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“If one company or small group of people manages to develop godlike digital superintelligence, they could take over the world. At least when there’s an evil dictator, that human is going to die. But for an AI, there would be no death. It would live forever. And then you’d have an immortal dictator from which we can never escape.”—Elon Musk (2018)

The Deep State is about to go turbocharged.

While the news media fixates on the extent to which Project 2025 may be the Trump Administration’s playbook for locking down the nation, there is a more subversive power play taking place under cover of Trump’s unique brand of circus politics.

Take a closer look at what’s unfolding, and you will find that all appearances to the contrary, Trump isn’t planning to do away with the Deep State. Rather, he was hired by the Deep State to usher in the golden age of AI.

Get ready for Surveillance State 2.0.

To achieve this turbocharged surveillance state, the government is turning to its most powerful weapon yet: artificial intelligence. AI, with its ability to learn, adapt, and operate at speeds unimaginable to humans, is poised to become the engine of this new world order.

Over the course of 70 years, the technology has developed so rapidly that it has gone from early computers exhibiting a primitive form of artificial intelligence to machine learning (AI systems that learn from historic data) to deep learning (machine learning that mimics the human brain) to generative AI, which can create original content, i.e., it appears able to think for itself.

What we are approaching is the point of no return.

In tech speak, this point of no return is more aptly termed “singularity,” the point at which AI eclipses its human handlers and becomes all-powerful. Elon Musk has predicted that singularity could happen by 2026. AI scientist Ray Kurzweil imagines it happening it closer to 2045.

While the scientific community has a lot to say about the world-altering impact of artificial intelligence on every aspect of our lives, little has been said about its growing role in government and its oppressive effect on our freedoms, especially “the core democratic principles of privacy, autonomy, equality, the political process, and the rule of law.”

According to a report from Accenture, it is estimated that across both the public and private sectors, generative AI has the potential to automate a significant portion of jobs across various sectors.

Here’s a thought: what if Trump’s pledge to cut the federal work force isn’t really about eliminating government bureaucracy but outsourcing it to the AI tech sector?

Certainly, Trump has made no secret of his plans to make AI a priority. Indeed, Trump signed the first-ever Executive Order on AI in 2019. More recently, Trump issued an executive order giving the technology sector a green light to develop and deploy AI without any guardrails in place to limit the risks it might pose to U.S. national security, the economy, public health or safety.

President Biden was no better, mind you. His executive order, which Trump repealed, merely instructed the tech sector to share the results of AI safety tests with the U.S. government.

Yet following much the same pattern that we saw with the rollout of drones, while the government has been quick to avail itself of AI technology, it has done little to nothing to ensure that rights of the American people are protected.

Indeed, we are altogether lacking any guardrails for transparency, accountability and adherence to the rule of law when it comes to the government’s use of AI.

As Karl Manheim and Lyric Kaplan point out in a chilling article in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology about the risks to privacy and democracy posed by AI, “[a]rtificial intelligence is the most disruptive technology of the modern era… Its impact is likely to dwarf even the development of the internet as it enters every corner of our lives… Advances in AI herald not just a new age in computing, but also present new dangers to social values and constitutional rights. The threat to privacy from social media algorithms and the Internet of Things is well known. What is less appreciated is the even greater threat that AI poses to democracy itself.”

Cue the rise of “digital authoritarianism” or “algocracy—rule by algorithm.”

In an algocracy, “Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, CEOs of Facebook and Google, have more control over Americans’ lives and futures than do the representatives we elect.”

Digital authoritarianism, as the Center for Strategic and International Studies cautions, involves the use of information technology to surveil, repress, and manipulate the populace, endangering human rights and civil liberties, and co-opting and corrupting the foundational principles of democratic and open societies, “including freedom of movement, the right to speak freely and express political dissent, and the right to personal privacy, online and off.”

How do we protect our privacy against the growing menace of overreach and abuse by a technological sector working with the government?

The ability to do so may already be out of our hands.

In 2024, at least 37 federal government agencies ranging from the Departments of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs to Health and Human Services reported more than 1700 uses of AI in carrying out their work, double from the year before. That does not even begin to touch on agencies that did not report their usage, or usage at the state and local levels.

Of those 1700 cases at the federal level, 227 were labeled rights- or safety-impacting.

A particularly disturbing example of how AI is being used by government agencies in rights- and safety-impacting scenarios comes from an investigative report by The Washington Post on how law enforcement agencies across the nation are using “artificial intelligence tools in a way they were never intended to be used: as a shortcut to finding and arresting suspects without other evidence.”

This is what is referred to within tech circles as “automation bias,” a tendency to blindly trust decisions made by powerful software, ignorant to its risks and limitations. In one particular case, police used AI-powered facial recognition technology to arrest and jail a 29-year-old man for brutally assaulting a security guard. It would take Christopher Gatlin two years to clear his name.

Gatlin is one of at least eight known cases nationwide in which police reliance on AI facial recognition software has resulted in resulted in wrongful arrests arising from an utter disregard for basic police work (such as checking alibis, collecting evidence, corroborating DNA and fingerprint evidence, ignoring suspects’ physical characteristics) and the need to meet constitutional standards of due process and probable cause. According to The Washington Post, “Asian and Black people were up to 100 times as likely to be misidentified by some software as White men.”

The numbers of cases in which AI is contributed to false arrests and questionable police work is likely much higher, given the extent to which police agencies across the country are adopting the technology and will only rise in the wake of the Trump Administration’s intent to shut down law enforcement oversight and policing reforms.

“How do I beat a machine?” asked one man who was wrongly arrested by police for assaulting a bus driver based on an incorrect AI match.

It is becoming all but impossible to beat the AI machine.

When used by agents of the police state, it leaves “we the people” even more vulnerable.

So where do we go from here?

For the Trump Administration, it appears to be full steam ahead, starting with Stargate, a $500 billion AI infrastructure venture aimed at building massive data centers. Initial reports suggest that the AI data centers could be tied to digital health records and used to develop a cancer vaccine. Of course, massive health data centers for use by AI will mean that one’s health records are fair game for any and all sorts of identification, tracking and flagging.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The surveillance state, combined with AI, is creating a world in which there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. We’re all presumed guilty until proven innocent now.

Thanks to the 24/7 surveillance being carried out by the government’s sprawling spy network of fusion centers, we are all just sitting ducks, waiting to be tagged, flagged, targeted, monitored, manipulated, investigated, interrogated, heckled and generally harassed by agents of the American police state.

Without having ever knowingly committed a crime or been convicted of one, you and your fellow citizens have likely been assessed for behaviors the government might consider devious, dangerous or concerning; assigned a threat score based on your associations, activities and viewpoints; and catalogued in a government database according to how you should be approached by police and other government agencies based on your particular threat level.

Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score.

It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.

It’s a setup ripe for abuse.

Writing for the Yale Journal, Manheim and Kaplan conclude that “[h]umans may not be at risk as a species, but we are surely at risk in terms of our democratic institutions and values.”

Privacy­—Manheim and Kaplan succinctly describe it as “the right to make personal decisions for oneself, the right to keep one’s personal information confidential, and the right to be left alone are all ingredients of the fundamental right of privacy”— is especially at risk.

Indeed, with every new AI surveillance technology that is adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry are being marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.

We teeter on the cusp of a cultural, technological and societal revolution the likes of which have never been seen before.

AI surveillance is already re-orienting our world into one in which freedom is almost unrecognizable by doing what the police state lacks the manpower and resources to do efficiently or effectively: be everywhere, watch everyone and everything, monitor, identify, catalogue, cross-check, cross-reference, and collude.

As Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO remarked, “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about… Your digital identity will live forever… because there’s no delete button.”

The ramifications of any government wielding such unregulated, unaccountable power are chilling, as AI surveillance provides the ultimate means of repression and control for tyrants and benevolent dictators alike.

Indeed, China’s social credit system, where citizens are assigned scores based on their behavior and compliance, offers a glimpse into this dystopian future.

This is not a battle against technology itself, but against its misuse. It’s a fight to retain our humanity, our dignity, and our freedom in the face of unprecedented technological power. It’s a struggle to ensure that AI serves us, not the other way around.

Faced with this looming threat, the time to act is now, before the lines between citizen and subject, between freedom and control, become irrevocably blurred.

The future of freedom depends on it.

So demand transparency. Demand accountability.

Demand an Electronic Bill of Rights that protects “we the people” from the encroaching surveillance state.

We need safeguards in place to ensure the right to data ownership and control (the right to know what data is being collected about them, how it’s being used, who has access to it, and the right to be “forgotten”); the right to algorithmic transparency (to understand how algorithms that affect them make decisions, particularly in areas like loan applications, job hiring, and criminal justice) and due process accountability; the right to privacy and data security, including restrictions on government and corporate use of AI-powered surveillance technologies, particularly facial recognition and predictive policing; the right to digital self-determination (freedom from automated discrimination based on algorithmic profiling) and the ability to manage and control one’s online identity and reputation; and effective mechanisms to seek redress for harms caused by AI systems.

AI deployed without any safeguards in place to protect against overreach and abuse, especially within government agencies, has the potential to become what Elon Musk described as an “immortal dictator,” one that lives forever and from which there is no escape.

Whatever you choose to call it—the police state, the Deep State, the surveillance state—this “immortal dictator” will be the future face of the government unless we rein it in now.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, next year could be too late.

This originally appeared on The Rutherford Institute.

The post The Rise of the Immortal Dictator: What Will AI Mean for Freedom and Government? appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s the second of five New Years here on the Far Side, and yet another national holiday. I’ve changed the bed linens, trimmed my hair and nails, put on my new red shirt, stuffed ang pao (red envelopes) full of cash for the youngsters, baked bread and brownies, put up the paper lanterns, and helped with Mrs. FarSide’s spring cleaning (stayed out of the way).

Welcome to the year 4723, or the Year of the Yin Green Wood Snake. If Chinese astrology has anything to say about it, this will be an exciting year. As you will see in a moment, it’s no mistake that China has announced DeepSeek and sustained fusion at this particular moment.

The Lunar New Year is something to behold. I say “lunar,” because it is based on a lunar calendar, and also because it is not limited to China. Most if not all of the Orient celebrate this event in some form or another.

Chinese astrology is a very complex thing. While the West has an annual cycle of 12 signs representing the zodiacal constellations, the East has 12 animal characters (Earthly Stems) each representing one lunar year, or a cycle of 12 years. The animal symbols have unique characteristics based on the 10 Heavenly Stems of Eastern cosmology. It appears the 12-year cycle may be based on the orbit of Jupiter, which is 12 years long.

But that’s not all!

Each 12-year cycle falls under one of the five elements: fire, water, wood, metal, and earth, with each element having a yin and yang polarity (10 Heavenly Stems). We are currently in the wood cycle, representing growth, vitality and renewal. This pattern results in a longer 60-year Ganzhi Cycle, as each element gets its own 12-year cycle. Each element also has its own color, with wood being green, that figures into the mix.

Just to make things more fun, each day is divided into 12 segments ruled by one of the signs, and each month is dominated by one of the signs similar to the Western system.

Furthermore, each year is polarized as either yin (feminine) or yang (masculine). Yin represents the Moon, passivity, darkness, intuition, coolness, rest and inward focus. Yin symbolizes the nurturing, receptive, and yielding aspects of life.

All of these influences are taken into account when scheduling meetings and events, special occasions and even choice of mate. The Chinese are an especially superstitious lot, and I’ve had to amend plans to accommodate the stars when setting meetings, negotiating contracts, and launching projects. Knowing all this can be a useful tool when doing business particularly in China.

How all this affects the individual depends on one’s compatibility with the Snake and Wood. For example, I am a Metal Ox. Metal controls (cuts) Wood, and Wood refines Metal. The Ox and Snake are compatible signs. Thus, this year should be beneficial to me, with balanced energy and focus.

Chinese mundane horoscopes reveal trends, benefits and challenges on a global and societal scale.

On the plus side, the Wood element represents growth, flexibility, and renewal. It encourages creativity, strategic thinking, and opportunities for collective development. However, as a Yin year, this growth is more gradual, introspective, and methodical rather than fast-paced or forceful (Trump take note).

The Snake is associated with intelligence, adaptability, and secrecy. This could mean a year of careful planning, thoughtful actions, and subtle shifts rather than bold moves. People may need to rely on intuition and strategic foresight to navigate challenges.

The color green, tied to Wood, symbolizes harmony, renewal, and healing. It may also bring an environmental focus, encouraging natural practices and nurturing relationships.

On the minus side, the Snake’s shadow nature involves hidden motives and potential manipulations. There may be an atmosphere of intrigue or secrecy, requiring vigilance in personal and professional relationships.

Yin Wood energy is flexible, but can also be overly passive or indecisive. It may take effort to avoid stagnation or missed opportunities.

The Western mundane horoscope highlights technological innovation via the trine of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto; Uranus retrograde in Taurus suggests financial reform; the North Node transit into Pisces highlights a collective move toward spiritual growth and cultural renewal.

Notice that in both systems, the themes of growth and renewal are key aspects for the year. How do two wildly different systems arrive at the same conclusions? Curiouser and curiouser.

So, what we can glean from all this is the Chinese view 2025 as a year for strategic planning and subtlety. Whatever you think of astrology, I guarantee this system is influencing Chinese national and individual actions and decisions. Folks doing business in or with Chinese entities can use this information to guide interactions toward successful outcomes.

Regardless of what you think about all this, and my own views are rather complex, it is embedded in the culture. To some extent, these ancient concepts sit at the core of our collective thinking and behavior.

An interesting line of inquiry in this regard is whether astrology prompts us to see non-existent patterns, or is there actual influence via electro-magnetic forces on individuals and societies? There are compelling arguments either way.

In any case, there is advantage in knowing what guides an opponent.

恭喜发财 (gong xi fa cai)!

This originally appeared on Radio Far Side.

The post Enter the Snake appeared first on LewRockwell.

That’s the sound of a swamp being drained. And much fetid water is still backed up over the 68.3 square miles that comprise the District of Columbia. You might be just realizing that the “Joe Biden” regime was not a government at all, but rather, a colossal racketeering operation. And let’s be clear and precise: racketeering is making money dishonestly. Thus: the grubby Biden Family itself at the top of that putrid food-chain, and their smalltime harvesting of mere table-scraps. Where trillions got creamed off by the big gators, the Bidens risked all for a measly few million, like newts gorging on gnats in a drainage ditch.

Are you so cynical— as the Marxians are in their so-called “critique” of capitalism — that you think all human transactions of making-and-doing are dishonest? That is yet another misreading of reality, which the recent years of nonstop official propaganda and gaslight have catastrophically aggravated to the degree that half of America can no longer think at all.

Capitalism is not a political ideology despite the “ism” incorrectly attached to it, like the tail pinned on a donkey. Capitalism is simply the management of surplus wealth. The catch is, in a hyper-complex society, the management itself becomes complex to an extreme. And that can easily lead to mismanagement, which will deform and pervert the very mechanisms that superintend wealth, sometimes so badly that the wealth disappears altogether.

These are the dynamics faced by the newborn Trump command. Both political parties, per se, have fallen into a dismal habit of racketeering in this sclerotic state-of-empire. But now Mr. Trump has seized control of the Republican apparatus, at least, and the Party’s entrenched ol’ crocs and pythons descry that under DJT the regular feeding frenzy is over. Hence: the hand-wringing over Pete Hegseth setting foot in the Pentagon, as he will sometime this dawning day. The dollars pounded down that rat-hole in this century could have funded start-ups of several empires, but instead the swag just landed in the index funds of countless board members parasitically lodged in a dark cosmos of G.I. procurement circle-jerks. A lot of that can and will be stopped. And the ones who just won’t quit are liable to be found out.

Now, the Democratic Party faces more perplexing quandaries. It, too, is constructed as a gigantic grift machine. But if you subtract the employees of the multitudinous NGOs and non-profit orgs set up in recent years to receive government largess — which have spawned like smelts in the San Joaquin delta — you would eliminate much of the party’s rank-and-file. (The rest are apparently embedded in government itself and the teachers’ union.) A whole lot of activists would lose their platforms for activism in the process.

These crypto-bureaucracies have become the places where the Democratic Party stashes the “elite over-production” of Woked-up Marxian semi-morons from America’s diploma mills — in which orgs they are lavishly paid to conduct the aforementioned propaganda and gaslighting operations that wrecked so many American minds. The funding spigot to many of those is getting shut down. It will result in an employment crunch for a large cohort of professional crybabies. They could possibly adapt to their new circumstances by ceasing to be crybabies, and finding other, more useful things to do. That would portend some very significant cultural shiftings, which might include the death of the Democratic Party as we’ve known it. Or, they could all just join Antifa (if they’re not already in it) and go make trouble in the streets.

The first seven days of Mr. Trump have been sheer razzle-dazzle. He and the people around him have torn through the zeitgeist like front-end-loaders through a homeless encampment. He has yet to meet a crisis. Some of the obvious traps are avoidable. For instance: seeking further injury to Russia as a way of ending the stupid Ukraine war — started by us in 2014, thanks a lot Victoria Nuland & Company — since both the US and Russia are just about unconditionally desirous of stopping the damn thing as soon as possible. It’s had no benefit for anybody but the Raytheon war lobby and the Zelensky regime’s legion of grifters. Mr. Trump’s recent tough talk has been entirely for show, just a mass of rhetorical lube to un-stick the lingering “Joe Biden” stasis in that sad-sack corner of the world.

If crisis awaits, it’s probably lurking in the financial realm, where the operations of debt have put nearly every country on Gawd’s Green Earth behind the eight-ball. There is just too much of it that everybody knows can’t possibly be paid back — or soon even serviced — and the grand managers of these matters are finally out of tricks for pretending things can go on. Nor, here in America, can Mr. Trump cut spending fast enough to rebalance accounts. And if he somehow could, government employment has become such a big piece of the total economy that we would land post-haste in a new great depression That predicament is yet-to-be faced, but hold your breath because it is hard upon us.

Meanwhile, this is the week when the most hardcore of Mr. Trump’s cabinet warriors go ‘splainin’ before committees in the US Senate: Bobby Kennedy, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel. Prepare for some heat and light. And then, the deluge.

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

The post Glug Glug. . . . appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Archbishop Elizabeth Warren Delivers the Sacramental Benediction at RFK Jr. Confirmation Hearing appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Child rape gang plunged to depths of human depravity, says judge.

The post “Not Asians, not Muslims, not immigrants “sick people are in every race, religion, national origin.Child rape gang plunged to depths of human depravity, says judge appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Chris Sullivan. 

The post China’s DeepSeek Disrupts AI Industry & The Future of Tech appeared first on LewRockwell.

The first week of President Trump’s second term has been a whirlwind – a marked contrast of when he first took office in 2017. What has he achieved? Is there more than hype and spin? Are expectations too high? Can he fulfill his promises?

The post Week One, Trump 2.0: How’d He Do? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Swiss official who jailed journalist Ali Abunimah is fanatical pro-Israel activist.

The Grayzone

The post Swiss official who jailed journalist Ali Abunimah is fanatical pro-Israel activist appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Lindsey Graham: Senate needs to investigate Trump decision to pull John Bolton’s security.

The post “One war monger worries about another war monger” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

The Kennedy Beacon

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(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/trump-eredita-uneconomia-profondamente)

C'è finalmente un po' di ottimismo nel Paese. Sfortunatamente le buone vibrazioni non sono sufficienti a risolvere i profondi problemi strutturali che ora affliggono l'economia statunitense, dall'inflazione a un mercato del lavoro debole a un settore delle piccole imprese che sta a malapena sopravvivendo, oltre a un consumatore allo stremo e a gravi problemi finanziari nel governo stesso.

Di sicuro l'economia statunitense brilla ancora sulla scena mondiale, ma questo semplicemente perché quasi tutti gli altri sono in condizioni peggiori. I problemi strutturali sono globali, dovuti all'esplosione del debito pubblico, all'eccesso burocratico e alle imposizioni normative degli ultimi cinque anni. Gli Stati Uniti potrebbero essere i meno peggio, ma questa osservazione da sola non fa scomparire i problemi.

In tale contesto, un economista di spicco e brillante in Cina, il dott. Gao Shanwen, ha ammesso in un forum di Washington DC che il tasso di crescita del 5% probabilmente non è reale e che la crescita effettiva in Cina è più vicina al 2%. È stato prontamente disciplinato dal Partito Comunista Cinese al suo ritorno e non gli è più consentito parlare in pubblico.

Questo è diventato un modello mondiale: il silenzio degli economisti che osano contestare numeri palesemente falsi. Negli Stati Uniti, tuttavia, c'è almeno la libertà di parola. Dove sono i problemi e qual è la realtà?

Tanto per cominciare, l'inflazione statunitense è in accelerazione da settembre 2021. Ora è al 3%, ovvero il 50% in più rispetto all'obiettivo ufficiale. Questo dolore continuo segue quattro anni della peggiore inflazione degli ultimi 40 anni e probabilmente molto di più. Secondo alcuni parametri, ciò che abbiamo attraversato equivale o supera il dolore economico degli anni '70. L'unica differenza questa volta è che i contabili del governo sono diventati più bravi a nasconderlo.

Quanto potere d'acquisto del dollaro è stato perso? Secondo le misure ufficiali, il totale di questa ondata inflazionistica è di 22 centesimi, ma i numeri del settore alimentare, automobilistico, immobiliare e dei servizi come assicurazioni e trasporti generano numeri quasi del doppio. Nessuno lo sa per certo e il calcolo di grandi indici dipende dalla metodologia di ponderazione e dal calcolo dei fattori attenuanti. Aggiungete nuove tasse e la cosiddetta shrinkflation e i numeri saranno ben peggiori.

Anche se l'inflazione finisse oggi, i danni degli ultimi quattro anni ci accompagneranno per molti anni a venire. Purtroppo non sta finendo oggi e questo lo sappiamo semplicemente quando uno fa shopping o guarda attentamente le bollette. Tutto continua a salire di prezzo.

Perché? La FED e il Congresso non hanno forse avviato una campagna anti-inflazione a partire da due o tre anni fa? Sì, ma il Congresso ha fatto quello che fa sempre: ha speso più soldi, il che crea più debito, che la FED poi monetizza e quindi crea più soldi. Inizialmente la FED ha lavorato per assorbire l'eccesso con tassi d'interesse più alti, ma l'anno scorso ha fatto marcia indietro con una nuova campagna di quantitative easing.

Il punto più basso nella massa monetaria è stato raggiunto a novembre 2023. Poi si è invertita la tendenza verso un allentamento. Ad oggi ci sono più di $1.000 miliardi in nuovi dollari che sguazzano nel Paese e nel mondo rispetto a 14 mesi fa; unito alla crescente velocità (ritmo di spesa), tutto ciò spinge l'inflazione nella direzione opposta.

In altre parole, i nostri problemi sono una conseguenza diretta della pressione politica esercitata sul Congresso e sulla FED mentre ci avvicinavamo alle elezioni del 2024. Come al solito, il partito al potere ha scelto la stampa di denaro e la spesa come metodo di manipolazione elettorale attraverso la creazione dell'illusione di prosperità. L'amministrazione entrante ora si ritrova con questo guaio per le mani. Per invertire il danno il presidente entrante e il Congresso possono solo sperare di generare un proverbiale effetto ricchezza tramite una forte deregolamentazione e tagli alle tasse in modo da mitigare l'inflazione. Anche nelle migliori condizioni, il problema ci accompagnerà per almeno un altro anno.

Un altro problema riguarda il mercato del lavoro, che è più in crisi di quanto si dica. Sia il rapporto occupazione-popolazione che il tasso di partecipazione al lavoro sono in calo da sei mesi. Questo dopo non essere riusciti a riprendersi completamente dai lockdown di marzo 2020. Ora si attestano ai livelli visti nei primi anni '80, prima che diventasse comune che donne con bambini piccoli e in età scolare fossero nella forza lavoro.

Qualcosa di importante è cambiato. Ci sono senza dubbio molti fattori in gioco, ma tra questi c'è che molte persone hanno visto le loro vite talmente sconvolte da non essersi adattate alla graduale riapertura del 2022 e oltre. Molte persone disabili sono senza lavoro e vivono di sussidi governativi, mentre molti anziani hanno semplicemente gettato la spugna.

È difficile dire se tali cambiamenti strutturali siano permanenti. Alcuni di essi sembrano essere dovuti alla mancanza di assistenza all'infanzia per le donne in età fertile. C'è anche un cambiamento culturale in atto, con le famiglie con due redditi che tornano a essere famiglie con un solo reddito e istruiscono i figli a casa. Non c'è dubbio che il sistema educativo statunitense sia profondamente stressato e che genitori e insegnanti si stiano tirando indietro a ritmi mai visti prima. Ciò indubbiamente influisce sul mercato del lavoro.

I dati effettivi sulla creazione di posti di lavoro in quattro anni sembrano in un continuo stato di revisione, poiché continuano ad arrivare nuovi dati che sgonfiano e correggono le esagerazioni degli ultimi quattro anni. Anche la natività nella componente demografia solleva interrogativi, poiché quasi tutta la creazione di posti di lavoro non è ad appannaggio dei lavoratori nativi, ma di quelli nati all'estero. Se e in quale misura le espulsioni di lavoratori clandestini influenzeranno tutti questi numeri è una questione aperta.

Indipendentemente da ciò, il mercato del lavoro dei colletti bianchi è diventato estremamente ristretto. Il Wall Street Journal scrive: “Ci sono ancora molti lavori per quelli che lo cercano nei servizi, compresi i settori sanitario e alberghiero. È più arduo trovarlo nei lavori d'ufficio, dove i capi mirano a essere più dinamici e in alcuni casi a sostituire i lavoratori con l'intelligenza artificiale. [...] Ad oggi il mercato del lavoro si è indebolito principalmente a causa di minori assunzioni, non di licenziamenti. Ma una volta che le aziende decidono di ridurre gli stipendi, i tagli di posti di lavoro spesso si trasformano rapidamente in una valanga, il che potrebbe innescare un aumento molto più rapido del tasso di disoccupazione”.

Per quanto riguarda altri dati, come le vendite al dettaglio e gli ordini di fabbrica, sono stati sovrastimati per molti anni solamente perché non è di routine che vengano aggiustati all'inflazione. Una volta eseguito tale calcolo, osserviamo un'attività economica piatta o in calo per tutti gli anni dell'amministrazione Biden. La propaganda potrebbe aver funzionato nel mantenere alto il morale, ma la realtà emergerà nei prossimi mesi, poiché i media generalisti e i raccoglitori di dati nelle agenzie governative saranno più disponibili a rivelare cosa sta realmente accadendo.

Poi c'è il problema delle finanze pubbliche. Il debito federale lordo in percentuale del prodotto interno lordo rimane a livelli mai visti dalla seconda guerra mondiale. Questa è una situazione pericolosa che mette tutto a rischio, spiazza gli investimenti privati ​​e spinge la banca centrale a occuparsi di questo problema con una maggiore stampa di denaro.

Tutto questo non può durare. Elon Musk ha creato, con la benedizione di Trump, il Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) per occuparsene, offrendo la possibilità di tagliare $2.000 miliardi dalla spesa federale immediatamente, senza toccare i diritti sociali.

Non c'è alcuna possibilità di un riavvio importante della produttività americana senza affrontare la crisi di bilancio. Il business as usual non può funzionare. E tuttavia tutto ciò che riguarda Washington è progettato per prevenire azioni così drastiche. È molto più facile per chiunque prenda il potere guardare dall'altra parte, persino inventando nuovi modi di spendere denaro, che affrontare la crisi come farebbe qualsiasi famiglia.

Il problema normativo è lampante: l'amministrazione Biden ha aggrovigliato più settori in una pletora di obblighi e imposizioni al punto che molti sono malfunzionanti per progettazione. Questo è qualcosa a cui l'amministrazione Trump può effettivamente porre rimedio, e si spera che gli sforzi di districare i nodi saranno immediati e drastici.

Questi sono tutti problemi gravi che l'amministrazione Trump deve affrontare. Un altro fattore: i media generalisti saranno molto più propensi a chiamare le cose con il loro nome di quanto invece non lo fossero con Biden. Forse è una cosa positiva, ma non promette nulla di buono. Dopo sei mesi l'amministrazione Trump potrebbe ritrovarsi a dover affrontare una recessione retroattiva che potrebbe vanificare molti dei suoi tentativi di consolidare i tagli fiscali.

Si tratta di un problema difficile, ereditato da un'amministrazione nei confronti della quale le aspettative pubbliche non potrebbero che essere più elevate.

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

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In the beginning, there was the photograph, and the photograph was still and without life. And the people lined up for portraits saying, “Behold, these photographs are flat and lifeless. We want three realistic dimensions!”

And so two photographs of the same scene from slightly different angles were caused to be placed in a diaphanoscope, and lo! objects looked real and the images had depth. But the people were not satisfied and cried out as one for motion in their pictures.

Then stacks of slightly different photographs were arranged and flipped to create the illusion of motion, and the nickelodeon was given unto the people. The people were sorely amazed and demanded feature-length versions that told stories.

And so images were lined up on celluloid strips and run through a special lantern that projected the images on the wall, and they appeared to move as unto real life. But alas, there was no sound, and the people were vexed and despondent, and they spaketh a curse unto the wizards.

Until one day, a box came into the world that magically carried sound from distant lands and reproduced it in the people’s homes. The masses were dazzled and gathered round the boxes, listening to stories and news of far-off lands. “Behold!” they cried. “We can be transported to false worlds, and false worlds can invade our minds!”

But lo, the people were still not satisfied and demanded that the sounds have pictures, and the pictures have sounds that are synced together and can kill two hours on a Saturday afternoon.

And so the wizards gathered in their sacred labs and fiddled and puttered with lanterns and boxes until one day, a miracle occurred. A troubadour called Al of Jolson appeared at a cinema near you. He sangth jazz and his voice was heard to sync with his lips, and the people fell down and bought popcorn unlike any concession sales ever before.

But soon the people tired of synced sound and pictures. They went unto the wizards and demanded that realistic color be added unto the magic projections. And so the wizards toiled night and day until they produced Becky Sharp, that combined motion film with radio boxes using color that was Techni. The people cheered and spent money like unto drunken sailors. The wizards took their loot and bought wands of wood that were holly, and maketh feature films about themselves that the people cherished and adored.

But it was not enough, never enough. “Verily,” the people cried out, “we love the content, but we want it in the comfort of our homes, like unto radio boxes, where we may partake of frozen dinners and gather the clan before flickering Light of Entrancement.”

The wizards were sorely amazed. “We give these people lights, sounds and color, yet they demand more and better. Their thirst cannot be slaken but that we transmit our wizardry into their very homes on multiple channels night and day!”

Whereupon a mighty wizard called Philo of the tribe of Farnsworth came forth and said, “Behold! I have found The Way. I have merged the cinema and the radio box, to transmit color, sound and lights through the aether! I shall call it vision of the tele.”

The wizards were astounded and gave Philo grants, investments and cigars, and the new boxes were shipped as fast as they could be assembled.

And the people cried out as one, “Lo! Thou hast done it, you old dog you!” And they flocked in great numbers to stores of departments, and bought the magic boxes by the truckloads. Soon there were dramas and sitcoms and variety shows on regular schedules, and the Guide of TV became their new sacred text, and the money poured into the wizards’ treasuries like manna from heaven.

The people were hypnotized for a time, and placated they were. But soon they tired of reruns and were not content to sit passively upon the sofa, with their operas interrupted by commercials for soap.

And so the wizards gathered again. “Hark, the people stir and are bored with our tricks. They gather at our doors with pitch forks and torches demanding the power to interact with the magic boxes.”

And so the wizards laboured around the clock until one day they gathered before the cameras of video and held aloft The Pong. “Verily we say unto you, we have created games of video. Now you can interact with your magic box for hours at a time, and your children and their children shall gain pounds of flesh and become pale and sickly staring at our mighty creation!”

And the people sat slack-jawed upon their sofas, only their thumbs were seen to move.

And so this dynamic interaction went on until the magic boxes got smaller, and portable, with higher resolution and faster frame rates until the people had forgotten the days with ears of rabbits. And the boxes merged with telephones and calendars and mail of the electronic kind. The wizards created networks that the people may carry their magic boxes on commuter trains and in public spaces, and annoy each other with unwanted distractions.

Then one day the Great Convergence happened, with virtual signs and wonders in the heavens. The wizards, sorely beleaguered by press releases and upgrades, created magic glass that could be worn upon the eyes. The glass projected hyperimages of glorious supersaturated color and 7.1 Surround Sound in the Golden Ratio of 16 cubits by 9 cubits directly into the eyes and ears. These bits of glass could be worn anywhere, at any time, and the content choices were without end.

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The eminent Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus in a biography of his illustrious father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agrippa famously wrote “Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium, atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.” Which translates in the Loeb Classical Library edition as “To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace.” Lord Byron, in his poem the Bride of Abydos, rendered the Tacitus Latin as “Mark where his carnage and his conquests cease! He makes a solitude, and calls it — peace.” Per Tacitus’ no doubt second hand account , the words were originally spoken by the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus who was addressing his assembled warriors concerning Rome’s insatiable appetite for conquest and plunder. The chieftain’s sentiment can be contrasted to pax in terra “peace on earth” which was sometimes inscribed on Roman medals (phalera) awarded to soldiers returning from the imperial wars.

Tacitus’ description of the First Century Roman Empire using a metaphor should strike a chord for modern American observers of the carnage taking place in the Middle East. The only question would be whether the description better fits Israel or the United States. Or, perhaps, does it apply to both since the two nations have lately in practice been governed out of Tel Aviv? Israel is an ethno-religious state that aspires to regional dominance to create what is referred to as Eretz Israel, Greater Israel, a nation state based on the apartheid view that only Jews, as being chosen by God, can rule and have full rights in the area that they control. The modern vision of what that would include as imagined by extremist advocates of the Jewish state’s expansion would stretch from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq, together with South Lebanon to the Litani River. Nations like Jordan and Syria would be absorbed in the process an there would be no Palestinians.

Some observers are supporting the theory that Donald Trump, who subordinated actual US interests to those of Israel during his first term in office, will now play hard ball with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if only to maintain his self-proclaimed reputation as a champion of world peace, solving international conflicts through making “deals” rather than by fighting. Brokering a deal on Israel-Palestine would be an achievement that has proven to be beyond the reach of every previous administration and it would surely earn him the Nobel Peace Prize. His initial position in 2016 was precisely that, to make a deal that would be acceptable to both sides, until the Israel Lobby punished him for it and forced him to back down.

Indeed, Trump is now pulling one of his characteristic one step forward two steps back with his proposal that Gaza should be made free of Gazans who should be conveniently moved to Jordan and Egypt “to clean out the whole thing.” That would be something like a perfect solution for Benjamin Netanyahu but the proposal has not been well received in either Amman or Cairo. Nevertheless, Trump certainly deserves a great deal of credit for what he has achieved. His supporters point to the recently initiated ceasefire with Gaza which came about due to Trump’s pressure on Netanyahu delivered in an impromptu visit by special emissary Steve Witkoff, succeeding in a objective that the clueless and genocide enabling Biden administration failed at for 15 months. While it is true that Witkoff induced a reluctant Netanyahu to accept a temporary ceasefire, possible off the table concessions to Israel that made the deal work have not been revealed. Israel’s special seat at the American Foreign Policy table remains in place evidently, with a recent Trump initiative to suspend all foreign aid for ninety days included Ukraine but exempted Israel. Indeed, the working level of Trump’s administration is measurably more rabidly pro-Zionist than were their counterparts under Joe Biden. The new Ambassador to Israel Ziocon Mike Huckabee denies that Palestinians even exist and sounds a lot like a settler leader which makes one wonder whether he will defend American interests at all. If push comes to shove the new men and women who have taken over will not only support the annexation of some or all of West Bank but also do nothing to stop or mitigate the restarting of the Gaza genocide.

At the same time, there are several incentives for Trump to want to avoid returning to the Biden-era genocide. Surrounding himself with pro-Israel fanatics won’t help, but two other factors may still play into the decision making, most notably US public opinion, which continues to shift toward Palestine and away from Israel and the possibility that Trump will get into a direct personal conflict with Netanyahu, who has been able to publicly ignore and even humiliate the White House for the last four years without any consequences. Given the respective egos, any disagreement between the two could easily escalate into a real rupture. Trump is not a career politician with decades of subservience to powerful lobbies and he also can’t run again for office. Global and national opinion is rapidly shifting against Israel, including among his MAGA base, with figures like Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens calling out Israel firsters as promoting policies that are antithetical to their values. If Israel continues its assault on all Palestine and the whole region with massive US financial and military support, it could hurt Trump’s popularity and legacy. Of course, Mossad provided videos or photos of him with a minor on Epstein Island or similar, if they exist, might be enough to keep him in line but that could well be the only thing that would constitute an off switch.

Against all of that, Netanyahu has told his supporters and political allies that the United States will support Israel if it opts to suspend the unpopular ceasefire and resume the onslaught due to “Hamas violations,” which will almost certainly be contrived or even cunningly false flagged. In fact, Netanyahu is already doing just that to inhibit the return of the north Gazans to their ruined homes. Hamas will be careful to avoid falling further into Bibi’s trap, but Israel’s propaganda mill is far more effective at reaching a global audience than is that of the Palestinians and the narrative will surely be muddied. Israel is also covering all based by maintaining its occupation of southern Lebanon, which was supposed to end on Sunday January 26th, in a ceasefire and truce that was set up and guaranteed by Washington, without a peep coming out of the Trump administration even though the Israeli Army has been shooting and killing Lebanese trying to return to their homes. Israel has also expanded its occupation of the Golan and Mount Hermon areas in neighboring Syria. However most significantly, Netanyahu has stepped-up pressure on Palestinian areas in the West Bank as a preparation for full annexation within the next year. Israeli snipers and army units have been killing Palestinians in Jenin and surrounding districts and have also stormed the center of the town using tanks and airstrikes, essentially shifting the slaughter in Gaza to a massacre on the West Bank while the ceasefire holds.

Again, there has not been one harsh word out of Washington over the Jenin killings and the White House has even lifted the sanctions on extremist settler groups on the West Bank that have made Palestinian lives so miserable as to encourage them to emigrate. Jews-only Israeli roads cris-cross the West Bank with armed soldiers and police manning check points and I have recently learned that Palestinians are not even allowed to collect rainwater to water their crops! The water belongs to Israel! And beyond that, the new administration has apparently rewarded Netanyahu by lifting a ban on the supplying of certain categories of weapons that the Biden administration had blocked, including 1800 of the devastating MK-84 2,000 pound bombs that have so effectively destroyed Gaza.

Iran, which is the ultimate target of Israel and possibly of the United States as well judging from “discussions” that have apparently taken place, is very much aware of what is going on and is making preparations for war by concealing and going deep underground with its vital military and energy related sites. Interestingly, however, the principal claim being made by both Israel and US government hawks like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina that Tehran might develop a nuclear weapon within a week if it chooses to do so has been denied by the outgoing CIA Director William Burns, who claims that the Iranians have no nukes and have no capability to quickly produce them, nor do they have any desire to acquire a nuclear weapon.

The upside to the ceasefire in Gaza is that some Palestinians apart from those who are being blocked have been able to return to their homes, 92% of which have been destroyed or badly damaged, to dig up the bodies of the families and neighbors. Food trucks, under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, are indeed beginning to arrive in much larger numbers for the starving Gazan population that remains. But if Israel renews its assault on Gaza it would be able to stop the humanitarian aid literally overnight, as it has done in the past.

So what could happen? If Israel continues to go carry out its plans of ethnic cleansing, genocide, territorial expansion and foreign aggression with unconditional US support, this may motivate other countries and some international institutions to continue turning against Israel, particularly as US power and influence are in rapid decline due to the rise of China and BRICS. All these trends are already underway: the questions is how fast they will develop into policies. But a renewed Israeli attack on an already devastated Gaza fueled by billions of US dollars could result in more and wider popular protest in the US in spite of government efforts to suppress pro-Palestinian protesters. It will also mean that the new phase of conflict will become Trump’s war, not Biden’s or Harris’ meaning that Democrats who stayed silent so as not to hurt the new administration will suddenly have a powerful incentive to criticize it. Alternatively, Trump is in a unique position to have “Nixon-goes-to-China moment,” which would have tremendous upsides for him politically and personally. Of course, Israel and its supporters would rise up in anger (they’ve killed people for less), but changing US and global public opinion could make the difference this time around if there is anyone in the White House who is listening.

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

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On Tuesday, Peter went live with analysis of this week’s major events. Most notably, he comments on Joe Biden’s controversial final acts as president and on Trump’s return to the Oval Office. He also analyzes the prospects for Trump’s second term and bashes the newly-inaugurated president for promoting a new cryptocurrency bearing his name.

Peter slams Biden’s mass pardons, which constitute a blatant abuse of presidential powers:

The problematic aspect of these pardons is people are not being pardoned of a crime that they’ve been convicted of, or even a crime that they’ve been charged with. People are being pardoned who have never been charged with anything. Basically what Biden is saying is if any of these individuals did anything wrong at any point over the last 11 years, I pardon them for whatever they might have done that I don’t even know that they did, that somebody might discover that they did, which I think is a real abuse of the whole system of a pardon to just preemptively pardon people. 

Not to be outdone in the controversy department, Peter explained why he considers Trump’s creation of a “meme coin” both unseemly and unwise:

But it’s not just former President Biden, I think, that was acting inappropriately in the days leading up to the inauguration. Donald Trump also, I think, was very inappropriate in the launching of his meme coin, the Trump coin, which came out on Friday evening. And just as inappropriate, the Melania coin, which I think came out the following day, was it Saturday or Sunday, I forget, but over the weekend, both these coins came out. And I really think it is shameless. I think it diminishes the office of the president for Donald Trump to be profiting in this way off of his presidential win.

Some argue it’s just harmless hype, but Peter warns that many Trump supporters will be duped by this coin:

Some people have already made a tremendous amount of money. The people that got in really early that were prepared for it and knew about it, bought them and flipped them and made millions and millions of dollars. But whatever money is made equals the money that’s lost by a lot of other people. The people that voted for Trump, the people that Donald Trump supposedly cares about, a lot of them are going to lose money.

Shifting gears, Peter noted how tech giants are swarming to the White House and forming new ventures under the president’s watch. To him, this cozy relationship may signal genuine investment or simply a hedge against an unpredictable economy:

You’ve got all these CEOs that are cozying up to Donald Trump and at first blush, you would think, oh, this is great. This is a pro-business president and so it’s good that all these businessmen want to be so tight with the president. Well, I don’t necessarily look at it that way. You got to see the other side of the coin. One of the reasons that a lot of businessmen want to get into the president’s good favor is because they’re afraid of him. On the other hand, he could do something that will help them, because I think Donald Trump intends to try to micromanage parts of the economy from the Oval Office to try to pick winners and losers, his own version of central planning.

Next, he touches on the newly-repealed ban on liquified natural gas (LNG) exports, a hot-button issue in energy policy, underscoring how shifts in regulation can impact inflation and supply dynamics:

It’s a good thing that they reversed it, but it does mean higher natural gas prices because one of the reasons that I think the Biden administration wanted to prevent us from exporting our natural gas is to keep more of it here. And that would reduce the price because we’d have greater supply. But if we’re allowed to export that supply to Europe, then that’s less domestic supply. And that means higher prices. 

Finally, Peter runs through some of Trump’s more eye-catching executive orders, which have stirred the economic pot in the US. He especially notes the national emergency at the southern border and the folly of renaming geographical landmarks:

He did declare a national emergency on the southern border. This is separate from the drugs– just to keep the immigrants from coming in. I guess they’re going to try to step up the efforts on the border. … The Gulf of America could mean South America too. It doesn’t necessarily mean the United States. It could have called it the Gulf of the United States. I don’t know the significance of that stuff, but again, this is form over substance. We have real serious problems in this country, and they’re not going to be solved by renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

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A rightly sounds a clarion call for restoring better music at Mass through taking the entire question of music seriously to begin with (which includes paying at least some of the musicians what their knowledge, training, and ability justly deserve). As one who has been singing in and directing choirs for decades, I can only say, “Hear, hear!”

I take issue, however, with a significant component of Meyrat’s argument. He noted that he once attended the traditional Latin Mass and reveled in the “exquisite music [that] lifted the souls in the congregation.” Yet, he later judged it better to go back to his local parish, to the “Mass of the Boomers” with “frequently cheesy” music, because “there’s something to be said about going to Mass with one’s actual neighbors.” And, with a lot of work, one might eventually achieve “suitable music at Mass.”

In a spirit of fraternal conversation, I’d like to suggest that this path may, in fact, be not only difficult but dangerous and that families should think twice before pursuing it.

Children change everything. This is a truth we ponder many times in our lives. First, Christians celebrate each year the coming of a child—the Child, Emmanuel, God with us, the Word made flesh—the infant, the boy, the youth, the man, on Whom all of reality hinges, who is our head, our cornerstone, our deliverer, our life. The annunciation, conception, and birth of this child certainly changed everything in the world; and, in spite of the constant battering of unbelief against the walls of the Church, His advent among us will never cease to purify and polarize mankind until the end of time.

Closer to home, whenever a man and a woman unite in marriage, God intends to change their lives by the advent of their child. By welcoming the child from His hands, they begin a long journey of maturing into their calling as husband and wife, mother and father, and, eventually, grandmother and grandfather.

Parents face difficult decisions as the children grow up. Before, the man and the woman may not have thought much about what movies they were watching, what music they were listening to, what influences they allowed into their lives; but now they might start questioning their habits and trying to improve them.

As much as newborns turn their parents’ lives upside down, new challenges arise when children are expected to begin their education. Is homeschooling the way to go? Is the local Catholic school an option? What about online curricula? As the surrounding society becomes more demented and even parochial schools turn out to be lukewarm or heterodox, Catholic parents who want their children to know and love the Lord and practice the Faith usually reach the conclusion that education must be done in the home, in keeping with the divine right and duty parents have not only to beget children but also to educate them. And keeping children at home for their education definitely changes everything.

Likewise, once children are part of our lives, we need to think more carefully about the liturgy we attend week in, week out. We know how important Sunday is: it is the Dies Domini, the Day of the Lord. We also know how important is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, where we give perfect worship to God through Christ and receive His most holy Body as the divinizing food for our journey. Faithful Catholics intuitively know just how important it is that Sundays and Holy Days be properly set apart, solemnized with reverent, mystical, nourishing, and edifying liturgy. We have a duty to seek this out for ourselves. But, more to the point, we have a duty to seek it out for our children.

Up to a point, one can “out-catechize” the misunderstandings arrived at by children who are judging simply on the basis of sights and sounds. But it is an uphill battle every step of the way when the mainstream form of worship transmits a message contrary to that of any traditional catechism published in the past 500 years. In fact, it’s worse: the liturgy cannot even harmonize with the models of worship given by God Himself to His people, which all Christian liturgies deliberately echoed—until the Novus Ordo. A friend once shared an experience of his, teaching CCD at a local parish:

Today we looked at a model of the Israelites’ Tabernacle in the wilderness and drew parallels to the Church and the Mass; it was a neat exercise and they seemed to be getting into it. But then we went to the CCD Mass and the parallels were messed up by the versus populum celebration, clericalization of the laity, and verbose profanation of sacred time. It seemed to have barely anything to do with the Tabernacle—and yet this is the model that informs the Temple, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Book of Revelation. With this level of disconnect, how are Catholics supposed to grasp anything Scripture says about worship?

The phrase “cognitive dissonance” comes to mind—in reference to so many levels. No parent needs the headache of having to address, in a sort of liturgical postmortem, the errors, ugliness, or irreverence of a Mass one has just attended. It’s uncomfortable at best and discouraging at worst.

Another friend shared with me these insights:

When our oldest started noticing things and asking questions, and knowing that when we face our personal judgment we will be judged on how well we performed our duties of state, we had to leave the diocesan parishes. Not only were the kids getting malnourished; we were getting small doses of poison. My wife and I had the capacity to filter most of it out, but the kids do not. The only option was to correct the priests’ actions and words, but that puts us in the awkward position of possibly disrespecting the one who has spiritual authority over us. And I have a very high view of the priesthood and did not want to be in a position of regularly criticizing priests.

After we started assisting at the TLM, I noticed, as if in retrospect, that I had built up all sorts of defenses to filter out the not-so-good stuff that goes on in your average Novus Ordo Mass. We should not have to filter out stuff as we actively participate (in the proper sense) in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; I’d say that those filters actually prevent proper participation. At this point, I find it pretty near impossible to pray at a Novus Ordo Mass, and my kids do not want to go to “the English Mass,” as they call it.

My correspondent points out that children are naturally absorptive and inquisitive. We could add to this that they are naïve, innocent, and trusting. So, their experiences are teaching them something about the nature of what they are seeing and hearing far more intensely than do the experiences of older people, who have seen and heard a lot more and had time to process it and learn about things from other sources. We, perhaps, can “shut it out,” close our eyes, meditate on something beautiful we once saw or heard, or “offer it up” as a penance, but their eyes are wide open, taking it all in—and it shapes them. What they see is what they are going to believe, and if we have to keep correcting erroneous inferences from what they see, it will fracture the fundamental axiom lex orandi, lex credendi. After all, how we worship should dictate what we believe, and what we believe should be spotlessly reflected in how we worship. Children, therefore, need to be protected from imbibing contradictions.

Michael Fiedrowicz points out the huge advantage we have in assisting at the old Mass:

The exterior forms of veneration and adoration that belong to the classical rite of the Mass are the best way of guaranteeing the corresponding interior attitudes. Prayers of preparation, genuflections, and bows are not trifles that could be omitted without diminishing the faithful completion of the holy action. The interior encounter with the sacred must manifest itself outwardly, involving and being supported by an exterior form. The traditional liturgy insists that interior sentiments are plausible only if at the same time they appear in an outwardly appropriate manner. In the same way, the liturgy is aware of the formative power that the sensible can exercise on the spiritual condition.

With the number of its sacred signs, the beauty of its altars, the preciousness of its chalices and vestments, and its ceaseless expressions of reverence, the classical rite guarantees this correspondence of interior belief and exterior form. This rite is, so to speak, safeguarded against a possible discord between that which one believes and that which one sees. Here is found the perfected unity and harmony between that which is to be performed and the way in which it is performed. The classical rite does not require anything to be believed that one does not—symbolically—see. (The Traditional Mass, 214–15)

We parents are responsible for the spiritual formation of our children. This is not something that can be outsourced to clergy, CCD volunteers, or parochial teachers. No matter how much formation they are getting from the outside, it is not likely to be enough, and it may not even be correct (by which I mean: in conformity with traditional Catholic doctrine). We need to ensure that the faith of children is fed from pure, uncontaminated sources; that their hope is directed primarily to heavenly realities, with worldly projects in second place; that their charity is enkindled by the sight of loving homage being paid to the Divine Lover and by the sight of other devout believers observing the proper order of charity, which puts God first.

The liturgy is for the purpose of honoring and glorifying God; but precisely by doing this well, it also nourishes us. Ironically, when liturgy is done “for the people,” it ends up not benefiting them because it does not order them rightly to God, who is our Creator and sovereign Lord. Take ad orientem worship: when the priest and the people together face the same direction, toward the East—the symbol of Christ, Sun of Justice, who will return to judge the world from the East, as He tells us in Scripture (Matthew 24:27)—we all immediately experience that the sacred liturgy is something being offered to God, without the need for any tedious explanation. It is quite intuitive. To experience ad orientem negatively, as “being ignored by the priest,” one must actually be brainwashed to some extent.

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In light of the news that President Trump has signed an executive order for a “plan” (as if one were needed) for the release of the JFK assassination files (as well as the MLK, Jr. and RFK files), the following article, that will appear in my upcoming book from Clarity Press, At the Lost and Found, seems appropriate. While it is good that these files might now be released, they are unnecessary to assess the truth behind these assassinations unless one wishes to engage in more “limited hangouts” as described by former CIA agent Victor Marchetti:

Spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting, sometimes even volunteering, some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.

There is no mystery to who killed these men, unless one wishes to engage in pseudo-debates forever because the truth and its implications are too terrible to bear.

What is the truth, and where did it go?
Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know
“Shut your mouth,” said the wise old owl
Business is business, and it’s a murder most foul
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Don’t worry, Mr. President
Help’s on the way
Your brothers are coming, there’ll be hell to pay
Brothers? What brothers? What’s this about hell?
Tell them, “We’re waiting, keep coming”
We’ll get them as well
– Bob Dylan, Murder Most Foul

Despite a treasure-trove of new research and information having emerged over the last sixty-two years, there are many people who still think who killed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and why are unanswerable questions. They have drunk what Dr. Martin Schotz has called “the waters of uncertainty” that result “in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance, that is.”

Then there are others who cling to the Lee Harvey Oswald “lone-nut” explanation proffered by the Warren Commission.

Both these groups agree, however, that whatever the truth, unknowable or allegedly known, it has no contemporary relevance but is old-hat, ancient history, stuff for conspiracy-obsessed people with nothing better to do. The general thinking is that the assassination occurred more than a half-century ago, so let’s move on.
Nothing could be further from the truth, for the assassination of JFK is the foundational event of modern American history, the Pandora’s box from which many decades of tragedy have sprung.

Pressured to Wage War

From the day he was sworn in as President on January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was relentlessly pressured by the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and by some of his own advisers to wage war – clandestine, conventional, and nuclear.
To understand why and by whom he was assassinated on November 22, 1963, one needs to apprehend this pressure and why President Kennedy consistently resisted it, and the consequences of that resistance.

It is a key to understanding the current state of our world today and why the United States has been waging endless foreign wars and creating a national security surveillance state at home since JFK’s death.

A War Hero Who Was Appalled By War

It is very important to remember that Lieutenant John Kennedy was a genuine Naval war hero in WW II, having risked his life and been badly injured while saving his men in the treacherous waters of the south Pacific after their PT boat was sunk by a Japanese destroyer. His older brother Joe and his brother-in-law Billy Hartington had died in the war, as had some of his boat’s crew members.
As a result, Kennedy was extremely sensitive to the horrors of war, and when he first ran for Congress in Massachusetts in 1946, he made it explicitly clear that avoiding another war was his number one priority. This commitment remained with him and was intensely strengthened throughout his brief presidency until the day he died, fighting for peace.

Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, this anti-war stance was and is unusual for a politician, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. Kennedy was a remarkable man, for even though he assumed the presidency as somewhat of a cold warrior vis à vis the Soviet Union in particular, his experiences in office rapidly chastened that stance. He very quickly came to see that there were many people surrounding him who relished the thought of war, even nuclear war, and he came to consider them as insane and very dangerous.

A Prescient Perspective

Yet even before he became president, then Senator Kennedy gave a speech in the U.S. Senate that sent shock waves throughout Washington, D.C. In 1957 he came out in support of Algerian independence from France, in support of African liberation generally, and against colonial imperialism. As chair of the Senate’s African Subcommittee in 1959, he urged sympathy for African independence movements as part of American foreign policy. He knew that continued colonial policies would only end in more bloodshed because the voices of independence would not be denied, nor should they.

The speech caused an international uproar, and Kennedy was harshly criticized by Eisenhower, Nixon, John Foster Dulles, and even members of the Democratic party, such as Adlai Stevenson and Dean Acheson. But it was applauded throughout Africa and what was then called the third world.

Yet he continued throughout his 1960 campaign for president to raise his voice against colonialism worldwide and for a free Africa. Such views were anathema to the foreign policy establishment, including the CIA and the burgeoning military industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower belatedly warned against in his Farewell Address, delivered nine months after approving the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in March 1960, a juxtaposition that revealed the hold the Pentagon and CIA had and has on sitting presidents.

Patrice Lumumba

One of Africa’s anti-colonial and nationalist leaders was the charismatic Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, who in June 1960 had been become the first democratically elected leader of Congo, a country savagely raped and plundered for more than half a century by Belgium’s King Leopold II for himself and multinational mining companies. Kennedy’s support for African independence was well-known and especially feared by the CIA, which together with Brussels, considered Lumumba, and Kennedy for supporting him, as threats to their interests in the region.

So, three days before JFK’s inauguration, together with the Belgium government, the CIA had Lumumba brutally assassinated after torturing and beating him. This murder had been approved by President Eisenhower in August 1960 at an NSC meeting where he gave Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, the approval to “eliminate” Lumumba.

Then on January 26, 1961, when Dulles briefed the new president on the Congo, he did not tell JFK that they had already assassinated Lumumba nine days before. This was meant to keep Kennedy on tenterhooks, to teach him a lesson. On February 13, 1961, Kennedy received a phone call from his UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson informing him of Lumumba’s death. There is a photograph by Jacques Lowe of the horror-stricken president answering that call that is harrowing to view. It was an unmistakable message of things to come, a warning.

Dag Hammarskjöld, Indonesia, and Sukarno

One of Kennedy’s central allies in his efforts to support third world independence was U.N Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. He had been deeply involved in peacekeeping in the Congo and efforts to resolve disputes in Indonesia, the latter being an extremely important country that was central to JFK’s concerns. Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash on September 18, 1961, while on a peacekeeping mission to the Congo. Substantial evidence exists that he was assassinated and that the CIA and Allen Dulles were involved. Kennedy was devastated to lose such an important ally.

Kennedy’s Indonesia strategy involved befriending Indonesia as a Cold War ally as a prerequisite for his Southeast Asian policy of dealing with Laos and Vietnam and finding peaceful resolutions to smoldering Cold War conflicts. Hammarskjöld was central to these efforts. The CIA, led by Dulles, strongly opposed Kennedy’s strategy in Indonesia. In fact, Dulles had been involved in treacherous maneuverings in Indonesia for decades. President Kennedy supported the Indonesian President Sukarno, whom Dulles opposed.

Two days before Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963, he had accepted an invitation from Indonesian President Sukarno to visit that country the following spring. The aim of the visit was to end the conflict (Konfrontasi) between Indonesia and Malaysia and to continue Kennedy’s efforts to support post-colonial Indonesia with economic and developmental aid, not military. It was part of his larger strategy of ending conflict throughout Southeast Asia and assisting the growth of democracy in newly liberated post-colonial countries worldwide.

Of course, JFK never went to Indonesia in 1964, and his peaceful strategy to bring Indonesia to America’s side and to ease tensions in the Cold War was never realized, thanks to Allen Dulles. And Kennedy’s proposed withdrawal from Vietnam, which was premised on success in Indonesia, was quickly reversed by Lyndon Johnson after JFK’s murder. Soon both countries would experience mass slaughter engineered by Kennedy’s opponents in the CIA and Pentagon. In Indonesia, Sukarno would be forced out and replaced by General Suharto, who would rule with an iron fist for the next thirty years, massacring at will with American support.

The Bay of Pigs

In mid-April 1961, less than three months into his presidency, a trap was set for President Kennedy by the CIA and its Director, Allen Dulles, who knew of Kennedy’s reluctance to invade Cuba. They assumed the new president would be forced by circumstances at the last minute to send in ground forces to back the invasion that they had planned. The CIA and generals wanted to oust Fidel Castro, and in pursuit of that goal, trained a force of Cuban exiles to invade Cuba. This had started under President Eisenhower. Kennedy refused to go along, and the invasion was roundly defeated. The CIA, military, and Cuban exiles bitterly blamed Kennedy.
But it was all a sham. Classified documents uncovered in 2000 revealed that the CIA had discovered that the Soviets had learned the date of the invasion more than a week in advance and had then informed Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, but – and here is a startling fact that should make people’s hair stand on end – the CIA never told the President. The CIA knew the invasion was probably doomed before the fact but went ahead with it anyway.

Why? So they could and did afterwards blame JFK for the failure.

This treachery set the stage for events to come. For his part, sensing but not knowing the full extent of the set-up, Kennedy fired CIA Director Allen Dulles – (who, in an absurdity, was later named to the Warren Commission investigating his death) and his assistant, General Charles Cabell (whose brother Earle Cabell, to further the absurdity, was the mayor of Dallas on the day Kennedy was killed) – and said he wanted “to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

Not the sentiments to endear him to a secretive government within a government whose power was growing exponentially.

Afterwards Kennedy said to his friends Dave Powell and Ken O’Donnell, “They were sure I’d give in to them and send the go-ahead order to the [Navy’s aircraft carrier] Essex. They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong.”

Kennedy Responds After the Bay of Pigs Treachery

The stage was now set for events to follow as JFK, now even more suspicious of the military-intelligence people around him, and in opposition to nearly all his advisers, consistently opposed the use of force in U.S. foreign policy.
In 1961, despite the Joint Chief’s demand to put combat troops into Laos – advising 140,000 by the end of April – Kennedy bluntly insisted otherwise as he ordered Averell Harriman, his representative at the Geneva Conference, “Did you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don’t want to put troops in.” The president knew that Laos and Vietnam were linked issues, and since Laos came first on his agenda, he was determined to push for a neutral Laos.

Also in 1961, he refused to accede to the insistence of his top generals to give them permission to use nuclear weapons in Berlin and Southeast Asia. Walking out of a meeting with his top military advisors, Kennedy threw his hands in the air and said, “These people are crazy.”

In March 1962, the CIA, in the person of legendary operative Edward Lansdale, and with the approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented to the president a pretext for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. Code-named Operation Northwoods, the false-flag plan called for innocent people to be shot in the U.S., boats carrying Cuban refugees to be sunk, a terrorism campaign to be launched in Miami, Washington D.C., and other places, all to be blamed on the Castro government so that the public would be outraged and call for an invasion of Cuba.

Kennedy was appalled and rejected this pressure to manipulate him into agreeing to terrorist attacks that could later be used against him. He already knew that his life was in danger and that the CIA and military were tightening a noose around his neck. But he refused to yield.

As early as June 26, 1961, in a White House meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s spokesperson, Mikhail Kharlamov, and Alexei Adzhubei, Khrushchev’s son-in-law, when asked by Kharlamov why he wasn’t moving faster to advance relations between the two countries, Kennedy said, “You don’t understand this country. If I move too fast on U.S.-Soviet relations, I’ll either be thrown into an insane asylum, or be killed.”

He refused to bomb and invade Cuba as the military wished during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. The Soviets had placed offensive nuclear missiles and 60,000 support troops in Cuba to prevent another U.S. invasion. American aerial photography had detected the missiles. This was understandably unacceptable to the U.S. government. While being urged by the Joint Chiefs and his trusted advisors to order a preemptive nuclear strike on Cuba, JFK knew that a diplomatic solution was the only way out, short the death of hundreds of millions of people that he wouldn’t accept. Only his brother, Robert, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stood with him in opposing the use of nuclear weapons. In the end, after thirteen incredibly tense days, Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev miraculously found a way to solve the crisis and prevent the use of those weapons. Premier Khrushchev had promised to take the Soviet missiles out of Cuba in return for Kennedy’s pledge not to invade, which Kennedy gave. Furthermore, JFK sent RFK to meet with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to secretly promise to Khrushchev’s demand that the U.S. then withdraw their missiles from Turkey.

Afterwards, JFK told his friend John Kenneth Galbraith that “I never had the slightest intention of doing so.”

The Fateful Year 1963

Then on June, 10 1963 he gave an historic speech at American University in which he called for the total abolishment of nuclear weapons, the end of the Cold War and the “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” advocating instead a movement toward “general and complete disarmament.”

A few months later he signed a Limited Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev.
In October 1963 he signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 calling for the withdrawal of 1,000 U. S. Military troops from Vietnam by the end of the year and a total withdrawal by the end of 1965.

All this he did while secretly engaging in negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev via the KGB’s Georgi Bolshakov, Norman Cousins, the journalist and editor of The Saturday Review, and Pope John XXIII, and with Cuba’s Prime Minister Fidel Castro through various intermediaries, one of whom was French Journalist Jean Daniel. Of course, secret was not secret when the CIA was involved.
In an interview with Daniel on October 24, 1963, Kennedy said:

I approved the proclamation Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we will have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.

Such sentiments were anathema, shall we say treasonous, to the CIA and top Pentagon generals. These clear refusals to go to war with Cuba, to emphasize peace and negotiated solutions to conflicts, not war, to order the withdrawal of all military personnel from Vietnam, to call for an end to the Cold War, and his decision to engage in private, back-channel communications with Cold War enemies marked Kennedy as an enemy of the national security state. They were on a collision course.

The Assassination on November 22, 1963

Once in the presidency, Kennedy underwent a deep metanoia, a spiritual transformation, from Cold Warrior to peacemaker. He came to see the generals who advised him as devoid of the tragic sense of life and as hell-bent on war. And he was well aware that his growing resistance to war had put him on a dangerous collision course with those generals and the CIA. On numerous occasions he spoke of the possibility of a military coup d’état against him.

On the night before his trip to Dallas, he told his wife, “But, Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it.”

And we know that nobody did try to stop it because they had planned it. But not from a sixth-floor window.

Who Killed Him?

If the only things you read, watched, or listened to since 1963 were the mainstream corporate media (MSM), you would be convinced that the official explanation for JFK’s assassination, The Warren Commission, was correct in essentials. You would be wrong because those media have for all these years served as mouthpieces for the government, most notably for the CIA that infiltrated and controlled them long ago. Total control of information requires media complicity, and in the JFK assassination and in all matters of importance, the CIA and MSM are synonyms.

The corporate media are the propaganda arm of the CIA.

So they report that The Warren Commission claim that the president was shot by an ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald, firing three bullets from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository as Kennedy’s car was driving away from him. But this is patently false for many reasons, including the claim that one of these bullets, later to be termed “the magic bullet,” would have had to pass through Kennedy’s body and zigzag up and down, left and right, to strike Texas Governor John Connolly who was sitting in the front seat, causing seven wounds in all, with the bullet only to be found later in pristine condition on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital.

The absurdity of that claim, the key to the government’s assertion that Oswald killed Kennedy, is only visually reinforced and made ridiculous by the famous Zapruder film that clearly shows the president being shot from the front right, and as the right front of his head explodes, he is violently thrown back and to his left as Jacqueline Kennedy climbs on to the car’s trunk to retrieve a piece of her husband’s skull and brain.

This video evidence is clear and simple proof of a conspiracy.

Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?

But there is another way to examine it.

If Lee Harvey Oswald, the man The Warren Commission said killed JFK, was connected to the intelligence community, the FBI and the CIA, then we can logically conclude that he was not “a lone-nut” assassin or not the assassin at all. There is a wealth of evidence to show how from the very start Oswald was moved around the globe by the CIA like a pawn in a game, and when the game was done, the pawn was eliminated in the Dallas police headquarters by Jack Ruby two days later.
James W. Douglass, in JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, the most important book to read on the matter, asks this question:

Why was Lee Harvey Oswald so tolerated and supported by the government he betrayed?

This is a key question.

After serving as a U.S. Marine at the CIA’s U-2 spy plane operating base in Japan with a Crypto clearance (higher than top secret, a fact suppressed by the Warren Commission) and being trained in the Russian language, Oswald left the Marines and defected to the Soviet Union. After denouncing the U.S., rejecting his American citizenship, working at a Soviet factory in Minsk, and taking a Russian wife—during which time Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane is shot down over the Soviet Union—he returned to the U.S. with a loan from the American Embassy in Moscow, only to be met at the dock in Hoboken, New Jersey by a man, Spas T. Raikin, a prominent anti-communist with extensive intelligence connections recommended by the State Department.

He passed through immigration with no trouble, was not prosecuted, moved to Fort Worth, Texas where, at the suggestion of the Dallas CIA Domestic Contacts Service chief, he was met and befriended by George de Mohrenschildt, an anti-communist Russian, who was a CIA asset. De Mohrenschildt got him a job four days later at a graphic arts company that worked on maps for the U.S. Army Map Service related to U-2 spy missions over Cuba.

Oswald was then shepherded around the Dallas area by de Mohrenschildt who in 1977 — on the day he revealed he had contacted Oswald for the CIA and was to meet with the House Select Committee on Assassinations’ investigator, Gaeton Fonzi — allegedly committed suicide.

Oswald then moved to New Orleans in April 1963 where he got a job at the Reilly Coffee Company owned by CIA-affiliated William Reilly. The Reilly Coffee Company was located in close vicinity to the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Office of Naval Intelligence offices and a stone’s throw from the office of Guy Bannister, a former Special Agent in charge of the FBI’s Chicago Bureau, who worked as a covert action coordinator for the intelligence services, supplying and training the anti-Castro paramilitaries meant to ensnare Kennedy. Oswald then went to work with Bannister and the CIA paramilitaries.

From this time up until the assassination, Oswald engaged in all sorts of contradictory activities, one day portraying himself as pro-Castro, the next day as anti-Castro, with many of these theatrical performances being directed from Bannister’s office. It was as though Oswald, on the orders of his puppet masters, was enacting multiple and antithetical roles in order to confound anyone intent on deciphering the purposes behind his actions and to set him up as a future “assassin.”

Douglass persuasively argues that Oswald “seems to have been working with both the CIA and FBI,” as a provocateur for the former and an informant for the latter. Jim and Elsie Wilcott, who worked at the CIA Tokyo Station from 1960-64, in a 1978 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, said, “It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA station that Oswald worked for the agency.”

When Oswald moved to New Orleans in April 1963, de Mohrenschildt left Dallas for Washington, D. C. where he met with CIA officials, having asked the CIA for and been indirectly given a $285,000 contract to do a geological survey for Haitian dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier, which he never did, but for which he was paid. He never saw Oswald again.

Ruth and Michael Paine then entered the picture on cue. She had been introduced to Oswald by de Mohrenschildt. In September 1963, Ruth Paine drove from her sister’s house in Virginia to New Orleans to pick up Marina Oswald and bring her to her house in Dallas to live with her. Back in Dallas, Ruth Paine conveniently got Oswald a job in the Texas Book Depository where he began work on October 16, 1963.

Ruth, along with Marina Oswald, was the Warren Commission’s critically important witness against Oswald. Allen Dulles, who JFK had fired but who amazingly served as a key member of the Warren Commission, questioned the Paines during the course of it, studiously avoiding any revealing questions.

The Paines had extensive intelligence connections. Thirty years after the assassination a document was declassified showing Ruth Paine’s sister Sylvia worked for the CIA. Her father traveled throughout Latin America on an Agency for International Development (notorious for CIA front activities) contract and filed reports that went to the CIA. Her husband Michael’s stepfather, Arthur Young, was the inventor of the Bell helicopter and Michael’s job there gave him a security clearance. Her mother was related to the Forbes family of Boston and her lifelong friend, Mary Bancroft, worked as a WW II spy with Allen Dulles and was his mistress.

From late September until November 22, various “Oswalds” are later reported to have simultaneously been seen from Mexico City to Dallas. Two Oswalds were arrested in the Texas Theatre, the real one taken out the front door and an impostor out the back.

As Douglass says: “There were more Oswalds providing evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald than the Warren Report could use or even explain.”

Even J. Edgar Hoover knew that Oswald impostors were used, as he told LBJ concerning Oswald’s alleged visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. He later called this CIA ploy, “the false story re Oswald’s trip to Mexico . . . their (CIA’s) double-dealing,” something that he couldn’t forget.

It was apparent that a very intricate and deadly game was being played at high levels in the shadows.

We know Oswald was blamed for the President’s murder. But if one fairly follows the trail of the crime, it becomes blatantly obvious that government forces were at work. Douglass and others have amassed layer upon layer of evidence to show how this had to be so.

Who Had the Power to Withdraw the President’s Security?

To answer this essential question is to finger the conspirators and to expose, in Vincent Salandria’s words, “the false mystery concealing state crimes.”
Oswald, the mafia, anti-Castro Cubans could not have withdrawn most of the security that day. Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker withdrew all police protection. The Secret Service withdrew the police motorcycle escorts from beside the president’s car where they had been the day before in Houston; took agents off the back of the car where they were normally stationed to obstruct gunfire. The Secret Service admitted there were no Secret Service agents on the ground in Dealey Plaza to protect Kennedy, but we know from evidence that during and after the assassination there were people in Dealey Plaza impersonating Secret Service agents. The Secret Service approved the fateful, dogleg turn (on a dry run on November 18) where the car almost came to a halt, a clear security violation. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded this, not some conspiracy nut.

Who could have squelched the testimony of all the doctors and medical personnel who claimed the president had been shot from the front in his neck and head, testimony contradicting the official story?

Who could have prosecuted and imprisoned Abraham Bolden, the first African-American Secret Service agent personally brought on to the White House detail by JFK, who warned that he feared the president was going to be assassinated? (Douglass interviewed Bolden seven times and his evidence on the aborted plot to kill JFK in Chicago on November 2—a story little known but extraordinary in its implications—is riveting.)

The list of all the related people who turned up dead, the evidence and events manipulated, the inquiry squelched, distorted, and twisted in an ex post facto cover-up clearly point to forces within the government, not rogue actors without institutional support.

The evidence for a conspiracy organized at the deepest levels of the intelligence apparatus is overwhelming. James Douglass presents it in such depth and so logically that only one psychologically invested in the mainstream narrative would not be deeply moved and affected by his book, the essential book to read on the matter, where there is still more from him and other researchers who have cut the Gordian Knot of this false mystery with a few brief strokes.

Oswald, the Preordained Patsy

Three examples will suffice to show that Lee Harvey Oswald, working as part of a U.S. Intelligence operation, was set up to take the blame for the assassination of President Kennedy, and that when he said while in police custody that he was “a patsy,” he was speaking truthfully. These examples make it clear that Oswald was deceived by his intelligence handlers and had been chosen without his knowledge, long before the murder, to take the blame as a lone, crazed killer.

First, Kennedy was shot at 12:30 PM CT. According to the Warren Report, at 12:45 PM a police report was issued for a suspect that perfectly fit Oswald’s description. This was based on the testimony of Howard Brennan, who said he was standing across from the Book Depository and saw a white man, about 5’10” and slender, fire a rifle at the president’s car from the sixth-floor window. This was blatantly false because easily available photographs taken moments after the shooting show the window open only partially at the bottom about fourteen inches, and it would have been impossible for a standing assassin to be seen “resting against the left windowsill,” (the windowsill was a foot from the floor), as Brennan is alleged to have said. He would have therefore had to have been shooting through the glass. The description of the suspect was clearly fabricated in advance to match Oswald’s.

Then at 1:15 PM in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, Police Officer J.D. Tippit was shot and killed. At 1:50 PM, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theater and taken out the front door where a crowd and many police cars awaited him, while a few minutes later a second Oswald is secretly taken out the back door of the movie theater. (To read this story of the second Oswald and his movement by the CIA out of Dallas on a military aircraft on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, documented in great detail by James W. Douglass, will make your hair stand on end. )

Despite his denials, Oswald, set up for Kennedy’s murder based on a prepackaged description, is arraigned for Tippet’s murder at 7:10 PM. It was not until the next day that he was charged for Kennedy’s.

The Message to Air Force One

Secondly, while Oswald is being questioned about Tippit’s murder in the afternoon hours after his arrest, Air Force One has left Dallas for Washington with the newly sworn-in president, Lyndon Johnson, and the presidential party. Back in D.C., the White House Situation Room is under the personal and direct control of Kennedy’s National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, a man with close CIA ties who had consistently opposed JFK on many matters, including the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy’s order to withdraw from Vietnam.

As reported by Theodore White, in The Making of the President 1964, Johnson and the others were informed by the Bundy-controlled Situation Room that “there was no conspiracy, learned of the identity of Oswald and his arrest …”

Vincent Salandria, one of the earliest and most astute critics of the Warren Commission, put it this way in his book, False Mystery:
This was the very first announcement of Oswald as the lone assassin. In Dallas, Oswald was not even charged with assassinating the President until 1:30 A.M. the next morning. The plane landed at 5:59 P.M. on the 22nd. At that time the District Attorney of Dallas, Henry Wade, was stating that ‘preliminary reports indicated more than one person was involved in the shooting … the electric chair is too good for the killers.’ Can there be any doubt that for any government taken by surprise by the assassination — and legitimately seeking the truth concerning it — less than six hours after the time of the assassination was too soon to know there was no conspiracy? This announcement was the first which designated Oswald as the lone assassin….

I propose the thesis that McGeorge Bundy, when that announcement was issued from his Situation Room, had reason to know that the true meaning of such a message when conveyed to the Presidential party on Air Force One [and to a separate plane with the entire cabinet that had turned around and was headed back over the Pacific Ocean] was not the ostensible message which was being communicated. Rather, I submit that Bundy … was really conveying to the Presidential party the thought that Oswald was being designated the lone assassin before any evidence against him was ascertainable. As a central coordinator of intelligence services, Bundy in transmitting such a message through the Situation Room was really telling the Presidential party that an unholy marriage had taken place between the U.S. Governmental intelligence services and the lone-assassin doctrine. Was he not telling the Presidential party peremptorily, ‘Now, hear this! Oswald is the assassin, the sole assassin. Evidence is not available yet. Evidence will be obtained, or in lieu thereof evidence will be created. This is a crucial matter of state that cannot await evidence. The new rulers have spoken. You, there, Mr. New President, and therefore dispatchable stuff, and you the underlings of a deposed President, heed the message well.’ Was not Bundy’s Situation Room serving an Orwellian double-think function?

Oswald’s Prepackaged Life Story

Finally, Air Force Colonel Fletcher Prouty adds a third example of the CIA conspiracy for those who need more evidence that the government has lied from the start about the assassination.

Prouty was Chief of Special Operation in the Pentagon before and during the Kennedy years. He worked for CIA Director Allen Dulles supporting the clandestine operations of the CIA under military cover. He had been sent out of the country to the South Pole by the aforementioned CIA operative Edward Lansdale (Operation Northwoods) before the Kennedy assassination and was returning on November 22, 1963. On a stopover in Christchurch, New Zealand, he had heard a radio report that the president had been killed but knew no details. He was having breakfast with a U.S Congressman at 7:30 AM on November 23, New Zealand time. A short time later, which was approximately 4:30 PM Dallas time, November 22, four hours after the assassination, he bought the Christchurch newspaper and read it together with the Congressman.

The newspaper reports from the scene said that Kennedy had been killed by bursts of automatic weapons fire, not a single shot rifle, firing three separate shots in 6.8 seconds, as was later claimed to have been done by Oswald. But the thing that really startled him was that at a time when Oswald had just been arrested and had not even been charged for the murder of Officer Tippit, there was already elaborate background information on Oswald, his time in Russia, his association with Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans, etc. “It’s almost like a book written five years later,” said Prouty. “Furthermore, there’s a picture of Oswald, well-dressed in a business suit, whereas, when he was picked up on the streets of Dallas after the President’s death, he had on some t-shirt or something…”

Who had written that scenario? Who wrote that script…So much news was already written ahead of time of the murder to say that Oswald killed the President and that he did it with three shots…Somebody had decided Oswald was going to be the patsy…Where did they get it, before the police had charged him with the crime? Not so much ‘where,’ as ‘why Oswald?

Prouty, an experienced military man working for the CIA in the Pentagon, accused the military-intelligence “High Cabal” of killing President Kennedy in an elaborate and sophisticated plot and blaming it on Oswald, whom they had for years set up in advance as part of a fake defector program run by the CIA. They brought him back to the U.S. on June 13, 1962 and had him escorted to Fort-Worth, Texas where he was introduced to his CIA handler de Mohrenschildt. The evidence for a government plot to plan, assassinate, cover-up, and choose a patsy in the murder of President John Kennedy is overwhelming.

Five years after JFK’s assassination, we would learn, to our chagrin and his glory, that the president’s younger brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, equally brave and unintimidated, would take a bullet to the back of his head in 1968 as he was on his way to the presidency and the pursuit of his brother’s killers. The same cowards struck again.

Their successors still run the country and must be stopped.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post The Life and Public Assassination of President John F. Kennedy appeared first on LewRockwell.

Having explored the physical and psychological mechanisms of control in a previous article, and their deployment through cultural engineering in yet another article, we now turn to their ultimate evolution: the automation of consciousness control through digital systems.

In my research on the tech-industrial complex, I’ve documented how today’s digital giants weren’t simply co-opted by power structures—many were potentially designed from their inception as tools for mass surveillance and social control. From Google’s origins in a DARPA-funded CIA project to Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos’ familial ties to ARPA, these weren’t just successful startups that later aligned with government interests

What Tavistock discovered through years of careful study—emotional resonance trumps facts, peer influence outweighs authority, and indirect manipulation succeeds where direct propaganda fails—now forms the foundational logic of social media algorithms. Facebook’s emotion manipulation study and Netflix’s A/B testing of thumbnails (explored in detail later) exemplify the digital automation of these century-old insights, as AI systems perform billions of real-time experiments, continuously refining the art of influence at an unprecedented scale.

Just as Laurel Cc served as a physical space for steering culture, today’s digital platforms function as virtual laboratories for consciousness control—reaching further and operating with far greater precision. Social media platforms have scaled these principles through ‘influencer’ amplification and engagement metrics. The discovery that indirect influence outperforms direct propaganda now shapes how platforms subtly adjust content visibility. What once required years of meticulous psychological study can now be tested and optimized in real-time, with algorithms leveraging billions of interactions to perfect their methods of influence.

The manipulation of music reflects a broader evolution in cultural control: what began with localized programming, like Laurel Canyon’s experiments in counterculture, has now transitioned into global, algorithmically-driven systems. These digital tools automate the same mechanisms, shaping consciousness on an unprecedented scale

Netflix’s approach parallels Bernays’ manipulation principles in digital form—perhaps unsurprisingly, as co-founder Marc Randolph was Bernays’ great-nephew and Sigmund Freud’s great-grand-nephew. Where Bernays used focus groups to test messaging, Netflix conducts massive A/B testing of thumbnails and titles, showing different images to different users based on their psychological profiles.

Their recommendation algorithm doesn’t just suggest content—it shapes viewing patterns by controlling visibility and context, similar to how Bernays orchestrated comprehensive promotional campaigns that shaped public perception through multiple channels. Just as Bernays understood how to create the perfect environment to sell products—like promoting music rooms in homes to sell pianos—Netflix crafts personalized interfaces that guide viewers toward specific content choices. Their approach to original content production similarly relies on analyzing mass psychological data to craft narratives for specific demographic segments.

More insidiously, Netflix’s content strategy actively shapes social consciousness through selective promotion and burial of content. While films supporting establishment narratives receive prominent placement, documentaries questioning official accounts often find themselves buried in the platform’s least visible categories or excluded from recommendation algorithms entirely. Even successful films like What Is a Woman? faced systematic suppression across multiple platforms, demonstrating how digital gatekeepers can effectively erase challenging perspectives while maintaining the illusion of open access.

I experienced this censorship firsthand. I was fortunate enough to serve as a producer for Anecdotals, directed by Jennifer Sharp, a film documenting Covid-19 vaccine injuries, including her own. YouTube removed it on Day One, claiming individuals couldn’t discuss their own vaccine experiences. Only after Senator Ron Johnson’s intervention was the film reinstated—a telling example of how platform censorship silences personal narratives that challenge official accounts.

This gatekeeping extends across the digital landscape. By controlling which documentaries appear prominently, which foreign films reach American audiences, and which perspectives get highlighted in their original programming, platforms like Netflix act as cultural gatekeepers—just as Bernays managed public perception for his corporate clients. Where earlier systems relied on human gatekeepers to shape culture, streaming platforms use data analytics and recommendation algorithms to automate the steering of consciousness. The platform’s content strategy and promotion systems represent Bernays’ principles of psychological manipulation operating at an unprecedented scale.

Reality TV: Engineering the Self 

Before social media turned billions into their own content creators, Reality TV perfected the template for self-commodification. The Kardashians exemplified this transition: transforming from reality TV stars into digital-age influencers, they showed how to convert personal authenticity into a marketable brand. Their show didn’t just reshape societal norms around wealth and consumption—it provided a masterclass in abandoning genuine human experience for carefully curated performance. Audiences learned that being oneself was less valuable than becoming a brand, that authentic moments mattered less than engineered content, and that real relationships were secondary to networked influence.

This transformation from person to persona would reach its apex with social media, where billions now willingly participate in their own behavioral modification. Users learn to suppress authentic expression in favor of algorithmic rewards, to filter genuine experience through the lens of potential content, and to value themselves not by internal measures but through metrics of likes and shares. What Reality TV pioneered—the voluntary surrender of privacy, the replacement of authentic self with marketable image, the transformation of life into content—social media would democratize at a global scale. Now anyone could become their own reality show, trading authenticity for engagement.

Instagram epitomizes this transformation, training users to view their lives as content to be curated, their experiences as photo opportunities, and their memories as stories to be shared with the public. The platform’s ‘influencer’ economy turns authentic moments into marketing opportunities, teaching users to modify their actual behavior—where they go, what they eat, how they dress—to create content that algorithms will reward. This isn’t just sharing life online—it’s reshaping life itself to serve the digital marketplace.

Even as these systems grow more pervasive, their limits are becoming increasingly visible. The same tools that enable manipulating cultural currents also reveal its fragility, as audiences begin to challenge manipulative narratives.

Cracks in the System

Despite its sophistication, the system of control is beginning to show cracks. Increasingly, the public is pushing back against blatant attempts at cultural engineering, as evidenced by current consumer and electoral rejections.

Recent attempts at obvious cultural exploitation, such as corporate marketing campaigns and celebrity-driven narratives, have begun to fail, signaling a turning point in public tolerance for manipulation. When Bud Light and Target—companies with their own deep establishment connections—faced massive consumer backlash in 2023 over their social messaging campaigns, the speed and scale of the rejection marked a significant shift in consumer behavior. Major investment firms like BlackRock faced unprecedented pushback against ESG initiatives, seeing significant outflows that forced them to recalibrate their approach. Even celebrity influence lost its power to shape public opinion—when dozens of A-list celebrities united behind one candidate in the 2024 election, their coordinated endorsements not only failed to sway voters but may have backfired, suggesting a growing public fatigue with manufactured consensus.

The public is increasingly recognizing these manipulation patterns. When viral videos expose dozens of news anchors reading identical scripts about ‘threats to our democracy,’ the facade of independent journalism crumbles, revealing the continued operation of systematic narrative control. Legacy media’s authority is crumbling, with frequent exposures of staged narratives and misrepresented sources revealing the persistence of centralized messaging systems.

Even the fact-checking industry, designed to bolster official narratives, faces growing skepticism as people discover that these ‘independent’ arbiters of truth are often funded by the very power structures they claim to monitor. The supposed guardians of truth serve instead as enforcers of acceptable thought, their funding trails leading directly to the organizations they’re meant to oversee.

The public awakening extends beyond corporate messaging to a broader realization that supposedly organic social changes are often engineered. For example, while most people only became aware of the Tavistock Institute through recent controversies about gender-affirming care, their reaction hints at a deeper realization: that cultural shifts long accepted as natural evolution might instead have institutional authors. Though few still understand Tavistock’s historic role in shaping culture since our grandparents’ time, a growing number of people are questioning whether seemingly spontaneous social transformations may have been, in fact, deliberately orchestrated.

This growing recognition signals a fundamental shift: as audiences become more conscious of manipulation methods, the effectiveness of these control systems begins to diminish. Yet the system is designed to provoke intense emotional responses—the more outrageous the better—precisely to prevent critical analysis. By keeping the public in a constant state of reactionary outrage, whether defending or attacking figures like Trump or Musk, it successfully distracts from examining the underlying power structures these figures operate within. The heightened emotional state serves as a perfect shield against rational inquiry.

Before examining today’s digital control mechanisms in detail, the evolution from Edison’s hardware monopolies to Tavistock’s psychological operations to today’s algorithmic control systems reveals more than a natural historical progression—it shows how each stage intentionally built upon the last to achieve the same goal. Physical control of media distribution evolved into psychological manipulation of content, which has now been automated through digital systems. As AI systems become more sophisticated, they don’t just automate these control mechanisms—they perfect them, learning and adapting in real time across billions of interactions.

We can visualize how distinct domains of power—finance, media, intelligence, and culture—have converged into an integrated grid of social control. While these systems initially operated independently, they now function as a unified network, each reinforcing and amplifying the others. This framework, refined over a century, reaches its ultimate expression in the digital age, where algorithms automate what once required elaborate coordination between human authorities.

Read the Whole Article

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On January 10th, one day before the 23rd anniversary of its opening, a much-anticipated hearing was set to take place at the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility on the island of Cuba. After nearly 17 years of pretrial litigation, the prosecution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the “mastermind” of the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001, seemed poised to achieve its ever-elusive goal of bringing his case to a conclusion.  After three years of negotiations, the Pentagon had finally arranged a plea deal in the most significant case at Guantánamo. Along with two others accused of conspiring in the attacks of 9/11, KSM had agreed to plead guilty in exchange for the government replacing the death penalty with a life sentence.

After more than 50 pre-trial hearings and other related proceedings, Americans — and the victims’ families — would finally see closure for those three individuals who stood at the center of this country’s attempt to reckon legally with the 9/11 attacks.

Because of the fact that the defendants had been tortured at notorious CIA “black sites” before arriving at Guantánamo, the case had long been endlessly stalled. After all, so much of the evidence against them came from torture confessions. As it happens, such evidence is not admissible in court under U.S. or international law, or even under the rules of Guantánamo’s military commissions. For obvious reasons, it’s considered tainted information, “the fruit of the poisonous tree,” and so inadmissible in court. Although military commission prosecutors tried repeatedly over the years to find ways to introduce that all too tainted evidence at trial, attempts to do so failed time and again, repeatedly pushing potential trial dates years into the future. As a recently compiled Center on National Security chart shows, the forever delays in those hearings led to calendars of such length as to defy comprehension. In Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s case, for example, such delays have so far amounted to 870.7 weeks.

With the plea deal now set to come before Judge Matthew McCall, who had agreed to delay his retirement in an effort to see this case to its conclusion, attorneys, journalists, and victims’ family members boarded planes, preparing to witness the longed-for conclusion to a case that had seemed endless. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn, however, that the hearing never took place. Delay was again the name of the game. As it turned out, from the moment the plea deal was announced, it became the centerpiece of an intense battle launched by then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

What Happened

Two days after the August 2024 announcement of the plea deal by the “convening authority,” Brigadier General (Ret.) Susan Escallier, the Pentagon official in charge of the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, Austin summarily overruled her, revoking the plea deal with little explanation and leaving experts and observers alike confused and disappointed. Had the secretary of defense not been consulted on the plea arrangement? That seemed unlikely. Had political pressure caused him to take such a drastic act? If so, then perhaps after the election he would change his mind and restore it. No such luck.

Whatever Austin’s motivation, Judge McCall refused to take “no” for an answer, declaring his revocation invalid.

McCall made it clear, instead, that he was moving forward. As the judge explained, in the memo that Austin had long ago issued appointing Escallier, he had attested to her independent authority. “Ms. Escallier shall exercise her independent legal discretion with regard to judicial acts and other duties of the Convening Authority.” But even as McCall prepared to go forward, Austin appealed to the Court of Military Commissions Review, asking it to rule that he did indeed have the authority to revoke the plea deal. However, that court then ruled that the secretary had improperly rescinded the deal after it had taken effect.

Still, he refused to give up, seeking help elsewhere. And he found it. On the eve of the scheduled hearing, the Department of Justice filed papers asking the D.C. Circuit Court to prohibit the Gitmo court from moving ahead and to stay proceedings while it contemplated the decision. Those who had flown to Guantánamo then returned home, and a new hearing was set for January 28th at the DC Circuit Court. At issue was both Austin’s authority to take over the plea deal and whether he had the right to withdraw from it, as lawyers argue that the dependents had already started performing their part of the deal. Of course, in the second age of Trump, it is no longer Austin but secretary of defense Pete Hegseth who will decide what happens next.

So, more than 23 years after the 9/11 attacks, here we are in the very same place we’ve been for endless years — on pause again, despite the endless charade of forward steps that go nowhere.

The Mirage of the Military Commissions

At this point, it’s worth asking whether the resolution of those cases by trial was ever a priority — or even a realistic goal. A look back over the course of the military commissions and the 9/11 case suggests some answers.

The Guantánamo detention facility was set up by a presidential military order issued on November 13, 2001. It authorized the detention of war-on-terror captives and mentioned future trials. “It is necessary for individuals subject to this order… to be detained, and, when tried, to be tried for violations of the laws of war and other applicable laws by military tribunals.” Accordingly, the commander of the naval base at Guantánamo spent the early months of the detention operation scouring the base itself for a suitable facility in which to hold such trials. He was surprised when no one at the Pentagon approached him about the need for such a building.

Fast forward six years, a year after those “high-value detainees” already tortured at CIA black sites were brought to Guantánamo. As NBC’s Bob Windrem later reported, an “Expeditionary Legal Complex was built in 2007 in the expectation it would be used for the trial of terrorists accused of murdering nearly 3,000 people with twin attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.” In 2008, the 9/11 defendants were charged. And last April, 17 years later, the Pentagon opened a second courtroom at the cost of $4 million for other cases pending before the military tribunals. Intrepid New York Times Gitmo reporter Carol Rosenberg recently summed up the costs associated with those signs of a continuing belief that actual trial proceedings were indeed in the cards this way: “The war court proceedings have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries, infrastructure, and transportation. Since 2019, the Office of Military Commissions has added two new courtroom chambers, new offices and temporary housing, more lawyers, more security personnel, and more contractors.”

On the surface, it would seem as if the commitment to holding various war-on-terror trials was perfectly real. The price tag was certainly hefty enough, as were the numerous pre-trial proceedings in the 9/11 case, as well as in other cases before the military commissions, each involving charges against those accused of committing acts of terrorism — the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole destroyer with one defendant; terror bombings in Bali, Indonesia, with three defendants; and the cases of several other individuals charged with crimes of terrorism.

Yet given the failure of significant forward movement in such cases for so long, it’s hard not to wonder just how serious the commitment to resolving them ever was and whether the construction of such expensive trial buildings was either a mirage, intended to hide the fact that the cases were destined to go nowhere, or self-deception on the part of presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. (Donald Trump halted the military commissions during his first term in office, leaving them in legal limbo.)

After all this time, only two cases have ever gone to trial, one of which, that of Salim Hamdan, was later overturned. In the other, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul was convicted on three counts, two of which were eventually overturned. (At present, Mr. Bahlul is serving a life sentence at Gitmo, having arrived on its opening day 23 years ago.)

Meanwhile, there have been a grand total of nine plea deals over all these years.  Of those, one convicted detainee is serving out a sentence at Guantánamo that ends in 2032, two convictions have been overturned, and two remain on appeal — a paltry record at best, especially given the grimness of those acts of terror. For all of the time, effort, and money, not to mention emotional distress, the results have been appallingly minimal.

Biden and Gitmo

To his credit, President Joe Biden, who inherited a Guantánamo with only 40 detainees left out of a total population that once stood at 790, seemed determined to make progress both in the military commissions and in releasing some of the remaining “forever prisoners” (a term originally coined by Times reporter Rosenberg to describe those living in the legal limbo of indefinite detention, neither charged nor released).  Biden provided Gitmo watchers (like me) with some hope that the prison, distinctly offshore of American justice, would actually close someday.

During Biden’s years in office, the population was reduced to 15 men — six forever prisoners and nine still part of the military commissions (two of whom are already convicted). Eleven of the Biden releases, consisting of Yemenis sent to Oman, occurred amid the battle over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s plea deal, as if he were whispering to us that we needn’t worry, the road to closure was still available. Yet even that set of transfers suffered from the same sort of one-step-forward-two steps-back shuffle that’s been the essence of Gitmo’s history. The Oman arrangement had originally been planned for October 2023, only to be put on pause once the war in Gaza erupted. One of the men released had been cleared since 2010, only to await arrangements made two presidencies later.

The Biden administration unfortunately never released the last prisoners held without charge or brought the accused to trial. Even in these final moments of his presidency, when he was arguably free to do whatever he wanted, including closing the prison, he chose instead, by virtue of his administration putting the deal on hold, to halt forward progress, leaving us to wonder why.

So here we stand, with Donald Trump back in the White House, awaiting what this will mean for the future of the forever prison.

Once You Break It, You Can Never Really Fix It

Sometimes, when it comes to Gitmo, it almost seems as if forces beyond the capacity of mere mortals are at play. No matter what promises are made, no matter what hope-inspiring acts are taken, no matter what progress occurs, the prison seems to have a life of its own, aided and abetted by those who continue to mount obstacles to any significant steps forward.

Of course, the biggest of the lessons learned should have been to honor the laws, both domestic and international, forbidding torture. Had the United States not authorized a program of what was euphemistically referred to by the administration of President George W. Bush as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including beatings, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, sensory bombardment, and all too much more, those trials could have been held in a timely fashion and in federal court on the mainland.

As President Barack Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, had wanted, the federal courts would have been capable of handling such cases without using “evidence”  produced by torture. In fact, one Guantánamo detainee, Ahmed Ghailani, was indeed transferred to the United States for trial in federal court and, though he was acquitted on 284 of 285 charges, he was found guilty on one count and sentenced to life in federal prison. Still, the hundreds of acquittals in his case chased away the idea of trying the remaining Guantánamo defendants in federal court.

From all of this, there’s a basic lesson to be learned: once you violate both fair treatment of prisoners and the basic principles of law, finding an unchallenged resolution to such cases is essentially inconceivable.

In other words, once you break it, you can never really fix it.

Today, that long, soul-crushing, legally abhorrent story stands, at a far greater cost than we might once have imagined, where it has always stood — as a mistake that never should have happened and that, once made, never found a leader able to muster the courage to end it.

The post The Forever Charade appeared first on LewRockwell.

John Helmer wonders if Elvira Nabiullina, the Russian Central Bank director, has set up her protector Vladimir Putin for failure.  

Elvira is known to be opposed to the rescue of Donbas Russians from oppression and extermination by Washington’s puppet in Kiev.  Elvira’s first act of treason against Putin and the Russian state was arranging to leave Russia’s central bank reserves in Western institutions where Washington could seize them.

Her current treason is 21% interest rates which suppress investment and GDP growth and cause inflation which she then uses to justify her economy-killing high interest rates.  Helmer provides the ruinous  inflation rates Elvia’s anti-Russian, pro-Washington policy is causing in Russia. See here. 

The inflation is being used by pro-western elements in Russia to blame the high cost of living on Putin’s never-ending war.

President Trump has concluded that inflation has weakened Putin’s position and that concessions can be wrung from him in exchange for an end to Washington’s support for the war.  Additional pressure is put on Putin by President Trump’s aggressive move against Greenland in keeping with the Biden regime’s “2024 Arctic Strategy” that identifies Russia as the principal target.

From Putin’s standpoint, Ukrainian strongholds are falling rapidly without the drawn-out house by house clearing operations of previous advances.  The liberation of the Russian areas of Ukraine likely will be complete prior to a Trump-Putin meeting.  The meeting will be about the terms of peace with Trump pressuring Putin with more sanctions and Greenland threat to drop some part of Russia’s demand that Ukraine be de-militarized, de-Nazified, and forbidden NATO membership. Putin has received forceful warning not to negotiate away the reasons for which Russia fought an expensive three year war. See here. The Art of the Deal Trump cannot very well agree to the end of the conflict on Putin’s terms without being slammed with the media headline: “Trump Sells Out Ukraine to Putin.”

As Putin has permitted Washington and NATO to attack Russian cities, school children, infrastructure, and military bases with missiles fired by Washington and NATO into Russia without response, Putin is regarded by Washington as a nonentity, a pushover. If Putin and Trump meet, Trump could assume the dominant position and fail to realize that Putin, having fought for more than three years at enormous cost, cannot negotiate away the goals for which Russia has fought, especially with Russia having won the battlefield.  There doesn’t seem to be much room for a mutually face-saving compromise.

Looking at Putin’s situation, President Trump assesses it as “Russia is kind of in big trouble. You take a look at their economy, you take a look at their inflation in Russia. I got along with Putin great, I would hope he wants to make a deal.”

Here is Helmer’s account.  Come to your own conclusion.

The post The Trump-Putin Meeting: Who Will Dominate? appeared first on LewRockwell.