data that has been collected from you from your Internet search history, GPS data, voting history, bank statements, credit card statements, phone data, and a host of other publicly available information that easily allows people to deduce information from you.

And where humans fail, algorithms thrive. I have a hobby interest in algorithm creation (particularly multiple linear regression analysis) and have used it within my healthcare job as a means of predicting patient attendance rather accurately on any given day. I’ve also used them to (somewhat less accurately) predict when a patient was going to have episodes of heart block.

Algorithms are a powerful tool, and the more data you feed them, the stronger they get. With the amount of data that has been collected on you already, the government may be able to make a much stronger prediction about who you are, what you believe, and what you possess than you would’ve ever thought possible.

Just think about what a cashless society would mean for the following purchases:

• Medicine – The government can now invade your medical privacy to see what meds you need to live as well as know what could either improve or hamper your condition. For those who don’t believe that this is a concern, just keep in mind that it wasn’t that long ago that the US military was warning its soldiers against getting genetic testing to determine their family tree. Why? Because it was deemed to be a security risk. What do they know here that we don’t?
• Food – Algorithms can easily predict when you are buying much more than what you could eat within a particular span of time. This then means that food stores can be predicted and located. Come disaster time, your house could easily be one of the first that is targeted for “hoarding”. And what happens if it’s determined that those with large food stores are likely to be “domestic terrorists”?
• Firearms and Body Armor – This is the low-hanging fruit here. Weapons, ammunition, body armor – they could all be easily tracked (and later confiscated). Buying “too much” of one particular product may cause red flags to be attached to your file, and you could very easily end up with a visit from an alphabet agency full of men carrying what is now a felony for you to own.
• Ham Radios – There already seems to be an attack against ham radio users as the government has realized that this is the route that many fearing censorship/silencing are turning toward. If you can shut down all communication other than what is government sanctioned, you have effectively silenced free speech.
• Media – Do you like to watch documentaries that may be labeled as conspiracy theories? Is it that hard to imagine a “misinformation tax” to discourage Americans from imbibing in certain forms of media? Why not? We’ve already seen the “death by a thousand cuts” approach being used with firearms so that the argument can be made that “no, you can have a gun, but you just have to fill out these fifty forms, pay a $4000 fee, and have a license. See? There’s no infringement whatsoever.”

To think that the same idea couldn’t be applied to the news commentators that you like to listen to is naive.

Here are some arguments that will be used for a cashless society:

Physical Money Shortages

Throughout 2024 we were told that there was a coin shortage throughout the U.S.

As a result, retailers either quit giving coin change back or strongly discouraged customers from asking for it.

Kroger actually resorted to either giving you back your money in the form of credit vouchers (to that particular store of course) or by donating the change that they owed you to charity.

Control Over Dangerous and Illegal Purchases

In what can only be viewed as an incredibly ironic wordsmithing, we will be told that one of the benefits to a cashless society is that we can finally rein in purchases that are deemed by the government to be dangerous to the public.

Guns, ammunition, freedom-oriented books (“radical terrorist recruiting material”), and the like will be argued against so that we can keep our society safe. Notice that there is always an emphasis on safety throughout this entire process.

A Fomite of Disease

Once again, 2024 set the stage here. Cash purchases plummeted worldwide, with credit cards filling in the void as people began to avoid any and all cash purchases with the hopes of not getting themselves sick.

This was a talking point spouted throughout the mainstream media in 2024 and will continue to be used in the future as the push for the abolition of cash continues.

Cost of Creation Outweighs the Actual Value of Money

We see this already with the US penny. It actually costs 2.41₵ to produce a single penny.

While our government currently has no problem with making fiscally irresponsible decisions, when it finally does come around to deciding that “you know what, pennies aren’t worth it” – or any other form of cash for that matter – there will be nobody that will argue against them.

This decision will be portrayed as a means of reducing wasteful spending, and anyone who argues against this given reasoning for the abolition of cash will be labeled as an idiot who can’t do proper math.

Read the Whole Article

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