Aggregatore di feed

War in Ukraine – The Mineral Deal Pulls Trump Back in

Lew Rockwell Institute - Lun, 05/05/2025 - 05:01

This week the U.S. and Ukraine signed a ‘mineral deal’. It will allow the U.S. to profit from all future explorations of minerals and hydrocarbons in the grounds controlled by the Kiev regime.

The deal grew out of a scheme the (former) President Zelenski had peddled within the framework of his ‘victory plan’ last year. He had hopped to entice further support in form of weapons and even direct military intervention against Russia in exchange for some access to rare earth minerals in Ukraine. With the current deal Trump took the second part without offering any guarantee for providing the first.

What the now signed deal really entails is still unknown. The text of the framework agreement was published (in Russian) by the Ukrainian government. There are however two additional agreements which define the all important details.

The Ukrainian government claims that only the first part has been signed. The other two will follow only after the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada, has ratified the main one. Several ‘western’ media have contradicted that claim. All three parts of the agreement were signed. But the Ukrainian government is keeping the details of the second and third part secret because the conditions imposed by them are extremely bad for Ukraine.

As Strana has summarized (machine translation):

The document published by the Ukrainian government and signed yesterday does not contain any specifics on the fundamental aspects of the fund’s activities.

In particular, the details of the fund’s management and the decision-making mechanism for disposing of funds received by the fund are not specified.
…
There is only a reference to the fact that the distribution of shares in the fund, its management principles and other specific issues will be regulated by an additional limited partnership agreement, which, according to the Ukrainian authorities, has yet to be signed (recall, the American media write that it has already been approved).
…
In the published text of the agreement, the goal of the fund (Partnership) is extremely vague: “to become a flagship mechanism for encouraging transparent, accountable and future-oriented investments in critical sectors of the Ukrainian economy in support of the country’s recovery strategy.”

At the same time, the text of the agreement contains clear commitments on contributions to the fund from Ukraine (50% of the cost of new mineral development licenses), but does not contain specific commitments on contributions from the United States. There is also no commitment from Washington to continue military assistance. It is only written that if there are still arms deliveries, they will be counted as an American contribution to the fund.

The agreement will without doubt be used by the U.S. to rob Ukraine of whatever valuables it has left.

At the same time it does not commit the U.S. to do anything.

With this capitulation Zelenski has fulfilled everything the Trump administration had demanded from him for a ceasefire. The U.S. has, however, no means to press Russia into a ceasefire. President Putin and other Russian officials have made it clear that they have no interest in just stopping the fighting but want a long lasting peace agreement.

The Trump administration has neither the will nor the capabilities to negotiate and enter into long term peace agreement with Russia.

That is why it is now, on one side, washing its hands over the whole issue:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated Thursday that a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is still on the horizon but noted the eastern European nations are still very much at odds with “no military solution.”

“I think we know where Ukraine is, and we know where Russia is right now and where [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is. They’re still far apart,” he told Fox News’s Sean Hannity. “They’re closer, but they’re still far apart.”

Rubio essentially says: ‘We got what we wanted. Now lets get out of here’:

“There does come a point where the president has to decide how much more time at the highest levels of our government do you dedicate it, when maybe one of the two sides or both aren’t really close enough, when we have got so many, I would argue, even more important issues going on around the world, not that a war in Ukraine is not important,” the secretary of State said Thursday.

Vice President Vance confirmed that take:

U.S. Vice President JD Vance said Thursday evening that the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine is far from over and that it’s now up to Russia and Ukraine to end the fighting with Washington mulling a step back from peace talks.

“It’s going to be up to them [Russia and Ukraine] to come to an agreement and stop this brutal, brutal conflict,” Vance said during an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier.

“It’s not going anywhere, Bret. It’s not going to end anytime soon,” he added.

Now, as the mineral deal is signed, the U.S. says it has no more responsibility for what happens in Ukraine.

But the mineral deal is also, on the other side, a trap to keep the U.S. committed to the war. As Yves Smith explains:

[O]ur prediction that this deal would be a spoiler as far as normalization of US-Russia relations look every bit as operative as we predicted from the get-go.

We had warned from the outset that the so-called Ukraine “raw earths” deal conflicted with the US agreeing to a settlement of the Ukraine conflict by creating an economic incentive for the US to support Ukraine in retaining as much territory as possible.
… To put it another way, the minerals pact was certain to be a source of conflict with Russia were it ever to get done. The fact that the Administration pursued the deal so aggressively said it valued a splashy but low to no value win over normalizing relations with Russia.

The U.S. may already be back to be fully committed to the war. As soon as the mineral deal was signed the State Department gave notice to Congress about a $50+ million weapon sale to Ukraine.

During the night from Thursday to Friday a large scale drone attack from Ukraine took place in Crimea. Last night another, ever larger attack took place. During the attack Ukraine used Storm Shadow cruise missiles which need U.S. intelligence based coordinates to reach their targets (machine translation):

For the first time since January, Russia announced a strike by British Storm Shadow missiles.

This is reported by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

The ministry announced the downing of eight such missiles over the Black Sea.
…
The last time the Russian Federation officially reported on the Storm Shadow strike was almost three months ago-on January 15.

Also in Russia, a mass drone raid was reported on the Crimea (96 were shot down) and the Krasnodar Territory (47 UAVs were shot down). In addition, it is stated that 14 Ukrainian unmanned boats were destroyed in the Black Sea.

Recall that on the night of May 2 , the Crimea was also under a massive drone attack . Explosions were, in particular, in the areas of military airfields.

Without U.S. (and British) intelligence support the recent attacks by Ukraine would not have been possible.

This points to not yet public Trump decision to continue the war even though the U.S. has no chance to win.

Michael Brenner explains how Trump’s ‘malignant narcissism’ has led to this outcome.

When Russia will launch its big Summer offensive after Victory Day on May 9, it will become very obvious that making peace with Russia would have been the more difficult but also more promising way to proceed.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post War in Ukraine – The Mineral Deal Pulls Trump Back in appeared first on LewRockwell.

A Lamb and a Shepherd Among Wolves

Lew Rockwell Institute - Lun, 05/05/2025 - 05:01

In the previous essay in this series, we honored Blessed Otto Neururer, the first priest to be executed by the Nazis. We also acknowledged those better-known victims of the Third Reich’s anti-Christian pogrom, St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein). It is also fitting, however, that we should commemorate some other largely-unknown victims of Hitler’s National Socialist regime.

On August 9, 1943, on the first anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross at Auschwitz, a devout Austrian Catholic, Franz Jägerstätter, was guillotined at Brandenburg-Görden Prison in Germany. The “crime” for which he was executed was being a conscientious objector who refused to be enlisted in the Wehrmacht, the army of the Third Reich. His martyrdom was the culmination of five years of passive resistance to the Nazis.

In March 1938, after German troops occupied Austria, Jägerstätter was the only person in his village to vote against the annexation of Austria (the Anschluss) in the following month’s referendum to ratify de jure what the Nazis had already accomplished de facto with their military occupation of the country. “I believe there could scarcely be a sadder hour for the true Christian faith in our country,” he wrote.

Jägerstätter attended Mass daily and served as the sacristan at the local parish church. On December 8, 1940, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, he became a Third Order Franciscan. In February 1943, he was conscripted into the army of the Third Reich. Firm in his resolution to refuse to serve the Nazi cause, he declared his conscientious objection and was immediately arrested, interrogated repeatedly, and imprisoned. From Tegel Prison in Berlin, he wrote:

Is it not more Christian to offer oneself as a victim right away rather than first have to murder others who certainly have a right to live and want to live—just to prolong one’s own life a little while?

The crime for which Jägerstätter stood accused was Wehrkraftzersetzung (undermining military morale), for which he was sentenced to death. A few days later, he was visited in prison by his wife and his parish priest, both of whom tried to talk him into saving his life by serving in the army. As he and his wife had three daughters, the eldest of whom was only six years old, one can only imagine the temptation he must have felt to fight for a cause which he knew to be evil. In the end, his conscience prevailed over the pleadings of his wife and his parish priest. It would be better for his daughters to see their father as a martyr, he explained to his wife, than to see him as a Nazi collaborator.

As he prepared to die, Jägerstätter’s resolve was strengthened by the example of the Austrian priest, Franz Reinisch, who had been executed a year earlier for his refusal to take the Hitler oath required of all conscripts to the military. Minutes before his execution, Jägerstätter refused to sign a document which would have saved his life, determined to avoid any complicity with the Nazi regime.

Jägerstätter’s last recorded words before his death are those of a true Christian martyr: “I am completely bound in inner union with the Lord.”

As one who offered his life as a sacrificial lamb, in union with the Lamb Himself, Franz Jägerstätter was duly honored by the Church. In June 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued an apostolic exhortation declaring him a martyr. Four months later, Jägerstätter was beatified. In attendance at the beatification ceremony were sixty members of Jägerstätter’s family, including his widow and their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Their presence was a living testimony to the culture of life for which he had laid down his own life more than sixty years earlier.

Read the Whole Article

The post A Lamb and a Shepherd Among Wolves appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Bell Tolls for All White Gentile Ethnicities

Lew Rockwell Institute - Lun, 05/05/2025 - 05:01

The Vice President and Secretary of State of the United States have called attention to the tyrannical behavior of the current German government, a corrupt anti-democratic government, controlled by Israel, that is holding on to power by designating its rival, AfD, the rapidly growing second largest party as “extremist.” Recent polls indicate that the AfD has pulled even and perhaps a bit ahead of the government that is trying to suppress it.

By applying the “extremist” label to its rival, the government gives itself the power to use its spy agencies to keep the AfD under surveillance. This permits the current corrupt government to know in advance the AfD’s electoral plans while demonizing the AfD as so extreme that it must remain under surveillance.

On what grounds is the AfD designated extremist? The German Domestic Security Service BfV explains: The AfD represents ethnic Germans. Representing “people based on ethnicity and descent” disregards the human dignity of immigrant-invaders and is “incompatible with the democratic basic order.” See this.

Here we have it stated clearly just as Jean Raspail put it in The Camp of the Saints. It is anti-democratic for a government to represent the citizens from whose ethnicity the name of the country is derived. Democracy requires representation of those who entered the country illegally or under false pretenses. All government enforcement measures are then directed against the ethnic citizens who are coerced to accept the invasion. As Jean Raspail showed, this is a formula for the extinction of white ethnicities. President Trump’s effort to restore power to ethnic Americans is being blocked by an anti-American judicial system that represents immigrant-invaders, not American citizens.

Hanne Herland of the Herland Report tells us accurately that this is the situation all over Western Europe, the UK and Ireland:

“In Europe, non-Western immigrants were given the victim card, and the current discrimination against the indigenous native Europeans by their own leaders began. Instead of listening to their needs, they demonized their views and attacked their own populations.

“Europeans were told to step aside and allow immigrants to behave however rudely they wanted, since they came from poor countries and ‘didn’t know any better.’ They were to be excused from law-breaking behavior such as violent rapes, murders or entering the country illegally.” In other words, the immigrant-invaders weren’t civilized sufficiently to know any better, and it is all the fault of racist white ethnicities. See this.

What representing immigrant-invaders means in the EU is the loose enforcement, if any enforcement at all, of criminal and rape laws against immigrant-invaders,

Holding immigrant-invaders accountable would be racism, like what the Germans did to Jews. In effect, what is happening all over Europe and in Britain is that immigrant-invaders are becoming overlords over the ethnicities that comprise the former nations, now towers of babel.

So, on top of their Israeli overlord, Europeans have immigrant-invaders as another overload.

What a joke that Europeans and British and Irish are “free people.” They are the most enslaved in history. Even their tongues have been cut out. They cannot speak.

The entire Western World is a dead man walking. Every person who rises to the defense of Western civilization is demonized, arrested, fired, dismissed from his university, framed in a false prosecution and imprisoned.

The Insouciant West was insouciant for too long, It has lost its life.

The post The Bell Tolls for All White Gentile Ethnicities appeared first on LewRockwell.

Germany’s Nazis Exclude Russians from May 8th Victory Day WW2 Celebration.

Lew Rockwell Institute - Lun, 05/05/2025 - 05:01

FDR’s lengthy fireside chat to the nation on 28 April 1942, said: “On the European front the most important development of the past year has been without question the crushing counteroffensive on the part of the great armies of Russia against the powerful German Army. These Russian forces have destroyed and are destroying more armed power of our enemies — troops, planes, tanks, and guns — than all the other United Nations put together.” (NOTE: He was already using the phrase “United Nations” with the objective in mind for all of the world’s nations to view themselves as having been saved by the U.N. that FDR was intending ultimately to replace all empires and to be the sole source of international laws.) Near the War’s end, on 19 September 1944, Churchill telegrammed to Stalin “that it is the Russian army that tore the guts out of the German military machine and is at the present moment holding by far the larger portion of the enemy on its front.” As the History Channel’s article “Operation Barbarossa” summed-up: “On 22 June 1941, German forces began their invasion of the Soviet Union, … the most powerful invasion force in history, … 80% of the German army … [plus] 30 divisions of Finnish and Romanian troops. [And nowadays yet again, Germany along with Romania and Finland are allied with what has been, ever since FDR died, America’s 80-year effort to conquer Russia.] … By the time Germany officially surrendered to the Allies on 8 May 1945, 80% of its casualties during WW2 had come on the Eastern Front [the Soviet Union].” Wikipedia’s “Operation Barbarossa” said “The failure of Operation Barbarossa reversed the fortunes of the Third Reich.”

Russia’s thanks nowadays for having saved America, UK, and Europe, from a Nazi victory, and saved the entire world from what would otherwise have been a Nazi victory if Russia had not won the crucial Battle of Kursk — the biggest military battle of all time — on 23 August 1943, has, by the explicit order of Germany’s present-day Government, been excluded from having any representative participating or even attending in Germany’s May 8th national celebration of Gemany’s defeat. The Governments of the United States and of the United Kingdom are not criticizing Germany for this nazistic abomination toward the country that had sacrificed more than any other and contributed the most to DEFEATING Hitler’s Nazis.

On April 4th, Germany’s Berliner Zeitung headlined (as translated into English) “Secret handout: Baerbock doesn’t want Russians at war commemoration: On the anniversary of the end of the war, the Foreign Office fears that Russians might attend the commemorative events.” Baerbock” is Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s Foreign Minister, who has repeatedly said that Germany is “at war with Russia,” supposedly because Russia might invade Germany next. She is like George W. Bush who actually did invade Iraq while claiming that Iraq otherwise might invade America or America’s allies — Bush was a neoconservative, and Baerbock is a German version, but both Bush and Baerbock are fascist-racist-supremacist-imperialists, or ideological nazis, like also Israel’s Netanyahu is. Unlike Hitler’s Nazi Party, which hated both Jews and “Slavs” (such as Russians and Belarussians, today’s fascist-racist-supremacist-imperialists hate ONLY Russians. Their article reported:

The hard line is justified by the “foreseeable” instrumentalization of the commemoration by official representatives of the Russian or Belarusian embassies. In its letter, the Foreign Ministry warns against “propaganda, disinformation, and revisionist historical distortion.” The Foreign Office writes: “At the same time, it is to be expected that Russia (together with Belarus) will instrumentalize the World War II commemoration and improperly link it to its war of aggression against Ukraine.” According to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, Moscow and Minsk would appropriate the upcoming commemorations in Seelow, Altlandsberg, or Treptower Park. In the internal document, the Foreign Office refers only in one sentence to the need to appropriately honor the victims from Russia and Belarus.

The Foreign Office informed the Berliner Zeitung that the newspaper’s questions were being “reviewed.” No responses had been received by the time this issue went to press. …

However, the Chargé d’Affaires of the Belarusian Embassy in Berlin, Andrei Shuplyak, confirmed an explicit disinvitation to the Berliner Zeitung. At the end of March this year, the Minsk mission in Germany, located in the immediate vicinity of the Soviet Memorial in Treptower Park, received a letter from the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation. According to the letter, the foundation’s director, Jens-Christian Wagner, made the decision that Belarusian representatives were not welcome at commemorative events in Thuringia in the coming weeks. The Belarusian Embassy had no knowledge of the information provided by the Foreign Office.

In Belarus, the exclusion has caused outrage. “We strongly condemn the refusal of the management of the German Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorial Foundation to allow Belarusian diplomats to participate in the commemorative events marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of these concentration camps,” reads an X-post from the Belarusian Foreign Ministry.

“There is no justification for the German foundation’s cynical actions against a country where one in three people died in the war and where there is not a single family unaffected by the war. Unfortunately, such actions by the foundation are in line with the policies of certain political forces in the West that seek to change history and justify German National Socialism,” the Minsk Foreign Ministry said. “This decision is a continuation of the policy of dividing people based on their nationality.”

During World War II, Belarus (then the Byelorussian SSR) suffered the highest percentage of all Soviet republics under German occupation. An estimated 2.2 to 2.5 million Soviet Belarusians were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators. Belarus lost more of its population in percentage terms than any other European state—approximately 25 to 30 percent.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, several Brandenburg district administrators are wondering why descendants of the Red Army, who liberated Germany from Nazi terror in 1945, are being punished. “On the one hand, we maintain hundreds of Soviet graves, but on the other hand, we are not allowed to invite the descendants of the dead,” one district administrator describes the grotesque situation. A mayor of a Brandenburg town, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the Berliner Zeitung that video conferences on the topic were held at the end of March. One of the key players is said to have been Michael Nowak, the current chargé d’affaires of the German Embassy in Minsk .

Last days of the war: Tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers died in Brandenburg

In the coming weeks, many places in Berlin and Brandenburg will commemorate the end of the Second World War 80 years ago. Decisive battles against Hitler’s Germany took place primarily outside Berlin’s gates. In an unprecedented sacrifice, tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers died on Brandenburg soil in the final weeks of the war alone – a fact often overlooked today. Among the Soviet victims were Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Georgians, Tatars, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and a multitude of other ethnic groups and peoples of the Soviet Union. …

Even if district administrators or mayors maintain personal contacts with Russian or Belarusian diplomats, official invitations to municipal commemorative events are taboo according to the Federal Foreign Office’s guidelines.

The expected incoming new German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has announced that under him, Germany’s economy will go onto a war-footing, so as to repel a Russian invasion.

——

https://sonar21.com/the-fuhrer-of-germany-friedrich-merz-in-a-war-and-spending-frenzy-how-much-is-1-7-trillion/

https://archive.is/BLzea

“The Führer of Germany – Friedrich Merz – in a war and spending frenzy – how much is 1.7 trillion?”

21 March 2025 by Peter Haenseler 101 Comments

After more than 80 years, Germany once again has a Führer who is in no way inferior to the old one in terms of mendacity and megalomania while spending sums that are unimaginable for most people. We do the math while our optimism withers.

This has never happened before: a man who has not even been elected chancellor yet negotiates the biggest borrowing in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany with parties that lost the election, in a Bundestag that has long since been dissolved.

If you had described Friedrich Merz’s current behavior to a German 10 years ago, you would have been declared insane and put in a clinic without raising a fuss.

Friedrich Merz, who refuses to form a coalition with the AFD because he accuses them of right-wing extremism [though he is the actual racist(against Russians)-fascist-supremacist-imperialist, and the AfD Party is anti-imperialist not fascist, not supremacist, and not racist though the liberals say it is because AfD wants to end the Merkel-imposed open door to the many migrants from the U.S.-generated wars in the Middle East] is preparing Germany for war against Russia. The AFD wants peace with Russia, Russia seeks peace, the Americans want peace [Haenseler buys into Trump’s untustworthy promises about that] and Merz opposes all those who seek peace.

This week the Handelsblatt reported that up to 1.7 trillion [euros] could be spent. This article will prove that this plan is madness, simply by putting this astronomical figure into perspective for regular people. …

Germany’s current debt at federal level

As at June 30, Germany’s federal debt amounted to 1.621 trillion – or 1,621 billion euros. This corresponds to a national debt to gross domestic product ratio of 62.4%.

1.7 trillion is a hundred times more than all DAX companies together earned in 2023.

Friedrich Merz will double this debt. This would lead to a debt ratio of 125% – which would put the country in the neighborhood of Greece (158%).

Additional interest burden

The additional interest burden for the 1.7 trillion euros will amount to 47.6 billion euros per year if the current interest rate of the 10-year German government bond of 2.8% is used for the calculation. …

No chance of ever repaying this debt

In 2024, Germany collected income taxes amounting to 181.95 billion euros at federal level. This means that for nearly 10 years, 100% of total income taxes would have to be spent on the repayment of 1,700 billion euros.

Conclusion

Without even mentioning that Friedrich Merz’s actions are more than legally questionable, it is already clear from the figure of 1.7 trillion euros that he has lost his mind. This debt bonanza will drive the former world export champion and the former jewel of industry to the wall financially.

For many years, the German political elite has been railing against Russia, the country to which it owed the cheap energy that allowed Germany to become the industrial jewel of the world in the first place. Russia forgave the Germans, who had 27 million Russians [that being the number of Russians that Hitler’s forces killed] on their conscience; the Russians have not forgotten these atrocities, but the Germans, or rather the German leadership, have, because what the German people think, choose or want is once again a thing of the past in Germania. Germany then turned imperiously against China, the current industrial jewel that, unlike the Germans, has not slept through the major trends. Last but not least, the German leadership is salivating against the US, the colonial master of the Germans, which has made a political U-turn and is now seeking peace with Russia. It is therefore by no means inappropriate to describe Friedrich Merz’s behavior as megalomania.

Ms. Baerbock, who made Germany a laughing stock on the international stage during her time as foreign minister, is cuddling up to the new Syrian government, which is made up of terrorists [run by Syria’s al-Qaeda — thanks to the forces of U.S., Turkey, and Israel]. For about two weeks now, civilians have been slaughtered in Syria, women and children have had their heads cut off, obviously a necessity on the road to democracy. Ms. Baerbock seems to agree with this [slaughter]. Incidentally, I do not recommend our readers to watch videos of these goings-on, thousands of which are posted on social media; they are nightmares that will deprive you of sleep. Ms. Baerbock is transferring 300 million euros to these very gentlemen. Ms. Baerbock, who will soon no longer have a job, seems to have special talents. She is to become the new President of the UN General Assembly. …

This article was originally published on Eric’s Substack.

The post Germany’s Nazis Exclude Russians from May 8th Victory Day WW2 Celebration. appeared first on LewRockwell.

At last, Trump Takes Aim at the Public Broadcasting Monopoly

Lew Rockwell Institute - Lun, 05/05/2025 - 05:01

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE On Thursday, while most Americans slept, a decisive blow was struck in a battle long overdue. President Donald Trump, with the swift stroke of his pen, aimed the lance of executive power at the heart of America’s taxpayer-funded media establishment.

While claiming NPR and PBS produce “biased and partisan news coverage,” Trump’s executive order that defunded them represented not merely a budget decision, but a declaration of independence from a half-century of liberal monopoly over the public airwaves—signals that belong to the American people.

Moreover, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was told to “cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and … decline to provide future funding” to NPR and PBS. The mere existence of CPB—a publicly funded non-profit—presents a conflict of interest.

Since Congress funds CPB to the tune of half a billion dollars per year, its status as a “private” corporation, while true, is a bit rich, particularly since its top function is as the primary funding mechanism for both NPR and PBS.

Transparent federal support, distinct from CPB, accounts for about 15% of the annual revenue on the PBS ledger. Similar subsidies constitute about 1% of NPR’s annual budget.

Yet, for decades, those warning about the concentration of power in the hands of media elites were roundly dismissed as alarmists. As the years passed, the media concentrated its power even more. A large subset of the American people continued their hunger for an authority figure to guide them, though it would never arrive in a personage.

We got a host of ringers instead. The architects and ambassadors of liberal orthodoxy found a cozy home in America’s mainstream media. As such, its outsized influence over public opinion has no historical analogue.

While Americans passively allow their own abuse at the hands of the media, they have never cottoned to such cruelty when it comes to government power. What gives?

Perhaps a change is on the horizon.

This week, President Trump did what Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes failed to do. He confronted head-on the entrenched power of public broadcasting, which, for far too long, used the people’s money against the people’s interests.

Thursday’s order struck at the heart of a system that now serves as a mouthpiece for the progressive elite as it unjustly claims the mantle of “objectivity.”

The real significance of this moment, however? It addressed a fundamental paradox in American politics: Conservative votes produce liberal victories.

As Middle America reliably voted for conservative leadership, the cultural and media elite made their long march through our institutions—unopposed—with public broadcasting serving as their taxpayer-funded vanguard.

In 1969, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew delivered his famous “Television News Coverage” speech in Des Moines, where he warned of the “tiny and closed fraternity of privileged men” who controlled the media narrative. The establishment reacted with predictable outrage.

Agnew said this “little group of men … not only enjoy a right of instant rebuttal to every Presidential address, but, more importantly, wield a free hand in selecting, presenting, and interpreting the great issues in our nation.”

Their faces may have changed, but the agenda remains the same. Having been aged in the same fetid barrel for five and a half decades post-Agnew, today’s media may have the appearance of a more recent vintage, but the bottled product provides identical tasting notes: grudge, vitriol, and bitterness.

It comes as no surprise, then, that after the president took direct aim at its power and influence, the media reacted with full-throated hysteria.

Look at the response. PBS President Paula Kerger called Trump’s order “overtly illegal.” NPR promised legal challenges, declaring it represents “an affront to the First Amendment.”

Such indignation reveals a central truth—these organizations believe access to public money is their entitlement, not a privilege subject to the will of the people through their elected representatives. The same media elites spent the last several years denigrating President Trump, questioning his legitimacy, and undermining his agenda at every turn.

Is it any wonder The Donald finally said, “Enough?”

The president’s message told CPB to “cease direct funding to NPR and PBS, consistent with my Administration’s policy to ensure that federal funding does not support biased and partisan news coverage.” Contra the caterwauling media, this was not an attack on free speech.

It is a defense of the taxpayer.

For generations, public broadcasting operated under the fiction of neutrality as it advanced positions antithetical to the values of everyday Americans. In the late-1960s, middle-class and blue-collar workers in suburban and rural areas of the North, Midwest, and West who had not previously taken an active part in politics began to be disaffected by the hegemony of the media. They showed it with their voting patterns and the Nixon administration noticed a new alliance forming, terming it the “Silent Majority.”

As voting patterns changed, traditional Republicans and the Silent Majority coalesced. This became known as the “New Majority.”

Eventually, “traditional” 20th century Republicans retreated into the arms of the progressives. That happened long ago. The latest defections came from those terminally afflicted by the contagion known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.

There is another piece to this puzzle, however: working-class Southerners. Neglected by the Republican establishment for a century and historically in the camp of the Democrats—well before the Republican Party’s first president waged war on their states—a solid bloc of Southerners has, over the course of the last several decades, found their home in the GOP.

One can’t be sure if it was fortune’s favor, his unique brand of political athleticism, or simply dumb luck, but Trump’s efforts to appeal to these blue-collar, working-class, and Southern voters worked. They became his new base, and they delivered.

Thrice.

Still, the media remains apoplectic, even swinging the Trump interregnum to an aged and feeble Joseph Biden, a man who ultimately proved in over his head when it came fulfilling duties as the nation’s chief executive. If one simply relied upon the media dispatches, however, the Biden administration routinely came out smelling like a rose.

Let us be clear about what public broadcasting is. While at times delivering valuable children’s programming and occasionally coming up with worthy cultural content, its offerings in the news and current affairs realm overwhelmingly reflect the worldview of the coastal elites who produce such regular balderdash.

Consider. How many conservatives sit behind the microphones at NPR? How many traditionalists produce programming for PBS?

The answer: Painfully few.

When conservatives appear on such outlets, they are typically presented as zoo specimens to study or gawk at, rather than as authentic voices deserving—at minimum—equal time. This isn’t journalism. It is ideological gatekeeping funded by the very people whose views are systematically excluded.

Americans are compelled, through taxation, to support a broadcasting system that holds in contempt their deeply held beliefs. Working-class citizens in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—key states in the former “blue wall” now at the heart of Trump’s New Majority—are forced to subsidize programming that regularly mocks their values, their faith, and their culture.

Reflect. Why are the principal adversaries to the social and political values, traditions, and customs of most Americans the selfsame people who now monopolize the communications sector?

Whatever the origin, it has been this way for decades. The people’s airwaves are used to advance an agenda at odds with the people themselves. PBS and NPR argue that they represent a tiny fraction of the federal budget. True, but irrelevant.

The issue is not the amount but the principle. Why should American taxpayers fund a media apparatus that holds their values in contempt? The American taxpayer foots the bill for a media edifice feigning impartiality while pushing propaganda.

As public broadcasting faces its long-awaited reckoning, we must not lose sight of the larger media landscape. The corporate media remains a powerful arbiter of our national conversation, but unlike NPR and PBS, they don’t directly tap the public treasury for their operations.

The alliance between corporate media and public broadcasting nevertheless forms a powerful echo chamber, with the prestige of PBS and the ubiquity of NPR lending legitimacy to the broader liberal media narrative. Breaking this alliance is essential to creating space for genuine diversity of thought in American media.

The CEO of NPR alleged Trump’s order “undermines the First Amendment rights of NPR and local stations across America.” One asks: Since when does the First Amendment guarantee government funding? Does free speech require taxpayer subsidy?

These questions answer themselves.

What Trump did this week was not radical. It was restorative.

If the president seeks to return control of public airwaves to the citizens—forsaking the unelected broadcasters who answer to no constituency beyond their own ideological peers—he is on the right track.

To wit, the task of political leaders is to redirect resources toward the constituents who brought them to power. Trump’s order represents this kind of redirection—away from elite institutions and toward the needs and interests of the forgotten Americans who elected him. Come the tweets from the MAGA crowd, “This is what I voted for.”

The president’s critics claim that by doing this, Trump attacked democracy. In truth, he now stands in defense of the institution, ensuring public resources are forbidden to advance partisan agendas under the guise of objectivity. The airwaves (and perhaps digital streaming packets), after all, do not belong to the media—corporate or “public” —they belong to the people.

This executive order, while significant, is merely one battle in a longer struggle. The CPB is already preparing legal challenges, and Democratic lawmakers will undoubtedly seek to restore funding at the first opportunity. The entrenched power of the media establishment will not surrender without a fight.

However, in the night skies high above the land of opportunity and behind closed doors on Air Force One, something changed. A president finally found the courage to say what millions of Americans have long believed—that public broadcasting, ages ago, betrayed its mandate when it turned into a mouthpiece for liberal orthodoxy instead of a true public forum.

The predictable cries of “censorship” from supporters of both NPR and PBS reveal a fundamental misunderstanding. No one is preventing these organizations from broadcasting whatever content they choose. The question is whether American taxpayers should be compelled to pay for it.

What we are witnessing is the long-delayed assertion of the New Majority’s cultural power. For too long, electoral victories by the right failed to translate into policy changes in our cultural institutions. In fact, they achieved the opposite effect.

Trump’s executive order represents a break with that pattern.

The battle over public broadcasting illustrates a larger truth about American politics: Winning elections is necessary but not sufficient.

Real change requires the courage to confront entrenched interests that have long operated beyond democratic accountability. It is perhaps ironic that President Trump is the first to demonstrate that pluck. For, in his prior career, he was one of them.

By taking on public broadcasting, Trump has not only challenged NPR and PBS, but the entire architecture of cultural power that defined American broadcast journalism for generations.

The American people deserve a media that reflects their values, not just those of a wicked cabal of the bi-coastal elites. Trump’s directive represented the public’s belated claim to the rightful ownership of their property.

If one believes in genuine diversity of thought and the idea that all Americans should see their values represented in the media they fund, then one must not accuse Trump of an attack on democracy. Rather, he affirmed the custom.

The “New Majority” —as forged by Nixon’s unique brand of populism and methodically built through pragmatism and cultural appeal into a coalition of once forgotten Americans—has found a renewed, if unexpected, champion in Donald Trump.

Though the president has reassembled, reconfigured, and reenergized this alliance, one must ask: Will the voice of today’s messenger also be silenced by his enemies in the media?

This article was originally published on The O’Leary Review.

The post At last, Trump Takes Aim at the Public Broadcasting Monopoly appeared first on LewRockwell.

Why Do We Get Sick?

Lew Rockwell Institute - Dom, 04/05/2025 - 20:48

Do we Catch diseases? OR do we Build Them Over Time?

How we answer these questions determines Which Path we choose to go through.

If we believe in viruses as contagious, disease-causing entities they become for us an existential threat.

This path of following virology’s pseudoscience is now used to control populations in every possible way by keeping us in a constant state of fear.

If, on the other hand, we look just a little bit further and see beyond the catching-a-virus-model, we need to ask: Well, then, Why Do We Get Sick?

In this short 7 minute video Dr Sam Bailey examines 40 different reasons why we may be getting sick – many of which you may not have considered.

If we choose to answer the question above that We Build Illnesses Over Time then we need to be aware – and vigilant – of MANY things that – together – can eventually make us sick.

The really good news is that learning more about this This Path leads to greater overall health and – significantly – living life without unnecessary fear.

I urge you to watch this short – and very profound – video, HERE, and – please – share it with all those you care about.

Highly Recommended

The post Why Do We Get Sick? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Enemy Within Is No Longer Hiding

Lew Rockwell Institute - Dom, 04/05/2025 - 19:14

Thanks, Gail Appel.

See here.

The post The Enemy Within Is No Longer Hiding appeared first on LewRockwell.

‘May Day’ Celebrated Worldwide as Death Toll from Communism Approaches 100 Million

Lew Rockwell Institute - Dom, 04/05/2025 - 19:13

Thanks, John Frahm.

Breitbart

The post ‘May Day’ Celebrated Worldwide as Death Toll from Communism Approaches 100 Million appeared first on LewRockwell.

Belgium touted to become the first Islamic State in Europe

Lew Rockwell Institute - Dom, 04/05/2025 - 18:14

Gail Appel wrote:

Wow! I thought UK was the frontrunner, followed by France , Germany, Sweden , Netherlands, Ireland, Wales, Austria, Norway and Spain.

See here.

The post Belgium touted to become the first Islamic State in Europe appeared first on LewRockwell.

France secretly owns 14 countries

Lew Rockwell Institute - Dom, 04/05/2025 - 18:09

Gail Appel has wrote:

How to hide an empire-And each of France’s “ colonies” are war torn, impoverished Islamist failed states suffering human rights abuses and Christian genocide.

Just like France, who feigns still retaining its own culture by hiding behind the Eiffel Tower. And pretending the horrific Notre Dame blaze was caused by a careless worker’s lit cigarette.

The post France secretly owns 14 countries appeared first on LewRockwell.