Aggregatore di feed

Thanks, John Smith.

Antiwar.com

The post Trump and Netanyahu Reaffirm Their Vision for the Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith.

Middle East Eye

The post Daughter of Ottoman princess: How I rejected CIA attempt to make me a spy appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Ken Klippenstein

The post Unprecedented number of B-2 bombers amassed for Iran Ms mass murder. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

New York Post

The post Trans Nashville school shooter… appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

Start the video at the 52:12:00 mark for the Kiriakou interview. Netanyahu has never won more than 27% of the vote in Israel. He is a murderer. Trump should lock Bibi up in the White House basement.

The post John Kiriakou on Redacted Discusses Netanyahu Visit to White House appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump casually mentioned that the U.S. will have its first TRILLION dollar military budget. This does not, in any sense, sound like a government looking to cut waste, fraud and abuse. We have been bankrupted (economically, and more importantly, morally) by a century of endless wars. The federal debt continues to rise, even with total Republican control. This is all bad news for our nation.

The post $1 Trillion Military Budget Coming? Watch The Demise of the Fake Economic System appeared first on LewRockwell.

Patrick Foy wrote:

Late in his second term, Reagan gave a radio address about tariffs. It is worth listening to. Reagan was a reader, a thinker and did his own research. He wrote his own material. You might even call him an intellectual. He was able to think outside the box, like when he proposed an agreement with Gorbachev to do away with all nuclear weapons. I forget why that did not happen. Reagan was serious.

In any event, it looks to me like Trump’s bombshell proclamation on tariffs delivered last week was a head fake. The idea is to open negotiations to achieve what he calls a fair trade deal. Maybe he can do it. In the meantime, he seems obsessed with raising military spending sky high and continuing his carte blanche support of Bibi Netanyahoo and the slaughter in Gaza. It is madness.

The post Ronald Reagan vs. Tariffs: 1987 speech gains new life in 2025 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Haaretz.com

The post 30 Years Ago, the Kafr Qana Massacre Shook Israel; Today, It Would Be Another Drop in the Ocean appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

One IDF officer said that not only are Israeli troops killing military-age males, “we’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We’re destroying their houses and pissing on their graves.”

See this.

The post Israeli Troops Blow Whistle on War Crimes in Gaza ‘Kill Zone’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

A Farewell to Virology by Dr Mark Bailey was first published in 2022.

The 28,000-word treatise exposed not only the lack of evidence for SARS-CoV-2, but also the entire virus model itself.

The essay has been since downloaded over 250,000 times, translated into 5 languages and continues to be studied by a growing number of medical researchers around the World.

This timeless work was, and remains, one of the most important bulwarks against virology’s pseudoscience and the tyranny it fuels.

It is now available in book form for the first time.

Please watch Dr Sam Bailey’s brief introduction (11min) which includes the links to Amazon and Lulu HERE.

Highly Recommended 

The post A Farewell To Virology – The Book is Now Available appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

The Duke was a holdout almost to be end as a convert to Catholicism. The Oscar winning actor and patriotic symbol of Americana was baptized into the Catholic faith two days before his passing.

See here.

The post John Wayne, Convert to Catholicism appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

The Dancing Queens. My blood pressure just shot up to impending stroke level.

The post This is what we’ve given more than 300 billion to fight a war ! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Perché in quest'ultimo mese i mercati sono rimbalzati in Europa e scesi negli Stati Uniti? Non a causa dei dazi. Se così fosse le obbligazioni sarebbero salite in Germania e Giappone e le azioni che beneficiano di tali dazi sarebbero altresì salite. La risposta è più semplice: gli attori di mercato stanno scommettendo su una FED aggressiva e su una BCE e una PBOC molto accomodanti. Seguite la stampante monetaria. Molti attori di mercato hanno paura dell'inflazione persistente, ma puntano i flussi di capitale verso quei mercati che potrebbero trarre vantaggio da una maggiore stampa di denaro, come nel caso europeo, e da piani di stimolo, come la Cina. Tuttavia questa è una scommessa pericolosa, soprattutto perché si fonda su un massiccio piano di spesa e allentamento monetario. Lo abbiamo già visto prima. La pianificazione centrale non funziona mai e le illusioni che ne conseguono sono tante. Questa volta non è diverso. Non sarà diverso nemmeno con la Cina, perché la sua sovraccapacità e le criticità nel settore immobiliare derivano da precedenti piani di “stimolo”. Gli attori di mercato avranno bisogno di più di semplici tagli ai tassi. Avranno invece bisogno di vedere i tassi reali scendere, l'inflazione sotto controllo e i deficit pubblici tagliati. Gli errori passati della BCE e della PBOC hanno creato le attuali turbolenze. Gli investimenti devono concentrarsi sui fondamentali reali e meno sul seguire la stampante monetaria, perché il problema della distruzione economica conseguente è molto più grande dei presunti benefici dell'espansione attesa.

____________________________________________________________________________________

di Finn Andreen

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/lue-vuole-usare-la-guerra-come-scusa)

L'élite politica e finanziaria europea sa che la guerra in Ucraina è persa, ma vuole usarla come un'opportunità per raggiungere l'indipendenza strategica dagli Stati Uniti. Come ha detto il futuro cancelliere della Germania, Friedrich Merz, subito dopo la sua vittoria elettorale del 23 febbraio: “Sarà una mia priorità assoluta rafforzare l'Europa il prima possibile affinché possa gradualmente raggiungere l'indipendenza dagli Stati Uniti”.

Una tale indipendenza strategica ha bisogno di soldi e investimenti, molti, non solo per potenziare la difesa ma anche molto altro, come energia e innovazione; settori in cui l'Europa è in ritardo rispetto a Stati Uniti e Cina. Per avere il pretesto e implementare questo piano di spesa, l'idea della classe dirigente europea è di assicurarsi che la guerra in Ucraina non finisca troppo in fretta. In questo modo il conflitto può essere usato per giustificare l'iniezione artificiale di denaro necessario nelle moribonde economie dell'UE.

In primo luogo c'era la questione di fornire €20 miliardi in supporto militare aggiuntivo all'Ucraina e che le regole fiscali autoimposte dall'UE venissero allentate utilizzando l'attuale “clausola di salvaguardia” in caso di circostanze “eccezionali”, come la falsa scusa della “difesa dell'Ucraina”. Come si legge su Bloomberg: “In base a questo piano, le nazioni dell'UE sarebbero esentate dai limiti di debito e deficit quando finanziano le spese militari. Ciò segna un cambiamento fondamentale nella politica finanziaria del continente, poiché tali esenzioni erano precedentemente impossibili in base alle regole dell'UE”.

Infatti la classe dirigente europea non vuole seguire le regole fiscali arbitrarie dell'UE stessa: per Parigi il limite del 3% al deficit di bilancio è politicamente doloroso; per Berlino il limite massimo del 60% in termini di debito/PIL è un vincolo artificiale.

Poi si è parlato di un pacchetto di difesa da €700 miliardi. Newsweek ha affermato che: “Baerbock ha detto che il pacchetto potrebbe valere circa €700 miliardi”. Anche il presidente francese Emmanuel Macron lo ha confermato il 2 marzo 2025: “Daremo mandato alla Commissione europea di definire le nostre esigenze di capacità per una difesa comune. Questo massiccio finanziamento raggiungerà probabilmente le centinaia di miliardi di euro”.

Lo slogan ufficiale di “aiutare l’Ucraina a difendersi” fornirà all’élite politica e finanziaria dell’UE una scusa per aprire di nuovo a tutta forza i rubinetti della Banca centrale europea e inondare l’intera economia europea di denaro “gratis” e puntellare le sue fragili economie, come fece dopo la crisi del 2011, nel 2021 e con il Green New Deal.

Doping delle economie dell’UE con obbligazioni congiunte

Questa volta l'idea è quella di utilizzare obbligazioni UE congiunte. Reuters scrive: “Gli importi maggiori dovranno provenire da un qualche tipo di finanziamento centralizzato, perché la maggior parte dei bilanci in Europa è relativamente tesa, in particolare in Italia e Francia”. Come affermato nel rapporto Draghi del settembre 2024: “L'UE dovrebbe muoversi verso l'emissione regolare di asset sicuri comuni per consentire progetti di investimento congiunti tra gli Stati membri e per aiutare a integrare i mercati dei capitali. Pertanto l'emissione comune dovrebbe nel tempo produrre un mercato più profondo e più liquido nelle obbligazioni UE”.

I bond europei congiunti sono essenzialmente emissioni obbligazionarie la cui garanzia è rappresentata dall'intera Eurozona e comporterebbero quindi un basso rischio e un tasso d'interesse inferiore rispetto ai bond UE a livello nazionale. Ciò è percepito come necessario affinché l'UE possa reggere la concorrenza con gli Stati Uniti e la Cina, i quali hanno già mercati dei capitali unificati, come ha chiarito un discorso di Draghi alla Commissione UE lo scorso anno.

Ci sono tre fonti principali di finanziamento della guerra: stampare denaro, aumentare le tasse e prendere in prestito. Mettere a disposizione “centinaia di miliardi” per l'UE si baserebbe probabilmente sul debito emesso da obbligazioni congiunte. Bloomberg ha scritto che, se la spesa fosse finanziata con aumenti delle tasse o tagli in altre aree, ciò potrebbe cancellare qualsiasi impatto positivo, o peggio. Qualsiasi spesa immediata per l'esercito non aiuterebbe l'Europa, perché verrebbe spesa principalmente per acquistare armi statunitensi.

Pertanto ciò che la classe dirigente europea ha in mente ora è mettere in atto quanto affermato da Merz: un'indipendenza strategica dagli Stati Uniti attraverso un ingente investimento in obbligazioni congiunte, emesse e utilizzate nel lungo termine per rafforzare lentamente l'industria europea, non solo nel settore della difesa, ma anche in altri.

Il piano dell’UE riguarda la centralizzazione del controllo finanziario

In un certo senso questa emissione di maggiori debiti è solo l'Unione Europea che emula il manuale degli Stati Uniti: usare la guerra per i benefici dei capitalisti clientelari, “capendo” infine come sfruttare cinicamente la guerra in Ucraina proprio come hanno fatto gli Stati Uniti dal 2022 alimentando il loro complesso militare-industriale. Ma, affinché ciò accada, la guerra non deve finire troppo presto per la classe dirigente europea, motivo per cui vengono fatti sforzi per rovinare — scandalosamente — qualsiasi piano di pace degli Stati Uniti e far sì che la guerra continui.

Questo piano è il tipico piano di spesa militarista keynesiano che gli stati europei avevano adottato già dalla prima guerra mondiale in poi, e non solo i fascisti e i nazisti, come dimostrò John T. Flynn nel suo libro, As We Go Marching.

Le conseguenze nel tempo di questa frenesia di spesa pubblica saranno tanto disastrose per l'Europa quanto ovvie per gli studenti della Scuola austriaca. Porteranno, come sempre, inflazione dei prezzi e svalutazione dell'euro, gonfierà bolle, distorceranno le economie dell'UE, porteranno a investimenti sbagliati e, ultimo ma non meno importante, abbatteranno le piccole imprese, la spina dorsale delle economie europee. Serviranno solo a rimandare la risoluzione dei problemi strutturali dell'UE, sia economici che politici. Ciò è particolarmente vero per la Francia.

Ma tutto questo è irrilevante per la classe dirigente europea, perché dal loro punto di vista questa spesa aumenterà artificialmente il PIL nei numerosi stati membri, creerà posti di lavoro nei settori della difesa e dell'energia in tutta Europa e quindi assorbirà parte della disoccupazione sistemica, un prodotto di decenni di pesante interventismo statale. Ciò consentirà un'ulteriore centralizzazione delle economie europee nelle mani di Bruxelles, poiché spingerà verso piattaforme di difesa comuni invece del frammentato mosaico di fornitori di difesa che esiste oggi in Europa. Come al solito, gli interessi della minoranza dominante divergono dagli interessi della maggioranza disorganizzata e governata.

Infine renderà gli attuali politici dell'UE più popolari di adesso (il che, bisogna ammetterlo, non è difficile da immaginare), e ne trarrà beneficio la loro carriera e molto probabilmente anche il loro patrimonio personale attraverso tutte le tangenti che riceveranno. La Presidente della Commissione Europea, Ursula von der Leyen e molti altri parassiti burocratici nell'UE, conoscono bene questo tipo di “business”.

Questo, almeno, sembra essere il piano. Non ci sarà tanta opposizione politica, poiché sarebbe un suicidio politico opporsi a un piano che “non solo renderà l'Europa di nuovo grande, ma anche più sicura (dalla Russia)!” La vittoria della CDU di Merz in Germania ha già reso più leggera la potenziale opposizione politica di AfD.

Questo è l'ennesimo caso che dimostra che i cittadini occidentali, in particolare in Europa, devono capire meglio che la creazione di denaro, sia attraverso il debito o in altro modo, e la successiva immissione nell'economia, non andrà a loro vantaggio. I benefici trascurabili e passeggeri di tali linee di politica non possono mai giustificare il loro vero obiettivo di sostenere enormi burocrazie e aumentare il loro controllo sulla società. È quindi più urgente che mai continuare a diffondere la conoscenza e la saggezza dell'economia Austriaca.

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

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

Unless you’ve worked a lot in logistics and cross-border trade, you may not be aware of the global tariff system. Most countries have a base tariff rate, with variations based on protected products and industrial sectors, or socio-cultural mores that levy a “sin tax” on consumers who enjoy certain luxuries—alcohol and tobacco being the most common.

As of April 3, 2025, Indonesia imposes import tariffs on goods from the United States in accordance with its Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) tariff schedule, as both countries are members of the World Trade Organization (WTO). These tariffs are generally consistent across all trading partners without preferential trade agreements with Indonesia.

General Tariff Structure:

• Non-Agricultural Products: Most tariffs are bound at 35.5%, with certain sectors such as automobiles, iron, steel, and specific chemical products having higher rates or remaining unbound.
• Agricultural Products: Over 1,300 products have tariff bindings at or above 35.5%

Recent Tariff Adjustments:

In October 2023, Indonesia implemented new tariffs on various imported goods under Finance Ministry Regulation No. 96/2023:

• Perfumes: 10-15%
• Hair Products: 15%
• Iron and Steel: 0-20%
• Bicycles(!): 25-40%
• Wristwatches: 10%

Import Licensing and Restrictions:

Beyond tariffs, Indonesia has implemented import licensing procedures and permit requirements that can affect U.S. exports. These measures have been subjects of discussion between the U.S. and Indonesia regarding their alignment with WTO obligations.

U.S. Trade Relations:

In 2024, U.S. goods exported to Indonesia totaled $10.2 billion, while imports from Indonesia were $28.1 billion, resulting in a US trade deficit of $17.9 billion.

For precise and up-to-date tariff information on specific products, consulting Indonesia’s official customs tariff publications or the Directorate General of Customs and Excise is recommended.

Until recently, the United States had a relatively liberal trade policy compared to global standards, but it also maintains targeted protectionist measures in key industries. Here’s how the US compares to the global tariff system:

1. Average Tariff Rates

• The US has an average applied tariff rate of about 2.4%, which is lower than the global average of around 7% (according to WTO data).
• Many developed countries, such as the EU (1.8%) and Japan (2.5%), have similarly low tariffs, while developing nations often impose higher average tariffs (e.g., India ~17%, Brazil ~8%).

2. Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)

1. The US has fewer FTAs than the EU or China, but it does have major agreements like:
   • USMCA (formerly NAFTA) – Zero tariffs on most trade with Canada and Mexico.
   • Bilateral FTAs with South Korea, Australia, and several other countries.
2. The EU has more FTAs, covering a larger portion of global trade, making European trade more open overall.

3. Protectionist Measures

• The US imposes higher-than-average tariffs on specific industries:
  • Agriculture: Tariffs of 10–30% on products like dairy, sugar, and peanuts.
  • Steel & Aluminum: Trump-era tariffs (Section 232) of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum remain in place against many countries.
  • China: High tariffs (up to 25% on $300+ billion of Chinese goods) due to the ongoing US-China trade dispute.
• In contrast, countries like China, India, and Brazil generally have higher across-the-board tariffs, whereas the US mainly targets specific industries or competitors.

4. Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs)

• The US relies more on NTBs, such as anti-dumping duties, subsidies, and “Buy American” policies, to protect domestic industries.
• The EU and Japan use NTBs extensively, especially in agriculture and regulatory standards.

The US has a lower overall tariff than most countries, but is aggressive in protecting strategic industries. Compared to the EU and Japan, the US is less engaged in global FTAs, meaning it lacks as many duty-free trade partnerships. China, India, and many developing nations have much higher tariffs, making the US look liberal by comparison.

As of January 2025, the United States recorded an overall trade deficit of $131.4 billion, an increase from the revised deficit of $98.1 billion in December 2024. This is due primarily to low tariffs on US imports, and high tariffs on US exports. This is compounded by a strong dollar, raising the cost of US goods overseas, but making imported goods much cheaper in domestic markets.

By comparison, Indonesia with its excessive tariffs, excise taxes, customs fees, and other costs runs a trade surplus. As of February 2025, Indonesia recorded a trade surplus of $3.12 billion, marking the 58th consecutive month of surplus since May 2020.

Despite the screaming, hollering and hand-wringing over Trump’s tariff regime, his policies actually make sense, in that they punish nations that levy excessive tariffs and barriers on US goods, while enjoying nearly unbridled access to US consumers.

Additionally, much of the yelping is coming from corporate sectors where low US tariffs have made it cheaper to produce goods overseas and import them. This leads to lower-paying service jobs in the US, where gradually even the cost of cheap foreign goods exceeds the family income. This pain is compounded when the dollar is weak.

This, simply put, is globalism—outsourcing everything to low labor-cost nations, with final assembly at home. At a more complex level, globalism has spawned such things as the ISO, IMF, WTO, WHO, World Bank, and everyone’s boogyman, the WEF. At the center of it all is the EU, the globalist sandbox where global regulations and enforcement systems are tested and rolled out.

What Trump has done is drive a stake in the heart of globalism. The EU creates the regulations, but the US enforces them, and if the US goes off on another tangent, there really isn’t a need for the EU, nor any of the other parasitic organizations that act as the gendarmes.

It is interesting to note that the Trump tariffs do not apply to Russia or Belarus, which are ironically isolated by the many sanctions against them. However, the tariffs do indirectly apply to Israel, via the global supply chain.

Trump’s tariff regime appears to favors nations producing energy and agricultural products (including fertilizer). He seems to be trying to lower energy and food costs to counteract the inflationary action of the tariffs.

That’s a bold move, Cotton. Let’s see if it works for them.

Article I, Sections 8, 9 and 10 grant Congress the exclusive right to impose import tariffs (Duties), while all levels of government are banned from imposing export tariffs.

However, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, gives the President the power to unilaterally levy import tariffs if there is a perceived threat to national security. Additionally, Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, grants the President the power to levy tariffs against countries engaging in intellectual property theft and unfair trade practices, the primary justification behind the China dispute.

Trump is doing nothing radical—it is essentially an eye-for-an-eye trade policy. His efforts appear to pass Constitutional and legal muster, using established powers vested in the Presidency.

Trump has thrown a monkey wrench into the globalist gears. For decades, the world has enjoyed nearly free access to US consumers, while profitting off taxes and duties against US products. Furthermore, US consumers have enjoyed low-cost goods from overseas, but at the expense of high-quality jobs that has eroded individual buying power and left the US vulnerable to foreign market manipulation.

It remains to be seen how all this will shake out. An operation this complex has thousands of variables, nearly all of which must align to deliver the desired outcome. Trump certainly has the ego to attempt something like this, but is it enough to claim victory within the next four years?

In the meantime, remember the Four Ds: dodge, dip, duck, dive, and, er…dodge.

Read the Whole Article

The post Tariffying Times appeared first on LewRockwell.

President Trump was elected in part because he promised to reduce prices and not drag the country into foreign wars. Sadly, President Trump has adopted a tariff policy that will raise prices and abandoned his “America First” foreign policy in favor of a return to Bush-era neoconservatism.

Despite criticizing President Biden for bombing Yemen, President Trump has authorized bombing that country under the false pretense that Yemen’s Houthis are threatening international shipping. President Trump has also threatened to bomb Iran. A false justification for this threat is that Iran is controlling the Houthis. If President Trump follows through on this threat against Iran, it could lead to another “forever war.” He has also continued US support for Israel and Ukraine’s wars.

President Trump started a trade war by imposing a ten percent universal tariff on imported products and other tariff expansions. Chinese imports will face a tariff of 54 percent, while goods imported from the European Union will “only” be assessed a 20 percent tariff.

The day following President Trump’s tariffs announcement, US stocks lost 3.1 trillion dollars in value, while the dollar fell to its weakest level since October.

China responded to the tariffs by imposing a 34 percent tariff on US imports along with other measures increasing the costs of US products in China. Canada imposed a 25 percent tariff on cars imported from the US. France President Emmanuel Macron called on European businesses to refrain from investing in American businesses, saying it makes little sense to invest in America when the US is punishing Europe.

President Trump’s actions are setting off a global trade war that means US consumers will suffer from increased prices for many products both foreign and domestic. Manufacturing and other American businesses that rely on imported raw materials and other inputs from abroad will have to pay more for these inputs, assuming they are able to get them at all. US exporters will suffer from decreased demand for US products in overseas markets.

According to estimates by the Budget Lab at Yale University, President Trump’s tariffs will cost the average American household a 3,800 dollars loss of purchasing power. The Tax Foundation estimates the tariffs will reduce US GDP by at least 0.7 percent and decrease the average American’s after-tax income by about two percent. Middle- and lower-income Americans will obviously be hardest hit. The decrease in income, combined with the increase in prices and increase in the unemployment rate, will raise demand for government welfare programs and thus put pressure on Congress to reject attempts to cut spending.

Thus far, Trump’s response to the economic chaos he has unleashed is to say everything will work out as other countries will negotiate “beautiful” trade deals with the US. President Trump, on the same day he announced the new tariffs, called on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, saying it was a “perfect time” to do so. The interest rate cut, though, would only further degrade the dollar and further burden Americans with increasing prices.

President Trump called the day he announced his tariff plan “Liberation Day.” This may be the most misleading name since the Affordable Care Act. Renaissance Macro Research head of US economic research Neil Dutta more appropriately labeled it “Obliteration Day.” President Trump’s tariffs, along with his support for war, could obliterate what is left of America’s peace and prosperity.

The post Liberation or Obliteration? appeared first on LewRockwell.

What is understood now is that ‘we’re no longer playing chess’. There are no rules anymore.

Trump’s ultimatum to Iran? Colonel Doug Macgregor compares the Trump ultimatum to Iran to that which Austria-Hungary delivered to Serbia in 1914: An offer, in short, that ‘could not be refused’. Serbia accepted nine out of the ten demands. But it refused one – and Austria-Hungary immediately declared war.

On 4 February, shortly after his Inauguration, President Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM); that is to say, a legally binding directive requiring government agencies to carry out the specified actions precisely.

The demands are that Iran should be denied a nuclear weapon; denied inter-continental missiles, and denied too other asymmetric and conventional weapons capabilities. All these demands go beyond the NPT and the existing JCPOA. To this end, the NSPM directs maximum economic pressure be imposed; that the U.S. Treasury act to drive Iran’s oil exports to zero; that the U.S. work to trigger JCPOA Snapback of sanctions; and that Iran’s “malign influence abroad” – its “proxies” – be neutralised.

The UN sanctions snapback expires in October, so time is short to fulfil the procedural requirements to Snapback. All this suggests why Trump and Israeli officials give Spring as the deadline to a negotiated agreement.

Trump’s ultimatum to Iran appears to be moving the U.S. down a path to where war is the only outcome, as occurred in 1914 – an outcome which ultimately triggered WW1.

Might this just be Trump bluster? Possibly, but it does sound as if Trump is issuing legally binding demands such that he must expect cannot be met. Acceptance of Trump’s demands would leave Iran neutered and stripped of its sovereignty, at the very least. There is an implicit ‘tone’ to these demands too, that is one of threatening and expecting regime change in Iran as its outcome.

It may be Trump bluster, but the President has ‘form’ (past convictions) on this issue. He has unabashedly hewed to the Netanyahu line on Iran that the JCPOA (or any deal with Iran) was ‘bad’. In May 2014, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA at Netanyahu’s behest and instead issued a new set of 12 demands to Iran – including permanently and verifiably abandoning its nuclear programme in perpetuity and ceasing all uranium enrichment.

What is the difference between those earlier Trump demands and those of this February? Essentially they are the same, except today he says: If Iran “doesn’t make a deal, there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before”.

Thus, there is both history, and the fact that Trump is surrounded – on this issue at least – by a hostile cabal of Israeli Firsters and Super Hawks. Witkoff is there, but is poorly grounded on the issues. Trump too, has shown himself virtually totalitarian in terms of any and all criticism of Israel in American Academia. And in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, he is fully supportive of Netanyahu’s far-right provocative and expansionist agenda.

These present demands regarding Iran also run counter to the 25 March 2025 latest annual U.S. Intelligence Threat Assessment that Iran is NOT building a nuclear weapon. This Intelligence Assessment is effectively disregarded. A few days before its release, Trump’s National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz clearly stated that the Trump Administration is seeking the “full dismantlement” of Iran's nuclear energy program: “Iran has to give up its program in a way that the entire world can see”, Waltz said. “It is time for Iran to walk away completely from its desire to have a nuclear weapon”.

On the one hand, it seems that behind these ultimata stands a President made “pissed off and angry” at his inability to end the Ukraine war almost immediately – as he first mooted – together with pressures from a bitterly fractured Israel and a volatile Netanyahu to compress the timeline for the speedy ‘finishing off’ of the Iranian ‘regime’ (which, it is claimed, has never been weaker). All so that Israel can normalise with Lebanon –and even Syria. And with Iran supposedly ‘disabled’, pursue implementation of the Greater Israel project to be normalised across the Middle East.

Which, on the other hand, will enable Trump to pursue the ‘long-overdue’ grand pivot to China. (And China is energy-vulnerable – regime change in Tehran would be a calamity, from the Chinese perspective).

To be plain, Trump’s China strategy needs to be in place too, in order to advance Trump’s financial system re-balancing plans. For, should China feel itself besieged, it could well act as a spoiler to Trump's re-working of the American and global financial system.

The Washington Post reports on a ‘secret’ Pentagon memo from Hegseth that “China [now] is the Department’s sole pacing threat, [together] with denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland”.

The ‘force planning construct’ (a concept of how the Pentagon will build and resource the armed services to take on perceived threats) will only consider conflict with Beijing when planning contingencies for a major power war, the Pentagon memo says, leaving the threat from Moscow largely to be attended by European allies.

Trump wants to be powerful enough credibly to threaten China militarily, and therefore wants Putin to agree speedily to a ceasefire in Ukraine, so that military resources can quickly be moved to the China theatre.

On his flight back to Washington last Sunday evening, Trump reiterated his annoyance toward Putin, but added “I don’t think he’s going to go back on his word, I’ve known him for a long time. We’ve always gotten along well”. Asked when he wanted Russia to agree to a ceasefire, Trump said there was a “psychological deadline” – “If I think they’re tapping us along, I will not be happy about it”.

Trump’s venting against Russia may, perhaps, have an element of reality-TV to it. For his domestic audience, he needs to be perceived as bringing ‘peace through strength’ – to keep up the Alpha-Male appearance, lest the truth of his lack of leverage over Putin becomes all too apparent for the American public and to the world.

Part of the reason for Trump’s frustration too, may be his cultural formation as a New York businessman; that a deal is about first dominating the negotiations, and then quickly ‘splitting the difference’. This, however, is not how diplomacy works. The transactional approach also reflects deep conceptual flaws.

The Ukraine ceasefire process is stalled, not because of Russian intransigence, but rather because Team Trump has determined that achieving a settlement in Ukraine comes firstly through insisting on a unilateral and immediate ceasefire – without introducing temporary governance to enable elections in Ukraine, nor addressing the root causes of the conflict. And secondly, because Trump rushed in, without listening to what the Russians were saying, and/or without hearing it.

Now that initial pleasantries are over, and Russia is saying flatly that current ‘ceasefire’ proposals simply are inadequate and unacceptable, Trump becomes angry and lashes out at Putin, saying that 25% tariffs on Russian oil could happen ANY moment.

Putin and Iran are both now under ‘deadlines’ (a ‘psychological’ one in Putin’s case), so as to enable Trump to proceed with credibly threatening China to come to a ‘deal’ soon – as the global economy is already wobbling.

Trump fumes and spits fire. He tries to hurry matters along by making a big show of bombing the Houthis, boasting that they have been hit hard, with many Houthi leaders killed. Yet, such callousness towards Yemeni civilian deaths sits awkwardly with his claimed heart-rendering empathy for the thousands of ‘handsome’ Ukrainian young men needlessly dying on the front lines.

It all becomes reality-TV.

Trump threatens Iran with “bombing [the] likes of which they have never seen before” over an ultimatum that likely cannot be met. Simply put, this threat (which includes the possible use of nuclear weapons) is not given because Iran poses a threat to the U.S. It does not. But it is given as an option. A plan; a ‘thing’ placed calmly on the geo-political table and intended to spread fear. “Cities full of children, women, and the elderly to be killed: Not morally wrong. Not a war crime”.

No. Just the ‘reality’ that Trump takes the Iranian nuclear programme to be an existential threat to Israel. And that the U.S. is committed to using military force to eliminate existential threats to Israel.

This is the heart to Trump’s ultimatum. It owes to the fact that it is Israel – not America, and not the U.S. intelligence community – that views Iran as an existential threat. Professor Hudson, speaking with direct knowledge of the background policy (see here and here) says, “it's NOT just that Israel as we know it – must be safe and secure and free from terrorism”. That's Trump and his Team’s ‘line’; that's the Israeli and its supporters narrative too. “But the mentality [behind it] is different”, Hudson says.

There are some 2-3 million Israelis who see themselves as destined to control all of what we now call the Middle East, the Levant, what some call West Asia – and others call “Greater Israel”. These Zionists believe that they are mandated by God to take this land – and that all who oppose them are Amalek. They believe the Amalek to be consumed with an overwhelming desire to kill Jews, and who therefore should be annihilated.

The Torah records the story of Amalek: Parshat Ki Teitzei, when the Torah states, machoh timcheh et zecher Amalek—that we must erase Amalek’s memory. “Every year we [Jews] are obligated to read – not how God will destroy Amalek – but how we should destroy Amalek”. (Though many Jews puzzle how to reconcile this mitzvah with their ingrained contrarian values of compassion and mercy).

This commandment in the Torah is in fact one of the key factors that lies at the root of Israel’s obsession with Iran. Israelis perceive Iran as an Amalek tribe plotting to kill Jews. No deal, no compromise therefore is possible. It is also, of course, about Iran’s strategic challenge (albeit secular) to the Israeli state.

And what has made the Trump ultimatum so pressing in Washington’s view – apart from the China-pivot considerations – was the assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. That assassination marked a big shift in U.S. thinking, because, before that, we inhabited an era of careful calculation; incremental moves up an escalator ladder. What is understood now is that ‘we're no longer playing chess’. There are no rules anymore.

Israel (Netanyahu) is going hell-for-leather on all fronts to mitigate the divisions and turmoil at home in Israel through igniting the Iranian front – even though this course might well threaten Israel’s destruction.

This latter prospect marks the reddest of ‘red lines’ to ingrained Deep State structures.

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

The post ‘Break-a-Leg’ (That Old Mafia Warning) – Trump Has Threatened Iran Over an Ultimatum That Likely Cannot Be Met appeared first on LewRockwell.

I’ve never met Donald Trump nor had any dealings with him, and since I don’t watch television, I’d barely paid attention to his antics until his unexpectedly strong run for the White House began attracting heavy media coverage in 2015.

But some time ago I was privately meeting on other matters with one of Trump’s powerful and influential backers when Trump’s name happened to come up. Since I tend to be forthright and speak candidly about most things, I casually described him as an “ignorant buffoon.” I was hardly surprised that my interlocutor failed to reply to that provocative characterization, but I noticed the slightly embarrassed expression on his face and interpreted his silence as an admission that he quietly shared my own appraisal.

I strongly suspect that the worldwide tariff policies recently declared by Trump will soon cause more and more Americans, including erstwhile Trump supporters, to come to that same distressing conclusion.

Tariff policy is part of economics, and I hardly claim any great personal expertise in that discipline. Indeed, quite the contrary.

Back almost a dozen years ago, before my increasingly controversial writings rendered me far too radioactive for such things, I was invited to participate in a televised NYC debate on the economics of immigration policy, with one of my opponents being the prominent libertarian economist Bryan Caplan of George Mason University. The show was syndicated around the country and simulcast on NPR, and early on I boldly admitted my total ignorance of economics, declaring that not only had I never taken a class in that subject, but I had never even opened the pages of a single economics textbook.

However, I also suggested that much of economics constituted basic common sense and perhaps partly as a consequence of that approach, our side won the debate by the widest margin in the history of that series, with one of the opposing team members even shifting towards our position.

• Open Borders, American Elites, and the Minimum Wage
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • November 11, 2013 • 1,700 Words

Video Link

Yet that minor legalistic technicality barely scraped the surface of the very bizarre tariff rates that Trump had decided to impose against the 150-odd other countries of the world.

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.

For example, it’s undeniably true that for decades America has run a horrendous and growing global trade deficit with the rest of the world, most recently totaling $1.2 trillion during 2024.

However, 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.

His declared tariff methodology was even stranger. I noticed that all his international trade statistics focused only on goods while ignoring services.

So if our trade with some particular foreign nation were in perfect balance, with a deficit in goods exactly matched by a surplus in services, Trump would only consider the former not the latter, and impose large tariffs to reduce that problem.

Back in the 1990s, Paleoconservative trailblazer Pat Buchanan had advocated a sweeping set of controversial economic and political policies that greatly outraged our reigning intellectual establishment, with higher tariff rates among them. These positions led the Donald Trump of that era to harshly denounce Buchanan as “a Hitler lover.” But with the sole exception of Buchanan’s sharp criticism of Israel and its powerful American lobby, our mercurial current president seemed to have now fervently adopted nearly all of Buchanan’s ideas, but apparently attempted to implement them with an IQ that seems 30-40 points lower.

I’ve only casually explored Trump’s bizarre tariff proposal and given my self-proclaimed ignorance of economics, perhaps I even misunderstood some of its elements. But according to media reports, his proposal raises average American tariffs on goods more than ten-fold, from around about 2% to 24%. This will surely constitute a gigantic shock to our economic system.

American businesses and the investors who own them seemed to see that shock in very negative terms, with our stock markets suffering their sharpest declines since the unprecedented collapse caused by the Covid epidemic of Trump’s previous term.

I’ve long suspected that our stocks were heavily over-valued, and Trump’s tariff announcement may have finally punctured that huge bubble, perhaps with financial consequences greater than he expected or intended.

For example, I’ve been rather surprised that high-profile tech companies that spent years annually losing billions of dollars have continued to maintain and even grow their market valuations, and perhaps these will now finally come down to earth, even with a gigantic thump. I had also thought that the release of China’s inexpensive and open source DeepSeek AI system would have a greater impact upon the American AI companies burning through so many billions of dollars each year, and maybe that will now happen.

Just a few days before the very sharp drop in American stocks, the Wall Street Journal had run a major article noting that over the last dozen years or so, the outsize returns in our stocks had drawn in unprecedented amounts of foreign investment. This inflow of funds might be reversed if stocks heavily fall, which would obviously magnify that effect.

Perhaps after their extremely sharp drops on Thursday and Friday, American stocks will stabilize themselves this week or even regain some of their lost ground. But perhaps the decline will still continue or accelerate.

The self-proclaimed goal of all of Trump’s wild tariff plans is the reindustrialization of American society, achieved by persuading major corporations to increase their domestic investment and relocate their factories back to our shores. But as numerous critics have pointed out, his policies seem rather unlikely to achieve that result.

Creating a major factory along with its associated sub-contractors and supply-chains is a very lengthy and expensive undertaking, likely to involve years and billions of dollars. So planning such major investment decisions requires a great deal of certainty that the factors responsible for the shift will remain in place for many years to come, thereby justifying such long-term capital expenditures. Uncertainty in the business climate will lead to the postponement of business investments.

Yet uncertainty is surely the watchword of Trump’s mercurial economic policies, with the recent announcements of crippling tariffs against Canada and Mexico having been repeatedly restricted, reversed, or delayed from day to day and week to week. Nobody had expected the sweeping worldwide tariffs announced last week, and given the ongoing collapse in global stock markets, nobody can say whether those tariffs—or even the president who issued them—will still be around in a few months’ time. Only a particularly foolish corporation would initiate long-term investment plans until the situation becomes much more clear.

So although Trump intended to promote a huge wave of new industrial business investment in America, the actual results seem much more likely to be the exact opposite.

Read the Whole Article

The post President Donald Trump and Chairman Mao appeared first on LewRockwell.

That ruckus you hear in the capital markets is the sickening howl of the Fugazy Economy meeting its extinction. Fugazy means fake, unreal, dishonest, misaligned to what societies need to thrive. Fugazy means mis-using the time-value of things that purport to be wealth to multiply fake wealth in the hands of a few at the expense of the many. The pernicious effects of that system are visible all across the ruined landscape of our country, a nation of broken cities, failed towns, and a demoralized populace.

Mr. Trump apparently aims to convert the expiring Fugazy economy into a production economy — yikes! — based on making things of value, and perhaps more importantly, of people at all social levels having meaningful roles in the making and moving of things. The Trump tariffs are the first big step in a process that is already generating a whole lot of friction, heat, and ferment. The aim of the tariffs is straightforward: the end of a trade regime that punishes and cripples American production.

The response so far is heartening. Many other countries suddenly seek new trade arrangements with the USA, correctly sensing that Mr. Trump means bidness. (This ain’t no Mud Club. . . this ain’t no foolin’ around. . . .) It’s even possible that these readjustments will happen so swiftly that the tariff differentials will be a wash before summer, and everybody will be, at least, on a firm footing, knowing what the clear new rules say. This new disposition of things required forceful incentives to change entrenched, harmful practices.

Another angle on this process is the dynamic known as import-replacement. It means exactly what it sounds like: where you used to get stuff from other lands, you now make it here. It should be obvious that this can’t be accomplished overnight. But the question is: okay, when are you going to start? Part of the answer is: we can’t afford to put it off any longer. There’s an awful lot of stuff, from machine tools to pharmaceuticals to military equipment that we had better start making again — or else slide into collapse, perhaps even slavery to other powers.

That process starts with deploying real capital — as opposed to Fugazy capital — to re-start businesses and industries. That will take money away from hedge funds and other rackets that exist to play games with evermore abstract layers of things that only pretend to represent money. As that occurs, a lot of pretend money will vanish. Don’t be too shocked by this. That’s what happens when a society bends back toward reality: you start sorting out the real money from the fake money. That’s why the price of gold keeps marching up.

I sense that Mr. Trump and his colleagues knew full-well that the tariff play would rattle the markets badly, that these “corrections” are an unavoidable consequence, and are better gotten-over as quickly as possible. What else would you expect in a system that has dedicated itself for decades to mis-pricing the value of just about everything? The snap-back is sure to be harsh.

The psychopathocracy that drives the Global Left lost more traction last week in its quest to keep all of its old rackets running. Their foot-soldiers in the USA have been defunded effectively by Mr. Musk’s DOGE, starting with the immense network of rackets that were run around the USAID program. The Woke NGOs are no more and the fat paychecks are no longer going out to the nose-ring-for-lunch-bunch who came to infest the DC Beltway — and their satellite offices in Democratic Party controlled cities. Hence, the feeble turn-outs in last weekend’s street actions.

The Baby Boomers have gone especially psychotic. That’s why there are so many old folks waving those Soros-made placards in the astroturfed crowds of the “Hands-off” protests. After an eighty-year run of the most mind-blowing comfort and convenience enjoyed by any generation in world history, America’s Boomers stare into the abyss of their fading Fugazy fortunes as their stock portfolios tank. Kind of too bad. Maybe you shouldn’t have gone along for the ride. Maybe you should have cared for your country a bit more.

Here’s your poster-boy for that: the retarded slob rock-and-roller Neil Young, performing in support of the US Intel blob, the Covid-19 vaccine campaign, the degenerate Democratic party, Senator Adam Schiff, and BlackRock. Neil Young’s estimated net worth is about $200-million. He could lose ninety percent of that and still live a life of luxury. In 2022, he inveighed against Covid vaccine “misinformation” and promoted the shots. Guess, what? You were dead wrong about that, Neil, and now a lot of people are dead and dying because of those vaccines. He has many compadres in showbiz who took the same position against reality.

The time is not far-off when they will be revealed as disgraceful tools — Public vaxx champions such as Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Oprah Winfrey, Howard Stern, Ryan Reynolds, Lady Gaga. . . the list is long and discouraging. Meanwhile, they’re all out there rallying the Woke troops against the Golden Golem of Greatness as the Left’s leaky lifeboat goes down, gurgle, gurgle. In the process, they’ve destroyed Hollywood, rock and roll, and comedy. The country will recover from that, too. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to laugh at them in the years to come as the obituaries roll in.

Meanwhile, brace and rejoice! Great changes are set in motion. Roll with the turbulence. You’ll come out the other end, stronger, wiser, steadier, perhaps even happier. And, mark ye, the silence emanating from the DOJ and the FBI these budding spring days. The New York Times is nervous as all git-out.

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

The post Farewell, Fugazy! appeared first on LewRockwell.

I feel one of the biggest issues in modern medicine is that patients often don’t get the opportunity to establish a genuine relationship with their physician and hence often lack the critical voice necessary for a therapeutic doctor-patient relationship.

Because of this, my goal here was always to be able to correspond with everyone who reached out to me (e.g., through comments). Unfortunately, due to the unexpected reach of this publication (two hundred thousand readers), I don’t have the time to both do that and to write here. For that reason, I decided the best solution was to have monthly open threads where people could ask whatever they wanted on any topic and I would make a point to always reply to them.

In tandem with these open threads, I try to have them tie to a subject that I feel is important to cover, but isn’t enough to be the focus of an entire article. For this month’s post, since water is a foundation of our body’s health, I would like to share my perspectives on the healthiest types of water to drink.

Note: I am currently finishing up a month long project on an article on DMSO and hematoxylin (two easily accessible compounds) which when combined, have over the years been shown to be a remarkable cancer therapy but like many things unfortunately was stonewalled by the FDA and became another Forgotten Side of Medicine.

The Water Industry

Over the decades I’ve been in the holistic health field, I’ve noticed device after device hit the market which claims to produce the optimal source of water for you to drink, frequently has a lot of marketing behind it, briefly becomes popular and in many cases, then fades into obscurity and is forgotten. This in turn has led me to cynically conclude the primary reason why these products are created is because they are easy to market, not because they are necessarily helpful.

From having extensively studied the subject, presently, I believe the following:

•There are so many unhealthy things in the water that any filter that can remove some of them is better than nothing.

•Many of the things you want to take out (e.g., fluoride) can only be taken out by a reverse osmosis water system, so if at all possible you should use one of them.

•There are a variety of other decent water filtration methods that many people get invested in, and may have specific advantages (e.g., Berkey water filters are gravity fed so they can be operated without electricity or an existing water pressure) but they are simply not as good at filtering as a reverse osmosis system.

•I do not like alkaline water filters (as I believe it is not good to neutralize your stomach acid) and I believe many of the benefits attributed to alkaline water filters come from how alkalinity can somewhat improve zeta potential or the fact that alkaline water generators often produce molecular hydrogen in the water.
Note: as Dr. Mercola discusses here, it is fairly unlikely alkaline water devices will actually change your pH.

•There are a variety of products which “energize” or “structure” water. Some people (e.g., those belonging to the “sensitize constitutional archetype”) find they help, but having explored this for years, all I can say is that the results vary immensely depending upon the product and the person who uses it.

•The one (recent) innovation I’ve repeatedly seen provide some degree of benefit to users are the hydrogen water bottles (which electrolyzes water so it becomes full of dissolved hydrogen and oxygen—which may also provide some of the benefit of the water). Many of the devices that do this are fairly cheap, so I believe if you want to experiment with a water product to see if it benefits you (e.g., some athletes find drinking hydrogen water increases their endurance) it’s the one to try.
Note: these is a significant amount of scientific evidence demonstrating the benefits of hydrogen water for a variety of conditions. Much of it has been compiled by The Molecular Hydrogen Institute.

•I like fresh spring water, but the value of it again varies immensely depending on the spring (a few are very good, many however are not). Additionally, I find long term consumption of spring water frequently causes issues for people due to the dissolved (positively charged) minerals disrupting their physiologic zeta potential (e.g., I know a few people who went on prolonged spring water diets who then developed cardiac arrhythmias). Finally, I believe if you want to store spring water, it needs to be stored in glass, as otherwise it loses the life-giving quality many attribute to spring water.

Note: when I was younger I spent a lot more time exploring spring water, but now that I live in a part of the Midwest that doesn’t have any springs to drink from, I’ve stopped doing that. For those sincerely interested in the topic, people around the world have spent years compiling a list of springs around the world on this website.

•I believe one of the most important but least appreciated water filtration needs is for showers. This is because once water is heated, chlorine will off gas from water, which results in people frequently breathing it significant amounts of it in while showering. In turn, I and many others have found a subset of patients (e.g., singers or those with a sensitive throat) find certain chronic symptoms improve once they get a chlorine shower filter, and likewise that it feels much better for the skin and hair if they use a dechlorinated shower. Given that shower chlorine filters cost very little and last for a long time, I believe they are an excellent health investment.

•Generally speaking, I believe you should not have ice in the water you drink. This is partially because the ice often comes from very dirty sources (especially on airplanes) and partially because it adversely affects your digestion (which for instance is why Chinese Medicine they advise many patients to not have cold drinks with meals).

Lastly, there are a variety of water products I believe sometimes have merit (e.g., Quinton Water), but since there are so many of them out there, I feel going into those is beyond the scope of a monthly open thread.

Reverse Osmosis Water

Throughout my life, I’ve seen a variety of things suggesting reverse osmosis (RO) water is the ideal liquid to drink. I believe many of the benefits of RO water are a result of some combination of the following:

•As mentioned before, RO is the most reliable way to remove toxins from water (although this requires having good quality filters which proceed the RO step).

•RO breaks water into much smaller clusters, which in turn makes it easier for that water to enter the cells of the body.

•The water being deionized by RO improves the physiologic zeta potential.
Note: distilled water also deionizes water.

In turn, we frequently find RO water just “feels good” to drink, and I often see patients experience clear benefits when they start drinking RO water.

Conversely, since selling water is such a competitive business, each business will come up with a variety of reasons to attack competing products.

In the case of reverse osmosis (RO) water, some of the most common arguments I’ve see raised against it are that it depletes you of vital minerals, its production process wastes a lot of water and it leaches toxins from its containers.

In my own experience, the first point primarily holds true for magnesium. This is because:
•Our bodies are quite sensitive to lowered magnesium levels (e.g., this can cause heart arrhythmias or muscle pain).
•We often depend upon water for our daily magnesium intake
•Many foods are now magnesium deficient (due to modern agricultural practices having demineralized the soil and the herbicide Roundup binding many of the essential minerals that remain in the soil), and as a result widespread magnesium deficiencies already exist.

For these reasons, I often advise people who plan to drink RO water for a prolonged period to also take a magnesium supplement (preferably magnesium threonate, malate, orotate or citrate—magnesium oxide is not good).

I don’t really agree with the second point, because while extremely inefficient RO systems exist (e.g., ones that waste 95% of the water you put into them) most waste between 20%-75% of the water during the filtration process. Given that people drink 3 liters of water per day, this translates to around 10 liters of water being wasted per day, which is equivalent to 1-2 toilet flushes or someone spending about one minute in the shower (or about 2.6% of the average amount of water someone uses).

In regards to the leaching perspective, I think this can be a valid point (e.g., if RO water is stored in old plastic containers or tanks, it can develop a plastic taste). For this reason, I try to store RO water in glass containers and make sure I don’t use a poor quality RO system to store water.
Note: conversely some people argue that RO’s ability to “leach” substances makes it helpful for detoxification protocols.

Reverse Osmosis Water and Zeta Potential

One of the greatest challenges in medicine is determining how much something actually helps people, as frequently the “benefit” is small and takes a long time to manifest. In turn, one of the reasons I was so drawn to the zeta potential concept was that one would immediately notice significant differences once something was done to restore their physiologic zeta potential and conversely, I repeatedly saw serious complications immediately follow a disruption of one’s zeta potential (e.g., I’ve never forgotten a patient I met when I admitted her the hospital after she suffered a textbook zeta potential collapse from receiving a pneumococcal vaccine).

Zeta potential, briefly, quantifies the tendency of particles that are (colloidally) suspended in a solution to clump together or remain separated and dispersed from each other. The degree of clumping present, in turn, determines how freely a fluid will flow, so when individuals have an impaired zeta potential, it will cause fluid stagnation throughout the body.

This fluid stagnation is often immensely consequential as almost every part of the body depends upon a healthy fluid circulation (e.g., people’s legs swell when fluid gets stuck in them and can’t flow back out). The consequences of an impaired zeta potential are particularly apparent in the blood, as once blood cells begin to clump together, the circulation significantly diminishes and severe conditions like heart arrhythmias, blood clots or strokes can follow.

To illustrate: the therapeutic usage of improving the physiologic zeta potential was originally developed by a colloidal engineer in the 1960s (at a time when therapeutics for heart conditions were sorely lacking). He built upon (sadly forgotten) medical research that showed many illnesses resulted from blood cells sludging together and concluded the clumping he saw in colloidal systems was the cause of this sludging. He then theorized that clumped blood was harder for the heart pump, so that to treat arrhythmias, the blood needed to be unclumped.

This worked (treating his severe heart arrhythmia) and gradually caught on (initially for heart conditions and then a variety of other ailments like dementia and poor wound healing). In turn, while readers here have reported a variety of improvements from restoring their physiologic zeta potential (e.g., fatigue, neuropathies, cold fingers or tinnitus), the most common feedback I’ve received is that restoring their physiologic zeta potential fixed their atrial fibrillation.
Note: I also had a reader who reported drinking my favorite bottled water brand (which has zeta potential enhancing ingredients) greatly improved her heart palpitations along with a few other issues like waking up with extreme dryness in the middle of the night.

Since zeta potential is largely determined by the balance of positive and negative charges in the body, certain agents (particularly aluminum—which is present in most vaccines) have very strong positive charges which in tiny concentrations cause large amounts of fluid to clump together. For example the main method of purifying sewage (which is composed of small organic waste matter particulates suspended in water) is to mix it with a flocculating agent so those suspended particles clump together and then settle out to the bottom where a sludge exists that can be separated from the rest of the water.

As aluminum is highly effective at disrupting zeta potential, it (primarily Al₂(SO₄)₃ ) is commonly used to treat municipal water it is hence frequently found in drinking water. Unfortunately, while the EPA puts limits on how much aluminum can be there, unlike many other regulations, those limits are strictly voluntary and the EPA only discloses that higher levels of aluminum can create “colored water” (due to it causing colloids in the water to clump together and become visible). As such, I believe it is important to use a filtration system (e.g., reverse osmosis) that removes these aluminum particles from drinking water.

Because of this, we frequently observe individuals have severe consequences when exposed to a zeta potential reducing agent. For example, as I show here, many of the subtle neurological injuries that have been observed for over a century from vaccines (which contain typically contain aluminum adjuvants) occur concurrently with microstrokes that affect the cranial nerves (e.g., causing facial paralysis or eye changes), and as such, restoring the physiologic zeta potential is a critical component of rehabilitating vaccine injuries.

Similarly, the COVID-19 spike protein (due to its positive charge density) is also highly effective at impairing the physiologic zeta potential. This is why COVID-19 patients would often have issues like microclots, and what I believe underlies many of the highly unusual medical issues seen in those injured by the COVID vaccines. Likewise, beyond the severe injuries, many people I know who were vaccinated no longer have eyes that no longer move smoothly when they look to the side.

Furthermore, while not as common, we’ve seen quite a few cases of someone having a stroke after they ate something cooked in aluminum, and I’ve read of many cases where a human or animal (e.g., a parrot) gradually developed a severe illness which went away after it stopped drinking water which was stored or cooked in aluminum. This is particularly unfortunate because almost all non-stick cookware on the market either utilizes a toxic substance (e.g., teflon) or is comprised of a thin layer of the safe non-stick coating (e.g., ceramic) lining an aluminum pan which inevitably begins to peels off and expose you to the aluminum underneath.

Note: I believe many of the health “issues” people ascribe to consuming salt are actually due to the fact aluminum is frequently added to salt products.

Typically, the kidneys are responsible for maintaining the physiologic zeta potential, which they do by excreting the most problematic positive charges (e.g., aluminum) while retaining the beneficial negative charges. In turn, since renal function declines with age, zeta potential worsens as well, and I believe many of the complications of aging are ultimately a result of a gradual loss of the physiologic zeta potential (particularly since restoring it greatly improves those degenerative conditions).

Note: I adopted the initial RO unit I used after I found out a hospital was using it for patients with kidney failure because it was the only filtration system which effectively removed aluminum from water they used for dialysis (toxic levels of aluminum are a recurring issue for these patients).

A variety of approaches exist for improving zeta potential, but most of them essentially boil down to avoiding the problematic positive charges (e.g., reducing your aluminum exposure) and adding beneficial negative charges to the body. In turn, I have found that many of the holistic therapies which have a wide range of positive benefits attributed to them (e.g., Earthing) all share the common thread of improving zeta potential.

Drinking deionized water forms a critical part of the zeta potential protocols because it eliminates many of the positive charges from the water you ingest which the kidneys would otherwise need to eventually eliminate. This is particularly important because the kidneys function much more efficiently when they have a low workload on them (i.e., not having to work against as high of a positive ion concentration gradient in the blood).

In short, all of the pioneers of treating zeta potential found that while drinking deionized water or consuming the correct negative charges helped, both typically had to be done together for anyone with a significant zeta potential impairment. This, in turn, has matched my own clinical and personal experience (as I am more sensitive to zeta potential disruptions—e.g., I’ve experienced minor microstrokes from eating food that was stored in aluminum).

Note: I’ve had a few older patients who switched from drinking RO water to well water and then developed a variety of unusual illnesses I was ultimately able to attribute to a loss of zeta potential (as well water often contains a significant amount of positively charged minerals).

Read the Whole Article

The post What’s the Healthiest Water To Drink? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Interoperability issues could make the US think twice about intervening in the EU’s support against Russia.

“Trump Is Unlikely To Pull All US Troops Out Of Central Europe Or Abandon NATO’s Article 5”, but he’s definitely “Pivoting (back) to Asia” in order to more muscularly contain China, which will have consequences for European security. Although Russia has no intent to attack NATO countries, many of these same countries sincerely fear that it does, which leads to them formulating policy appropriately. This (false) threat perception heightens their concerns about the US’ gradual disengagement from NATO.

To make matters worse, Reuters cited five unnamed sources to report that the US chided the EU for its military-industrial plans, particularly those which relate to production and procurement within the bloc. They’re presumably connected to European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen’s “ReArm Europe Plan” that calls for members to boost defense spending by 1.5% on average for a collective €650 billion more in the next four years and provide €150 billion worth of loans for defense investments.

This bold program will strengthen the EU’s strategic autonomy but will likely come at the cost of accelerating the US’ disengagement from NATO. EU-produced equipment might not be interoperable with American equipment, which could complicate contingency planning. The bloc wants the US to intervene in the event of a military crisis with Russia, yet the US might think twice if its commanders can’t easily take control of European forces in that event.

The US might also be less likely to do so if the EU reduces its reliance on American equipment like the F-35s that are rumored to have “kill-switches”. These could hypothetically be activated if the EU tried provoking a conflict with Russia that the US didn’t approve of for whatever reason. If the EU becomes emboldened to do precisely that and thus becomes a major strategic liability for the US, then the odds of the US intervening in its support would dwindle, thus leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

At the same time, some countries like the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania – which occupy NATO’s strategic eastern flank with Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine and are much more pro-American than their Western European counterparts – will likely remain within the US’ military-industrial ecosystem. This could therefore serve to retain American influence along the EU’s periphery, keep those countries out of the bloc’s military-industrial ecosystem, and thus hamstring plans for a “European Army”.

Nevertheless, the US would also do well to share some defense technology with Poland and agree to at least partial domestic production of its large-scale purchases, which could transplant a portion of the American military-industrial ecosystem to Europe for easier export to other countries. That could in turn keep Poland from pivoting to France or at least relying more on it to balance the US like the ruling liberal-globalist coalition might do if its candidate wins the presidency during the next elections in May.

The US could therefore leverage its military-industrial cooperation with Poland by offering preferential terms (i.e. technology-sharing and at least partial domestic production) as a means for retaining American influence along the EU’s periphery amidst the bloc’s own military-industrial plans. That could greatly impede the EU’s strategic autonomy, make any “European Army” more difficult to form due to interoperability issues, and thus pressure Western Europe to relent by purchasing more US equipment.

This originally appeared on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

The post The EU’s Military-Industrial Plans Could Accelerate the US’ Disengagement From NATO appeared first on LewRockwell.