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Thanks, John Smith. 

The Intercept

The post New York Times Distorts Harvard Report on Antisemitism appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

I reckon Jack Isaacs didn’t want to be stationed in Nome, Alaska. Ag Secretary Rollins should send Travis Lunders to Nome.

Forest Service Supervisor Who Harassed Maude Family Retires

The post Forest Service Supervisor Who Harassed Maude Family Retires appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

https://freedomflotilla.org/2025/05/02/condemnations-and-call-for-investigation-from-experts-following-the-attack-on-the-freedom-flotilla/ 

https://x.com/PressTV/status/1918463367225680004

The post Condemnations and call for investigation from experts following the attack on the Freedom Flotilla appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Gateway Pundit

The post Steve Bannon’s Powerful Interview with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò appeared first on LewRockwell.

From Javier Milei’s X profile:

“On this day, 77 years ago, a state was born, modern yet ancient.  77 years of miracles, hope, courage, and determination.

77 years where FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY rose above the DARKNESS.  I congratulate the State of Israel on its short but glorious 77 years of existence.  A country small in size but immense in spirit.  Like Argentina, Israel is a beacon of FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY.

AM ISRAEL JAI!

VLLC!

(The Israeli Constitution, as in The Communist Manifesto, makes it illegal to own private property.  That, it would seem, makes it difficult to call it a “beacon of freedom”).  Among other things.

The post Genuflecting to His Political Financiers and Puppet Masters appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump will host a military parade on June 14 in Washington, D.C. to honor U.S. military veterans and active-duty servicemembers and to commemorate the 250th birthday of the murderous U.S. Army. June 14 is also Trump’s birthday. But, of course, that has nothing to do with it.

The post Donald Trump: Militarist appeared first on LewRockwell.

David Martin wrote:

I have been informed by a correspondent that the site that I used for the explanation of why the Trump administration continues to lie for Israel about its nuclear arsenal has a credibility problem of its own.  One can spot it by reading the article carefully.  The headline says, “Israel has 90 nukes – but our leaders won’t say so because U.S. would have to cut off aid.”   The “90 nukes” wording is also in the subtitle and in the third paragraph.  But in the second paragraph we see, “At least 90 of them.”

Indeed.  It turns out that there is a Wikipedia page that examines tse question of Israel’s nuclear weapons, and there we see in the second sentence, with a host of references, “Estimates of Israel’s stockpile range between 90 and 400 nuclear warheads,[2][5][6][7][8][9][19

Nuclear weapons and Israel – Wikipedia

So, the 90 number is apparently a bare minimum estimate.  My correspondent, who has followed the matter quite closely, thinks the real number of nuclear weapons might be closer to 1000.  And we are not just hair splitting over numbers.  He is not alone in believing that the reason Israel has so many is that they want to have enough to make the Samson Option credible.  

There’s a Wikipedia page on that subject, but I think people can get a better handle on it by going to the web page with the title, “Can Israel’s Doomsday Weapon Destroy Human Civilization?” 

It concludes this way: 

Take my opinion for what it’s worth. But I would like everyone to ask themselves if we should be allies, or even tolerate the existence of a state with a “Samson Option” of rage quitting and killing us all.

The post Israel’s Nukes appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Antiwar.com

The post Israel Bombs Humanitarian Aid Flotilla on Way to Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

John Leake

The post Our Man in Kiev appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.  

NY Post

The post Elon Musk: DOGE should ‘definitely’ investigate Federal Reserve’a $2.5B HQ: ‘eyebrow raiser’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

The Vigilant Fox

The post RFK Jr. Leaves NewsNation Panel Speechless With One Brilliant Point on Measles appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Eugyppius

The post Domestic spy agency declares Alternative für Deutschland to be a “confirmed right-wing extremist” organisation appeared first on LewRockwell.

Even Germany, the EU’s leading power, regularly complains that it has no air defense systems to spare, particularly “Patriots” as it awaits new ones from manufacturer Raytheon (no sooner than 2027, mind you). If even Berlin needs to wait another two years, what could possibly Greece do to replace the systems that the EU/NATO wants for the ever-ravenous Neo-Nazi junta?

While US President Donald Trump is still “promoting peace talks” and “protesting the senseless killing” in the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, his country seems to be facilitating it all by delivering new weapons to the Neo-Nazi junta (just like it did since the very beginning). Namely, Greek media are reporting that the United States is intensifying pressure on Greece to send its American-made “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems to the Kiev regime.

Washington DC is reportedly doing this “as part of a broader push for European nations to bolster Ukraine’s defenses, especially as US military support to the region wanes”. So much for the Trump administration’s supposed “differences” with the troubled European Union and NATO regarding further weapons deliveries to the Neo-Nazi junta.
On the other hand, while the Greek government has been largely compliant with NATO demands for deliveries of certain tactical weapon systems, the country’s military is adamant that handing over operational and strategic assets is unacceptable, as it would undermine Greece’s ability to defend itself. Despite their numerous flaws, Athens considers its “Patriot” air defense systems critical for the multi-layered national defense strategy, meaning that undermining this would effectively be tantamount to high treason.

And indeed, as Greece is faced with mounting pressure on its maritime borders, particularly its EEZs (exclusive economic zones) in the Aegean and Mediterranean, it needs every bit of air and/or missile defense assets it can possibly acquire, regardless of whether they’re Russian, EU/NATO or US-sourced.
Earlier last week, reports surfaced that the EU/NATO were also pressuring Greece and Spain to transfer their SAM defense systems to the Neo-Nazi junta. Namely, Brussels insisted that Athens and Madrid had “less urgent” needs for their own air defense and that the Kiev regime should be prioritized. These demands went so far that during a previous EU summit in Brussels, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis were told directly they should support the Kiev regime with these air defense assets.

And while it may be true that Spain is currently faced with no direct threats that would require the deployment of “Patriot” SAM systems, as previously mentioned, Greece is a different story. Namely, the already rapidly escalating tensions with Turkey are virtually bound to get worse.
Turkey sees the division of EEZs in the Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean as “unfair” and wants to take over approximately half of both, including most of the EEZ around Cyprus. This wasn’t such a burning issue before the discovery of huge deposits of oil and natural gas. However, ever since, Ankara has been trying to establish control over these resources, almost exclusively in an aggressive manner, causing issues with all of its maritime neighbors in the region.

This resulted in continued militarization on both sides, with Greece (re)establishing bases on the Aegean islands, while Turkey keeps strengthening its offensive potential. Athens is particularly interested in reinforcing its ASDEN (the Supreme Military Command of the Interior and Islands). To that end, it acquired various multipurpose systems.
The Greek military needs a combination of offensive and defensive weapons that could be used to not only deter, but also eliminate a hostile armed force that could potentially jeopardize the safety of numerous Greek islands (or any economic activity in their vicinity). Greece is not exactly known for being resource-rich, meaning that it needs to import them.

The recent discovery of natural gas deposits within its EEZs in the Aegean and Mediterranean caught the attention of Turkey, which suddenly “realized” that the current division is supposedly “unfair”. Ankara is effectively ignoring the existence of many Greek islands and argues that anything beyond their immediate territorial waters is “fair game”. Obviously, this is unacceptable to Athens which has controlled the Aegean Sea for most of its millennia-long existence.
In recent years, Turkey developed a number of weapons with an operational (and even strategic) impact, particularly rocket and missile systems, as well as a plethora of unmanned platforms (both air and sea-based). Namely, in the aftermath of the July 2016 coup, Erdogan effectively purged the Turkish military of any disloyal elements, resulting in a virtual paralysis of the Navy and Air Force.

The issue of manpower shortages was then resolved with a focus on unmanned systems. The side effect of this change was not only much tighter political control over the Turkish military (largely loyal to the Pentagon prior to the 2016 coup), but also a more aggressive posturing, so Ankara became more offensive-oriented. This resulted in the escalation of various regional wars and conflicts, spanning from the South Caucasus to Lybia.
Not only does the Kiev regime have no consideration for Greek security concerns, but it actually has close ties with Turkey and also acquires a lot of Turkish weapons. Its frontman Volodymyr Zelensky keeps “begmanding” weapons from the political West, often without contemplating how this affects certain countries and their strategic security. He usually just emphasizes constant shortages of air defense systems such as the “Patriot”.

Even Germany, the EU’s leading power, regularly complains that it has no air defense systems to spare, particularly “Patriots” as it awaits new ones from manufacturer Raytheon (no sooner than 2027, mind you). If even Berlin needs to wait another two years, what could possibly Greece do to replace the systems that the EU/NATO wants for the ever-ravenous Neo-Nazi junta?

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

The post US Still Pressuring Greece To Hand Over Its Air Defenses to Kiev Regime appeared first on LewRockwell.

There was cause for celebration for Catholics in France at this year’s Easter Vigil. Figures released by the Bishops’ Conference of France announced that 10,384 adults would receive the sacrament of baptism at the 2025 Easter Vigil. This is an increase of 45 percent over the 7,135 adults who were baptized in 2024 and a 90 percent increase over the 5,463 adults who were baptized in 2023.

According to Église Catholique en France, “13 dioceses (more than 10 percent of all dioceses in France) have more than doubled the number of baptized adults. In ten years, catechumens in France have increased from 3,900 in 2015 to 10,392 in 2025. This is an increase of more than 160 percent.”

Among the new adult catechumens, the 18–25-year-old cohort accounts for more than 42 percent of the catechumens and is surpassing the 26–40 age group. This is a dramatic change considering the fact that in 2020 the number of 26–40-year-old catechumens was double the number of 18–25-year-olds.

Social media—as well as a few mainstream journalists—has noticed. An unprecedented surge in attendance for Ash Wednesday Masses in 2025 led Famille Chrétienne to conclude that it is a “phenomenon never seen before…from Nantes to Nice, from Paris to Bordeaux, the parishes were submerged by a new affluence for the Mass of the Ashes, marking the entrance to Lent…It is noteworthy among the crowd, a massive presence of young people.”

All of this is leading some Catholic commentators in our own country to ask “Is being Catholic becoming ‘hip’ in France?” A headline in the Catholic Herald concluded that “God Has Undoubtedly Decided to Take Over: France’s Continuing and Surprising Catholic Shift Against Secular Progressivism.”

It is true that France is well-known for its militant secularism. Despite having long held the title as “the Eldest Daughter of the Catholic Church,” the most recent data we have available revealed that self-declared “convinced atheists” represent almost 30 percent of the French population, and another 34 percent claim to be “not religious.” France has long been known as being among the top five most atheist countries in the world, behind only Japan, China, and the Czech Republic.

Despite this, there remains a Catholic culture in France that is beginning to flourish again even though the government has done everything it can to destroy that culture. Since 2004, government school students are not allowed to wear religious symbols—including crucifixes and medals of the saints. And there is no curriculum dedicated to learning about religion in French public schools.

Dioceses throughout France report that—in addition to the large number of catechumens—there has also been a huge increase in adult “reverts,” Catholics who were baptized in childhood but had stopped practicing their religion during adolescence and then decide to go back to the Church to deepen their faith. In 2024, more than 9,000 adults received the Sacrament of Confirmation at Pentecost—twice as many as two years before.

Most faithful Catholics, here and in France, see this gift of faith that has been given to France as a sign from Heaven. They know that God will never abandon them, and they believe that He touches their hearts and reveals Himself to all who ask. The bishops of France are pointing to the Jubilee of Young People in Rome for the influx of catechumens, but it is more likely that these  new catechumens are simply realizing that they want more meaning in their lives and are unable to find it in the secular society that surrounds them in France—and elsewhere.

One of those new Catholics interviewed in the French media explained her decision by saying that “It’s increasingly hard to make sense of the world in which we are living. I feel there’s a spiritual malaise. It’s up to each of us to find our own path but for me, Catholicism answers my questions.”

Read the Whole Article

The post Celebrating a Catholic Renaissance in France appeared first on LewRockwell.

I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it again: The Right can be just as dangerous to Liberty as the Left. Much of the unconstitutional/Orwellian/socialist/authoritarian laws and policies emanating from Washington, D.C., were put in place by the Right.

The Gun Control Act of 1968, which is the granddaddy of all the nefarious gun control laws and policies under which the American people are now subjected, was supported by the largest so-called pro-Second Amendment organization in the U.S., the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA even helped to draft that monstrosity. The Act of 1968 was preceded by the National Firearms Act of 1934, which the NRA also supported. Furthermore, the NRA supported most every federal gun control law on the books since 1968.

When it comes to the life issue, the National Right to Life, Focus on the Family and similar “pro-life” groups have consistently been the chief obstacle to the passage of Personhood bills and amendments across the country, which would legally define life as beginning at conception, including Dr. Ron Paul’s Sanctity of Life Act that he repeatedly tried to pass while he was in Congress.

When the supposed “pro-life” party in D.C. controlled the House, Senate and White House under G.W. Bush, it was the Bush White House and GOP leaders in the House and Senate that killed Dr. Paul’s bill. And you can bet your last dollar that a Sanctity of Life Act has ZERO chance of becoming law with Trump in the White House and the GOP in control of both houses of Congress today.

And when it comes to perpetual foreign wars (most on behalf of Israel) and a burgeoning police/surveillance state domestically, the Elephants and Donkeys are twins. Neither the Left nor the Right in D.C. ever saw a war they didn’t like or ever saw an expansion of government that tramples the Fourth Amendment that they didn’t support.

At this very moment, it is Donald Trump and his conservative supporters who are feverishly trampling the First Amendment protection of the Freedom of Speech in America—particularly the right to speak or write against Israel’s genocide in Gaza or any criticism of Israel itself or any support for the Palestinians.

But it is the Elon Musk/Peter Thiel technocratic vision of government, which dominates the Trump administration, that perhaps poses the greatest threat to Liberty and constitutional government that we have ever seen.

From Technocracy.News comes this report:

Patrick Wood gives the introduction:

How could anybody in the populist MAGA movement embrace the outright destruction of Constitutional government, in favor of an authoritarian monarchy: abolish elections, concentrate power, neutralize dissent, turn citizens into users and shareholders of a sovereign corporation (SovCorp) and establish a Scientific Dictatorship based on Technocracy? It’s too late to suggest smelling the coffee here: you will soon smell the stench of the burning dumpster that used to be America.

How is this any different from the loony left’s plan to burn everything down? Same outcome, different means.

Either way, Technocracy is guaranteed to rise out of the ashes.

Here is the treatise. Read it carefully. Emphases are in the original.

Curtis Yarvin, known until a few years ago only to a niche audience under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, is now considered one of the most subtle and dangerous intellectual influences on America’s new radical right. His theory of the Dark Enlightenment is nothing less than a full-scale assault on the foundational values of modern liberalism: representative democracy, the rule of law, civil rights, public opinion, and the separation of powers.

In his ideological universe, democracy is not the pinnacle of civilization but its degeneration. A convenient lie designed to obscure the reality of power—unelected, invisible—which, according to Yarvin, lies in the hands of the Cathedral: a meta-structure composed of media, academia, and bureaucracies that propagates progressive dogmas with the zeal of a religious institution.

His solution? Tear it all down. Dismantle democratic institutions and replace them with a system of “neocameralism,” modeled on corporate governance: a state-as-a-company, run by a sovereign CEO, unelected, irremovable, and vested with absolute authority. In this vision, citizenship is not a political right but a contractual position. Citizens become shareholders—or just users. Government becomes a service to be optimized.

This idea of “algorithmic sovereignty” has seduced many minds in Silicon Valley, starting with Peter Thiel, billionaire investor, founder of Palantir, and PayPal co-founder—one of the most influential figures in the American tech ecosystem. Thiel has openly questioned the compatibility of democracy and freedom (“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible”) and has heavily bankrolled think tanks, start-ups, and political candidates aligned with neo-reactionary thinking.

It is in this context that Yarvin gradually moved closer to the orbit of Donald Trump, though never in an official capacity. His writings have circulated among figures close to Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, and other intellectuals in the American alt-right, who are drawn to Yarvin’s blend of technical jargon, aristocratic historical references (from Carlyle to De Maistre), and systemic critique of Western democracies.

In particular, Yarvin served as one of the theoretical sources for the “post-democratic” rhetoric that emerged surrounding Trump’s 2016 campaign: the idea that the deep state is an entrenched apparatus obstructing the popular will in favor of the Cathedral’s interests—and yet incapable of producing true social order. Neither the Cathedral nor democracy itself, Yarvin argues, can sustain real order. Only a “strongman” can.

This idea resonated in Trump’s later attempts to delegitimize elections, the media, and the judiciary.

Yarvin’s own language—steeped in programming metaphors and software analogies—makes him especially appealing to high-tech and crypto-libertarian circles. To Yarvin, society is outdated software, which must be uninstalled and replaced with more efficient code. His lexicon speaks the language of Silicon Valley while conveying authoritarian and ultra-reactionary ideas.

Beneath the irony, intellectualism, and provocations, Yarvin’s thought is driven by a deep hostility toward political equality and popular participation. His idea of order is grounded in hierarchy, efficiency, and unquestioned authority. It’s an aristocratic restoration in digital form, where a technocratic elite supplants the sovereign people.

But Yarvin does not merely seek to preserve the established order. He wants to overthrow it. And he does so with the tools of the 21st century: blogs, podcasts, newsletters, interviews, memes. His aim is not merely theoretical—it is cultural and political. To influence those who hold power (or could) in order to reprogram the future.

In recent years, his influence has extended well beyond the American far right. Some Republican candidates, such as J.D. Vance, have received Thiel’s support and shown sympathy toward post-liberal right-wing ideas. The billionaire tech elite—often frustrated by the slow pace of democratic procedures—has increasingly turned its gaze to “efficient” authoritarian models like Singapore’s, one of Yarvin’s explicit references.

What makes his vision particularly dangerous is its ability to penetrate the mainstream, disguised as a “technical” fix or a neutral systems upgrade. But beneath the managerial surface lies an openly illiberal project: to abolish elections, concentrate power, and neutralize dissent.

Maybe Trump wasn’t joking when he told a gathering of evangelicals during last year’s campaign that 2024 would be the last time they would have to vote.

Yarvin’s Dark Enlightenment is a high-tech version of absolutism: an order imposed from above, no longer justified by God, but by code. And in an age of institutional distrust, disinformation, and political disillusionment, this lucid and tidy dystopia has found more listeners than one might expect.

Curtis Yarvin is not just a niche thinker. He is a symptom of a deeper mutation: the erosion of the democratic imagination, replaced by a growing fascination with efficiency, control, and authority. And every time a tech magnate talks about “resetting the system,” you can faintly hear, in the background, the echo of Yarvin’s voice.

Yarvin and Nick Land: Two Faces of the Dark Enlightenment

The term Dark Enlightenment was not coined by Curtis Yarvin but by Nick Land, a British philosopher and theorist of accelerationism, in a 2012 essay that spread widely across neoreactionary circles. Land, a key figure in the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) at the University of Warwick in the 1990s, abandoned academia to become a theorist of dissolution: of democracy, of humanism, and of Western moral frameworks themselves. Where Yarvin is pragmatic, Land is apocalyptic; where Yarvin imagines a state-company governed like a start-up, Land envisions the definitive collapse of liberal civilization under the weight of its own velocity.

And yet, the two converge. Both see the Enlightenment not as the gateway to reason and rights, but as the beginning of a destructive illusion: the idea that the average human being is capable of self-government. Both reject universalism, equality, and progress as toxic myths. Both celebrate elites: technocratic for Yarvin, cybernetic for Land.

Still, important differences remain. Yarvin is an engineer-turned-philosopher, an institutional hacker who wants to rewrite the code of government. Land is a post-human thinker, fascinated by AI, entropy, and deregulated markets as forces that obliterate all order. For Yarvin, the remedy is digital monarchy; for Land, it is liberatory catastrophe. One wants to replace democracy with authority, the other to accelerate it into oblivion.

The paradox is that both end up converging on the same vision of the future: a world without participation, without popular sovereignty, without shared morality. A world where power no longer answers to consent but to speed, efficiency, and control. This is the dark heart of the Dark Enlightenment: not a mere reaction to liberalism, but its cold, calculated negation.

In the comparison between Yarvin and Land, we glimpse a new grammar of post-democratic power: technocratic, authoritarian, post-human. It is not a return to the past, but a leap into the void—rationalized, theorized, and designed. And for that reason, all the more dangerous.

I have written (here and here) about this grave threat to our liberties and, yes, to our very system of constitutional government founded on the theistic laws of nature and universal understanding of self-government that Donald Trump and his gaggle of technocrats such as Musk and Thiel pose.

There are two exhaustive works on the Dark MAGA that every freedom lover needs to read. They are titled The Dark MAGA Gov-Corp Technate Part One and Part Two researched and written by Iain Davis.

These are seminal works. We ignore them at our own peril.

Another scholarly presentation directly relating to this subject is a video by Montana physician and Public Service Commissioner Dr. Ann Bukacek. Her address specifically targets reliable and affordable energy—especially electricity—and the effects of deregulation. In her address, she astutely describes the dangers to our liberties and the reality of rising consumer costs (inflation—another form of government taxation) when large corporations are allowed to control government (known as Crony Capitalism).

When America’s founders penned the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, they put We the People in charge of our government. In her video address, Dr. Bukacek clearly shows the nefarious and deleterious ramifications that result when the People’s representatives in government give unchecked power to large multinational corporations. Though her presentation  primarily centers on energy costs in the State of Montana, her research also implicates the cost to America’s liberties by the emerging Gov-Corp Technate (without using that term).

I urge readers to watch Dr. Bukacek’s presentation here.

From REAL ID to biometric scanners to digital currency to omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent AI-driven, corporate-controlled, “algorithmic sovereignty,” the MAGA movement is unleashing a real-world Twilight Zone of technocratic authoritarianism upon America.

I concur with Patrick Wood:

How could anybody in the populist MAGA movement embrace the outright destruction of Constitutional government, in favor of an authoritarian monarchy: abolish elections, concentrate power, neutralize dissent, turn citizens into users and shareholders of a sovereign corporation (SovCorp) and establish a Scientific Dictatorship based on Technocracy?

How indeed?

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post The New Radical Right appeared first on LewRockwell.

There seems to be a pattern developing that your average 9-5 worker may not truly understand or have time to see–but it’s happening before their eyes. This pattern is playing out between rich and poor people and where both of them see value (yep, you guessed it, the former are a bit better than the latter at assigning value). I won’t define rich or poor, I’ll let you set that standard yourself since I still believe your notion of that will apply. I have noticed this after travelling to 4 continents in the last few years, meeting and talking with all walks of life from all different backgrounds.

What are the Rich Doing?

Rich people are examining the world before them in a set of tradeoffs and probabilities to weigh out what is valuable to them in the long run. Notwithstanding the tax increases happening in the West, the rich will settle for less money & “nice things” in effort to sustain what everybody would regard as a ‘normal life’ 5 years ago. This means that they will seek to preserve a living standard involving reliable electricity & internet, heating, good food (not slammed with preservatives, hormones or pesticides), hygiene in the streets, safety (especially for their children) & familiarity in their cultures. However, this may mean that their income level drops by a considerable 40, 50, 60% from what they have grown accustomed to receiving. It may mean not working at all for some years given language differences & lack of resources in the new area and simply working off of accumulated savings. If your portfolio and business is going through the roof with success, but your world is a state of collapse–what the hell is the point?

Close to Wall Street

Furthermore, the rich & wealthy are actively seeking to create their own parallel systems of value to utilize those around them the best (to have a sources for medicine, for meat, for entertainment, for transport, for payment, etc.). They will deploy capital they have now (while they view it to still have purchasing power) in effort to create their own sustainable life and network. It’s already well known that “the rich” are buying up farmland hand over fist. Again, even if this means a considerably decline in their paycheque, bonuses or social status. After all, what’s the point of an ‘extra’ 5 million dollars if you’re forbidden from living as a free human. You can’t put a price on freedom.

What are the Poor doing?

Poor people are adopting a tunnel-vision approach by assigning the ultimate value to “money”. They strive to make more money at all costs but sacrifice their quality of life & freedoms to do so. They will willingly take the jump head first into a dystopian, apocalyptic world failing to see the ‘point’ of money in the first place. This is to say nothing about inflation.

Additionally, I believe poor people will continue to forego their relationships with their sexual partner, their family & their friends for the sake of more money. They will stop doing the things they enjoy and work around the growing inconveniences of life, unpredictable violence and soul-crushing nature of bureaucracy. All of this will be towards the chasing the dream of holding a larger bank account, the largest penthouse on the block, the most recognition amongst the business/tech/finance community. Of course, only a few will be successful at this journey given the mountain of resistance from regulation and taxes alone, but this journey would have removed any joy or meaning from their lives in the meantime.

Even those who are successful, there’s only so much you can do in a 15-minute-city that bans travel, meat consumption, healthy food or alternative medicines or news from the state-mandated versions.

Likewise, these poor folks are going to compete on who can be most connected to “the system”. That is, they will compete for the most number of social media accounts, purchasing the latest item, downloading the latest application. This techno-centric life will become increasingly detached from reality and attached to the virtual cloud or state-controlled power-grid. There won’t be any parallel system, it’ll be the same system that is currently controlled.

The Best Option is to:

Maintain your freedoms. It’s always superior to have yourself in a position whereby you have options or open doors that perhaps you do not need to walk through, but it’s much better to have some options than none. It’s a superior strategy to not be dependent on others for basic items such as finance, transportation, medicine, food, digital usage, speech, education, etc. This, I believe, is where the wealthy crowds assign real value that goes beyond their brokerage accounts. This may be difficult to imagine due to the fact that rich people like lots of gadgets and toys too. However, that was the before times, when political risks at least seemed minimal and manageable. Now, political scandals, tax & policy changes and unpredictability are at their high points meaning one can no longer dedicate their wealth to discretionary pleasure spending any longer. I believe this will reveal itself in the markets as well–consumer staples will out perform tech and discretionary spending in the near-to-mid future.

Tiny Story

I had a meeting where I was chatting to some folks who were definitely successful and wealthy about the nuances of the world around us. My partner felt insecure about the topics with lots of forecasts, predictions & names being thrown around. She felt as though she had nothing to offer. The conversation somehow ended up about food supply in her country and she remarked that her grandmother, poor in rural Mexico, owned a lot of chickens. The wealthy men immediately acknowledged this as being a great asset to have in life, especially now.

They were able to realize that it doesn’t matter if you have a sports car, fancy pair of shoes or a Rolex watch, what matters are the essentials [one of them being food!].

Closing

We are seeing a situation where everything is about movement control in the Western world. Controlling your physical movement, your thoughts, your communication, your capital, your lives. Since the debts cannot be paid they have forced governments to become more tyrannical to kick the can down the road a little further. These areas of the world are run by collectivists that do not see the importance of individuals–they see the importance of their group; their parasitic sustenance and that is all. The powers that be have ensured, with lots of success, that being in any group (or utilizing any method) outside of their own is increasingly difficult. For both rich and poor cohorts, there is a powerful call for change to adapt.

During a period of chaos, the essentials, such as Maslows hierarchy of needs, are what really matters the most. A bear is a powerful apex predator, but even it knows to hibernate to withstand difficulty ahead. My travels have brought me to discover that those with capital are eager to enter to find their cave away from the chaos. Whether it be through experience, having access to good information or having the means to “break away” from the mainstream, ironically, the rich are planning for a world filled with more uncertainties, complications and disasters than the poor. Are you positioned the best you need to be for you and your family?


Thank you for reading! 

On The Ball, LLC was incorporated to preach freedom as often as we can so that you can make better decisions for yourself, your family and your wealth.

The post Money Isn’t Everything; Freedom Is. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Over the next decade, the US government plans to spend nearly $1 trillion on its nuclear arsenal — with the actual cost certain to run even higher than that. The huge outlay is driven in part by the sheer size of America’s doomsday-weapon collection, which comprises an estimated 3,700 deployed or stockpiled nuclear warheads, not counting another 1,500 that are purportedly “retired” and awaiting dismantlement.

Though Americans have been conditioned to think it’s reasonable to maintain such a large arsenal, the idea that thousands of warheads are required to deter nuclear aggression rests on flawed thinking about the nature of deterrence. While defense contractors and military bureaucracies enriched by the status quo will tell you otherwise, the truth is that an adequate arsenal of nuclear warheads can be measured not in thousands, but mere dozens.

During the Cold War, two successive doctrines guided nuclear war strategy. First came Massive Retaliation, which rested on the threat of a disproportionate, devastating nuclear response to either conventional or nuclear aggression. That gave way to Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), in which any nuclear attack was guaranteed to escalate to the point where both countries are completely destroyed.

Both doctrines shared a cornerstone premise — that effective, credible deterrence requires the capability to completely destroy the opposing country. That’s the wrong yardstick. Deterrence is achieved by the ability to impose an intolerable level of retaliatory destruction on a country that’s contemplating a nuclear first-strike — a threshold far lower than border-to-border annihilation.

For perspective, in World War II, Russia and China each suffered roughly 20 million total civilian and military deaths. The same unfathomable fatality counts that spanned several years in World War II can be achieved in mere minutes with only 20 modern nuclear warheads — 15 striking Russian cities and only five hitting the more densely-populated cities of China, according to calculations by University of Maryland professor Steve Fetter.

If the United States chose to opt against the morally-repugnant targeting of population centers with little military significance (that is, cities similar to Hiroshima and Nagasaki), a second-strike could instead vaporize the enemy’s economy, targeting power generation, refinery complexes and vital ports (though even these nuclear attacks would inflict civilian death on a huge scale, not only from the blasts but also the economic destruction). Here, Fetter calculates 100 detonations would suffice.

The fatalities and destruction associated with either of those two targeting scenarios that pursue some level of societal devastation — so-called “countervalue targeting” — are well beyond what any foreign ruler would consider tolerable, suggesting that the anticipation of even one or two second-strike warheads would be sufficient to deter an adversary from striking first.

Note, this approach to deterrence, which focuses on the power to retaliate and inflict “intolerable” destruction, does not require adversaries with high moral character. It matters little whether an opposing ruler regards his citizens with loving empathy or depraved indifference. Rulers are ultimately driven by self-interest — and no leader can expect his hold on power to survive a nuclear gamble that brings about the vaporization of cities or irreplaceable economic assets in his own country. (Indeed, there may be no “power” to hold on to.) As political scientist Kenneth Waltz wrote in a milestone 1990 paper that promoted the peacekeeping value of nuclear weapons while making the case that small arsenals are sufficient, “Rulers like to continue to rule.”

Given these realities of deterrence, the size of an adversary’s nuclear arsenal has no bearing on the appropriate size of America’s. “So long as two or more countries have second-strike forces, to compare them is pointless,” wrote Waltz. “If no state can launch a disarming attack with high confidence, force comparisons become irrelevant…beyond a certain level of capability, additional forces provide no additional coverage for one party and pose no additional threat to others.”

In contrast to countervalue targeting, “counterforce targeting” aims to inflict military defeat by destroying a large, diverse array of military targets, such as missile silos, bomber and submarine bases, command and control facilities, and conventional forces.

Counterforce-targeting is what led both America and Russia to amass far larger arsenals than that of any other nuclear-armed country. Beyond the elevated general risk associated with securing, transporting, maintaining and training with these large volumes of warheads, the mutual targeting of nuclear weapon delivery platforms pursuant to counterforce doctrine encourages first strikes — launched out fear that an opponent’s first strike would render one’s own weapons unusable.

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Many traditions throughout history have come to view one’s birth as one of the most important moments in a human’s life as it sets the stage for all that follows. Unfortunately, much in the same way we desecrate the death process by over-medicalizing it (to the point research has found that doctors are less likely to seek end of life care at a medical facility), the same issue also exists with childbirth. Many physicians I know who are familiar with the hospital birthing process chose to skip it and give birth at home (along with many more doctors featured in a 2016 documentary).

Conversely, a minority of childbirths do need advanced medical care. For those mothers, access to a hospital greatly benefits them, particularly if actions are taken to mitigate the most dangerous aspects of hospital birth. As such, childbirth occupies a similar place as many other medical controversies; neither side of the issue is entirely correct. However, the data clearly shows the risk of routine C-sections outweighs their benefits so this article will attempt to expose what they aren’t tell you about them.

The Business of Being Born

For a long time, doctors had no interest in being delivering babies, but once a leader in the profession realized grateful mothers they delivered the babies of would become their doctor’s lifelong customer, the medical professional gradually displaced midwives and switched birth from being seen as a natural life event to one that required increasing medicalization. While some of those interventions were helpful and saved lives, many were not and put both the mother and child at risk of a variety of immediate and chronic complications.

Since the hospital birthing process does not try to augment the natural birthing process and instead tries to control and manage it, one of the most significant issues with many of its approaches to birth (detailed here) is that they frequently create complications that require more and more invasive methods to be implemented.

In many cases, the end of this pipeline is the mother “having” to bypass the birthing process by cutting open the abdomen and directly extracting the baby (via a costly C-section). While they are sometimes necessary (e.g., the WHO made a good case that in 10% of births, they prevent maternal and infant mortality), they are done far too frequently (e.g., in 2023, 32.3% of all American births were C-sections).

Note: one of my least favorite statistics in medicine is that C-section rates dramatically rise at the times doctors typically want to go home.1,2,3

General Risks of C-Sections

Being an abdominal surgery, C-sections carry a variety of issues commonly seen with those procedures such as:

• The mother typically needs a 4-6 weeks recovery period.

• Post-surgical infection (e.g., globally this happens in 5.63% of C-sections).

• Significant pain (at the most important bonding period of your life).

• Potential reactions to general anesthesia.

• Accidental organ injuries (particularly since some C-sections need to be done very quickly to save the baby’s life).

Additionally, there are some surgical complications more unique to C-sections such as:

• Damage to the lining of the uterus that creates adhesions and scars, which cause the placenta to attach in the wrong place in future pregnancies (e.g., two C-sections make women 13.8 times more likely to have a placenta accreta).

• The weakened uterine scar can rupture during a subsequent delivery (especially if contraction inducing oxytocin is used during delivery), so one C-section can result in patients needing to have all subsequent births to be C-sections as well (particularly if there’s an abnormal placental attachment).

• The infant can accidentally get cut during the C-section (e.g., 1.5-1.9% get facial lacerations).

• C-section incision scars often cause significant issues for years—if not decades (until they are correctly treated), and in many cases these scars are the hidden cause of chronic pain and a variety of ailments as they continually activate and then dysregulate the autonomic nervous system.

• The general anesthetics used for the C-section can increase an infant’s risk of neonatal complications.

Note: C-sections also cause a variety of other issues, such as breastfeeding problems, worsened sleep, and emotional challenges (e.g., PTSD or anxiety).14

However, beyond the surgery itself, simply bypassing the normal birthing process can also cause significant issues for infants. For example, hyaline membrane disease (respiratory distress syndrome—RDS) affects approximately 24,000 infants in the United States annually and is the leading cause of neonatal fatalities.16 The birthing process protects against this (e.g., studies have found premature C-section babies are 2.4-3.92 times more likely to have RDS1,2,3), likely due to its mechanical pressure forcing excessive fluids out of the lungs.

Chronic Risks of C-sections

C-sections have also been linked to a variety of chronic issues, most of which are immunological or neurological in nature.

Immunologic risks include:

• A Kaiser study of 8,953 children found C-sections increased allergic rhinoconjunctivitis (hay fever) by 37% and asthma by 24% (53% in girls and 8% in boys).

• Roughly 2000 studies have assessed the link between C-sections and asthma. From them, a 2020 meta-analysis found C-sections increase asthma by 41%, while a 2019 meta-analysis found a 20% increase.

• A Danish study of 750,000 children aged 0-14 assessed a few autoimmune diseases and found those born by C-sections were roughly 20% more likely to develop Laryngitis, Asthma, Gastroenteritis, Ulcerative colitis, Celiac disease, and Juvenile
Arthritis (along with Pneumonia and other lower respiratory tract infections).

• A later Danish Study of 2,699,479 births found that elective C-sections caused a 14% increase in diabetes, a 14% increase in rheumatoid arthritis, a 4% increase in Crohn’s disease, and a 15% increase in irritable bowel disease. Generally, the risk for these conditions was higher in women and for elective C-sections (with the exception of Crohn’s increasing by 15% after emergency C-sections). Another similar study also found C-sections significantly increased the risk of asthma, systemic connective tissue disorders, juvenile arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, immune deficiencies, and leukemia.

• A study of 7,174,787 births found C-sections made infants (in the first 5 years of life) 10% more likely to be hospitalized for infections (particularly respiratory, gastrointestinal, and viral ones).

 •A study of 33,226 adult women found being born by C-section made them 11% more likely to be obese and 46% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes.

Much of this is likely due to C-sections disrupting the microbiome (which can persist into adulthood) as infants depend upon the vaginal flora (and external fecal flora) to initially colonize the gastrointestinal tract (as the microflora of the vagina are predominantly composed of the “good bacteria” our digestion needs and shortly after birth, the stomach starts producing stomach acid so other bacteria can’t easily colonize the GI tract). In turn, many studies have found C-sections significantly disrupt the microbiome, including a prospective trial that demonstrated that the degree of lasting microbiome disruption in an infant directly correlated to their likelihood of developing asthma and allergic sensitizations.

Note: one partial solution to this (which does not address harmful hospital microbes displacing the normal microbiome) is to inoculate the infant with the mother’s vaginal secretions immediately after delivery. However, while compelling evidence has emerged for vaginal seeding in the last decade,1,2 it is not currently endorsed by the medical community, and most hospitals do not offer it.

Neurologic risks include:

• A mouse trial found C-sections led to behavioral changes and increased cell death in certain portions of the brain, while a retrospective MRI study of 306 children found that C-sections significantly reduced brain white matter and functional neural connectivity.

• A large 2017 study found that C-section children (ages 4-9) performed lower on standardized tests than vaginally born children and that this was not due to confounding variables, while a 2024 study found C-sections caused lower motor and language development scores during specific age windows in the first three years of life.

• A 2020 Czech study found 5 year old children born via C-section had poorer performance on cognitive tests than children born via vaginal delivery.

• C-sections have been found to increase the rate of ADHD by 15-16% and autism by 23-26%. At the same time, early onset schizophrenia has also been associated with C-sections (much of which may be due to C-sections changing the dopamine receptors in the brain).
Note: as this study shows, the increase in autism is strongly correlated to mothers receiving general anesthesia during the C-section.

• C-sections have been found to impair a newborn’s ability to recognize familiar scents, make them more averse to being touched or hugged, and have poorer sensory integration, visual memory, and visuospatial perception. In parallel, mothers of C-section babies have been found to have less attachment to and more negative evaluations of their children.

Since neurological development is such a complicated process, it’s difficult to say which factor (e.g., anesthesia, reduced maternal bonding, gut microbiome alterations) is ultimately responsible for these changes. However, many excellent healers I’ve talked to from a variety of traditions (e.g., the New Zealand Maoris) have shared that they noticed there is a loss of vibrancy and vitality in C-section babies which they attribute to them not “getting a spark” the vaginal birthing process facilitates (e.g., because the micro-motion within the skull is catalyzed by the compression experienced during the birthing process).

One of the most interesting conversations I had on this subject was with a doctor who shared that he was taught the vitality of infants directly correlated to how much they cried at birth (which is why, in the older days, doctors would wack a baby’s soles to trigger a vigorous cry). In turn, when he and his colleagues attempted to help struggling infants with birth trauma by gently compressing the tops of their skulls to recreate part of the birthing process, they found that C-section infants would let out a brief but very vigorous cry, whereas children who had been born vaginally typically had a much softer cry—something they attributed to the initial birthing process not having catalyzed the cry they needed then (which is why it was so loud at the subsequent compression).

Note: this is somewhat similar to the observation in homeopathy that patients who can mount fevers tend to have stronger vitalities and better responses to homeopathic remedies, but as the decades have gone by, people have become less able to mount fevers and now have smaller reactions to homeopathic remedies.

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The long-debated “minerals deal” was finally signed between the US and Ukraine late Wednesday, after a months-long, whiplash-producing back and forth between the two parties. In the end, Wednesday started with an affirmation that the deal would be signed, then by mid-day we were told that the Ukraine government aircraft turned around mid-flight and the deal was off, and then later in the afternoon the deal was finally actually signed. That is the chaos that is Trump 2.0 foreign policy in these early days of the Administration.

The “minerals deal” that was eventually signed was billed as a miraculous breakthrough, an amazing journey from the dramatic confrontation between the US president and vice president and Zelensky in the Oval Office just weeks ago, to the point where President Trump can raise high his trophy: the signed minerals deal for which an enormous amount of US diplomatic effort has been spent!

But the deal signed Wednesday in no way resembles the original “rare earths” deal touted by President Trump just a few weeks ago. Recall that when first launched this “deal” was a way for Ukraine to “pay back” the United States for $350 billion in assistance as calculated by the Trump people. The number is only accurate if one goes back to the US-backed coup in 2014, and, ironically, through the first Trump term (where for the first time offensive weapons were provided), and past the Biden largesse after Russia’s launch of its “special military operation” in February of 2022.

And it was a payback in the “rare earths” minerals said to be so critical to our technological society that had heretofore been supplied by “adversaries” like China for which many in the Trump foreign policy team were preparing to target as soon as they solved the Ukraine issue.

The great negotiator Trump was to secure the “rare earths” minerals from Ukraine that would for certainty be withheld or forbidden when the real strategy of “confronting” China was put into place.

But it’s all kabuki theater. First off, Trump people dropped the demand that US aid to Ukraine to the tune of a third of a trillion dollars needed to be paid back. That was the backbone and rationale of the deal in the first place. No, just days ago it was determined that we would start with a clean slate with Ukraine.

Once again – as with the “Liberation Day” tariff war – maximalist demands were made, proved incredibly disruptive, and then were inexplicably reversed suddenly days later.

“Just kidding.”

And now that the “minerals deal” was finally signed to great fanfare, it turns out that it was not about “rare earths” minerals at all. As Energy and commodities columnist at Bloomberg Javier Blas reported, after looking at the radically restructured “rare earths” deal posted on X, the “deal” is primarily about “oil, natural gas and a bit of aluminum.” He added, “And the critical minerals? Rare earths?”

Even the supposed harsh terms turn out to be a paper tiger:

– The US has no say under the agreement on when or what gets extracted in Ukraine
– Both countries invest equally into an ‘investment fund’
– No debts for past aid are acknowledged
– The US will not see a single dollar from the investment, in the best circumstances, for 10 YEARS

We’ve seen this movie before. Stealing oil from Syria and Iraq with negligible benefit to American citizens that was initially touted as a way to pay them back for our financing regime change wars. But only the well-connected Beltway parasites were well-paid.

The ludicrous “rare earths minerals deal” is a microcosm of how absurd the Trump Administration’s policy has been on the US/Russia war through proxy Ukraine in the first place.

One of the most dangerous and counter-productive additions to the new “minerals deal” is a provision that US military assistance shipped to Ukraine will go into the joint investment fund on the plus-side of the US ledger. In other words, this “breakthrough” has opened the door for the US to return to the Biden policy of endless weapons supplied to a nearly supine nation…with a promise to “pay you back” once minerals are extracted from what remains of Ukraine soil. This will serve to prolong the war that Trump claims he wants to end.

As longtime analyst Brian Berletic – with a solid track record of accuracy – wrote last week, “Today, the US government is attempting to play the role of a frustrated mediator trying to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia, when in reality this was always a war between the US and Russia.”

Perhaps driven by hubris and an obsession with vainglory, President Trump is desperate to be able to take credit for “solving” a completely fictional Ukraine/Russia war. Any doctor worth his salt would tell you that there is no way you can treat the disease if you misdiagnose the symptoms, but here we are with an Administration hypnotized by the neocon-created fantasy of a sudden attack – without antecedent – by Russia on its neighbor as a blatant land grab mixed equally with a desire to express bestial cruelty.

The only way they can sell this neocon fever dream is to reimagine Russian President Putin as a kind of golem-like figure who suddenly wakes up in the morning and decides who and how many to kill that day.

In fact this entire chapter of post-Cold War US foreign policy is defined by a desperate search for relatively easy dragons abroad to slay while sharpening our fangs to take down rival number two, Russia, with an eye on rival number one, an ascendant China.

But something happened on the road to unipolar victory: through the bad joke called NATO, the US threw everything in its arsenal short of nuclear weapons at Russia in Ukraine and it lost. In a United States thankfully defended by a wonderful geography of two protective oceans, it may be hard for our fellow citizens to understand what an existential war may look like.

Indeed, even WWII was a kind of crusade to save Europe from its own excesses. We were never threatened by Hitler or any of his riff-raff. Jews were totally safe in the US.

Russia on the other hand came to know up close and personal the murderous intent of the Nazis, and for the Soviet Union it was a matter of life and death – and we are talking tens of millions of lives – that savage Hitler with his view that Slavs were untermensch to be eliminated must be defeated.

Life or death. Americans have not faced that since, arguably, the Civil War.

So here we are in an absolutely AI kind of artificial reality where the early Trump 2.0 Administration is expending extraordinarily amounts of political, diplomatic, and other multi-layer efforts to maintain a fiction that Trump can wave his wand and remove animosity between Ukraine and Russia when all the time it was the US who was at war behind the shadows.

As the process becomes increasingly less attuned to the reality on the ground – thanks in large part to a reverse Walter Durranty-level fantasist called “General Kellogg” who for some bizarre reason continues to dominate the debate with his asinine “plan” published with neocon Fred Fleitz last April –  Trump’s chimeric admonitions to his Russian counterpart to “just stop shooting” belie a kind of desperation that is doomed to fail. And he knows it.

Russia is fighting for its survival. Neocons are surfing on Ukrainian blood to “take down” Russia.

That’s it. That’s the war.

So how can President Trump square this ginormous circle and escape the traps and spider webs woven for him by all the neocons he has again hired to direct his foreign policy?

Ron Paul is often dismissed as jejune for his bons mots like “we just marched in we can just march home.” However in systems analysis many times it turns out that the simplest solution is the best solution. President Trump can end the war in Ukraine in a day (as he once promised) by simply announcing that it is not his war and he will no longer have anything to do with it.

That means no shuttle diplomacy with absurd plans, no more Steve Witkoff trafficking in Kellogg’s gilded turds. Simply a recognition of reality: literally no American who voted for Trump to save them from Biden’s inflation and woke tyranny could give a flying fornication who rules Ukraine or how it gets along with Russia. Polls back this idea as well.

To win Ukraine, Trump must wash his hands, Pontius Pilate-like, of the whole affair.

The neocons who have again steadied their swagger in Trump 2.0 love to revise the “peace through strength” mantra, as if they are the heirs of Reagan. But the real strength that brings on peace is the strength to stand up to all the Beltway neocons and desktop warriors and say, “enough.”

“This is not my war and I want to have nothing to do with it. Americans elected me to bring jobs to Middle America, not to pursue a crusade for the bloodthirsty neocon elite who fantasize of using American might to right all their perceived historical wrongs.”

America first is the real and only solution to the Ukraine problem.

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

The post End The Ukraine War With This One Simple Trick appeared first on LewRockwell.

When a claque of deep state shills such as Norm Eisen, Chuck Schumer, Bill Kristol, David Brooks, and Larry Summers holler about Mr. Trump’s attempt to reform a depraved political culture as “an assault on norms,” are you not prompted to wonder what, exactly, those norms might be?

Looks like they are describing a colossal matrix of racketeering operations in concert with an epic program of crypto-Marxist mind-fuckery, mountains of money purloined under color-of-law, swindles galore of practically every public enterprise, the capital city of a so-called republic fogged in gaslight to conceal a Satyricon of pedophilia, sodomy, and sado-masochism in every closet, cabinet, and pigeon-hole of the political class.

So, along comes Mr. Trump for the second round, with a supernaturally able clean-up crew this time, and the monsters feeding off that depraved normality commence to shriek in mortal panic as the scaffold of their crimes gets methodically disassembled and secrets are revealed.

Many of you have been pouting over the lack of criminal prosecutions these first hundred days. Why is AG Ms. Bondi preening on Fox News when she should be banging-out subpoenas and arrest warrants, you ask? And what broom-closet is Dan Bongino hiding in over at the Hoover Building? How is Hillary Clinton still at-large in the land? Does Alejandro Mayorkas still make his Saturday excursions to the boutiques along M Street? Looks like the months of May and June are setting up to be the season of shocks and consequence.

T-minus seven days. pic.twitter.com/wcU4tJvHLF

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) April 30, 2025

A week earlier, O’Keefe announced that he had bombshell recordings of public figures breaking the law, involving billions of dollars, which he expected would lead to indictments. What spooked him in the week since then? I guess we’ll have to stand by to find out, or see if JO’K was bluffing.

Meanwhile Virginia Guiffre, a former Jeffrey Epstein teen sex slave, likewise said just over a week ago: “I am making it publicly known that in no way, shape, or form am I suicidal. If something happens to me, for the sake of my family do not let this go away and help me to protect them. Too many evil people want to see me quieted.” This was a month after she was injured in a traffic accident with a school bus in Western Australia. On April 24, she reportedly committed suicide at home, after release from the hospital. What do you suppose changed her mind?

An ominous silence surrounds the promised release of the Epstein case material, whatever it consists of: depositions, flight logs, photographs, video recordings of prominent people in compromising situations. Remember, not long after inauguration day, the FBI’s New York field office was found to be sitting on a huge trove of previously hidden Epstein case evidence. The DOJ swiftly “retired” the chief agent of the office, James Dennehy, who additionally had failed to cooperate with requests to disclose the names of agents involved in the Jan-6 investigations. Supposedly, since the discovery of the Epstein trove, a thousand agents were assigned to “process” it, redact the names of the innocent victims, so they say. Are the close to finishing?

Speaking of the J-6, 2021 matter, pressure is building for the Republican majority Congress to hold hearings on exactly what went on that fateful day. FBI Director Patel has yet to disclose how many government agents (not just FBI), and how many “confidential human sources” (i.e., provocateurs), were in the crowd around and inside the US Capitol. It’s getting to be past time to ask Mr. Patel for a straight answer on that in an official proceeding, and continue from there to related business, such as Nancy Pelosi’s failure to reinforce the Capitol Police with National Guard troops that day, and the strange doings around the DNC pipe bomb ploy few blocks away. Personally, I doubt that Mr. Patel is inclined to lie or dissemble about all that. But the natives are getting a little restless.

Mr. Kennedy at HHS is already pretty frisky in his role supervising the enormous cluster of agencies that have done so much to wreck the nation’s health in recent years. Goodbye fluoride in the drinking water. Hello to placebo testing for new drugs and vaccines. Welcome to a vigorous six-month campaign to determine a likely cause of the autism epidemic. RFK is even asking what exactly is in those aviation contrails that folks have been observing and complaining about for so many years. And then there was the bomb he dropped during this week’s cabinet meeting: that under Joe Biden, HHS acted as a major vector for the trafficking of children. Say, what??? Lotta people wondered, did Bobby really say that? And does he know exactly who in HHS is responsible. . . like, names attached? I guess we’ll find out.

On a brighter note, not only did Klaus Schwab, the comic book villain who leads the World Economic Forum (WEF), resign last week, but he stands formally accused of misusing its funds. An inquiry ensues. Mr. Schwab’s daughter, Nicole, supposedly revealed to possibly sketchy alt-journalist Medeea Greere, that the WEF sought to reduce the global population by billions, and not in a nice way. Standing by on that one. . . . But, at least old Klaus is gone. His temporary replacement is Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, former CEO of the Nestle conglomerate, with a record of nefarious activity in the marketing of infant bottle formula in the third world and other turpitudes. Prediction: the WEF is toast. It was always a bit too bizarre to be taken seriously, but its demise signals real trouble for the foundering Globalist endeavor.

So, the month of May is shaping up to be merry as all get-out, and then June will be bustin’ out all over. That thing you felt. . .? That was the ground shaking and the earth moving. Strap in.

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

The post What’s Normal, Exactly? appeared first on LewRockwell.