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You do not have to wade far into the recently declassified Crossfire Hurricane documents to be shocked.  I had only read three pages of the FBI’s December 19, 2016 interview with the DoJ’s Bruce Ohr before learning just how early in the game the FBI brass knew that the Steele dossier was worthless.

In the way of background, on July 31, 2016, the FBI launched its counterintelligence operation into the Trump campaign, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.”  FBI agent Peter Strzok was assigned to head it up.

If the goal was to cripple Trump regardless of the evidence, Strzok was the man for the job.  “Damn this feels momentous,” he texted his lover, FBI attorney Lisa Page, upon getting the assignment.  Two weeks later he explained to Page his motives.  “There’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” he texted her.  “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

Ohr played a curious role in the whole affair.  He served as unofficial DoJ contact with the notorious Christopher Steele, the author of the eponymous Steele dossier.  According to Ohr, the two met for breakfast on the same day the FBI launched Crossfire Hurricane.  Steele wanted to discuss some “serious stuff” involving low-level Trump adviser Carter Page.

More interesting than what Steele claimed to know about Page is what Ohr already knew about the funding of the Steele dossier.  As Ohr told his FBI interviewer, Joe Pientka, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS “hired Steele to dig up Trump’s connection to Russia.”  Complicating matters is that Ohr’s wife, Nelliie, worked for Simpson.

Protecting Nellie, a Russian interpreter, Ohr claimed she was “hired to conduct open source research.”  He conceded, however, “Even though she did not know the goal of the project, she was able to surmise the purpose as the individuals were close to Trump.”

Ohr knew, too, that “Glenn Simpson was hired by a lawyer who does opposition research,” although he did not name the lawyer.

Steele, reported Ohr, “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President.”  Ohr did not believe that Steele was “making up information.”  That said, he had little confidence in Steele’s sources.  Steele may have reported what he heard, but, said Ohr, “that doesn’t make that story true.”  Explained Ohr, “There are  always Russian conspiracy theories that come from the Kremlin.”

Steele and Ohr met again that September, close to the time reporter Michael Isikoff first broke the story of the Steele dossier.  In this meeting, an increasingly worried Steele fed Ohr what would prove to be bogus information about Trump’s relationship to Alfa Bank.  On September 23, 2016, Isikoff wrote a lengthy breakout article for Yahoo News based on a briefing by “multiple sources.”  Ohr was unsure whether Isikoff had met with Simpson or Steele or both.

As Isikoff reported, intelligence officials were investigating Carter Page’s “private communications with senior Russian officials.”  He reported, too, that Senate majority leader Harry Reid had briefed the FBI director James Comey on the “significant and disturbing ties” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.  Reid likely got this information from the Clinton campaign, apparently unaware that Comey had access to the same spurious intel.

In October 2016, a few weeks after the article’s publication, the DOJ and the FBI packaged the Isikoff article and the dossier in their application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), specifically to monitor Carter Page.  As the 2019 inspector general report by Michael Horowitz made painfully clear, despite years of denial by various parties, the FBI relied heavily upon the Steele dossier to get FISA authorization on Page.  Serving on the FISC at the time was Judge James Boasberg.  Anti-Trump partisans tainted every step of the process.

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

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(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/il-prezzo-della-convenienza)

Immaginate: il vostro smartphone si spegne mentre siete in viaggio e all'improvviso vi ritrovate impotenti, incapaci di navigare, pagare o persino accedere alla prenotazione dell'hotel. Non è un'ipotesi; è la nostra realtà. Secondo il “Digital 2024 Global Overview Report” di DataReportal, la persona media trascorre ora oltre 7 ore al giorno sui dispositivi digitali, con il 47% che segnala ansia quando è separata dai propri telefoni. Quello che una volta era un piccolo inconveniente è ora diventata una crisi, rivelando quanto profondamente abbiamo integrato la tecnologia nella nostra esistenza quotidiana, dall'ordinare un caffè al dimostrare la nostra identità.

George Orwell immaginava una distopia di sottomissione forzata, ma gli è sfuggito qualcosa di cruciale: le persone rinunciano volontariamente alle proprie libertà per le comodità. Come spiega Shoshana Zuboff in “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”, questa disponibilità a barattare la privacy per la comodità rappresenta un cambiamento fondamentale nel modo in cui il potere opera nell'era digitale. Non abbiamo bisogno che il Grande Fratello ci osservi: invitiamo la sorveglianza nelle nostre case tramite altoparlanti smart, telecamere di sicurezza ed elettrodomestici connessi, tutto in nome di una vita più facile. Non solo accettiamo questa sorveglianza; l'abbiamo interiorizzata come un compromesso necessario. “Non preoccupatevi”, ci viene detto, “i vostri dati sono al sicuro e in cambio riceverete consigli migliori e servizi più smart”. Ci siamo talmente abituati a essere osservati che difendiamo i nostri osservatori, sviluppando un attaccamento quasi patologico agli stessi sistemi che ci limitano.

Pensate alla sicurezza aeroportuale. Dopo l'11 settembre gli americani hanno accettato procedure TSA sempre più invasive, le quali promettevano sia sicurezza che comodità. Due decenni dopo ci togliamo diligentemente le scarpe, addestrati come animali obbedienti a seguire il teatrino della sicurezza perché un idiota ha cercato di nascondere esplosivi nei suoi stivali quasi 25 anni fa; ci sottoponiamo a scansioni di tutto il corpo e consegniamo le bottiglie d'acqua, ciononostante la sicurezza aeroportuale non è né comoda né più efficace. Proprio come ci siamo tolti le scarpe senza fare domande negli aeroporti, abbiamo ceduto senza fare domande le nostre informazioni più riservate in cambio della promessa di comodità.

Ho assistito in prima persona a questo cambiamento durante i miei due decenni nel settore della tecnologia. Quando Google ha lanciato Gmail, pubblicizzandolo come un servizio “gratuito”, ho avvisato gli amici che in realtà stavano pagando con i loro dati. Il vecchio adagio si è rivelato vero: quando qualcosa è gratuito, non siete un cliente, bensì il prodotto. Molti hanno riso, dandomi del paranoico.

Un video satirico chiamato “The Google Toilet” ha catturato perfettamente questo momento, mostrando come saremmo disposti a barattare i nostri dati più intimi per la comodità. Il video sembrava assurdo quando è stato realizzato 15 anni fa, ora sembra profetico. Oggi quella stessa azienda, che ho dimostrato profondamente legata alla comunità dell'intelligence sin dalla sua nascita, traccia la nostra posizione, ascolta le nostre conversazioni e sa di più sulle nostre abitudini quotidiane dei nostri amici più cari. Anche dopo che Snowden ha rivelato l'entità della sorveglianza digitale, la maggior parte delle persone ha scrollato le spalle. La comodità valeva il costo, finché non abbiamo scoperto che non erano in gioco solo i nostri dati, ma la nostra capacità stessa di vivere in modo indipendente.

La tirannia di quando tutto è “smart”

Secondo Consumer Reports oltre l'87% dei principali elettrodomestici venduti nel 2023 includeva funzionalità “smart”, rendendo quasi impossibile trovare modelli base. Quando di recente ho avuto bisogno di un'asciugatrice, ho scoperto che quasi tutti i modelli erano “smart”, richiedendo connettività Wi-Fi e integrazione con app. Non volevo un'asciugatrice che potesse twittare; ne volevo solo una che asciugasse i vestiti. Quando l'idraulico è venuto a installarla, perché ovviamente non ho mai imparato a farlo da solo, si è lamentato che gli serviva una laurea in ingegneria solo per riparare gli elettrodomestici moderni.

Non si tratta solo di asciugatrici. Ogni articolo domestico sta diventando smart: termostati, maniglie delle porte, lampadine, tostapane. Mio padre sapeva smontare e rimontare il motore di un'auto nel nostro garage. Oggi non si può nemmeno cambiare l'olio in alcuni veicoli senza accedere al sistema informatico dell'auto. Abbiamo perso più delle semplici competenze meccaniche: abbiamo perso la sicurezza di provare a riparare le cose da soli. Quando tutto richiede software specializzati e strumenti proprietari, il fai da te diventa impossibile per progettazione.

La perdita della scrittura corsiva esemplifica questo declino. Oltre ai suoi benefici per le capacità cognitive, non si tratta solo di calligrafia; si tratta di continuità culturale e indipendenza. Una generazione incapace di leggere il corsivo diventa dipendente dalle traduzioni digitali della propria storia, che si tratti della Dichiarazione di Indipendenza o delle lettere d'amore dei nonni. Questa disconnessione dal nostro passato non è solo comoda; è una forma di amnesia culturale che ci rende più dipendenti da versioni aggiustate e digitalizzate della storia.

La visione del movimento fai da te, ovvero dare alle persone gli strumenti per creare, riparare e comprendere il mondo fisico che le circonda, offre un modello per resistere alla dipendenza ingegnerizzata. Le comunità stanno già creando biblioteche di utensili dove i residenti possono prendere in prestito attrezzature e imparare riparazioni di base. Stanno emergendo garage di riparazione di quartiere, dove le persone si riuniscono per riparare oggetti rotti e condividere conoscenze. Le cooperative alimentari locali e gli orti comunitari non riguardano solo i prodotti biologici, ma anche come nutrirci senza catene di fornitura aziendali. Anche semplici azioni come la gestione di raccolte di libri fisici e registri cartacei diventano radicali quando incombe la censura digitale. Non si tratta solo di hobby, ma di atti di resistenza contro un sistema che trae profitto dalla nostra impotenza.

La natura fiat del controllo digitale

Proprio come le banche centrali dichiarano il valore della valuta per decreto, le aziende tecnologiche ora dichiarano cosa costituisce la comodità nelle nostre vite. Non siamo noi a scegliere questi sistemi, ci vengono imposti, proprio come la moneta fiat. Volete un elettrodomestico “stupido”? Spiacente, questa opzione è stata dichiarata obsoleta. Volete riparare i vostri dispositivi? Sono stati progettati per non esserlo ed essere buttati.

Ho esplorato più a fondo questo concetto dei sistemi imposti in un precedente saggio, esaminando come la scarsità e il controllo artificiali si estendano ben oltre il denaro, fino a cibo, salute, istruzione e informazione. Gli stessi principi che consentono alle banche centrali di stampare la valuta dal nulla ora consentono alle aziende tecnologiche di dichiarare cosa è “necessario” nella nostra vita quotidiana.

Questo non è un semplice progresso tecnologico, è un sistema di controllo. Proprio come la moneta fiat trae valore dalla convinzione collettiva, la “comodità” moderna trae il suo fascino non dall'utilità genuina, ma dalla necessità artificiale. Ci viene detto che abbiamo bisogno di dispositivi smart, archiviazione cloud e connettività costante, non perché siano utili a noi, ma perché sono utili al sistema che trae profitto dalla nostra dipendenza.

La spinta verso una società senza contanti rappresenta l'espressione massima di questo controllo. Come scrissi due anni fa in “From Covid to CBDC”, l'eliminazione della valuta fisica non riguarda solo l'efficienza, ma la creazione di un sistema in cui ogni transazione può essere monitorata, approvata o negata. Le valute digitali delle banche centrali (CBDC) promettono praticità, costruendo al contempo l'architettura per una sorveglianza e un controllo finanziari assoluti.

Proprio come i green pass hanno normalizzato la presentazione di documenti per partecipare alla società, i pagamenti esclusivamente digitali normalizzano l'idea che le nostre transazioni richiedano l'approvazione istituzionale. Immaginate un mondo in cui i vostri soldi hanno una data di scadenza, in cui gli acquisti possono essere bloccati in base al vostro punteggio di credito sociale, o in cui i vostri risparmi possono essere disattivati ​​se pubblicate un'opinione sbagliata online. Queste non sono ipotesi: il sistema di credito sociale in Cina dimostra già come il denaro digitale possa diventare uno strumento per far rispettare la conformità.

La morte del movimento “fai da te”

Per un breve momento tra la fine degli anni Duemila e l'inizio del decennio del 2010, sembrava che potessimo resistere a questa ondata di dipendenza ingegnerizzata. Il movimento fai da te è emerso, esemplificato da spazi come il 3rd Ward a Brooklyn, un vasto spazio di lavoro collettivo di 30.000 piedi quadrati in cui artisti, artigiani e imprenditori potevano accedere a strumenti, apprendere competenze e creare una comunità. Piattaforme online come Kickstarter sono emerse contemporaneamente, consentendo ai creatori di mettere insiene un pubblico e finanziare progetti innovativi direttamente, aggirando i tradizionali gatekeeper.

Ciononostante qualcosa è cambiato. La chiusura di 3rd Ward nel 2013 ha segnato più della fine di uno spazio di lavoro: ha rappresentato la commercializzazione stessa dell'etica del fai da te. Quello spazio aveva insegnato lezioni fondamentali sull'istruzione sostenibile guidata dalla comunità e sulla condivisione delle competenze, ma queste lezioni sono andate perse quando il movimento è diventato sempre più orientato al profitto. Mentre alcuni elementi positivi rimangono, gran parte della sostanza del movimento fai da te è stata sostituita dalla creazione performativa: invece di creare davvero qualcosa, ci siamo accontentati di guardare gli altri creare qualcosa su YouTube. C'è qualcosa di profondamente umano nell'impulso a creare, a costruire, a capire come funzionano le cose, eppure la modernità ci ha rimodellati da creatori a spettatori, contenti di sperimentare la creatività indirettamente. L'autentica spinta dall'autosufficienza si è trasformata in contenuti attentamente curati, con i “creatori” che sono diventati influencer che vendono l'estetica dell'artigianato piuttosto che le competenze stesse.

La domanda ora è se ci stiamo davvero illuminando a vicenda attraverso queste piattaforme, o se stiamo semplicemente seguendo il modello di OnlyFans di mercificazione (e degradazione) di ogni interazione umana.

Personaggi digitali e perdita di sé

I social media non hanno solo trasformato la nostra vanità in un'arma, ma ci hanno trasformati da esseri umani in performance digitali. I nostri telefoni sono diventati macchine di propaganda portatili per i nostri marchi personali. Una ricerca interna di Meta ha rivelato che Instagram peggiora i problemi di immagine corporea per il 32% delle ragazze adolescenti, eppure continuiamo ad abbracciare queste piattaforme. Fotografiamo ogni pasto prima di assaggiarlo, documentiamo ogni momento di vacanza invece di viverlo e creiamo l'illusione di vite perfette mentre siamo seduti da soli nei nostri appartamenti, sorseggiando vino e intorpidendoci con Netflix.

Le implicazioni per la salute sono sbalorditive. Secondo uno studio del CDC del 2023, i tassi di depressione tra i giovani adulti sono raddoppiati sin dal 2011, con gli aumenti più netti correlati ai modelli di utilizzo dei social media. Stiamo barattando la vera connessione umana con colpi di dopamina digitale, conversazioni reali con reazioni emoji ed esperienze autentiche con post accattivanti. La comodità della connessione digitale istantanea ha creato una generazione più connessa ma più isolata che mai.

Man mano che perfezioniamo le nostre performance digitali, ci affidiamo sempre di più a strumenti artificiali per mantenere queste personalità attentamente create, il che ci porta a una forma di dipendenza ancora più profonda.

La trappola dell'IA

Forse la cosa più allarmante è la nostra crescente dipendenza dall'intelligenza artificiale. Stiamo esternalizzando il nostro pensiero all'IA, ma così facendo, rischiamo di erodere la nostra stessa autonomia cognitiva. Nello modo stesso in cui abbiamo permesso alla nostra forza fisica di indebolirsi affidandoci alla tecnologia, la nostra forza mentale sta diventando flaccida, inutilizzata e atrofizzata.

Gli studenti ora si rivolgono a ChatGPT prima di tentare di risolvere i problemi da soli. I professionisti si affidano all'IA per scrivere e-mail, report e presentazioni senza sviluppare autonomamente queste competenze critiche. Gli scrittori si affidano sempre di più all'assistenza dell'IA piuttosto che affinare la propria arte. Ogni volta che ci rimettiamo all'IA per compiti che potremmo svolgere da soli, non stiamo solo scegliendo la comodità, stiamo scegliendo di lasciare che un'altra capacità umana si atrofizzi.

Proprio come abbiamo dimenticato come riparare i nostri dispositivi, rischiamo di dimenticare come pensare in modo profondo e indipendente. Il pericolo non è che l'IA diventi troppo intelligente, ma che diventeremo troppo dipendenti da essa, incapaci di analizzare, creare o risolvere problemi senza assistenza digitale. Stiamo costruendo un mondo in cui il pensiero indipendente diventa raro quanto l'abilità meccanica, in cui l'autosufficienza cognitiva è vista come inefficiente piuttosto che essenziale.

Riconquistare la libertà

La soluzione non è rifiutare tutta la tecnologia, ma comprendere il vero costo della comodità. Prima di adottare ogni nuova innovazione “smart”, chiedetevi:

• A quale capacità sto rinunciando?

• Posso essere autosufficiente se questo sistema fallisce?

• La comodità vale la dipendenza?

• Qual è il vero prezzo, in termini di privacy, competenze e autonomia?

• In che modo questa tecnologia plasma il mio comportamento e il mio pensiero?

Bisogna coltivare attivamente l'indipendenza insieme all'innovazione, imparare le tecniche di riparazione di base, conservare copie fisiche di documenti importanti, e libri, perché, data l'ascesa del complesso industriale della censura, non possiamo essere sicuri di quanto a lungo saranno disponibili in formato digitale. Imparare a leggere una mappa, scrivere senza intelligenza artificiale e sopravvivere qualora Internet dovesse venire meno. La vera libertà non si trova nell'avere tutto a portata di mano, ma nel mantenere la capacità di vivere senza quelle comodità quando necessario.

L'ironia non mi sfugge qui. Ho trascorso decenni come knowledge worker nel settore della tecnologia, esattamente dove la società mi voleva: davanti agli schermi, a creare prodotti digitali, diventando proprio il tipo di specialista che ora sto criticando. Come molti della mia generazione, ho imparato un po' di programmazione di base prima di imparare a riparare un rubinetto che perdeva o a coltivare il mio cibo. Amo ancora la tecnologia e credo nel suo potenziale di automatizzare compiti banali, liberandoci in modo da perseguire forme più elevate di creatività e connessione, ma questa promessa diventerà vuota se sacrifichiamo le nostre capacità fondamentali nel processo.

L'aspetto più pericoloso di questo compromesso non è la perdita di privacy, è la perdita di consapevolezza che stiamo perdendo qualcosa. Non stiamo solo perdendo competenze e privacy; stiamo perdendo la capacità di riconoscere cosa significhi essere indipendenti. La domanda non è se la comodità valga il costo della libertà, è se riconosceremo ciò che abbiamo perso prima di dimenticare di averlo mai avuto.

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

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The last excuse that diehard defenders of President Trump’s tariff policies have advanced now lies in ruins. Trump had put in place exorbitant tariffs, these defenders acknowledged, but this was just a negotiating tactic, to get the targeted countries to lower their own tariffs on American goods. But if that is his aim, he is pursuing it in a blunderbuss fashion. As Paul Craig Roberts, a strong defender of tariffs, says: “Trump’s position on tariffs is problematical for many reasons.  First, let me say that historically tariffs were a legislative issue.  The Morrill Tariff was voted by Congress. The Smith-Hawley Tariff was voted by Congress.  How is it that the executive is imposing tariffs? Assuming the president has this authority and assuming that we don’t have tariffs on others but others have tariffs on the US, the way to success is for Trump to sit down with the offenders and explain that the situation is not working for us. How do they propose to rectify the inequality?  This would have given Trump the upper hand.  Instead, he is portrayed as issuing threats not only to China but also to American allies. Retaliation has become the game.”

Ron Unz, who is a master of statistical analysis. offers the best account of where Trump has gone wrong. Unz, like Roberts, isn’t opposed to protective tariffs, but he explains fully Trump’s irrationality. Trump has confused trade deficits with tariffs, leading him to absurd figures: “For example, our factually-challenged president declared that his new tariff rates were ‘retaliatory’ and indeed the first column of the chart he displayed showed the foreign tariffs that had allegedly provoked his retaliation, but everyone quickly noticed that these figures were total nonsense. Switzerland hardly imposes a 61% tariff on American goods, nor does Vietnam maintain a 90% tariff rate against our products. Instead these figures were merely calculated using a formula based upon America’s existing trade deficit in goods, which was something entirely different. So if another country sold us more goods than they themselves bought, that was described as due to a tariff even if no such tariff actually existed. In a perfect example of this absurdity, Trump incorrectly claimed that the penguins of Norfolk Island near Antarctica maintained huge barriers against American products, with his counter-vailing tariff of 29% aimed at punishing those water-fowl for their unfair trading practices. Obviously, Trump’s claims justifying his new tariff rates were totally ridiculous, but they were actually ridiculous in several different ways. Suppose that this weren’t the case, and our trade in goods with the rest of the rest of the world were totally in balance, just as Trump wished it to be. Under those circumstances, we would naturally have trade surpluses with some countries and trade deficits with others, with all of the different figures netting out to zero. But according to Trump’s framework, those countries with which we had a trade surplus would still be hit with a new 10% tariff while those with which we had a deficit would suffer much larger tariffs, and these would then be jacked up if those countries decided to retaliate. So the apparent goal and endpoint of Trump’s policies would be to sharply reduce or even eliminate all our trade with the rest of the world. Thus, Trump was self-sanctioning America much like he had sought to do against Iran, Russia, North Korea, and all the other countries he and previous administrations had regarded with considerable hostility. Yet oddly enough Trump seemed to believe that cutting off the global trade of countries he didn’t like would severely hurt them, but cutting off our own trade would strengthen our country and benefit the American people.”

Given such irrationality, an obvious question arises, what is Trump’s game? Eric Schliesser, who teaches political science at the University of Amsterdam, suggests that Trump is seeking to concentrate power in himself and to advance his own financial interests and those of his cronies: “From my own, more (skeptical) liberal perspective tariffs are an expression of mistrust against individuals’ judgments; they limit and even deny us our ability to shape our lives with our meaningful associates as we see fit. And tariffs do so, in part, by changing the pattern of costs on us, and, in part, by altering the political landscape in favor of the well-connected few. Of course, in practice, tariffs are always hugely regressive by raising costs on consumer products. This is, in fact, a familiar effect of mercantilism and has been a rallying cry for liberals since Adam Smith and the Corn league. That is, some of the most insidious and dangerous effects of tariffs are evidently political in character. They create monopoly profits for the connected few, who can, thereby, entrench themselves against competitors, regulators, and consumers. It is well known that once a tariff is entrenched it is incredibly difficult to remove. They create permanent temptations to bribe the executive and those with access to him. Watch for stories about import-quotas, tariff holidays, and ad hoc tariff exemptions to appear in the press and subsequent policy. Political and economic uncertainty is generally a self-reinforcing process. To undo it more and more actions by the executive are demanded by a scared public manipulated by profit-seeking adventurers. It’s entirely predictable we’ll see the rise of a system of selective subsidies and cartels as Trump Tariffs are entrenched.”

Schliesser also draws a connection between high tariffs and imperialism. “The commentariat is suddenly full of knowing nods to William McKinley and his tariffs. President Trump himself is known to refer to him. And, yet, there is a tempting mistake to treat tariffs as evidence of isolationism. McKinley was no isolationist. McKinley’s was the American imperialist presidency annexing Hawaii, and after the war with Spain annexing Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and American Samoa as well as control of Cuba. That President Trump admires President McKinley and envisions annexation of Canada, Greenland, Panama, and even Gaza fits the worldview.”

We should never forget that the problem with tariffs is confined to Trump’s insane ideas. Tariffs are bad for consumers. They restrict what we can buy. As the great Dr. Ron Paul explains, “China’s retaliatory tariffs show how export-dependent industries are harmed by protectionist policies. Even if other countries refrain from imposing retaliatory tariffs, exporters can still suffer from reduced demand for their products in countries targeted by US tariffs. Businesses that rely on imported materials to manufacture their products also suffer from increased production costs thanks to tariffs. President Trump acknowledged how tariffs harm US manufacturers when he granted US automakers’ request for a one-month delay in new tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada.Many American consumers who are struggling with high prices are concerned that President Trump’s tariff policy will further increase prices. They are right to be concerned. Contrary to popular belief, foreign businesses do not pay tariffs. Tariffs are paid by US businesses that wish to sell the imported goods. When tariffs are increased, the importing businesses try to recoup their increased costs by increasing their prices. Consumers then must choose whether to pay the higher price, find a cheaper alternative, or do without the product. Whatever they choose, consumers will be worse off because they cannot spend their money the way they prefer.

Let’s do everything we can to end protective tariffs. Free trade is the path to peace and prosperity.

The post Trump’s Insane Tariff Policy appeared first on LewRockwell.

The European Zionists who created the modern state of Israel may have been cursed from the beginning, not because they were Jews, but because they were urbanites. In other words, they were not then, and are not now, farmers or ranchers, to use the American term.

Not being farmers or ranchers is a big deal if you “create” a country with a self-sufficient pastoral fantasy on top of land populated by actual farmers and ranchers. Urban culture can be a blessing of cultural, artistic, and intellectual achievement, of politics and ideas, of excitement.  On the other hand, urban culture is intensely uncurious about rural and farm life, not interested in the people or the culture that keeps food and fuel moving into the cities.

Just recently, our own Vice President JD Vance, himself direct from rural Appalachian poverty, caught heat from China when he said, “We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”  The Chinese were surprised because Vance is known for his “Hillbilly Elegy” that humanizes rural people, and reflects on their toughness and their strength. They were saddened because Vance’s words revealed the lack of mutual respect and understanding.  Aesop’s fable about the city mouse and the country mouse comes to mind.

That fable speaks to the dilemma we find today in the modern Zionist state, where peaceful poverty for Israelis may increasingly be preferable to a higher per capita income and unimaginable levels of fear and uncertainty. Tel Aviv is security dependent on an American president who is mercurial and calculating. Zionist Israel is vulnerable to coming American generations who will inevitably end Zionist Israel’s special status, stop US wars on demand for Israel, and slash current outrageous levels of US taxpayer subsidy to a country of 9 million mostly ungrateful inhabitants eight time zones from middle America.

Respecting rural life is one thing, understanding the land and the environment is another.  As a farmer, I glimpse the fundamental wisdom of the natural world, and its multiplicity of adaptations to climate and microclimate, land, livestock and wildlife.  I am impressed on a daily basis by the sliver of interdependence and resilience that I see around me.  I’m humbled because I perceive only a tiny portion of this complexity.  There seems to be a continuous dance between too much and not enough, and yet it all leads to growth and healing – of soil, of land, of life.

My ancestors came here from Germany and England 400 years ago, farmers and working class poor people, risk-takers and populists intent on escaping the colonial curse of Europe, not reinventing it the New World.  One of my grandfathers was a fan of Thoreau, and despised FDR, I never saw the other one read a book, but he also despised FDR.  Both were farmers just north of the Ohio River, not too far from where Vance grew up two generations later.

So when I report the long term “strategy” by the IDF and Israeli settlers of releasing feral pigs into Palestinian lands to destroy the land, the grass, the crops, and the water as a pre-settlement clearing operation, it is in this context.  My natural-born contempt for arrogant urbanites, utopian bureaucrats, and people who live primarily as government stooges comes alive in the case of Israeli settlers – pressing to occupy more, steal more and destroy ever more Palestinian land on the Capitol dime with IDF muscle – and using wild boars as their weapon.

For well over a decade, wild pigs have been released into Palestinian areas.  Illegal settlers do it, the Israeli government encourages it, and the IDF protects all the pigs by ensuring Palestinians are unarmed and unable to defend their property.  It is really quite amazing.

Americans throughout the midwest and south know what feral pigs can do.  Whole service industries have grown up to control wild pig populations, and repairing and protecting farms, ranges and suburbs from their rapacious environmental damage. Americans embrace their natural rights to protect themselves, their children and their property, and to bear arms.  Palestinians, on the other hand, live under Israeli laws that do not rest on a written Constitution, but reflect only the shifting needs of Zionism.  It is “illegal” for them to bear arms, or otherwise protect their property from settlers, or from the feral pigs those settlers send their way.

Given the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the related land theft going on in the West Bank, Syria and southern Lebanon, the issue of feral pigs in Palestine may seem unremarkable.  It’s just one more method of harassing, dehumanizing, starving and humiliating Palestinians, in a place where the highest order of the state, and the highest value of Zionism is to harass, dehumanize, starve and humiliate Palestinians, and to kill them.

In the United States, we work together to prevent and repair the insane damage feral hogs do to local economies and environments. Our universities study ways to control their reproduction, our governments fight the pigs directly, and assist private enterprise in destroying them.  Private citizens in American shoot them, trap them, kill them and process them. We know feral pigs in this country, and we know their place is very likely on a plate somewhere. Ironically, feral pigs in Palestine and in Israel are today a war crime of one side against the other, but they will ultimately become a two state disaster that may require a horde of Texans and Arkansans with rifles and ingenuity to solve.

Israel does not know, or care, one whit about pigs, agriculture, the environment, or how the natural world works.  With US money, arms and assistance, the Zionist government – with overwhelming support by most Israelis – has dropped the equivalent of 6 Hiroshima size atomic bombs on a strip of land the size of Washington DC, up to College Park and Laurel, Maryland.  Gaza has been physically annihilated, but the real dehumanization has not occurred there, but inside of Israel, within Israeli society.

Feral hogs wreak havoc on farms, fields and forests, leaving destruction in their wake.  They destroy what they cannot eat, pollute water, spread disease and terror.  They kill and eat lambs and kids, among other things.  The USDA – and probably the IDF as well – call them a “feral swine bomb.”

Perhaps it is appropriate that Zionist colonialism, a political model inherited from European intellectuals and creatively massaged by European Zionist urbanites, is letting loose wild boars into the holy land as a weapon.  European nobility did much the same on lands set aside for the world of wealth, and elite sport, as a demonstration of power, and enforcement of serfdom and servitude of the locals.

Zionist Israel was never a good fit for the second half of the 20th century, and it has become an anachronism in the 21st.  70 plus years of Israel’s episodic mass starvation, destruction of property, and murder wreaked on Palestinians has become ordinary, yet unimaginable.  One more hell on earth has been created, this time courtesy of US political leaders and Zionist cultists. We don’t understand it. But Americans definitely understand feral pigs, and we know only the insane and degraded would set them on their neighbors.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if we wouldn’t tolerate it in our own neighborhood, or our own country, we shouldn’t fund it overseas.

The post Wild Boars appeared first on LewRockwell.

How do we know God loves us? Is there any evidence in the Scriptures telling us that He does? Is there an image perhaps to which we can easily point to prove that we are loved by God in the most intimate and unmistakable way? There are actually a whole busload of examples, of which the following may be the most profound and compelling of all. It is certainly the most recent, appearing just the other day in one of the Lenten readings taken from the prophet Isaiah (49:6-15).

What is most arresting about the image is that it reveals a God speaking to Israel as though He were addressing a young child, frightened and alone in a world too menacing to face. He wants to allay the child’s fear of abandonment, of that sudden desolating state in which the child sees no hope of escape, no prospect of rescue or relief. And so the Lord reaches out to the child, to comfort this child after His own heart, with the certainty that He at least has not forgotten him, that He will never forsake him. It is an unspeakably beautiful passage, evoking an intimacy never before expressed between God and the people of the book, of the promise uniquely given to them by God.

And so, seizing upon the most perfect image, He asks, “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb?” Such an astonishing image that must have been to those about to undergo the pain of exile and loss! What greater consolation could there be than the certainty of knowing that God, not unlike a mother choosing to love her child, is no less moved to love His own child, the offspring of the covenant He first made with Abraham?

Now, of course, God is their Father, the Primal One who fashioned Israel into a people, a nation whose mission will be to provide that point of entry for God Himself to enter the human story, making it His-tory because our own stories will never be enough to overcome the iniquity of a fallen universe. And, accordingly, as our Father, His aim is to reshape the whole of that universe, redirecting its course back to Him. But notice how He loves Israel precisely as a mother, indeed, as would any good mother whose love for her children remains resolute, steadfast, and fierce, freshly dispensed each hour of every day.

There can be no other relation among men as necessary and natural as the bond between a child and his mother. In the order of nature, it remains the first and most formative of all the connections we make. How could it be otherwise with one who has not only given the child life from out of her own life, the very loins of her own body, but who, by choosing to nourish the child at her breast, bestows a meaning upon this child, a meaning of imperishable value? Where else but in the primordial relation of the child to its mother, given the sheer indestructible intimacy of that bond, will there awaken that sense of the child’s importance and value as a person?

And what other astonishing thing does God say to Zion through the prophet Isaiah? What does He tell this people He brought out of bondage and death, in order finally to put to flight whatever lingering fear of abandonment may persist? Nothing less than God’s absolute guarantee that “Even should she forget, I will never forget you.” That however wayward the exercise of a mother’s love may prove to be, God’s love is not subject to change, that it will always burn with an intensity of love for those who have won His heart.

And because the exercise of divine love is not in the least arbitrary or capricious, every human creature who has ever lived, or will ever live, is entitled to receive that love. It is not like a government contract, revocable over time. It lasts forever.

And yet we still fear its loss, don’t we? We still suffer the anguish of being abandoned. Hasn’t it always been the deepest, the most fearful privation of all? That those we love, those on whom we depend to love us, will maybe decide someday to stop loving us. That they will choose, however perversely, to leave us in the lurch, alone and bereft, lost in a world we were never created to have to endure. And isn’t that the whole point of being lost, that we simply do not know when the ax will fall?

Alas, when it comes to being lost, we are all like the children of Israel. Or our own children as well. In her moving account of her father, writer John Cheever, Susan Cheever explains the origin of her book’s title, Home Before Dark. “My father liked to tell a story about my younger brother Fred,” who, at the end of a long summer’s day, suddenly sees their father.

And when he saw daddy standing there he ran across the grass and threw his little boy’s body into his father’s arms. “I want to go home, Daddy,” he said, “I want to go home.” Of course, he was home, just a few feet from the front door, in fact. But that didn’t make any difference, as my father well understood. We all want to go home, he would say when he told this story. We all do.

And if there were no home to go to, no one to welcome the child when he got there, what then? Or if his father should tell him in words so final that nothing more could be said to soften the sentence: “I do not know you”? Would that not force one out into a state of aloneness, of solitude and sorrow that, again, none of us were created to have to endure?

If there really were a loneliness so final that nothing in this world could remedy the pain of it, an abandonment so total that neither word nor gesture could deliver us from it, wouldn’t that be the equivalent of what we mean by Hell? Isn’t Hell that very depth of loneliness where no love, no relation of real communion, can reach one in order to set free the soul of one’s solitude? It would be as if we, too, were the Prodigal Son, only fated never to find our father’s love. An eternity of grief, no less. Who could possibly bear it?

This is why we must cling, and always with the most desperate and tenacious desire, to a God who is not content merely to know us but who loves us as well, who longs to hold us as close to Himself as a child bathing at the breast of its own dear mother.

This originally appeared on Crisis Magazine.

The post We Are All Prodigal Sons and Daughters appeared first on LewRockwell.

Elon Musk—via his DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency)—exposing and attempting to cut government waste is wonderful. However, it’d be even better if Elon focused more on striking closer to the root of the problem: the public’s economic ignorance from which all the disastrous, coercive, competition-immune, monopolistic government central planning, spending, and also warmongering grows. This is precisely what Ludwig von Mises did, and I like to call it the “Misesian formula” for prosperity. Mises devoted parts of his majestic treatise Human Action (1949) to the formula. In a section aptly titled “Economics and the Citizen,” Mises writes:

Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man’s human existence….

All present-day political issues concern problems commonly called economic. All arguments advanced in contemporary discussion of social and public affairs deal with fundamental matters of…economics. Everybody’s mind is preoccupied with economic doctrines…. Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories….

As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny is at stake….

…all reasonable men are called upon to familiarize themselves with the teachings of economics. This is, in our age, the primary civic duty.

Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that economics cannot remain an esoteric branch of knowledge accessible only to small groups of scholars and specialists. Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.

Since it’s real freedom and capitalism that lead to prosperity, explaining this to people is, per Mises, “the primary civic duty.”

Riding the wave of economic education, Javier Milei had been spearheading on his way to electoral triumph in Argentina, on November 8, 2023 Elon tweeted a Hayek meme writing: “Best economist ever.” A week later, on December 4, he tweeted, “Great book by Hayek” while linking to Hayek’s classic book The Road To Serfdom, and another meme quoting Hayek: “nothing could contribute more to the cure of humanity’s ills than to give people a better understanding of economics.” Elon is thus increasingly aware of the need to educate, but still far from having a Misesian ethos-understanding.

Mankind’s problems are overwhelmingly the result of the public’s economic ignorance which then, via democracy, manifests itself in the order-destroying bureaucracies. It is their ignorance—that of your neighbor, family members, and likely former self—that is near the root of the problem, not whatever homo sapiens people vote for. The very root of this economic ignorance, as significantly shown by founder of the “Austrian School of Economics,” Carl Menger, is the fact that money (and its vital emerging benefits like profit-loss calculation), trade, the division of labor, economic competition, etc. are—to borrow Adam Ferguson’s popular phrase—“indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.” Hardly anyone, and much less people of significant influence, likely including Elon, are aware of this.

One of my favorite little-known Libertarian books is Walter Block’s I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians, which contains over 80 autobiographical essays-interviews of leading libertarians/free marketeers like Walter himself, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Peter Boettke, etc., describing how they became libertarians/free marketeers. It is easy to see how many of them went from being ignorant big government, socialist myth-believers to champions of freedom and emerging civilization, by stumbling upon sound economics.

Mises (1881-1973) died long before the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) and pro-capitalist reforms in China, thus he spent his lifetime fighting a losing intellectual battle, as socialist myths expanded their control of more countries. He writes:

From time to time I entertained the hope that my writings would bear practical fruit and point policy in the right direction. I have always looked for evidence of a change in ideology. But I never actually deceived myself; my theories explain, but cannot slow the decline of a great civilization. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.

After WWI, he carried the same determination in his Atlas-like intellectual-educational efforts:

How one carries on in the face of unavoidable catastrophe is a matter of temperament…. Again and again I had met with situations from which rational deliberation found no means of escape; but then the unexpected intervened, and with it came salvation. I would not lose courage even now. I wanted to do everything an economist could do. I would not tire in saying what I knew to be true.

Mises again, in Human Action:

…in the field of social organization and economic policies. Here the best theories are useless if not supported by public opinion. They cannot work if not accepted by a majority of the people. Whatever the system of government may be, there cannot be any question of ruling a nation lastingly on the ground of doctrines at variance with public opinion. In the end the philosophy of the majority prevails. In the long run there cannot be any such thing as an unpopular system of government….

The supremacy of public opinion determines not only the singular role that economics occupies in the complex of thought and knowledge. It determines the whole process of human history….

…great men cannot succeed in adjusting social conditions to their plans if they do not convince public opinion.

The flowering of human society depends on two factors: the intellectual power of outstanding men to conceive sound social and economic theories, and the ability of these or other men to make these ideologies palatable to the majority.

Mises’s wisdom above predicts what is happening to Elon and his DOGE, and again highlights the need to “convince public opinion.” Although Elon has gained support from many, a large percentage of the economically-ignorant public is increasingly, fanatically against Elon’s efforts. Bolshevik-like, intellectually dangerous ideologues like Robert Reich have been constantly spewing anti-economics and violence-inducing class-warfare rhetoric. For example, on March 12, 2025, Reich wrote in Facebook:

Elon Musk is trying to steal the federal government — slashing public services, firing civil servants, and handing power to billionaires like himself. I salute the brave public servants who are resisting this coup.

This type of mindset by the economically ignorant masses have made Musk one of the most hated men in America, to be destroyed via lawfare and even physical violence. From January 29 to March 10, 2025, there have been 9 attacks on Tesla locations. On March 10, X/Twitter suffered a relatively massive outage which, at the time, Elon felt originated in Ukraine, showing the potential dangers of being against the interests of millions vested in neocon warfare. I would not be surprised if SpaceX and Tesla are already—or will eventually be—victims of internal sabotage. Statistically, as the anti-Elon dice keep getting rolled at an increasing rate, he will likely be brought down somehow. Besides, as Vincent Cook’s article “Is DOGE a Dog When It Comes to Real Federal Spending?” shows, there are too many legal obligations for DOGE to make significant cuts.

Elon is attacking the symptoms of economic ignorance, not the root causes like Mises did. With a more Misesian intellectual background and educational strategy, Javier Milei—similar to Ron Paul—managed to educate enough people to win the presidency of Argentina. In an interview with Ben Shapiro, Milei explained how the intellectual revolution grew from economic education:

This time young people were really educated. We would organize what we called the concerts. They were political rallies… At these rallies we had stands…with books. Minister Bullrich…said something brilliant, “you should pay more attention to what Milei is doing. It’s not normal for a politician to be talking to 20 or 30 thousand people about Hayek.” Young people started to evangelize at home with their parents and grandparents.

Mises wrote:

Liberalism is rationalistic. It maintains that it is possible to convince the immense majority… It has full confidence in man’s reason. It may be that this optimism is unfounded and that the liberals have erred. But then there is no hope left for mankind’s future.

In other words, we must believe that we can educate “the immense majority,” and thus act accordingly, even if it proves to be futile, otherwise “there is no hope left for mankind’s future.” Mises concludes Human Action:

The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last centuries have been built. It rests with men whether they will make the proper use of the rich treasure with which this knowledge provides them or whether they will leave it unused. But if they fail to take the best advantage of it and disregard its teachings and warnings, they will not annul economics; they will stamp out society and the human race.

The post Elon’s DOGE Is OK, But Mises Is Way Better appeared first on LewRockwell.

In Routh’s case, prosecutors presented evidence that he used an encrypted messaging app while communicating with “someone he believed to be a Ukrainian contact with access to such powerful military weaponry”. Reports indicate that Routh’s exchange with the Ukrainian contact showed that he requested “an RPG or ‘Stinger'” and that he would “see what we can do… [Trump] is not good for Ukraine”.

Last year was one of the most intense in recent memory. The Deep State was determined to prevent Trump’s return to the Oval Office and it used virtually any means at its disposal, including his physical removal after media smear campaigns and the so-called lawfare failed. The second half of 2024 saw several assassination attempts and similar security incidents that could’ve possibly changed history. The first assassination attempt happened on July 13, when Trump narrowly escaped death after a bullet fired by Thomas Matthew Crooks grazed his face and ear. The involvement of the Deep State was pretty obvious from the get-go, as evidenced by the sheer number of blatant security blunders.

Just two months later, on September 15, Ryan Wesley Routh, a rabid Russophobe and an ardent supporter of the Neo-Nazi junta, tried to assassinate Trump at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Less than a month later, an unnamed 49-year-old resident of Las Vegas was arrested near a checkpoint at a Trump rally in Coachella, California. He was driving an unregistered black SUV with a “homemade” license plate and was in possession of multiple firearms (including a loaded gun), ammunition, several fake passports with different names, etc. He claimed to be a journalist but had no proper credentials. Inexplicably, the suspect was released the same day after posting a $5,000 bail.

Once again, so many security flops of this kind can be anything but. There’s simply no other logical explanation as to how relevant special services can make so many consecutive “mistakes”. The latest findings effectively confirm this. Namely, it turns out that the second would-be assassin, Ryan Routh, had some “very peculiar” contacts with foreigners who “might’ve” been interested in seeing Trump die. As previously mentioned, he was an ardent supporter of the Kiev regime and there was even evidence that he helped recruit mercenaries for its forces. However, it turns out that his connections were far more dangerous than initially thought, as he tried to acquire heavy infantry weapons from the Neo-Nazi junta.

Namely, in Routh’s case, prosecutors presented evidence that he used an encrypted messaging app while communicating with “someone he believed to be a Ukrainian contact with access to such powerful military weaponry”. Reports indicate that Routh’s exchange with the Ukrainian contact showed that he requested “an RPG or ‘Stinger'” and that he would “see what we can do… [Trump] is not good for Ukraine”.

According to Zero Hedge, the new texts were revealed in a Monday DOJ filing which admitted evidence in the cast. Obviously, powerful weapons such as rocket launchers would’ve been a virtual death sentence for Trump, as the would-be assassin wouldn’t have to worry as much about accuracy.

The sheer firepower of an RPG rocket would’ve ensured the death of both Trump and anyone in his vicinity. It’s unclear how exactly a “Stinger” MANPADS would help Routh, as it’s an air defense weapon, but there have been reports about its use against ground targets through the so-called “direct fire” mode. On the other hand, there’s also a strong possibility that Routh was planning to shoot down an aircraft with Trump onboard, so a “Stinger” would certainly make sense in that regard. According to the prosecutors, his efforts to obtain these weapons in August 2024 constitute “direct evidence of his assassination attempt against Trump”. In other words, Routh was engaged in long-term planning and had help.

The report also shows that he said “I wish” via an encrypted messaging app while discussing the first assassination attempt on Trump. In another message, Routh said that he needed “equipment so that Trump cannot get elected”. What’s more, in one of the texts to his Ukrainian contact, he suggested that “those items [US/NATO-supplied weapons] are lost and destroyed daily” and that “one missing would not be noticed”, adding that “no one would get caught in the transaction”. Thus, he wasn’t only planning an assassination, but also how to conceal the Kiev regime’s involvement. It’s difficult to imagine that such a plot would’ve been lost on the Neo-Nazi junta leadership, particularly as Zelensky endorsed Kamala Harris.

Routh himself repeatedly argued that having Trump in the White House would be “bad for Ukraine”. Expectedly, the Kiev regime is frantically trying to distance itself from him, with many of its officials calling Routh “delusional”. This is certainly “unpleasant” for them, as the Trump administration’s relations with the Neo-Nazi junta aren’t exactly the best, to put it mildly. What’s more, even in the unlikely case that the entire scandal was initiated by rogue groups or individuals, it still proves that the Kiev regime is an unreliable partner (at best), as its endemic corruption nearly killed Trump. It should be noted that numerous independent media from around the world have been warning about this for years.

This includes reports about the dangers of unchecked deliveries of weapons to the Neo-Nazi junta, as evidenced by the growing black market for otherwise unobtainable military-grade systems. The evidence presented by the prosecution confirmed the warnings InfoBRICS published several years ago, including the dangers for air travel. Namely, evidence shows a message with a photo of Trump’s plane and the following caption by Routh: “Trump’s plane, he gets on and off daily.”

“Attempting to purchase a destructive device to blow up President Trump’s airplane lies squarely within the realm of an attempt on his life, and Routh’s statements about the purpose of the purchase—that he ‘need[s] equipment so that Trump cannot get elected’ — drives home his intent, ” the prosecutors concluded.

Although Routh never managed to acquire either an RPG or a “Stinger”, the very fact that he came close shows that nobody is really safe, especially when even a US president (or a presidential candidate, at the time) was so close to dying. This is also a clear message to the American public – supporting extremists and terrorists for whichever geopolitical or any other reason cannot be justified and can always backfire, as such people are very difficult to control (if possible at all).

It also shows the deep involvement of US proxies in its domestic affairs, as the Deep State demonstrated willingness to use the said proxies for internal political purposes. Prominent US figures are even openly talking about this issue on TV. Namely, former Trump administration official Mike Benz commented that he’s “95% certain” that “rogue cells” within the corrupt federal institutions were working with Routh to assassinate Trump. He still insisted that this is “not to say the CIA did it or the Pentagon did it”, but that it was done by these “rogue cells” which set up “informal networks” for this very purpose. In other words, the anti-Trump Deep State is still “alive and well”, not just in the US, but also within its massive intelligence apparatus.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

The post Did Kiev Regime Plot To Kill Trump? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Over the last six months, I’ve worked to bring the public’s attention to dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) a forgotten natural therapy which rapidly treats a wide range of conditions and that many studies have shown is very safe (provided it’s used correctly), and, most importantly (thanks to the 1994 DSHEA act which legalized all natural therapies) is now readily available. Since I believe DMSO has an immense amount to offer to the medical community and individual patients, I’ve thus diligently worked to compile the evidence that would best make the case for its rediscovery. As such, throughout this series, I’ve presented over a thousand studies that DMSO effectively treats:

Strokes, paralysis, a wide range of neurological disorders (e.g., Down Syndrome and dementia), and many circulatory disorders (e.g., Raynaud’s, varicose veins, hemorrhoids), which I discussed here.

A wide range of tissue injuries, such as sprains, concussions, burns, surgical incisions, and spinal cord injuries (discussed here).

Chronic pain (e.g., from a bad disc, bursitis, arthritis, or complex regional pain syndrome), which I discussed here.

A wide range of autoimmune, protein, and contractile disorders such as scleroderma, amyloidosis, and interstitial cystitis (discussed here).

A variety of head conditions, such as tinnitus, vision loss, dental problems, and sinusitis (discussed here).

A wide range of internal organ diseases such as pancreatitis, infertility, liver cirrhosis, and endometriosis (discussed here).

A wide range of skin conditions such as burns, varicose veins, acne, hair loss, ulcers, skin cancer, and many autoimmune dermatologic diseases (discussed here).

Many challenging infectious conditions, including chronic bacterial infections, herpes, and shingles (discussed here).

Fortunately, much in the same way DMSO’s caught on in the 1960s, providing that evidence again has allowed it to make a rapid resurgence (e.g., I’ve now received over 2000 stories from readers who’ve often had remarkable improvements from using it).

Of the myriad of uses for DMSO, the least appreciated one is its applications in cancer due to the politics around “unproven” cancer therapies:

Dr. Stanley Jacob [the pioneer of DMSO] also is acquainted with Tucker’s work. In fact, he telephoned Tucker a few days before the Mike Wallace 60 Minutes show on CBS-TV to check out progress on the cancer treatment. Jacob plays down the DMSO-cancer connection, because he has enough trouble getting the substance recognized for all of its other special uses. He doesn’t want to have to fight off the label of “cancer quackery” as well.

As such, I recently published an article on DMSO’s remarkable properties for treating cancer and cited hundreds of studies showing that:

•DMSO causes a wide range of cancer cells to transform back into normal cells.
•DMSO slows the growth of many cancers.
•DMSO allows the immune system to target and eliminate cancers it previously was unable to remove.
•DMSO treats many challenging complications of cancer such as cancer pain and amyloidosis from multiple myeloma.
•DMSO protects tissue from radiation and chemotherapy injuries.
•DMSO makes many cancer therapies (e.g., radiation or chemotherapy) more potent, thereby ensuring both a higher treatment success rate and far less complications (as less toxic doses are being used).

Remarkably, despite DMSO’s anticancer properties routinely being used in lab experiments (including those seeking to find anticancer agents with those same anticancer properties), the cancer field has a striking blind spot to DMSO’s use, so in the existing literature, it is almost never discussed as a potential therapeutic.

Of these many uses, I believe the two most noteworthy are DMSO’s ability to mitigate the challenging complications of cancer (e.g., cancer pain or protecting healthy tissue from radiation therapy) and its ability to potentiate other anti-cancer agents.

Combination DMSO Therapies

One of the major advantages and risks of DMSO is that it can bring substances through the skin and significantly increase their potency in the body. On one hand, this is quite advantageous as it makes it possible to administer things which would otherwise require injections through the skin and for much lower doses of them to be needed to get results (e.g., as I showed here, antimicrobials mixed with DMSO are often able to treat a wide range of chronic infections which otherwise resist antimicrobial therapy). However, on the flip side, it greatly increases the risk of toxicity, either by accidentally bringing toxic compounds (e.g., pesticides) into the body that were on the skin prior to applying DMSO (or that were touched afterwards), or increasing the potency of a drug taken in combination with it.

Note: it is well known that healthcare workers who routinely administer chemotherapy periodically have accidental exposures to it (e.g., via vapor inhalation), so organizations like the CDC and NIOSH have worker guidelines about it (as these exposures increase the risk for a variety of issues including cancers). Since DMSO will cause chemotherapy drugs it is mixed with to be absorbed through the skin, it is crucial to be extremely cautious when administering it with chemotherapy drugs (particularly when applying it topically).

Since natural therapies are typically much less toxic than conventional pharmaceuticals and easily available (rather than requiring a prescription) over the years, people have tried combining DMSO with many of them and frequently found significant advantages from mixing them together DMSO.

This also holds true in the field of cancer care, and from reviewing all of the ways in which DMSO has been used to treat cancer, I believe the most promising applications (and which had the strongest data supporting their human use) came from DMSO being used in combination with another natural therapy. Unfortunately, the number of substances DMSO can be combined with is almost endless, and as such, the DMSO field has only scratched the surface of what it can be combined with to treat cancer. Many highly potent cancer treatments are likely waiting to be discovered once the right things are combined with DMSO.

Note: somewhat analogously, in the hundreds of studies I identified that examined if DMSO could differentiate a specific tumor type or improve a particular cancer-related gene (or protein), most of them found DMSO did create an improvement. As such, many other aspects of cancer would likely also be seen to improve following DMSO if they were to be tested.

Hematoxylin

Hematoxylin is a powder obtained from the logwood tree (e.g., grinding the heartwood up, boiling it in water to dissolve the hematoxylin present, and evaporating that mixture so only the powder remains). That tree is native to Central America and was originally used by the Mayans to stain cotton and as a medicinal (e.g., to treat diarrhea and dysentery). After its discovery by the Spanish in 1502, a massive market for it quickly developed due to the textile industry’s need to establish a dependable dye. Before long it began to be mixed with a variety of metal salts so it would remain in fabric (and not wash out).

Since many cellular processes are transparent and hence difficult to see without dyes that can stain them, much later (around 1830) hematoxylin began to be used in pathology where it was discovered (once oxidized into hematein and attached to a metal salt) it was remarkably effective for staining many components of cells including DNA. In turn, because of how well it works, almost two hundred years later, it remains one of the primary stains used in pathology to evaluate tissue (it’s the “H” in H & E stains).

Note: like hematoxylin, DMSO is also obtained from trees. Because each of these compounds is so widely used, they are also very affordable.

Tucker’s Discovery

Currently, most of the drugs we use are developed by a mechanistic system where biologically relevant targets in the body (e.g., receptors or enzymes) are identified through research, then compounds are mass screened through for their ability to affect those targets, with the ones that can elicit some type of pertinent change then run through a funnel (which can involve animal and then sometimes human testing) to identify which from that large pool of candidates elicits a benefit.
Note: compounds are sometimes custom-designed to affect receptors or identified through AI systems rather than physically testing a broad swathe of them.

In contrast, previously, drug design was much more of a hit or miss process, and frequently incredible discoveries would happen either by luck or under a completely mistaken assumption.

For example, the first antibiotic was developed by mixing a substance known to be toxic to bacteria (arsenic) with a dye that stained bacterial cell walls under the theory that the dye would allow arsenic to selectively target bacteria rather than the body (with almost all the attempts failing). After decades of attempts were made to replicate this approach, another dye that functioned as an effective antibiotic was found, but before long it was discovered that the antimicrobial agent was not the dye itself but rather a colorless metabolic product of it, sulfanilamide.

Similarly, one of the most remarkable therapies I know of (Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation) was originally developed under the belief that exposing the entire circulation to UV light would sterilize the bloodstream and hence treat a lethal infection. This did not work (it killed the test dogs) but before long, the inventor accidentally only irradiated a small fraction of the dog’s blood and got a remarkable results as inputting a small amount of UV light into the circulation transforms human physiology and allows the self-healing capacity of the body to treat a wide range of illnesses (e.g. UVBI is a highly effective treatment for bacterial and viral infections, circulatory disorders and autoimmune diseases).

Hematoxylin likewise follows a similar journey. Eli Jordon Tucker, Jr., M.D. was a highly respected orthopedic surgeon in Texas (with many awards and honorary status in a numerous medical societies) who had a wealth of surgical experience and had discovered a variety of pioneering orthopedic techniques from bone research he conducted as a hobby (e.g., he gained renown for discovering how to graft bones from one species to another). Tucker’s bone research required him to purchase cattle from a meat packing company, and in the process, he noticed many of the cows butchers (and meat inspectors) were accepting for slaughter had large cancers covering their faces.

Observing those cancers made Tucker wonder if there was some type of cancer-resisting antibody in those cows, so he began administering extracts of their blood into lab rats and mice with cancers and observed anticancer activity for certain cancers. Since it was unclear how much of a change was occurring, Tucker looked for a dye that could stain the tumors, and eventually realized hematoxylin was the perfect dye because it stained the cancers one color and normal cells another color. Unfortunately, hematoxylin had poor solubility and could not dissolve in normal laboratory solvents or enter solutions, so his ability to use it in his experiments was limited.

So, once DMSO (a potent solvent), came into use around 1963, Tucker tried using it and quickly discovered DMSO not only dissolved hematoxylin but could dissolve a very high concentration of it (e.g., 25g of hematoxylin could be dissolved in 62mL of DMSO). Furthermore, this mixture was excellent for staining cancers and making them visible (e.g., they stood out under the microscope and in gross dissection) as it concentrated in the cancers, but DMSO simultaneously did not stain any other tissues in rats. Most importantly there was a “marked increase in central necrosis of the neoplasm” indicating this mixture could potentially eliminate cancers while sparing normal cells.

Note: hematoxylin (dissolved in carboxymethylcellulose), like many other compounds, had previously been screened for its anticancer activity and in the absence of DMSO, had none, which I suspect was in part due to hematoxylin rather than hematein (which hematoxylin rapidly turns into within the body) being used.

Tucker then decided to conduct toxicity studies (initially in dogs) where he found high concentrations of IV DMSO mixed with hematoxylin had no toxicity to any of the tissues or organs he examined (and did not accumulate in any non-cancerous tissue). Curiously the mixture he made was far less toxic than IV DMSO alone (which is extremely safe and only had toxicity issues at fairly high concentrations), with roughly four times as much IV DMSO being possible for animals to tolerate once it was mixed with hematoxylin.
Note: the only physiologic change he observed from D-hematoxylin was that blood urea nitrogen would typically drop by around 50%, indicating this mixture improved kidney function.

He then began treating spontaneous cancers in animals (e.g., in horses, dogs and cows), which included terminal cases with massive tumors (e.g., a large-cell lymphosarcoma, a small-cell lymphosarcoma, generalized malignant melanoma, a squamous cell carcinoma) along with an osteogenic sarcoma. In all of these cases, there was a prompt response, and the animal subsequently recovered.

Note: Tucker found that hematoxylin alone had no effect on cancer cells (as did previous researchers who tested iton a carcinoma, sarcoma and leukemia cell lines) while subsequent investigators found DMSO alone had a minimal anticancer effects compared to the mixture, whereas they could not administer hematoxylin alone (as without DMSO it is essentially not soluble in an IV solution). Going forward (for brevity) I will refer to the DMSO hematoxylin mixture as “D-hematoxylin” (which is a term I made up while writing this).

William Daniel, former Governor of Guam, one of Tucker’s friends, phoned and told the doctor: “E.J., I have a cancerous dog on my ranch who is suffering terribly. Could you do anything to help him, or should I have him put to death?”

“I’d love to try,” answered Tucker. “I’ll send my technician to pick up the dog right away.”

The technician brought the animal to Tucker’s veterinarian, Dr. Collins, for examination. The vet diagnosed that large-cell lymphosarcoma was permeating the dog’s body. “The poor animal is choking to death from the tumors in his throat, and he has large tumors all over his body,” said Dr. Collins over the telephone. “I don’t think he’ll live long enough to be transported to your laboratory.”

Tucker said, “Transfuse him, give him some blood fast, and let me have him for treatment.”

The physician took the dog, which was barely alive, into the laboratory and injected DMSO-hematoxylon solution intravenously. His technician took over the work and gave the injections daily. Within two weeks, all the tumors had disappeared. It seemed like a miracle to the technician.

Upon Tucker’s examination of the dog, he found that all the large-cell lymphosarcoma tumors had completely regressed. The huge masses in the neck and over the whole body of the animal had gone away, and the dog came out of the treatment completely cured.

The dog was thriving at the laboratory when an unlucky accident caused his death. He ate a large quantity of some meat contaminated with Malathion, an insecticide poison. Tucker performed an autopsy, which revealed no active cancer cells in the vestigial remains of the previously large lymphomatous nodules. Many ghost cells—cells that were formerly cancer but weren’t any kind of cells anymore —appeared in the microscopic sections. Not a single distinguishable cancer cell remained in the dog.

Additionally, in 2019, long after Tucker conducted his toxicity experiments, to help the Ecuador team, Roger Tapia, a veterinary student conducted his own LD50 study as a graduation thesis by giving intraperitoneal injections of D-hematoxylin to 70 mice and determined that:

•The D-hematoxylin LD50 was 1257.16 mg/kg of hematoxylin (± 159.10 mg/kg), which is very safe (and between 10 to 100 times less toxic than many commonly used cancer drugs).
Note: the LD50 of hematoxylin alone is also fairly low (e.g., the oral LD50 is over 2000mg/kg), but relatively little data exits on its actual LD50 as it is not intended for human consumption (e.g., data only exists for the oral LD50 and the actual LD50 is unknown as a high enough dose to be lethal to half of those exposed was never tested).

•At lower doses (e.g., 5.5mg/kg to 550mg/kg) low activity, tremors and accelerated breathing were observed that regressed after an hour, while at higher doses, spasms, suffocation and eventually death occurred (likely due to respiratory collapse).
Note: the authors of the study suspected these symptoms were likely due to the shock of an intraperitoneal injection and it being injected too quickly (all of which can be avoided with a careful IV administration).

•In rats that died, the presence of fluid accumulation was observed in the abdominal cavity and surrounding the lungs which was attributed to vasodilation and increased vascular fragility.

•At all doses (including lethal ones), the mixture did not produce any changes in the shape, weight, or size of the internal organs (which I assumed was due to the fact D-hematoxylin does not accumulate in normal tissues).

The full study can be read here:

Note: while Tucker found IV DMSO with hematoxylin was a fourth as toxic as DMSO alone, when I compared the IP (intraperitoneal) LD50 value this study obtained to the recognized LD50 values for DMSO, I found DMSO alone was less toxic.

Read the Whole Article

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According to press accounts, the Trump administration, which some right-wing libertarians have humorously described as being “antiwar,” is now contemplating dropping bombs on Mexico. Yes, real bombs that kill people and destroy things, just like the bombs that U.S. national-security state officials used to kill people in Iraq, which, like Mexico, never attacked or invaded the United States. More specifically, such a bombing campaign would target drug cartels in Mexico.

Make no mistake about it. When one nation-state drops bombs on another nation-state, that is an act of war. When the first bomb drops, the United States will initiating another war of aggression — that is, the type of war that was condemned as a war crime at Nuremberg.

Before then, U.S. officials will undoubtedly try to pressure Mexican president Claudia Scheinbaum into agreeing to their bombing campaign. That way, they can say that they are not really waging war on Mexico with their bombs because Mexico’s president has agreed to the U.S. Empire’s bombing of her country.

Scheinbaum has already gone to tremendous lengths in an effort to appease President Trump. She has agreed to surveillance over Mexican skies by U.S. government drones. She has sent Mexican drug dealers to Trump in what had the appearance of human tribute being paid to an emperor. She has sent 10,000 Mexican troops to the U.S. Mexico border in an ostensible effort to help Trump enforce the U.S. drug war and U.S. immigration controls. And she has had her own drug warriors bust several Mexican drug-dealing operations.

As of now Sheinbaum has said that Mexico will not agree to a military attack on the country. Time will tell whether she caves and give Trump officials the fig leaf they need to launch bombing attacks on Mexico.

Notice something important here: federal officials have now conflated the much-vaunted “war on terrorism” with the much-vaunted “war on drugs.” Why is that important? Because it enables them to treat a criminal-justice matter — i.e., violations of drug laws — as a military matter, which empowers them to treat drug-war violators as “illegal enemy combatants” who don’t wear uniforms.

The war on terrorism came into existence as a result of the 9/11 attacks. The terrorists replaced the communists as America’s official enemy, and the “war on terrorism” replaced the Cold War’s “war on communists.” “The terrorists are coming!” replaced “The Reds are coming!” to keep Americans afraid and eager to trade their liberty for the pretense of “security.” That’s how we got the Patriot Act, TSA, illegal mass secret surveillance, and other destructions of American liberty and privacy.

The war on terrorism exposed vast omnipotent powers that had long been wielded by the U.S. national-security state. Kidnappings, military custody, torture, indefinite detention, extra-judicial execution, mass secret surveillance, and state -sponsored assassinations — all to keep us “safe” of course.  While many fear-filled Americans were excited about the fact that their government was wielding such powers against “the terrorists” (and against the Muslims), what they didn’t notice in their fear was that the government could now legally wield omnipotent powers against American citizens as well.

Throughout the war on drugs, however, it was always assumed that the drug war would be operating independently of the war on terrorism. After all, drug prohibition is strictly a criminal-justice matter, one that involves a process of arrest, indictment, prosecution, and possible punishment. It’s also a matter that involves constitutional procedural protections, such as due process of law, trial by jury, right to counsel, and the presumption of innocence.

Thanks to the principle of posse comitatus, it also means that the military is absolutely prohibited from involving itself in the drug war. That’s because the American people do not want the military to be involved in matters relating to criminal justice. They want regular law enforcement personnel to enforce criminal laws and they want the regular criminal-justice system to handle violations of criminal laws. (Hypocritically, however, the U.S has long sent U.S. military forces into foreign countries to enforce the drug war. Moreover, it encourages other countries to use their own militaries to wage the drug war. )

The Trump administration has now conflated the “war on drugs” and the “war on terrorism” by designating drug cartels or drug gangs as “terrorist” organizations. That enables U.S. officials to now use the military and “wartime” military powers against violators of drug laws.

Don’t forget also that the war on terrorism is the “global” war on terrorism, which, in the minds of U.S. officials, empowers the U.S. Empire to do whatever is necessary to eradicate terrorism everywhere. That’s undoubtedly why people within the Trump administration feel like the U.S. can bomb Mexico even without the consent of Claudia Sheinbaum. Of course, if they get away with bombing Mexican drug-war violators under the rubric of the “war on terrorism,” there is nothing to prevent them from doing whatever is necessary to kill and destroy drug-war violators here in the United States under the same “war on terrorism” rubric, including assassinating them or sending them to Guantanamo Bay or El Salvador for torture and indefinite detention. After all, don’t forget that it is a “global” war on terrorism.

Finally, it is important to note that what all too many Americans fail to realize, despite decades of drug-war failure and violence, is that nothing that U.S. officials do, including bombing Mexico, will win their war on drugs. All they will succeed in doing is accelerating the destruction of American liberty, while wreaking ever more death and destruction.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

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There are a number of discussions about a potentially imminent U.S. war on Iran. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism concludes that a war is more likely than not. Crooke, Mercouris and Diesen are ambivalent (vid) but also seem to expect a conflict.

President Trump (or, more correct, Netanyahoo behind him) has made demands towards Iran that are designed to be rejected:

• End all nuclear programs
• Destroy medium range missiles which can reach Israel
• Stop support for all ‘resistance’ movements in the Middle East

Iran will of course reject those demands.

It is willing to put its nuclear program back into the parameters of the JCPOA nuclear agreement, which Trump previously discarded, IF sanctions against it are lifted. It is also willing to do lucrative business with the U.S. But that is about it.

The U.S. is trying to impress Iran with military arrangements. Several B-2 bombers were sent to Diego-Garcia, two airforce carriers are in the Middle East, Israel has been supplied with more THAAD and Patriot air defense missiles.

I find that to be a mere show of force mostly for the audience in the U.S. It is not enough for a sufficiently strong attack that aims to defeat Iran. Iran’s abilities to retaliate require a much larger force for the opening campaign and many more forces to handle all the calamities which would inevitably follow.

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff was in Oman today for talks with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi. The first reactions are positive but there are no words (yet) of any results:

“Talks were held in a constructive atmosphere, based on mutual respect,” and the delegations exchanged the views of their respective governments about “Iran’s nuclear program and sanctions relief with the mediation of Oman FM,” says the MFA statement.

The talks will continue next week.

It is hard to assess what Trump might do. If he does not give a f*** he will attack Iran no matter what. If he still cares for his legacy he will avoid a war that would let energy prices explode and pull the U.S. into another large war without end which it can not possibly win.

My current line of (wishful?) thinking is similar to Larry Johnson’s:

My hope is that Trump is smarting from the beating he has taken over the tariff fiasco and that he is eager to score a diplomatic win. If my assumption is correct, Trump will embrace JCPOA 2 as his creation and proclaim himself as the one who stopped Iran from building a nuke.

Then again, as Alastair Crooke reminds us, the current volatile international situation may make random events more relevant than politicies in creating the outcome. Simple moves, from potentially many sides, (an Israeli attack on Iran?) could easily have snowball effects.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post War With Iran? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Three wise monkeys are perfectly aware of what a pigeon posing as eagle is really up to.

The Toddler Temper Tantrum-style Trump Tariff Tizzy (TTT), now accelerated to 145% – and counting – is yet another thunderous trademark pigeon smashing the chessboard gambit.

It won’t work. Trump claimed that China would call him to “make a deal”. That’s reality show territory. Reality is more like the statement by the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council: “Given that U.S. exports to China already have no market acceptability under the current tariff rates, if the U.S. further imposes additional tariffs on Chinese goods, China will simply ignore them.”

Translation: keep vociferating/tariffing. We don’t care. And we will stop buying from you. Anything.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry: A “tariff-wielding barbarian can never expect a call from China.”

Basic numbers. China’s GDP for 2025 is projected at 5%. U.S. imports account for at best 4% of Chinese GDP. China’s share of total exports to the U.S. dropped to 13.4 per cent in 2024.

Goldman Sachs – not exactly a CCP “mouthpiece” – has just projected that TTT will cost China only 0.5% of GDP in 2025, while costing no less than 2% of U.S. GDP. Talk about blowback.

Still, from now on, what matters most for Beijing is to keep diversifying the supply chain.

Asia-wide, the extra wheels are in motion. President Xi Jinping will soon start an ASEAN mini-tour (Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia). The Shanghai Cooperation Organization – increasingly focused on geoeconomics – is about to meet. The EU, for all the mendacity of its “elites”, is absolutely itching to strike trade deals with China.

Zhao Minghao, deputy director at the Centre for American Studies at Fudan University, in Shanghai, refers to the current incandescence as “a game of strategic resolve.”

Previously, the eminent Wang Yiwei, international relations star professor at Renmin University in Beijing and an expert on the New Silk Roads, noted that the current tariff rate already made China’s exports to the U.S. “almost impossible”.

This analysis noted how China started to deal with TTT with a “courtesy before force” approach, then turned to “we don’t care”, while cultivating “the art of timing” in its asymmetric attack on U.S. stocks.

A fascinating window on the real wheels of Chinese trade is offered by a timely visit to the vast Yiwu International Trade City,

the largest concentration of small traders on the planet.

Less than 10% of Yiwu’s phenomenal amount of business involves the U.S. Among the 75,000 business operators in Yiwu Small Commodity City, only a little over 3,000 do business with the U.S.

Two Sinophobes meet one mirage

TTT is largely the product of two crude Team Trump arrogant/ignorant Sinophobes, economic advisor Peter Navarro and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, who know less than zero about all things China.

In fact it was Bessent who right at the start gave the game away:

“This was driven by the president’s strategy… You might even say that he goaded China into a bad position. They responded. They have shown themselves to the world to be the bad actors, and we are willing to cooperate with our allies and with our trading partners who did not retaliate.”

A crude trap. With the sole focus on China. That had nothing to do with the initial tawdry plot line: tariffs, Mafia-style, on most of the planet, penguins included. If you don’t retaliate, fine. If you do, we hit harder.

of the so-called “Miran mirage” – after Trump’s alleged economic brain Stephen Miran. What is actually happening, fast, bypassing the stupid notion that tariffs will be paid for by current depreciation elsewhere (see Miran’s white paper here), is the uncontrolled demolition of the U.S. as a world trade center.

Asked why he paused the tariffs, Trump answered: “I thought people were jumping a bit out of line. They were getting a little bit yipee. They were getting afraid.”

Nonsense. Trump cannot possibly admit on the record that the U.S. oligarchy, Jamie Dimon and co., freaked out big time; and that, plus the debacle in the bond market, forced him to backtrack.

Nobody in neoliberal heaven and earth can mess with the Goddess of the Market.

As for the long-term strategy of several nations of the Global Majority caught in TTT’s crossfire hurricane, not to mention big players like China and the EU, they will all avidly reduce their dependence on U.S. markets.

Once again, the elaborate “deal” offered by Trump and his illiterate advisors boiled down to a Mafioso “offer you can’t refuse”: blow up, or significantly diminish, your trade with China – the largest trading partner of nearly all of these nations – and trade with Exceptionalistan, plus 10% tariffs. To hell with your economic sovereignty and strategic flexibility. Once again: it’s our way or the – tariff – highway.

Reality instead will dictate that the U.S. will increasingly import Chinese products from third countries – while China will continue to get paid for it. China will export even more to ASEAN and other Global Majority actors.

As it stands, Trump’s “plan” – if there is any – remains to “stabilize” his allies while concentrating all the firepower on China, in theory to drive China’s complex supply chains to chaos and force companies to move production lines to, for example, Vietnam or India.

Shakedown leading to breakdown

China containment will be on overdrive. Expect a tsunami of technological restrictions, investment red lines and, of course, extra sanctions. Sinophobe Bessent does not rule out delisting Chinese stocks from U.S. exchanges: “I think everything’s on the table (…) That will be President Trump’s decision.”

Beijing, for its part, can easily go nuclear, deciding for a sell-off of its U.S. Treasuries en masse, with catastrophic cascading consequences. As of January, Beijing held $760 billion in U.S. debt. With a delightful diplomatic touch, Yang Panpan and Xu Qiuyan, researchers at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, note that what happens next with U.S. Treasury bonds remains “highly uncertain”.

Bridgewater billionaire investor Ray Dalio, for his part, while incisive, was also heavy on diplomacy: “We are seeing a classic breakdown of the major monetary, political and geopolitical orders.”

There’s no more “cooperative world order” led by the U.S. (in fact that was anything but cooperative”); Dalio at least recognizes the unilateralism manifest in “the U.S.-led trade-war, geopolitical war, technology war, and, in some cases, military wars.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian de facto synthesized Beijing’s position. No more Mr. Nice Guy, which was the default Chinese position until recently: if the U.S. insists on fighting a tariff war and a trade war, China will fight to the end.

So here we are. And once again, it’s the Empire of Chaos against BRICS.

The Empire of Chaos embarks on a hot geoeconomics war against its peer competitor China; contemplates a hot military war against sovereign Iran; and at the same time tries to appease nuclear/hypersonic power Russia into a sort of hazy deal to somewhat freeze the Forever War by proxy in Ukraine.

The new Primakov triangle, RIC (Russia-Iran-China) is perfectly aware of these moves. Putin had metaphorically characterized the Russian position in the U.S.-China trade war when he mentioned that the Chinese have a good proverb: when tigers fight in the valley, the smart monkey sits and watches how it ends.

Now is more the case of three wise monkeys perfectly aware of what a pigeon posing as eagle is really up to.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The post Why China Won’t Call a ‘Tariff-Wielding Barbarian’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Trump gives in to the military/security complex, renews weapons to Ukraine and extends sanctions on Russia for a year.

On April 10 Trump declared a continuation of the national emergency with Russia and renewed President Biden’s April 2021 executive order declaring Russia to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and the economy of the United States.”

By renewing Biden’s executive order, Trump even buys into the Russiagate charges against himself:

Among the “harmful” activities ascribed to Russia in the document are “efforts to undermine the conduct of free and fair democratic elections and democratic institutions in the United States and its allies and partners.”

Russia is also blamed for a Washington specialty:  “undermining security of countries and and violating principles of international law.”

Trump has already cluttered the peace negotiations with his demand for Ukrainian rare earth minerals.  Now he has introduced another extraneous issue–his demand for control of the pipeline through which Russian natural gas is delivered to Europe.  Yes, Putin is still supplying Russia’s active enemies with energy.  What sense does it make to help your enemies make war against you?

The Kremlin remains unable to read the writing on the wall.  Kremlin spokesman Peskov said that “our dialogue with the American side is ongoing,” and that Moscow remains open to resolving the Ukraine conflict diplomatically.  The Kremlin thinks it is building relations with Washington by being the only party to keep the ceasefire on energy infrastructure. It is not succeeding.  Trump has already threatened Russia with more sanctions unless Russia agrees to a total ceasefire.  What incentive does Russia have to do that when Zelensky? US? NATO? won’t even keep a partial ceasefire?

It leaves one to wonder if Putin has convinced Washington that he is so averse to war that he will eventually surrender.

It is now completely clear that Putin made a strategic mistake not to quickly win the conflict. Instead, the Kremlin valued reaching an agreement with the West higher than it valued Russian national defense. See this.

The post Trump Backs Away From Improving Relations With Russia appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump says he want to “go back, probably, to a 2020 standard” as regards federal mandatory miles-per-gallon edicts – the latter being the right word because it’s the honest word.

A “standard” is an objective value of some kind, used to evaluate whether a given thing rises to that standard. Federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) “standards,” on the other hand, are nothing more than the federal government decreeing that all new vehicles must average an arbitrarily laid down minimum miles-per-gallon. Those that do not average say 35 miles per gallon – the standard in force in 2020 – are considered “noncompliant” and their manufacturer is punished for this via fines that are imposed for offering such “noncompliant” cars for sale.

Note the offering part.

It often – it almost always – passes without comment that no one is forced to buy a vehicle that does not average 35 MPG. People are free not to. But they aren’t free to buy a vehicle that averages less than 35 MPG in that it’s not “free” when you’re made to pay more for something. Sure, you can buy a new car with a six cylinder engine. But you probably can’t afford to – because CAFE fines have made six-cylinder-powered cars luxury-priced cars and most of them no longer come standard with sixes anymore, either.

The fundamental discussion about whether the federal government has any legitimate business decreeing how many miles-per-gallon new vehicles must deliver is the one that needs to happen.

Trump’s comment to John Elkann, the new chairman of Stellantis, about “going back, probably, to a 2020 standard” is of a piece with the promises of Republicans to “mend” – but not end – Social Security and to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. With – of course – a Republic version of Obamacare. Statism always advances. Its “retreats” – when they occur – are merely slower advances.

Trump was correct when he told Elkann that the federal fuel economy fatwas – which have been framed as being as much about “emissions” (of the dread gas carbon dioxide) as about gas mileage – don’t “mean a damn bit of difference for the environment” but wrong when he added that they “make it impossible for people build cars.”

Not so.

CAFE just makes it hard to sell vehicles that are not devices – i.e., electric or partially electric vehicles – and engines that are larger than small fours. They make it extremely expensive to offer for sale large vehicles with large engines. There are plenty of medium-small look-alike crossovers with one-point-something (maybe two-point-o) liter engines available. These are the ones that are “compliant” with the 2020 standards – and these are the ones we’ll continue to get if Trump “goes back” to the 2020 standards.

Trump himself understands this. “We’re going to be bringing it back to a standard that is a very good environmental standard, but it makes it possible to build a car,” he said.

So there you go.

And note the part about the “very good environmental standard.” It suggests Trump agrees that there ought to be “standards” – just more reasonable ones (according to his standard).

We are supposed to be grateful that Trump is opposed to the near-doubling of the 2020 standard – to about 50 miles-per-gallon – that was decreed by the Scranton Sniffer. This “standard” would have effectively forced the manufacturers to make almost nothing other than electric and partially electric cars – because those are the only kinds of vehicles that can be made to average 50 MPG. It would still be legal to sell vehicles with engines – even V8s – but they would become so expensive (as a result of CAFE fines) as to be available only to the small handful of people in a position to be able to afford them.

Read the Whole Article

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There can be no justification at all for the view expressed widely in the twentieth century and into our own, that the very existence of truth is contingent on somehow being able to define the term in human languages for a group of people! This astounding exercise in hubris tries to make us believe that “your truth” or “my truth” is always relative and is dependant upon the finite workings of the mortal organ known as the human brain!

Immortal and absolute truth that lies beyond the ability of our finite minds to fully grasp is actually a much more rational conclusion. Such a conclusion also acknowledges the fact that inherent within all of  us is the moral code and ethic that is written in the stars and in our hearts and which in some parts of the world is referred to as “conscience”.

As the German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote, “two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”

The latter has a lively existence in cultures as diverse as the geographies from which they hail. Nor is it resident only after a period of learning has embedded it in our minds. Rather, as an entity that has its independent existence in the consciousness of all those that belong to the fraternity of nations, it has surprised many readers of comparative history and literature with its essential unity.

For, separated as they are by oceans and mountains and land and sea, these people of varying hue and shape have aspired broadly to a set of rules which are remarkable in their consistency from time to time and place to place.  These rules may or may not be called “truth” and may or may not all be expressed in similar terms by those who recorded their history, but where in the histories of all these peoples have valour and selflessness and honour and gentleness and kindness not been held up as beacon lights for the aspiring soul?

And we can all sense, if we will, that the workings of science and the unraveling of beauty in poetry and dance and song are truth. The images of the stars that we can now gaze at if only from a distance is also truth.

There cannot be a rigid confinement of truth to a particular time and place. To impose such a rigidity would be to impose a limitation upon truth and truth thus fettered would not belong to eternity, but rather to a confined time, a restricted space. It was not made to be limited in this way. Rather it administers its transcendent judgements from the portals of the forever and may thus encompass all times and all places within its realm. It straddles the heavens, but is able to descend to the deep recesses of our infinitesimal lives. It ministers to the heavenly bodies and keeps them in tow, and yet can minister equally well, perhaps better, to our souls. It is at once mightily clad with splendor and clothed in beggar’s garb.

As witnessed by the turbulent, unsettled lives of the existential philosophers for example, the pursuit of truth can be a frightening thing both for the pursuer and for those who are around him or her at the time. Such a pursuit is not like pursuing a wild beast, not even a dangerous wild beast, not even one which may turn round and attack the pursuer; all these are tame perils compared to the benevolent peril of being pursued at every turn by the very thing you seek to pursue. Truth can be a relentless pursuer of those who seek it out – and it can stretch like a mighty and encompassing shadow over the pursuer as he speeds across the wilderness in search of the thing that in fact lurks always at his shoulder. The English poet Francis Thompson’s magnificent, tender, poem, “The Hound of Heaven” describes God as the Truth, as the pursuer, the hound: (excerpts):

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me’.

Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateway of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon;
With thy young skiey blossom heap me over
From this tremendous Lover—
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!

Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat—
‘Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.’

Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
And past those noisèd Feet
A voice comes yet more fleet—
‘Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me.’

Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou has hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.

‘Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught’ (He said),
‘And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited—
Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!’

Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.’

The Gospels describe the trial of Christ at the palace of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. Pilate questions Jesus and in the traditions of Greece and its progeny, Rome, he had likely thought long and hard, with the poets and the philosophers, about truth and its meaning. When he asked Jesus Christ “what is truth?”, perhaps he was hoping to get a final answer to his own doubts and fears about the meaning of truth.

In this detail of the painting by the celebrated Hungarian painter Mihály Munkácsy, Pilate is pensive, reflective, fearful, perplexed, transfixed:

The eternal and the temporal became one in the person of Jesus Christ. This is the majestic significance of the words – “the Word became flesh – and lived among us.”  The nature of truth as we can know it and the nature of the person of Christ have so many things in common that only the deliberate denier can miss asking the question – is Jesus the Truth? Do all the quests of the centuries find their final fulfilment in Jesus?

When Pilate questioned Christ, he received no answer. Instead Pilate was invited silently, to witness the life that he was now trying – how it had lived out its time on earth, and to make up his own mind as to whether that Life was Truth itself.  Perhaps Pilate realized that it was. Hence the scripture records – “and Pilate marvelled at his silence.”

In what the great French artist Gustave Doré, called “the work of his life”, (the painting “Christ Leaving The Praetorium,”) the trial of Christ is over and He is leaving the Roman governor’s palace (praetorium). He is about to bear His own Cross to the hill called Calvary – there to be crucified for you, for me. Even in the painting, a poor imitation though it must be of the most momentous, the most consequential trial in human history, it is resplendently obvious that Jesus is indeed the Truth. As Jesus leaves the praetorium, it must have been obvious to Pilate too:

This originally appeared on Francis Christian’s Essays.

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