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Ricordo a tutti i lettori che su Amazon potete acquistare il mio nuovo libro, “Il Grande Default”: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0DJK1J4K9 

Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato "fuori controllo" negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa è una storia di cartelli, a livello sovrastatale e sovranazionale, la cui pianificazione centrale ha raggiunto un punto in cui deve essere riformata radicalmente e questa riforma radicale non può avvenire senza una dose di dolore economico che potrebbe mettere a repentaglio la loro autorità. Da qui la risposta al Grande Default attraverso il Grande Reset. Questa è la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso è accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

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di Barry Brownstein

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/il-fermo-avvertimento-di-david-hume)

Il Trattato sulla natura umana di David Hume è stato definito “uno dei libri fondamentali della filosofia occidentale”, “il documento fondante delle scienze cognitive” e forse “l'opera filosofica più importante” in lingua inglese.

Nel mio precedente saggio su David Hume ho analizzato come le sue idee anticipassero le neuroscienze moderne.

Per coloro che credono di essere governati dalla ragione, un'analisi più approfondita della filosofia di Hume mette a nudo la loro arroganza.

“Nulla è più consueto nella filosofia, e perfino nella vita comune”, scrisse nel suo Trattato, che affermare la “preminenza della ragione sulle emozioni”.

Per emozioni Hume intende le nostre predisposizioni, il pensiero carico di significato e le emozioni generate da convinzioni di cui spesso non siamo consapevoli. Egli sostiene che “la ragione da sola non può mai produrre alcuna azione, né dare origine alla volizione. Deduco che la stessa facoltà [la ragione] è altrettanto incapace di impedire la volizione, o di contestarne la preferenza a qualsiasi passione o emozione”.

Hume sostiene che le nostre “emozioni” vengono prima e solo dopo usiamo la “ragione” per giustificare ciò che le nostre emozioni hanno deciso. Pensiamo che la ragione guidi il nostro autobus decisionale, ma spesso essa è solo un passeggero.

Quando si assimilano tutte queste implicazioni, la mente dovrebbe fermarsi completamente. Hume contesta l'assunto secondo cui possiamo affidarci alla ragione per gestire le nostre emozioni.

I politici autoritari sanno che suscitare emozioni intense, come paura e odio, è molto più efficace per galvanizzare l'opinione pubblica rispetto a un dibattito ragionato. Il presidente Biden, ad esempio, durante il suo mandato, ha fatto del suo meglio per censurare le diverse opinioni sui vaccini contro il COVID, promettendo al contempo un “inverno di [...] morte” per i non vaccinati.

Allo stesso modo un vostro amico, un vostro collega o un vostro familiare, guidato dalle proprie emozioni, potrebbe non rispondere mai alla ragione finché non sareste voi a stimolare le loro emozioni.

Il ricordo che Hume aveva dei suoi “errori passati” e delle sue “innumerevoli infermità [mentali]” gli faceva “temere” la possibilità di commettere ancora più errori. Anche noi commettiamo un errore dopo l'altro, e la ragione non ci impedisce di cedere alle nostre emozioni erranti.

Hume avanza quella che definisce un'affermazione “straordinaria”: “La ragione è, e dovrebbe essere, solo schiava delle emozioni, e non può mai pretendere di avere altro compito che quello di servirle e obbedirle”. Quindi, cosa potremmo fare, lui o noi, per separarci dai dettami disfunzionali delle nostre passioni? Cosa affina o tempera le nostre emozioni?

Hume ammette che per prima cosa dobbiamo “percepire la falsità di ogni supposizione”, la quale suscita le nostre emozioni.

Nel suo saggio successivo “Lo scettico”, nel volume “Saggi, morali, politici e letterati, parte 1”, Hume delinea una soluzione per migliorare la nostra programmazione condizionata. L'obiettivo è raggiungere “un vivo senso dell'onore e della virtù, con emozioni moderate”. Allora la nostra “condotta sarà sempre conforme alle regole della moralità; o se [ci] allontaniamo da esse, [il nostro] ritorno sarà facile e rapido”.

Tuttavia non tutti perseguono la virtù. Hume scrive di queste persone, infatti:

Quando un individuo nasce con una disposizione d'animo perversa, con una disposizione insensibile, da non provare alcun gusto per la virtù e l'umanità, nessuna simpatia per i suoi simili, nessun desiderio di stima e applausi, allora bisogna ammettere che è del tutto incurabile e non c'è alcun rimedio nella filosofia.

Il ritratto che Hume fa dell'uomo non virtuoso è fosco: “Non prova alcun rimorso nel controllare le sue inclinazioni viziose: non ha nemmeno quel senso o gusto che è necessario per fargli desiderare un carattere migliore”.

Lo stesso Hume si chiedeva cosa si potesse fare per riformare una persona del genere: “Dovrei parlargli della soddisfazione interiore che deriva da azioni lodevoli e umane, del delicato piacere dell'amore e dell'amicizia disinteressati, dei piaceri duraturi di un buon nome e di un carattere consolidato?”

Per coloro che non attribuiscono valore alla virtù, Hume ammetteva: “La mia filosofia non offre alcun rimedio in un caso del genere, né potrei fare altro che lamentarmi dell'infelice condizione di questa persona”. In breve nessuna supplica li convincerà a coltivare la virtù per moderare le proprie passioni. Hume non si faceva illusioni sul fatto che un buon consiglio avrebbe trasformato rapidamente chiunque.

A coloro tra noi che, secondo le parole di Hume, sono “abbastanza virtuosi”, egli consigliava di approfondire la comprensione delle condizioni in cui le emozioni diventano più virtuose: “È certo che una seria attenzione alle scienze e alle arti liberali ammorbidisce e umanizza il temperamento e nutre quelle belle emozioni in cui consistono la vera virtù e l'onore”.

Man mano che la persona “abbastanza virtuosa” studia, sviluppa “una maggiore sensibilità per tutti i doveri e le convenienze della vita. Percepisce più pienamente una distinzione morale nei caratteri e nei comportamenti”.

Supponiamo che io sia agitato dalla velocità con cui un commesso di un supermercato passa in rassegna i prodotti alimentari. Sebbene la ragione trovi una scusa per i miei pensieri poco caritatevoli, le mie emozioni non virtuose guidano la mia reazione. Più studio e rifletto sull'umanità in tutte le persone, meno è probabile che io noti tali sciocchezze. Come scrive Hume, non appena scopro la “falsità della [mia] supposizione” (in questo caso che il commesso sia un mero oggetto per me), il mio giudizio su di lui svanisce.

Secondo Hume i nostri studi ci insegneranno che “la mente non è del tutto ostinata e inflessibile, ma ammetterà molte alterazioni rispetto alla sua conformazione e struttura originali”.

Hume consigliava allo studioso della virtù di “proporsi il modello di un carattere” e di “prendere familiarità con quei particolari in cui il suo carattere si discosta da esso”.

Hume prescriveva una pratica continua per coloro che volevano evitare errori provocati da emozioni tendenti alla gelosia: “Che egli vigili costantemente su sé stesso e orienti la sua mente, con uno sforzo continuo, dai vizi verso le virtù; e non dubito che, col tempo, troverà, nel suo temperamento, un cambiamento in meglio”.

In breve le “esortazioni” non bastano. Invece impegnandosi per migliorare le proprie abitudini e per una “riforma” personale, è possibile sviluppare “buone disposizioni e inclinazioni”:

Un uomo che persegue una condotta di sobrietà e temperanza odierà la sommossa e il disordine: se si dedica agli affari o allo studio, l'indolenza gli sembrerà una punizione; se si costringe a praticare la beneficenza e l'affabilità, presto aborrirà tutti i casi di orgoglio e violenza.

Leggendo Hume è difficile non disperare per il futuro dell'umanità. Le emozioni sfrenate sono la norma nei campus universitari e i canoni della filosofia morale della civiltà occidentale sono stati eliminati dai programmi scolastici.

Nel suo libro, “The Soul of Civility”, Alexandra Hudson mette in evidenza l'abbandono dell'educazione classica nelle scuole e nelle università pubbliche odierne: “Le arti liberali e le discipline umanistiche erano le forme di educazione che rendevano una persona libera e idonea alla cittadinanza”. Tale educazione, scrive la Hudson, permetteva di coltivare “l'amore per la virtù e la polis, e promuovendo la ragione e l'autogoverno [...] stimolava le persone ad andare oltre l'essere dominate dalle proprie emozioni”.

La Hudson raccomanda “lo studio della filosofia e della letteratura, le quali ci espongono alla bellezza, alla bontà e alla verità”. Tali studi ci aiutano ad “apprezzare la nostra umanità e quella degli altri”. Tali programmi di studio smussano “gli spigoli più pungenti della nostra natura umana, insegnando a coloro che l'hanno studiata come perseguire la pace e l'armonia con gli altri ed evitare crudeltà, violenza e conflitti”.

Seguiremo le sagge prescrizioni di Hume e della Hudson prima che sia troppo tardi? Un popolo senza virtù, guidato da emozioni sfrenate, non sarà mai libero.

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

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

There’s a lot of conflicting information about the immediate cause of the recent mega-blackouts in Spain and Portugal. The governments in those countries claim the causes are “still unclear” after the largest blackouts in history. Given the rather spotty record of truth-telling by national governments, I suspect the causes of the blackouts are clear to those who are in a position to know.

What we on the outside do know, though, is that Spain and Portugal, like most European states, have spent years trying to replace tried and true energy sources with more unreliable and costly sources of energy in the name of “net zero” or the “European Green Deal“

Some critics of Europe’s fashionable policies on renewable energy have suggested that the blackouts are to be expected given Europe’s reckless pursuit of unreliable energy sources such as solar and wind power. Today, for example, Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform UK Party, predicted that “the lights are going to go out here too” if Britain carries on with “renewable lunacy.”

A symbol of this policy could be the 2022 destruction of Teruel’s thermoelectric coal power plant in Spain. Rather than modernize the plant or replace it with a cleaner-burning coal plant, the plant was decommissioned and then demolished in 2022 as part of Europe’s drive toward “renewable” energy. As described by an article expressing approval of Spain’s transition away from traditional (and very reliable) power sources:

Over the course of its existence, the 1.1 GW plant produced 224,000 GWh, the equivalent of the energy consumption of the entire Iberian Peninsula for a whole year. After forty years, the age of coal is over for Andorra and the time of renewable energy has begun.

In the near future, the area will become a “hybrid” hub, with solar plants, wind farms, battery storage systems and a green hydrogen factory.

This sort of thing, of course, has been going on all over Europe. One of the more notable cases is Germany’s destruction of its nuclear power plants mere months after the Ukraine regime—possibly with US assistance—sabotaged the Nordstream pipeline, cutting Germans off from a key source of power. Since then, German industry pays electricity prices that are “significantly higher than what companies pay in other major competitor countries.” This has impacted Germany manufacturing sector which “has struggled since 2021 due to rising energy costs…” Moreover, in times of less sun and wind, Germany must import energy from nearby countries.

Other countries have faced similar problems as well, and even though energy prices have been rising substantially, Europe’s ruling class continues to insist on “green energy” that has yet to deliver the sort of energy output that it necessary. Anca Gurzu provided a summary on January 15 of this year:

Europe’s industrial electricity prices skyrocketed in recent years, accentuating its competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis the United States at a crucial time in the energy transition, when both regions are trying to carve out a place for themselves in the nascent cleantech manufacturing market otherwise dominated by China.

Between 2019 and 2023, the United Kingdom’s industrial power prices grew by 124%, Hungary’s by 171%, Poland’s by 137% and France’s by 93%, according to data from the U.K. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which combines data from Eurostat and the International Energy Agency.

(In contrast, in the United States, energy prices grew by 21 percent during the same period.)

Cripplingly high prices are not the same thing as blackouts, however, so it’s unclear that the switch to renewable energy is necessarily the cause of this blackout. The fact that the blackout occurred is simply the latest evidence of the same phenomenon driving the shift to “renewable” and more expensive power. Namely, the ruling regimes of Europe simply don’t consider it a priority to provide inexpensive and reliable energy to the ordinary people who suffer most when blackouts and price surges occur.

In Western Europe, national regimes began nationalizing the energy sector beginning the early 1950s. The stated reason for the regime takeovers of the sector was increased efficiency or that the governments could better deliver more affordable power. It’s now been more than seventy years, and one might think that the national governments would have become proficient at providing more than enough power to their resident populations. Apparently, that’s too much to hope for, but not because these governments lack the means. After all, these are wealthy Western states with enormous budgets. Spain’s national budget, for example, is nearly $600 billion, which is anything but austere for a country with fewer than 50 million people.

Yet, the Spanish regime, like most European regimes, is not motivated to ensure that their taxpayers don’t have to worry if the lights come on. This is in spite of the fact that marginal rates for income taxes in Spain are among the highest in the world, and other taxes like corporate taxes and VAT taxes are not exactly low.

The recent blackouts show that the regime’s priorities are elsewhere. Clearly, the “net zero” fad trumps any concern for reliable, affordable power for normal people who pay all the bills. What really matters to politicians is being able to brag at the next EU junket that your country installed some new wind farms, whether that actually helps people or not. Surely, there are other concerns, as well. Perhaps the ruling class of Spain is spending too much time pushing for perpetual war with Russia to bother with “boring” pursuits like a reliable electrical grid that the taxpayers have been squeezed for many times over.

Given the tax revenues and resources available to the Spanish regime, the disregard of reliable energy is clearly a choice that is being made. Unfortunately, since the energy sector was socialized long ago, the taxpayers are at the mercy of those choices.

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

The post Spain’s Blackout Shows the Regime Can’t Be Bothered With Affordable, Reliable Power appeared first on LewRockwell.

To many economists, questions of justice are not relevant to the study of free markets. In most situations where people try to invoke arguments about “justice,” they are concerned with distributive justice. Their aim is to address questions of wealth distribution and income inequality. They argue that “social justice” requires the state to redistribute wealth.

In this context, Friedrich A. Hayek depicted “social justice” as a meaningless slogan—a mantra wielded by political activists to avoid having to give reasons or justifications for their policies. Hayek argued that markets are constituted, not by design, but by a form of “spontaneous order” in which any attempt to depict market forces as “just” or “unjust” reflects an inappropriate anthropomorphism of the market. In The Mirage of Social Justice he argued that “the term ‘social justice’ is wholly devoid of meaning or content… it is a semantic fraud, a phrase used to give moral approval to what is in fact a demand for the distribution of benefits according to some arbitrary criterion.”

Similarly, Ludwig von Mises argued that attempts to evaluate free market outcomes by reference to “justice” are misconceived. In Human Action, he argues that those who analyze free markets by reference to justice “hold up a set of metaphysical principles and condemn the market economy beforehand because it does not conform to them.” They are particularly concerned that free markets are “unjust” because they do not result in equal distribution of wealth. Mises points out that, although they may have started out with “sound intentions” by adopting a utilitarian approach to market analysis, they later turn around and denounce what they may see as “unjust” outcomes, such as wealth inequality. Paradoxically, the state interventions—which they then introduce in an attempt to achieve “justice”—only have the effect of leading them away from their economic goals. Mises explains:

Thus they are the harbingers of economic retrogression, preaching a philosophy of decay and social disintegration. A society arranged according to their precepts may appear to some people as fair from the point of view of an arbitrary standard of social justice. But it will certainly be a society of progressing poverty for all its members.

Mises reiterated that “capitalism has not only multiplied population figures but at the same time improved the people’s standard of living in an unprecedented way.” Those who wish to improve the material conditions of all people should therefore adopt the principles of capitalism, rather than adopting dubious “social justice” redistributive policies which only lead to poverty and economic decline. While endorsing Mises’s and Hayek’s utilitarian defense of free market capitalism, Murray Rothbard took an entirely different position on the justice debate. As David Gordon has often explained, Rothbard’s theory of ethics aims to surmount the limitations of utilitarian benefit-cost analysis. Rothbard criticized the utilitarian reluctance to make value judgements about specific acts. He argues, in the section quoted by Gordon:

The utilitarians declare, from their study of the consequences of liberty as opposed to alternative systems, that liberty will lead more surely to widely approved goals: harmony, peace, prosperity, etc. Now no one disputes that relative consequences should be studied in assessing the merits or demerits of respective creeds. But there are many problems in confining ourselves to a utilitarian ethic. For one thing, utilitarianism assumes that we can weigh alternatives, and decide upon policies, on the basis of their good or bad consequences. But if it is legitimate to apply value judgments to the consequences of X, why is it not equally legitimate to apply such judgments to X itself? May there not be something about an act itself which, in its very nature, can be considered good or evil?

In the Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard explains in more detail why he considers the utilitarian ethic inadequate in defending individual liberty. One of the points he makes is that unless one altogether avoids participating in any public policy discussions framed in the language of justice, one cannot avoid ever invoking value judgments. He argues that, “while praxeological economic theory is extremely useful for providing data and knowledge for framing economic policy, it cannot be sufficient by itself to enable the economist to make any value pronouncements or to advocate any public policy whatsoever.” Confining oneself to declaring that social justice is a meaningless slogan would be an unlikely starting point for anyone wishing to engage in public policy debates.

A further point made by Rothbard concerns defending individual liberty. He argues that cost-benefit analysis often produces results inimical to individual liberty. He argues that “to make the full case for liberty, one cannot be a methodological slave to every goal that the majority of the public might happen to cherish.” Sometimes the majority is wrong. As David Gordon has pointed out, this is not to say that utilitarian ethics is a simplistic matter of cost-benefit analysis, nor would it be accurate to say that utilitarians simply follow wherever majority opinion leads. Gordon points out that, “Utilitarians need to figure out what to include in their calculations, but to say this is not to establish that they cannot do so in a reasonable way.” Rothbard’s argument is, rather, that in some situations “one must go beyond economics and utilitarianism to establish an objective ethics which affirms the overriding value of liberty, and morally condemns all forms of statism.”

This is one reason why Rothbard defended property rights on moral or ethical grounds, directly addressing the demands of justice. He argued that:

…we cannot simply talk of defense of “property rights” or of “private property” per se. For if we do so, we are in grave danger of defending the “property right” of a criminal aggressor—in fact, we logically must do so. We may therefore only speak of just property or legitimate property or perhaps “natural property.” And this means that, in concrete cases, we must decide whether any single given act of violence is aggressive or defensive: e.g., whether it is a case of a criminal robbing a victim, or of a victim trying to repossess his property.

In other work, for example his “Just War” lecture where he defended the justice of the American Revolution and the War for Southern Independence, Rothbard shows that he takes very seriously the need to decide questions of justice in order to identify, in each case, which party is the aggressor. In striving to improve our material conditions it does not suffice to “let the chips fall where they may.” It is necessary to address questions of justice. Rothbard does not see justice as merely incidental to a defense of liberty, but rather as a moral and ethical concept that lies at the very heart of liberty. In the Ethics of Liberty, he argues that,

…first and foremost, liberty is a moral principle, grounded in the nature of man. In particular, it is a principle of justice, of the abolition of aggressive violence in the affairs of men. Hence, to be grounded and pursued adequately, the libertarian goal must be sought in the spirit of an overriding devotion to justice.… Justice, not the weak reed of mere utility, must be the motivating force if liberty is to be attained.

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

The post Understanding The Importance of Justice appeared first on LewRockwell.

In 1791, the first Secretary of the Treasury of the US, Alexander Hamilton, convinced then-new president George Washington to create a central bank for the country. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson opposed the idea, as he felt that it would lead to speculation, financial manipulation, and corruption. He was correct, and in 1811, its charter was not renewed by Congress.

Then, the US got itself into economic trouble over the War of 1812 and needed money. In 1816, a Second Bank of the United States was created. Andrew Jackson took the same view as Mister Jefferson before him and, in 1836, succeeded in getting the bank dissolved.

Then, in 1913, the leading bankers of the US succeeded in pushing through a third central bank, the Federal Reserve. At that time, critics echoed the sentiments of Messrs. Jefferson and Jackson, but their warnings were not heeded. For over 100 years, the US has been saddled by a central bank, which has been manifestly guilty of speculation, financial manipulation, and corruption, just as predicted by Mister Jefferson.

From its inception, one of the goals of the bank was to create inflation. And, here, it’s important to emphasise the term “goals.” Inflation was not an accidental by-product of the Fed—it was a goal.

Over the last century, the Fed has often stated that inflation is both normal and necessary. And yet, historically, it has often been the case that an individual could go through his entire lifetime without inflation, without detriment to his economic life.

Yet, whenever the American people suffer as a result of inflation, the Fed is quick to advise them that, without it, the country could not function correctly.

In order to illustrate this, the Fed has even come up with its own illustration “explaining” inflation. Here it is, for your edification:

If the reader is of an age that he can remember the inventions of Rube Goldberg, who designed absurdly complicated machinery that accomplished little or nothing, he might see the resemblance of a Rube Goldberg design in the above illustration.

And yet, the Fed’s illustration can be regarded as effective. After spending several minutes taking in the above complex relationships, an individual would be unlikely to ask, “What did they leave out of the illustration?”

Well, what’s missing is the Fed itself.

As stated above, back in 1913, one of the goals in the creation of the Fed was to have an entity that had the power to create currency, which would mean the power to create inflation.

It’s a given that all governments tax their people. Governments are, by their very nature, parasitical entities that produce nothing but live off the production of others. And, so, it can be expected that any government will increase taxes as much and as often as it can get away with it. The problem is that, at some point, those being taxed rebel, and the government is either overthrown or the tax must be diminished. This dynamic has existed for thousands of years.

However, inflation is a bit of a magic trick. Now, remember, a magician does no magic. What he does is create an illusion, often through the employment of a distraction, which fools the audience into failing to understand what he’s really doing.

And, for a central bank, inflation is the ideal magic trick. The public do not see inflation as a tax; the magician has presented it as a normal and even necessary condition of a healthy economy.

However, what inflation (which has traditionally been defined as the increase in the amount of currency in circulation) really accomplishes is to devalue the currency through oversupply. And, of course, anyone who keeps his wealth (however large or small) in currency units loses a portion of it with each devaluation.

In the 100-plus years since the creation of the Federal Reserve, the Fed has steadily inflated the US dollar. Over time, this has resulted in the dollar being devalued by over 97%.

The dollar is now virtually played out in value and is due for disposal. In order to continue to “tax” the American people through inflation, a reset is needed, with a new currency, which can then also be steadily devalued through inflation.

Once the above process is understood, it’s understandable if the individual feels that his government, along with the Fed, has been robbing him all his life. He’s right—it has.

And it’s done so without ever needing to point a gun to his head.

The magic trick has been an eminently successful one, and there’s no reason to assume that the average person will ever unmask and denounce the magician. However, the individual who understands the trick can choose to mitigate his losses. He can take measures to remove his wealth from any country that steadily imposes inflation upon him and store it in a country where this either does not occur, or occurs to a lesser degree.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post The Magic Trick appeared first on LewRockwell.

One of the most effective thought-terminating clichés is “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” It is particularly effective because it works on both people who are, let’s say, not extraordinarily intelligent, and on more intelligent people, people who you wouldn’t expect to fall for such simplistic tricks.

It is especially effective in hyper-polarized sociocultural environments, like the one we’re in currently, where people feel like they need to be on one or the other side of whatever.

If you’re unfamiliar with thought-terminating clichés, the term was popularized by Robert Jay Lifton in his seminal book about “thought reform,” i.e., brainwashing.

“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.” — Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a Study of Brainwashing in China

Thought-terminating clichés you might be familiar with include, but are not limited to, “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists,” “trust the science,” “trust the plan,” “it’s not perfect, but it’s better than the alternative,” “it’s just common sense,” “freedom isn’t free,” “that’s just the way it is,” and the list goes on.

Thought-terminating clichés are designed to do exactly what it sounds like they are designed to do … terminate thought, particularly critical thought. They are typically deployed against you when you are challenging some item of official propaganda, or dogma, or reprehensible action, associated with or perpetrated by whatever “party,” “side,” “team,” or “cult” people think you’re a member of, or are trying to get you to shut the fuck up about.

Let me give you a concrete example.

I assume you’ve heard the latest news out of Germany, where the Intelligence service has designated the Alternativ für Deutschland party a “confirmed right-wing extremist group.” This designation will enable the German authorities to ban the AfD, which is currently the most popular party in Germany.

Yes, these are same German authorities who have prosecuted me for a so-called “hate crime” for tweeting the cover art of one of my books, and who banned that book, and who had me censored, and damaged my income and reputation as an author, and who are similarly persecuting numerous other “Covid dissidents” and government critics.

Obviously, I’m not a big fan of these authorities.

So I’m expected to be a fan of the AfD, which was the only political party in Germany that opposed the so-called “Covid measures,” because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

The enemy of my enemy is exactly what my enemy (i.e., the German authorities) claim they are in this Guardian article.

“According to the BfV [i.e., Germany’s domestic Intelligence service], the AfD’s xenophobic stances based on an ‘ethnic-ancestry-based understanding’ of German identity are ‘incompatible with the free democratic basic order’ as indicated by the country’s constitution.

The spy agency added that the AfD ‘aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society, to subject them to unconstitutional unequal treatment and thus to assign them a legally devalued status’.

It also said: ‘This exclusionary understanding of the people is the starting point and ideological basis for ongoing agitation against certain individuals or groups of people, through which they are defamed and despised indiscriminately and irrational fears and rejection are stirred up.’”

The irony here is that the German authorities, in describing the aims of the AfD, are describing exactly the totalitarian behaviors that they themselves indulged in during 2020-2023. The only difference being that the “individuals or groups of people” who were “excluded from equal participation in society,” “subjected to unconstitutional treatment,” and “indiscriminately defamed and despised,” were “the Unvaccinated,” the “mask refusers,” the “Covid deniers,” and other “Covid dissidents.”

I have written two entire books of essays documenting the grossly unconstitutional and totalitarian policies of the German authorities, so I won’t go on and on about it here. The point is, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz’s description of the AfD, and their obliviousness to how it describes themselves, would be comical, were it not so psychotic.

And the other point is, just because the BfV and the other German authorities are a bunch of liars and fascists, that doesn’t mean that everything they say is a lie, and it doesn’t make me a fan of the AfD.

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Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that freeing the Israeli hostages in Gaza was not his top priority, suggesting instead that defeating Hamas should take precedence over a hostage deal.

“We have many objectives, many goals in this war,” Netanyahu said. “We want to bring back all of our hostages. That is a very important goal. In war, there is a supreme objective. And that supreme objective is victory over our enemies. And that is what we will achieve.”

Nothing the prime minister said here is true or valid — unless by “enemies” he means “all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip”.

Netanyahu has been fairly transparent about the fact that Israel’s ultimate goal in Gaza is neither freeing the hostages nor defeating Hamas, but seizing Palestinian territory and removing its Palestinian inhabitants. He has openly said that Israel will occupy Gaza via military force, completely ruling out the possibility of any form of Palestinian government for the enclave. He has openly said he wants to enact President Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, which explicitly entails removing “all” Palestinians and never allowing them to return.

So they’ve made this perfectly clear. This isn’t about Hamas, except insofar as an armed resistance group will make it difficult to forcibly remove all Palestinians from Gaza. And it certainly isn’t about hostages.

And yet, bizarrely, this is how the western political-media class continues to frame this onslaught. They call it Israel’s “war with Hamas”, when it’s nothing other than an undisguised ethnic cleansing operation. They prattle on about October 7, hostages, and terrorism, even though it has already been made abundantly clear that this has nothing to do with any of those things. They act as though the admission was simply never made.

There is absolutely no excuse for continuing to babble about hostages and Hamas after the US and Israel said the goal is the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza. They told you what this is really about. They said it. With their face holes. They said it right to you. End of debate.

Israel has been seeking ways to purge Gaza of Palestinians for generations. That’s all this has ever been about. Not October 7. Not hostages. Not Hamas. Not terrorism. Everything about Israel’s operations in Gaza have indicated that their real goal is to remove Palestinians from a Palestinian territory and not to free hostages or defeat Hamas. And then when Trump took office, they started openly admitting it.

How is this not the whole entire conversation every time Gaza comes up? How is this not the beginning, middle and end of every single discussion?

This is like a cop looking right into someone’s phone camera while strangling a black man to death and saying “I am killing this man because I am racist and I want to kill black people,” and then afterward everyone’s still saying “resisting arrest” and “we don’t know what happened before the video started recording”. He said what he was doing and what his motives were with his own mouth.

You don’t get to babble about Hamas, October 7 or hostages in defense of Israel’s actions in Gaza anymore. That is not a thing. If you want to defend Israel’s actions in Gaza, the sole topic of conversation is whether or not it’s okay to forcibly purge an entire population from their historic homeland by systematically bombing, shooting and starving them while destroying their civilian infrastructure, solely because of their ethnicity.

That is what the discussion is about. Not anything else. That and that only.

________________

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Amazon compiles reviews, presents product information, processes orders, facilitates and produces delivery, and facilitates and produces returns.

Amazon is the dominating first mover in web shopping. Thanks to Amazon’s favorable pricing, its overall product is hard to outcompete as either a physical retailer or a similar second mover.

Amazon’s practical, functioning solution provides highly-valuable intel, showing what similar, effective functionality to deliver using an open solution.

An open solution will provide added benefits to customers and to producers—including reviewers, manufacturers, and shippers.

Empowering Customers

Customers seek products that do things they value. Customers benefit from shopping information, good pricing, delivery by the time products are needed, and returns when needed.

Shopping information from all sources could be improved.

External product reviews are currently summarized by Amazon. In the future, these reviews could get rated for usefulness and linked to.

Customer reviews currently get centrally controlled by Amazon. In the future, these reviews could get aggregated from multiple sources, rated, and displayed.

Manufacturers’ product data currently gets entered by sellers and gets listed in comparison tables by Amazon. In the future this could continue. But also, product data could be tiled for side-by-side comparisons that also let sellers quickly inform customers about the features that make their products add more value or that make their products provide comparable value for lower prices.

Pricing is a total that currently gets stabilized somewhat by Amazon. In the future, pricing could be an emergent property that flows from instantaneously-bid prices for a product, packaging, and shipping.

Delivery currently gets offered as a few discrete options by Amazon. In the future, delivery could reflect customers’ needs, entered as constraints. If a customer is reordering but still has some inventory on hand, or if a customer for some other reason doesn’t plan to use a product until after some date, he could just enter a need date and let that constraint be met optimally by the manufacturer and shipper or shippers, working together. Pricing could vary depending on the applicable shippers’ capacity utilization and offering prices at the exact time when a customer orders.

Returns are currently shipped using a small number of producers. In the future, returns could be shipped using many more producers, and manufacturers could process returns themselves.

Decentralizing Production

Amazon’s solution coordinates substantial work done by various producers, including reviewers, manufacturers, and shippers.

A review can be an excerpt or a full review. It can be a product comparison, findings after initial use, or findings after substantial use. In each case, all of the review content that’s currently displayed on Amazon is produced by reviewers, but all of this displayed content currently gets subsumed into Amazon and owned by Amazon.

In the future, customer reviewers could retain ownership for a copyright period of, say, 3 years—long enough to provide property rights during the initial, most-valuable period, but short enough to disrupt progress much less than current copyrights do.

Most reviewers would likely still provide content for free. But reviewers who provide content that customers find particularly helpful could in exchange earn donated tips or royalties—which could be a nice thought, and which could even add up to a meaningful bonus. Educated shopping is a valuable skill. Incentivizing the most-skilled people to spend a little time writing or recording reviews that pass along their best insights could surface far-better information.

Manufacturers currently ship most of their products to Amazon warehouses. Amazon receives, stores, picks, packages, and delivers.

In the future, manufacturers could package their products themselves for shipping. They still could deliver retail packaging, or they still could provide frustration-free packaging that doesn’t need to be suitable to display for sale and that doesn’t need to limit shoplifting. Customers could opt-in for frustration-free packaging wherever it’s available. Manufacturers could then migrate to frustration-free packaging that’s already also suitable to get directly shipped as-is.

Shippers could be given complete flexibility to route products directly from the manufacturer to the customer. In time, shipping could get decentralized into pickup, intercity loading, intercity trucking, delivery loading, and delivery.

Programmers can build an open-source solution that transforms all of these component tasks to make each of them open to competition. Customers, reviewers, manufacturers, and competitive shippers each have strong interests in bringing this solution into being and helping it succeed.

Together, they can build a future open shopping system that cuts out even the current-best middlemen to deliver overall pricing and value that can’t be beat.

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While the sede of St. Peter remains officially vacante for the next couple of days at least, it’s a unique moment to reflect very frankly on the painful pontificate of Francis without fear of being labeled a sedevacantist. In a recent op-ed for OnePeterFive, Danielle Heckenkamp urged Catholics not to “focus on the confusion and the errors of the past twelve years” and to instead marvel that God’s grace has moved amidst this darkness, notably in the “acceptance of orthodox Catholic teaching [that] has exploded under the pontificate of Pope Francis.” Although she is certainly correct on the second point, I would argue that, on the contrary, it is essential for Catholics to make sense of what the Church has endured for the past decade to avoid falling into the trap of another umpteen years of “recognize and resist” Francis 2.0.

This week on May 7, about 130 cardinals will vote on a successor for Francis. Within days, perhaps, a new Pope will be elected. He will assume the role of earthly head of the Catholic Church, and Catholics will be required to submit to his authority, “to acknowledge [him] as Father, Pastor, and Universal Teacher, and be united with him in mind and heart.” No amount of hype on social media about Cardinal Robert Sarah is going to change the outcome. Indeed, if the attention Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin is currently receiving in the corporate press is any guide at all, the next successor of St. Peter is less likely to be an orthodox prelate from Guinea, and more likely to be the individual who, with Pope Francis, allowed disgraced former cardinal, the late Theodore McCarrick, to help hash out the infamous Vatican-China accord.

The stakes shouldn’t be this high. There is a temptation to treat the conclave as something in between a presidential campaign and a horse race, with favorites and front runners and underdogs. Catholics should shun discourse that categorizes candidates as “moderates” or “conservatives” or “liberals.” Such labels are an illusion: one is either Catholic, or one is not. One either embraces orthodoxy, or lapses into heterodoxy. One is either faithful to Catholic dogma, or is instead seduced by heresy. One either steadfastly perseveres in the faith, or apostatizes.

Unlike a change in a political administration, the election of a new pope does not – or at least, should not – herald a change in Catholic dogma. The Pope receives and safeguards the precious deposit of faith; he may need to articulate or clarify it, but he doesn’t get to overhaul, revamp, or modernize it. Hence in the normal course of events, Catholics would be approaching the next pontificate with a “business as usual” mentality: same teachings, different pope.

And yet who can honestly say that they feel that way? After Francis’ pontificate, there is understandably a desperate yearning for correction and cleansing. Anyone who follows my writing knows I’ve had plenty to say about Pope Francis over the past several years. None of it has been positive. I criticized what became over the years his trademark equivocation on human sexuality and marriage. I lamented his malicious targeting of the Tridentine Liturgy and the supercilious spurning of Traditional Catholics who prefer the orthodoxy, reverence, and rightly-ordered worship of the ancient rite, to the lukewarm preaching and liturgical calamities and abuses of the Novus Ordo. I denounced his hobnobbing with the who’s-who of pro-abortionists, globalists, depopulation junkies, transgender surgery advocates, and climate change alarmists. I mourned his treatment of honorable bishops like Joseph Strickland – and yes, I’ll go around that buoy once again – for reasons that never saw the light of day.

I reported on how serial sex abuser McCarrick had scandalously been allowed to act as unofficial wheeler and dealer for the Vatican in working out the elusive terms of the China-Vatican agreement. I amplified the eerie warnings of George Neumayr, late editor of the American Spectator, who was concerned that McCarrick, even after his fall from grace, was continuing to pull strings behind the scenes via “Teddy’s Nephews”, even to the point of influencing the next conclave.

Most of all, I rejected Francis’ embrace of religious indifferentism, and his scandalous undermining of the kingship of Christ, as expressed in the 2019 Abu Dhabi document on human fraternity, his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, and more recently in comments made during an interreligious meeting with young people in Singapore.

Yet despite my outspoken censuring of Pope Francis, I’ve struggled in private to make sense of the whole Francis dilemma. I couldn’t rationalize it for my husband when he was preparing to convert. I am at a loss to explain Francis to my Protestant friends and colleagues. I avoid the topic entirely with my children for fear of casting aspersions on the throne of Peter and undermining the papacy.

Indeed, that’s precisely what the incessant rebuking and reprimanding – mine included – have done to the papacy. Catholics who spent the twelve-year pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio paradoxically recognizing and resisting his authority, have unwittingly perpetuated an absurdity of epic proportions: How can a Catholic unquestioningly and obediently follow the Vicar of Rome, and yet disregard pretty well every word that emanates from the Pontiff’s mouth?

Catholic writers learned, of course, how to dress up the language in as charitable a manner as possible: Francis’ “un-Catholic teaching;” his “deviation from Catholic doctrine;” the Pope’s “departure from core dogma.” I know these euphemisms well because I’ve availed myself of all of them.

Yet the point of the flowery language is to mask the malodor of papal heresy. Now we come to the material point, which was succinctly encapsulated in a syllogism formulated in a recent objection to Dr. John Lamont’s essay on the consequences of Francis’ theology:

No true pope is a notorious heretic.
But Francis is a notorious heretic.
Therefore, Francis is not the true pope.

I applaud the use of formal logic to attempt to reason through the Francis fiasco, but it was a shame that neither the article nor Dr. Lamont’s subsequent response adequately analyzed the syllogism in question. Instead, the anonymous author, in a futile effort to counter the Lamont argument, proffered a range of competing syllogisms, whose validity in all but one case was questionable. For the Lamont argument to be proven unsound, it must be shown to be invalid and/or untrue in itself. Now, according to the rules of formal logic, this syllogism certainly is valid, so the only way to reject the argument as unsound is for one or both of the premises to be proven false. If this cannot be done, then the conclusion must be true as it necessarily follows from the premises.

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Many who have written on the needed characteristics of the next pope have said such things as “The next pope needs to call the bishops to proclaim the faith boldly; to restore respect for the sacraments; to unify the polarized elements of the Church.” Few pundits note that purging the Church of the Lavender Mafia, of the homosexual priests and bishops who run the Church, is arguably the most important and the most difficult of all tasks a new pope will face.

Pope Benedict failed to do the cleanup because he was old, frail, and sick—but even more so because the resistance to his efforts was so strong. Pope Francis, through appointments and his protection of bishops accused of sexual abuse and cover-up of abuse, has only strengthened the Lavendar Mafia. See the recent article by Damian Thompson on Francis’ favorable treatment of predators.

Undoubtedly, many Catholics are still oblivious to the dominance of the Lavender Mafia in the Church. The sex abuse crisis has opened the eyes of many, since bishops have been so lax in dealing with sexual abuse. Their weak response shows us that they are not healthy heterosexuals; for if they were, they would be enraged about the abuse in the Church and society and would not have let hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children to have “gone missing.”

I have written about this problem before. In short, after Vatican II there was a huge exodus of heterosexual priests and seminarians for a variety of reasons (some claim as many as 20,000); the priesthood was becoming more of a social-work profession and that didn’t require ordination. Also, many believed the Church was going to permit married priests. Ironically, this led many heterosexual men to leave the priesthood or seminary and get married; they believed that once the requirement of celibacy was lifted, they could return. The homosexuals remained and expanded their ranks by promoting each other, recruiting homosexuals, and rejecting heterosexuals.

Let me pause and say that, undoubtedly, there are and have been priests and bishops who are tempted to homosexual acts who have remained chaste and served the Church well. I suspect they are not simply good men but truly holy men; to resist the temptations that the devil and his minions within the Church must have presented them requires supernatural virtues. I admire them beyond words. They are not the Lavender Mafia. And it goes without saying that many priests and bishops are not homosexual.

There is quite a lot of evidence to support the presence of a homosexual underground in the seminaries and priesthood: indispensable is the book by Fr. Donald Cozzens: The Changing Face of the Priesthood (2000), wherein he prophetically maintained that the priesthood was becoming a gay profession. Richard Sipe worked on the topic for years and wrote many books (listed on his website); he concluded that in the early-21st century, 30 percent of the U.S. bishops were active homosexuals. Frédéric Martel, in his sensationalist but nonetheless revealing In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy (2020), said that the Vatican was overrun by homosexuals. While it is too scurrilous for most, Tom Rastrelli’s Confessions of a Gay Priest: A Memoir of Sex, Love, Abuse, and Scandal in the Catholic Seminary (2020) provides a graphic description of his journey through seminary.

In 2019, Pope Benedict, speaking of the ’60s and ’70s, famously said, “In various seminaries homosexual cliques were established, which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in the seminaries.” Pope Francis, largely considered sympathetic to LGBTQ+ issues, shocked the Italian Episcopal Conference by saying, “there is too much ‘frociaggine’ [faggotry] in seminaries.” (Pope Francis later apologized for his use of the term.)

Thus, there is every reason to believe that at least in first-world countries the percentage of homosexual bishops is high. Just consider the fact that Cardinal Sebastiano Baggio, a certified Mason, was in charge of appointing bishops worldwide from 1973-1984. His legacy is impressive.

It is impossible to estimate how many of the cardinals participating in the conclave have either been accused of being active homosexuals or of covering up for homosexuals. SNAP (The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) submitted to Cardinal Parolin a list of six of the papabile cardinals who have “either enabled or concealed sexual abuse committed by Catholic Clergy”: Péter Erdő from Hungary, Kevin Farrell from the United States, Victor Manuel Fernández from Argentina, Mario Grech from Malta, Robert Francis Prevost from the United States, and Luis Antonio Tagle from the Philippines. A rainbow cloud hangs over the heads of the cardinals from the United States, either for their own suspected homosexual activities or for cover-up of abusive homosexual priests.

The good news is that things are getting better—for instance, fewer homosexuals are entering seminary, in part because homosexuals no longer need to “hide.” One article reports that before 1980, only 59 percent of newly ordained priests claimed to be heterosexuals; after 2010, 89 percent do. Given those statistics, it is not surprising that only 34 percent of priests ordained before 1980 thought homosexuality to be always wrong; after 2020, 80 percent do.

But change in the episcopacy will not come soon or easily: the seminaries of the decades from the ’60s through the ’90s, and perhaps beyond, produced the bishops we have today; and they will do their best to reproduce themselves—today’s bishops appoint the next round of bishops.

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The foreign policy of the United States is in the hands of the least capable, most uninformed, and most reckless morons the American education system has yet produced, and their successors, if any, will be worse.

American aggression toward the world is hidden under a euphemism:  “national defense.”  In past years before  euphemisms took over from reality, the Secretary of Defense was known as the Secretary of War.

Washington conducted wars against Mexico. Against the Confederate States of America.  Against the native American Indians. Against Spain from whom Washington seized Cuba and the Philippines. Against varied Central and South American countries–remember US Marine Commander Smedley Butler, twice decorated with America’s highest honor, who said that he and his US Marines were the enforcement squad in Latin America for the United Fruit Company and the New York Banks who were exploiting Latin America to the hilt, backed up by the bayonets of the US Marine Corps.

The name of the War Department changed, but we went on to wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Caribbean, overthrowing various countries in central and South America.  Then in Africa where leaders and governments were overthrown.  Then in Yugoslavia.  Then in the Middle East where Washington eliminated Israel’s opponents for Israel. Then in South Ossetia against Russia.  Then in Ukraine again against Russia. And now the US has wars pending against Iran and China, while continuing the one against Russia by shifting the burden to Europe.

In no way is this “national defense.”  

We are witnessing the continuation of Washington’s policy of hegemony.  Washington negotiates with Russia, China, Iran, for one purpose only. To present them with “peace agreements” that they cannot possibly accept in order for Washington to say it tried for peace, but Russia, China, and Iran refused the peace offers.

The “peace offers” amount to the surrender of sovereignty of Russia, China, and Iran. They have to conform their policies to Washington’s instructions.  Iran has to dismantle its national defense and destroy its conventional missiles.  Iran can’t sell any oil to China or anyone else. Iran can’t enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Russia can’t have all of its conquests of the Russian territories in Ukraine.  Ukraine won’t be demilitarized. Russia will be punished with more sanctions if Putin doesn’t agree to a ceasefire before he knows what the deal is.  Ukraine can have de facto NATO membership with a mutual security clause with the West. China can’t continue succeeding economically more than America. Far from renouncing the Paul Wolfowitz Doctrine of American Hegemony, President Trump espouses it.

America is not as strong as Washington thinks it is.  Actually, America is very weak, as is every Western country, not merely militarily, but also emotionally, spiritually. Generations of denunciation of Western Civilization by Western universities have created populations unsure of who they are.  The damage universities have done to the belief system is extensive.  In America’s coming wars with China, Iran, and Russia, what are the American youths dying for except Israel and the profits of the armaments industries?

Why should Americans die for Ukraine and Israel and the profits of armaments industries?  No one asks or answers this question.

The relationship between men and women and between ethnic citizens and their tyrannical Western governments are severed perhaps beyond repair. The belief system throughout the Western World has been dismantled by decades of White Liberal and Jewish propaganda that the West, all of it, is racist, misogynist, homophobic, and anti-semitic and must make amends by accepting second class citizenship for oppressive white heterosexuals–the “Trump Deplorables,” an ethnic and gender class that in Jean Raspail’s novel, The Camp of the Saints,  is eliminated from the earth by its own loss of belief in itself.

How can an American believe in himself when he is endlessly told that he is the source of all evil, all oppression? The indoctrination of white kids against their race begins in early education with critical race theory and aversive racism. Can Washington’s war propagandists create larger monsters out of Putin, Xi, and Iran than Western Universities have created out of white people?

So, here is the situation:  On the one hand the neoconservatives and the America First Liberals tell Americans that they are ordained for rule.  On the other hand the Democrats and the left tell Americans that they are hopeless racists who have to be displaced.

The Trump regime is creating a war scenario that America cannot win. Let’s just consider one of the many possible developments.  Washington withdraws from the war in Ukraine, leaving it to Europe, but before Washington can engage China, Netanyahu sics his American puppet on Iran.  Iran, unlike Putin, decides to fight. There go the American aircraft carriers in the region. There go the American bases in the Middle East. Iran’s Russian supplied air defense systems eliminates a large percentage of the American Air Force. America is handed a resounding military defeat.  Out come the nuclear weapons.

Putin’s inability to make decisions is aiding and abetting Washington’s self destruction. Putin says that Russia stands alone against the West which is attempting to finish off Russia by breaking the Federation into a number of smaller countries, as Washington did to the Soviet Union, creating Ukraine for the first time in its history as an independent state, one now only 30 years old, a Washington creation.

Does Putin understand that the peace negotiations are a fraud intentionally designed to fail?  What is actually going on is that America’s intended wars with Russia and China are being sequenced, because the US lacks the strength to take on all its chosen opponents simultaneously. 

Washington’s war against Russia in Ukraine is being turned over to Europe under the pretense of a US/EU split.  As neither Zelensky nor Putin can accept Trump’s terms, Trump can extract America from the conflict by walking away, leaving the continuation of the conflict to the  EU. The American establishment will continue to make money from this conflict by selling the weapons to the Europeans and make more money by ramping up war with China.  

The conditions Trump requires of Iran are so unrealistic as to indicate a total lack of seriousness. They amount to stripping Iran of all possibility of existence as a sovereignty nation. Trumps’ announcement of US sanctions on every country that buys oil from Iran is mindless.  Washington is trying to cut China off from oil like FDR did Japan, thus leading to the war that FDR wanted.  Trump has either made a deal with the American establishment or his government has.

Look at the picture with a clear eye.  

What and how is Russia endangering the West that justifies war to suppress the threat?  Russia has threatened no Western country and has done nothing but to plead for a mutual security agreement with the West, which the West has refused.

What actions have Iran taken against the West?  None.  Iran is in the crosshairs  because Iran supports Israel’s last remaining enemies, the small group of Houthis in small Yemen and the decapitated Hezbollah militia in small Lebanon.  Washington eliminated for Israel at the cost of American lives and money Israel’s enemies in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.  The Arab world is no more. America wiped it out for Israel.

As Norman Podhoretz made clear in the Jewish journal Commentary, the purpose of America’s 21st century’s wars in the Middle East is to overthrow Arab states in the way of Greater Israel.  And Washington complied.  Today the only remaining Arab state is Saudi Arabia, and not long ago an Israeli minister added half of Saudi Arabia to the map of Greater Israel. Israel now occupies part of Syria and says it is there to stay.  This week Israel announced that the total conquest of Palestine was under way.

The first quarter of the 21st Century has been Israel’s.  Israel’s American puppet has destroyed for Israel, at the expense of American lives and money, Israel’s Arab enemies.  Now Netanyahu is going to sic his dumbshit puppets in Washington on Iran.

The post Will America Survive? appeared first on LewRockwell.

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President Donald Trump has failed to bring peace to Ukraine as he believed he could. He has discovered a situation far more complex than he expected. Refusing to take sides, he has found himself plunged into a century-old conflict between two feuding brothers—a conflict that his predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, fueled and instrumentalized. He must therefore enlighten his fellow citizens before he can resolve the situation.

After examining President Donald Trump’s negotiations with Iran  [ 1 ] , we now examine his negotiations with Ukraine. Unfortunately, we do not have the documents of the Ukrainian “integral nationalists” as we do those of the Israeli “revisionist Zionists.” This is because today’s Ukraine is truly a military dictatorship, while in Israel, the army is still the guarantor of what remains of democracy in the face of Benjamin Netanyahu’s “revisionist Zionists.”

The Ukraine issue is very different from the Iranian issue in that the United States does not share the same myths with that country as it does with Israel. In the Middle East, President Donald Trump is trying to negotiate a just and lasting peace while preserving Israel’s interests (and not those of the “revisionist Zionists” who favor Greater Israel). In Ukraine, he refuses to take sides and maintains a position of strict neutrality, while his predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, made a secret deal with the “integral nationalists” against Russia. Here too, he must uncover the reality, but this time, he must make his own administration aware of it before he can conclude anything.

Donald Trump’s clarification

On February 3, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) accused NATO of preparing the release of three surprising pieces of information  [ 2 ]  :
• 1.5 billion euros intended for the purchase of munitions was embezzled by the Ukrainian presidency;
• 130,000 Ukrainian soldiers, killed in combat, continue to receive their salaries and appear on the electoral lists;
• the unelected President Zelensky transferred—and not sold—real estate to foreign companies and compensation was discreetly paid to him into foreign accounts.

In response, on February 7, the unelected President Volodymyr Zelensky gave an interview to Reuters  [ 3 ] . He stated that his country possessed a quantity of “rare earths” and proposed to exploit them with the Allies.
Contrary to their name, “rare earths” are not “rare” in the world, it is their refining that is. They are essential for new technologies, both civil and especially military.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent then went to Kiev to present a draft treaty for the transfer of Ukrainian subsoil as compensation for the US weapons delivered during the war. He received a cool reception from the unelected president, the weapons having been donated and not sold in the long term as had been initially envisaged (lend-lease).

We all watched with amazement as President Donald Trump and his Vice President J.D. Vance clashed with their unelected Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, on February 28, 2025, during his reception in the Oval Office of the White House.

The meeting ended without the signing of Scott Bessent’s planned agreement on the exploitation of “rare earths.” It should be noted that the unelected President Zelensky made several attempts to position his narrative, according to which Russia had invaded Ukraine in order to annex it; a narrative that had until then been supported by NATO. Meanwhile, his hosts accused him of conducting a “propaganda tour” and, faced with his denials, asked him to respect the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of his country.

As the United Kingdom and EU members (except Slovenia and Hungary) rallied around Volodymyr Zelensky, Washington suspended its military intelligence sharing with Kyiv on March 5. Suddenly plunged into darkness, Kyiv retreated while trying to slow its withdrawal. Within four days, it became clear that, without US military intelligence, neither the Ukrainian nor the allied armies could win. This shock deeply shook the latter, which then met several times to discuss what they needed to do to regain their effectiveness.

A period of uncertainty

After the serious incident at the White House, Ukraine tried to replace US support with that of the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada. However, they do not have resources comparable to those of Uncle Sam.

President Donald Trump played hot and cold by letting the Europeans at large discuss together what they could do on their own. At first, he defended the representativeness of President Volodymyr Zelensky in the face of Russia, which criticized him for not having organized elections and for occupying the Ukrainian presidency without right or title since the end of his term in May 2024. Consequently, Moscow argued that any peace agreement signed by an unelected leader could be considered null and void and called into question.
The Ukrainians pointed out to President Trump that their Constitution prevents the holding of elections during a period of martial law. But Donald Trump was informed by Steve Witkoff that Volodymyr Zelensky was renewing martial law for three months at a time to avoid holding elections  [ 4 ] . He then began to look for possible candidates to replace him and discovered that most of the soldiers who had died in combat were still on the electoral rolls. Elections are therefore impractical as they stand. Russia has proposed organizing them under the responsibility of the United Nations. The issue has not been resolved.

In an interview with Le Figaro , unelected President Volodymyr Zelensky said  [ 5 ]  : “The second motivation [that keeps me going] is hatred of the Russians who killed so many Ukrainian citizens. I know that in peacetime, it is not polite to use that word. But when you are at war, when you see soldiers entering your territory and killing innocent people, I promise you, you can feel that hatred.”
He has made similar statements many times, saying that he “hates Russians.” When asked if he meant to say that he hates Vladimir Putin, he replied, “No, all Russians!” In doing so, he is echoing the rhetoric of the “integral nationalists.” Their founder, Dmytro Dontsov, claimed that Ukrainians were born to destroy the culture and the people of Moscow; principle that he implemented with his Nazi allies at the head of the Reinhard Heydrich Institute.
Far from being a piece of propaganda, the Russian accusation of the Nazification of Ukraine is a reality.

President Trump had secretly sent his friend Steve Witkoff, also a special envoy for the Middle East, to discuss an initial prisoner exchange with Kirill Dmitriev in St. Petersburg in early April. During their discussion, Dmitriev presented himself as the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, but also as a Russo-Ukrainian interested in the Trump administration’s efforts. Having quickly concluded an initial exchange, he also arranged an unannounced meeting with President Vladimir Putin on April 11. Putin presented Witkoff with the Russian version of the conflict. Witkoff listened attentively and immediately verified the information. Back in Washington, he explained to President Trump the extent of the misunderstanding: Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden had indeed reached an agreement with neo-Nazis to take over Ukraine. The latter persecuted Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Russia did not invade the country to annex it, but implemented Security Council Resolution 2202 (the Minsk Agreements), for which it had guaranteed. Instead of helping, loyal to Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Germany and France, who had also guaranteed the implementation of Resolution 2202, had consciously accused Russia of invading Ukraine.
Donald Trump, who had long known Witkoff personally and trusted him, instantly understood the Democrats’ manipulation. Having observed Zelensky’s attitude against him during Russiagate and his involvement in the Biden-Harris election campaign, he quickly formed new convictions.

On April 14, President Donald Trump adopted the Witkoff version and lamented Zelensky’s initiation of the war, stating, “You don’t start a war against someone 20 times superior and then hope that people will give you missiles.” On April 17, he sent both sides a peace proposal, which Ukraine rejected and Russia accepted with reservations.

There remain four points of disagreement between the United States and Russia:

• Moscow continues to bomb military targets in civilian areas during negotiations. Since the Hague Conferences (1899 and 1907), it has been accepted that civilized nations will not place military installations among civilians; however, the Ukrainians use their own population as a “human shield.” Similarly, it is accepted that during negotiations, both sides are scrupulously careful to fight only military personnel, so Russia is also wrong.

• Washington only accepts the demilitarization of Ukraine if foreign forces can ensure security there. Moscow therefore proposes the deployment of UN peacekeepers, while the Allies demand that they deploy themselves. But, in view of previous episodes, Moscow believes that they will not ensure peace, but will continue the war.

• Moscow intends to conquer all the oblasts that voted to join the Russian Federation, while Washington considers that the few unoccupied areas of these oblasts must remain Ukrainian, with the final borders being those of the ceasefire.
For several years, Ukraine has organized an annual international demonstration to reaffirm its sovereignty over Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014. However, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Crimea had proclaimed its independence before Ukraine. Moscow continued for several years to pay civil servants and pensions there until President Boris Yeltsin abandoned this expensive territory and Crimea agreed to join Ukraine. In 2014, when “integral nationalists” overthrew the elected president, Crimea voted for independence a second time, then to join the Russian Federation. President Donald Trump considers this annexation legal for two reasons: first, it was a referendum in accordance with international law, and second, Ukraine did not obstruct it at the time.

• Kyiv wants the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, which is essential for cooling the nuclear power plant, handed over to it, something Moscow strongly opposes. This demand contradicts the previous point, since these two facilities are now controlled by Russia. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), at the beginning of the war, the Zaporizhzhia power plant housed an incredible stockpile of plutonium and enriched uranium, accumulated in violation of international treaties. Russia, considering the plant a priority target, seized it at the beginning of its special military operation. It managed to recover the fissile material and transfer some of it to what was then Russian territory. Numerous battles took place at the time, suggesting that not everything had been removed.

At Pope Francis’s funeral in Rome on April 26, Presidents Trump and Zelensky met again in St. Peter’s Basilica for a quarter of an hour. It seems they agreed to start anew, with the United States and Ukraine putting everything that came before aside. They would no longer talk about war, but about a month-long truce, and would engage together in reconstruction. Of course, this reconciliation wouldn’t resolve much, but it would allow them to consider the future from a new perspective.

Scalded by the failure to comply with Resolution 2202 as much as by the recent Easter truce, Russia immediately declared itself opposed to a prolonged truce. Instead, it unilaterally announced a cessation of hostilities on the anniversary of the victory over Nazism, on May 9; an affront to the Ukrainian “integral nationalists,” allies of the Nazis, which they quickly rejected.

The creation of the United States-Ukraine Reinvestment Fund

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko signed an agreement in Washington on April 30 creating a “U.S.-Ukraine Reinvestment Fund.” Contrary to news agency reports (and what we have reported, see VAI 3394), this is not a simple restatement of the U.S. proposal for rare earth mining, but a radically new system.

The study of the text, now available, shows that the United States is waiving reimbursement for the weapons it delivered to Ukraine, while Ukraine is waiving security guarantees  [ 6 ] . Washington is proposing to the Ukrainians to manage with them both the continuation of the war and the reconstruction of the country. Kiev will only have new money in proportion to the profits that Ukrainian-American companies make in Kiev, half of which will be managed by the Joint Fund. Kiev will be able to either spend this income on buying weapons and losing them in combat, or on rebuilding its country.

Ukraine will retain “full control over its subsoil, infrastructure, and natural resources,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said. The creation of the fund will also not harm Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.

Addressing the nation on May 1, unelected President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “We have spoken with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, about our readiness to conclude the agreement – ​​we discussed it at our meeting in the Vatican. In fact, this is the first tangible result of this Vatican meeting, which makes it truly historic. ”  [ 7 ]

The Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament) is expected to ratify the agreement between May 13 and 15.

The US Treasury Secretary said: “The United States is committed to helping facilitate an end to this cruel and senseless war. This agreement sends a clear message to Russia that the Trump Administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine for the long term. President Trump envisioned this partnership between the American and Ukrainian people to demonstrate the commitment of both parties to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine. And to be clear, no state or individual that financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine. ”  [ 8 ]

According to Reuters, given political uncertainties and the time it takes to build mines and factories, the United States and Ukraine could wait a decade or more to reap revenues from a minerals deal  [ 9 ] .

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Vice President JD Vance said he has given himself 100 days from the signing of the agreement to reach peace between Ukraine and Russia.

—

[ 1 ]  “  The stakes of Donald Trump’s negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , April 29, 2025.

[ 2 ] ​  ​Зеленского  ”, Пресс-бюро СВР России, 3 February 2025.

[ 3 ]  “  Quotes from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s interview with Reuters  ,” Reuters , February 7, 2025.

[ 4 ] ​  ​продовження строку дії воєнного стану в Україні”  “, ерховна Рада Ukrainny.

[ 5 ]  “  Volodymyr Zelensky: “Stopping the war means stopping Putin”  ”, Isabelle Lassere, Le Figaro , March 27, 2025.

[ 6 ]  “ United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund ”, Voltaire Network , April 30, 2025.

[ 7 ] ​  ​історичною – звернення Президента  “, Президент України, 1 травня 2025 rock

[ 8 ]  “  Treasury Announces Agreement to Establish United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund  ”, US Department of the Tresuary , April 30, 2025.

[ 9 ]  “  US, Ukraine may wait decade or more to see revenue from minerals deal  ”, Eric Onstad & Pavel Polityuk, Reuters, May 1, 2025.

The post The Stakes of Donald Trump’s Negotiations With Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

For decades, Argentina’s currency has failed remarkably in its future purchasing power compared to other currencies. This includes recurring devaluations, hyperinflations and periods of systematic rejection by Argentinians, who prefer the dollar to save and calculate. So much so that when Javier Milei became their president in December 2023, he found a currency—the peso—kept alive by legal tender laws and anti-dollar regulations. There was basically only exchange demand for pesos, but no or very little demand for pesos to maintain purchasing power.

In September 2024, economists Philipp Bagus and Bernardo Ferrero (B&F) defended Milei from criticism and argued as follows:

What Grau ignores is that price inflation was tamed as a result of two, interlocking phenomena: the slow but steady decrease in the avenues of monetary emission and the increase in the quality of the monetary regime.

Here, Milei’s defenders will be put to the test.

Quantity of Money

B&F discussed the monetary base expansion in Alberto Fernández’s four years (Milei’s predecessor), and highlighted the expansion of his last year. However, Milei had already surpassed Fernández’s expansion by September 2024. The official monetary base (M0) had increased 133.1%, and looking back at Milei’s first year, the increase was 209.1%, which is much more than Fernández’s last year (84.8%). Therefore, beyond ceasing Treasury financing, there was no “steady decrease.”

Nevertheless, according to B&F, by achieving fiscal surplus and declaring the elimination of deficits non-negotiable, Milei established a “firm” monetary anchor. And although inflationary expectations were significantly reduced, this anchor is linked only to ceasing the monetization of deficits via peso printing. And yet, they also argued that the austerity measures anchored the future money supply and swiftly boosted money demand.

True, ceasing Treasury financing with new pesos eliminated one of the means for the new money to quickly enter the market through government spending and thus affect prices. And the overall spending reduction helped in this regard as well. But leaving aside the fact that price inflation figures are elaborated from an arbitrary selection of items chosen by a government agency, B&F did not take into account several crucial factors that explain how price inflation could slow down while money printing and money demand increased at the same time:

a) With the initial 54% devaluation and the removal of transport and energy subsidies and various price controls, money demand (peso demand) was bound to increase due to legal tender laws and the need to cope with the rising cost of living. The number of people selling their saved dollars for pesos to make ends meet increased dramatically.

b) Besides tax payments in pesos, exchange and capital controls—which hinder dollar demand—favored peso demand even further, because people continued to demand money anyway.

c) The inflow of new dollars into the banking system with the amnesty program helped the central bank (BCRA) to cope with dollar demand in the exchange market. For half of these deposits go to the BCRA, thus helping to control the dollar price.

d) The new pesos going to commercial banks, such as those coming from the BCRA’s operations, would not always go right to the purchase of goods and services and quickly affect prices. But they undoubtedly helped credit expansion.

e) The argument that exchange controls could not be a significant causal factor because they already existed when Milei arrived is flawed. As private credit was virtually dead and financial strategies were unattractive before Milei, exchange controls became a significant factor for money demand once inflationary expectations went down, private credit revived and the role of fractional reserve banking returned to the stage. This, together with credit expansion, made investment opportunities in the peso interest rate and the official dollar price very favorable for certain groups, since they assumed that the exchange rate would remain stable and the peso interest rate would exceed the peso devaluation rate (set by the BCRA). Hence, a great demand for pesos for financial strategies eased by monetary policy followed, including an upturn in the government securities market, while the BCRA continued to meet dollar demand. This ensures that large amounts of pesos remain within the financial system for quite a while without entering the market for goods and services.

Quality of Money

B&F indicated that the quality of the monetary regime was improved by restructuring the BCRA’s balance sheet, with a larger part of the monetary base backed with dollar reserves. Yet, this hardly matters for most people’s demand for pesos, while it matters most to public creditors and financial investors, especially because the BCRA is the largest supplier of dollars and government securities are also issued in dollars. But to say that these and the other measures were responsible for reducing both price inflation and interest rates is to ignore the factors above, as well as the fact that the lower interest rates induced by central banking are first set to encourage credit expansion and thus money demand. And indeed, five of the six interest rate cuts until September 2024 took place in just two months between March and May.

Also, B&F echoed something that ended up being yet another myth for government propaganda, when they reported that the monetary base would not be allowed to grow anymore, thus further “improving” the quality of the monetary regime. Of course, this did not happen, and Milei himself recognized later that they had not been withdrawing all the pesos issued for the purchase of dollars.

On the other hand, digging into Bagus’ academic article on the quality of money, it is important how the quantity of money is expected to change—so ceasing Treasury financing increased the quality of the peso. However, if the institutional setting of a central bank is relevant, that of the BCRA had essentially not changed. Additionally, since the institutional setting of the currency determines the quality of money, the effects of specific measures on the currency and its use are also relevant. In Argentina, some measures improve the quality of the peso for certain individuals by offering them very special advantages from its use. Thus, the government can also drive different valuations over the quality of money among people. Accordingly, the less monetary regulations and arbitrariness there are, the more people will benefit from measures that increase the quality of money. And if a formally “independent” central bank improves the quality of the currency, this is neither the BCRA’s case, given that Milei himself has claimed to be directly involved in setting the initial devaluation.

Likewise, Bagus argues that the central bank’s statutes can limit to a certain extent the potential increase in the money supply, and that its mandates play a role in the way the quantity of money is expected to increase, thus affecting the quality of money. Yet, as things stood, especially before the reduction in exchange and capital controls implemented in April 2025, the BCRA’s mandates failed to ensure any limits or clear expectations for the potential increase in the money supply. The BCRA intervened in the exchange market, buying and selling dollars regularly. But since borrowing and surpluses are limited, it became impossible to stop printing new pesos entirely for dollar purchases—because of the need to balance the exchange market in accordance with the government’s commitments and exchange rate objectives. Meanwhile, the official exchange rates overvalued the peso, and importers and exporters were forced to exchange their money with the BCRA. And as the government wanted to balance dollar supply in the broad exchange market, exporters, for example, were forced to sell 20% of their dollars in the parallel market.

Bagus also notes that the ideology of the central bank’s president and its staff influences the quality of money. But with an economic team of people from previous administrations, including those responsible for the problems Milei inherited, how can one expect big improvements in monetary policy? In the past, Milei himself accused his current finance minister of irresponsibly spending US$15 billion of reserves and thus causing a disaster at the BCRA in 2017.

Furthermore, shortly before the elections, Milei advised not to put time deposits in pesos, and said that the peso could not be worth even excrement, since it was printed by politicians who, in Milei’s words, were not even good as fertilizers. In fact, many Argentinians expected a swift dollarization, and it is safe to say that Milei himself induced a currency run and a rise in the dollar price in the informal market close to his inauguration. So, if comments by politicians can immediately alter the quality of money, unless the quality of Argentina’s politicians has changed much by September 2024, something that even Milei’s own cabinet cannot prove, it is unwarranted that the quality of the monetary regime has improved greatly. Much less so when the man who became the president of the country contributed to worsening the quality of the peso before he won the election.

Public Debt and Central Banking

Central banking and public debt explain why Milei’s surpluses have not prevented the issuance of pesos and government securities. For one, a central bank’s open market operations are off-budget transactions that affect the money supply. For another, short of debt repudiation, the accumulated public debt does not disappear with a new government administration, and government securities do not require current deficits to continue. And on top of everything else, banking and political elites have incentives to continue both central banking and public debt.

But it is also true that surpluses are not necessarily better than deficits, since both total government spending and total government revenues must be considered while determining the impact of fiscal affairs on the economy. And the surpluses used for paying debts held by commercial banks will not lead to a credit contraction and the correction of misalignments caused by credit inflation, but to more credit inflation and misalignments.

Conclusion

Monetary inflation does not immediately determine price inflation, but it intrinsically leads to it, because prices will be higher than they would have been without the increase in the money supply. Indeed, price inflation never ceased under Milei, even though it went down. However, something more important than the impact of monetary inflation on price increases is the damage caused to the wealth generation process. For it triggers an exchange of nothing for something and distorts the structure of prices and production, thus diverting wealth from wealth generators to non-wealth generators. And while the increase in money demand partially offset the effects of monetary and credit inflation on price inflation, the new money—whether in fiduciary media or not—was not distributed equally among all, but went to certain people. Consequently, there were major net beneficiaries of Milei’s monetary policy at the expense of many more people.

While B&F devoted considerable space to discussing the problems caused by the government administrations that preceded Milei, the fact that a previous administration was responsible for implementing certain policies does not absolve Milei of the blame for maintaining them for so long. Otherwise, the past may become an eternal excuse to defend any administration or, worse, to be part of a propaganda effort in the intellectual cover-up of political power. Nonetheless, although it has improved recently, Milei’s monetary policy has been an example of a remarkable centrally planned monetary policy. Whether on exchange rate, money supply or public debt, the policies pursued so far have virtually nothing to do with the free and sound money postulates of the Austrian School of Economics—from which B&F’s ideological convictions and academic experience derive.

Therefore, one would have expected B&F to see through government propaganda and not make so many mistakes in assessing Milei’s monetary policy—especially in the case of a monetary specialist like Bagus. But both empirically and theoretically, B&F failed to provide a correct explanation of Argentina’s monetary affairs. And in light of Bagus’ own academic work, the improvement in the quality of the monetary regime was clearly less significant than argued by Milei’s defenders.

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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Was Lee Harvey Oswald really the lone gunman history says he was? Join Mark Groubert and Eric Hunley on America’s Untold Stories as they sit down with Greg R. Parker—acclaimed JFK historian and author of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War. Parker presents groundbreaking research showing Oswald as a manipulated asset, not a rogue assassin. From Oswald’s early ties to covert training operations in New Orleans to his connections with U.S. intelligence and the CIA during the height of Cold War tensions, this episode unpacks the shadowy framework surrounding one of history’s most controversial figures. We also explore the overlooked role of Ruth Paine’s sister, the flawed Warren Commission, and how Cold War paranoia shaped the perfect patsy. Prepare for explosive insights backed by archival documents, expert testimony, and years of Parker’s meticulous research.

Greg R. Parker is an Australian author and historian renowned for his meticulous research into the life of Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Born in Newcastle, New South Wales in 1958, Parker has spent over two decades uncovering new evidence and challenging official narratives surrounding the JFK case. He is best known for his multi-volume series Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War, which explores Oswald’s ties to intelligence operations and Cold War programs, arguing that Oswald was groomed as an intelligence asset rather than a lone gunman. Parker’s work has been cited by leading researchers and praised for its depth, originality, and rigor. He also founded the Reopen Kennedy Case (ROKC) forum, a hub for serious researchers, and organized Australia’s first JFK assassination conference. His scholarship continues to reshape how historians and the public view one of the most controversial events in American history.

Check out Greg’s book “Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War: Why the Kennedy Assassination should be Reinvestigated – Volumes One & Two” (Affiliate Link) https://amzn.to/42YU8fW

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Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

 

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Louis Conte and Adam Garrie

 

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