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For all three years of the war between Moscow and Kyiv Europe has held to the pro-Ukrainian stance. Neither the lack of major progress of the Ukrainians on the battlefield, nor the internal crisis, experienced by the EU member states due to providing assistance to Kyiv, made the European leaders deviate from the initial political line. Europe even decided to distance from its long-standing ally, the US, that had reconsidered its top foreign policy priorities, and act on a stand-alone basis without the US support or approval despite probable aggravation of their bilateral relations.

Thus, smelling danger from the US focus on rapprochement with Russia, the European Commission unveiled the White Paper, the document on the rearmament of the member states and defense industry development. The document highlights that Europe must be ready for large-scale military actions in its territory because of the threat coming from Russia in case the latter prevails in the war in Ukraine. Despite ever-growing number of the Europeans, unsatisfied with the current policy, that among others instigated a migration crisis of an unprecedented scale, Brussels still insists on allocation of great sums of money from the budget, turning a blind eye on the existing domestic problems. The recently unveiled document on the rearmament is no exception either. It foresees annual supplies of air defense systems, large-caliber weapons and ammunition, as well as providing support for the Ukrainian defense by means of single source contracts.

With regard to all privileges and opportunities provided for Kyiv, Europe seems to be trying hard to persuade its people and partners that Ukraine is a vital ally and assistance to this belligerent country must be top priority. By these actions the European leaders take strides to substitute the expenditure of the EU funds not on the internal problems of the member states but on Ukraine, that is no part of the block. Furthermore, it turns out that Europe makes efforts to prolong the war by all means in the view of the positive prospects after the talks between Russia and the US.

The European Union is unlikely to need a half-ruined country that will require several annual budgets to be restored. Its primary interest is to weaken one of the key players on the global stage as much as possible, and to achieve this goal, as we can see, Europe is set for acting against the interests of its citizens. Furthermore, the European Union is likely to undermine the authority of Donald Trump, who promised to put an end to all wars, to interfere with his rapprochement with Russia and derail the signing of a peace treaty.

The latest events and decisions, taken by the EU, indicate that Europe has set a course for the direct participation in the war on the side of Ukraine. And reconsideration of the defense strategy, as well as the already started rearmament are just part of the preparation stage.

The post Has Europe Set a Course for War? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.” — President Dwight D. Eisenhower

In the 1960s and 1970s when the US actually had an enemy, though possibly one of our own making, there was a peace movement.  It might well have come from left-wing professors in the universities who did not think racist America was worth defending. 

In the first quarter of the 21st century, a period of many American wars of choice, there is no peace movement.  In her book Joan Roelofs asks:

“Why is there so much acceptance of and so little protest against our government’s illegal and immoral wars and other military operations? Why is there mostly silence about the death and destruction that wars and even the preparation for war inflict on people, including the troops, and on the environment?  Why is there so little concern about the potential for the extinction of human and other life posed by nuclear war, now seen as an ‘option’ by the US and other militaries?”

Her answer is in her title: The Trillion Dollar Silencer.  You might think that the money goes for weapons, but much of it is used to purchase universities and faculties, think tanks, nonprofit organizations, state and local governments, media, contractors, and foreign governments.

The Department of Defense tentacles reach everywhere. With so many so dependent on DOD handouts, there is no one left to protest.

Roelofs’ research is exhaustive.  She packs an amazing amount of detail including names and monetary amounts in 200 pages. For example, Roelofs explains how the CIA salts money around. The CIA creates dummy foundations and makes grants to them.  The dummy foundations then make grants to legitimate foundations, and the foundations pass the money on to the CIA-designated groups.

President Eisenhower warned about the growing power of the military/security complex. Nothing was done about it.  The power has grown so great that the Department of Defense cannot pass an audit, and several trillion dollars are unaccounted for.  You might remember that whatever it was that hit the Pentagon on 9/11 managed to hit and destroy the offices housing the documents and experts who were  searching for where the money had gone, thus bringing the investigation to an end.

In the final chapter Roelofs asks “what can be done?”  Her suggestions lack effectiveness.  Her book was written prior to the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency.  My suggestion is for someone who can to get the book into DOGE hands.  The Trillion Dollar Silencer traces the money flows through so many hands and places that it will save the DOGE staff much work and leave them astonished by the many non-defense uses of defense funds.

It takes character and determination to correct a bad situation.  America’s predicament is that corruption is so pervasive that challenging it results in career destruction.  People have mortgages, car payments, kids in school.  Taking exception to corruption is a road to poverty.  Perhaps Trump and Musk will be able to do something, or perhaps the Democrat judges will save the day for institutionalized grift.

The post Preparing for War Is an American Institution appeared first on LewRockwell.

• Be confident and make brief eye contact. Don’t look like a victim but check your ego and show respect.
• Maintain situational awareness. Scan waists and hands for weapons.
• Learn what gangs are active in your area, how to identify members.
• Learn what kinds of crimes they commit and how it goes down. Understanding that, you can reduce both your risk and your exposure to it.
• Caches give you the ability to start over should you be forced by a superior force to capitulate or flee.

Gangs

When readers were asked what the greatest threat was in their neighborhoods, the number one answer was … gangs! I can’t say I’m surprised at that.

Gangs are already a serious problem in the US today, with more than a million and a half members of street gangs, but in the chaos and disorder of emergencies, gang membership skyrockets, making gangs an even bigger problem whenever the rule of law gives way to anarchy.

At times like these, people want to know that somebody has their back, so the stress, volatility, and change that accompanies catastrophes drives people to group up. Prison gangs are a well-known example of this behavior.

Situational Awareness & Avoidance

Learn what gangs are operating in your area and how they operate. Each gang has its own SOP and its own IFF (Identification Friend or Foe). Depending on the type of gang, they may use colors (hats, T-shirts, bandannas) or tattoos. Biker gangs, for example, will often wear sleeves (tattoos on their forearms) with symbols that carry meanings to anyone familiar with them. Catalogs of gang tattoos are available from various law enforcement agencies online. Download catalogs and research gangs active in your area. The gang units of police departments and correctional facilities sometimes have online resources such as catalogs of gang tattoos where you can look them up and decipher their meanings.

In an area of Brazil that I visit, two of the local gangs are called Estados Unidos (United States) and Al-Qaeda. And the EU (US) gang used the US Flag as their colors, which I found out when I brought Zippo Lighters emblazoned with the US Flag to give away as souvenirs. I wanted to bring something made in the USA but could have caused trouble for people I liked if they used them in public.

On situational awareness, in the favelas (slums), Brazilian gangs employ low-tech methods to warn the residents of raids by the police or by rival gangs. Chief among these fireworks touched off by lookouts. They are cheap and effective. When people hear them, they know to get behind hardcover because bullets are about to fly.

Two examples of SOP of Brazilian gangs are robbing buses and kidnapping. With the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuban communist revolutionaries experienced major cashflow problems. One of their solutions was to train operatives to carry out kidnappings for ransom, some of which took place in Brazil. Some claim that when the communist kidnappers were caught and imprisoned, they trained Brazilian criminals to carry out kidnappings, but judging by the SOP, I think the idea was more largely disseminated through the media, giving small gangs the idea that they could make money by pulling off kidnappings for ransom, mostly without professional training.

Aware of the fact that local gangs kidnap foreigners to make money, I investigated restraint escape and SERE techniques, started restraint escape training, and integrated restraint escape gear into my EDC.

In the bus robbery scenario, armed thugs board a bus. One puts a handgun to the driver’s head to stop the bus and the other walks from one end of the bus to the other with a backpack or bag. He instructs everybody to drop their wallet, cellphone and jewelry in the bag. If someone doesn’t hand it over and he feels like they are holding out, he unceremoniously shoots that individual in the head and moves to the next person.

Where possible, use superior situational awareness to avoid problems. That doesn’t mean that when you see them, and they see you, you stop, turn around and head in the other direction. That will make you look like prey, triggering a predatory pursuit response. You wouldn’t do that with a dog and it won’t be any more effective here.

Do what you should be doing anytime you come in sight of another on the street, scan their waist and hands for weapons.

Reduce Risk & Exposure

Understanding the SOP greatly improves one’s chances of surviving this type of robbery, not to mention limiting exposure to lose. To mitigate risk in this scenario, as well as muggings, my wife and I, employ various techniques:

• Don’t Say, “What?” – Understand criminal SOP and stay alert. Even if you speak the same language (more or less), it may be hard the slang of some thug’s slang. Just hand over what you have. My brother-in-law was walking with some Americans one night and this very situation happened. The gangbanger lifted his shirt to show them his handgun, one of the Americans didn’t have his head on a swivel and didn’t understand what was happening or what the guy he was asking. It didn’t go like the scene in Pulp Fiction Jules tell the kid to, “Ask me, ‘What!’ one more time!” either. The banger got frustrated and shot the guy in the head. Fortunately, he lived and made a full recovery, but gunshot wounds to the head don’t always work out like that.
• Report Binder Money Clips – When carrying a lot of cash, break it up into smaller amounts instead of rolling it in a single, easy to find roll of cash. That way you lose some of your money, not all of it. With minor modification, the handles on the report binder clips can open a range of handcuffs and it’s easy to pinch one-off.
• Drop Wallet – Put some expired credit cards and a believable amount of cash in a wallet so you have a wallet to drop in the bag.
• Decoy Cell Phone – Robberies and muggings are so common that quite a few locals save their old cellphones when they upgrade. They carry their old cellphone in their hand or back pocket and their new cellphone goes in their waistband, at least while out on the street.
• Don’t Wear Expensive Jewelry – This should just be common sense, but then every time I look at an EDC group or an EDC lineup on Uncrate, all the jewelry, expensive watches, and matching everything make me wonder. I suppose you could have that rare survival situation in Beverly Hills or on 5th Avenue in Scottsdale, where you need to impress some gold digger while simultaneously saving the day but why would you want to? And carrying a bunch of expensive accessories makes you a target everywhere else.
• Carry Concealed – If things do go sideways, sometimes your chances of survival are better if you fight. Train regularly and learn when it’s better to fight and when it’s better not to. I carry concealed in the USA, but for the time being Brazil is a non-permissive environment, so I only carry what I can get away with there. Fortunately, Brazil has a new president and his platform included the restoration of gun rights, which Brazilians voted for in a referendum. Unfortunately, last time around, they voted a corrupt socialist regime into power that refused to approve any permits, arguing that the country had enough police to protect the citizens.

Respect

Gangs are usually trying to control what they see as their territory. When you disrespect a gang banger, you might as well break out the dueling pistols because it’s the modern-day equivalent of removing your glove to slap him across the face with it or insulting a gentleman in public. Only he and his buddies are going to jump you five to one. Once you disrespect him, he has no choice but to act or he’ll lose face with other gang members, pissing away hard-earned street cred.

When you encounter someone on the street that you think might despite what you may have heard, don’t avoid eye contact. Walk confidently, make brief eye contact and give one of them a curt nod to acknowledge their presence. Don’t scowl or frown in disapproval, but don’t smile either. Give them the respect they are looking for. If challenged, verbalize the message, “I’m not disrespecting you.”

Read the Whole Article

The post 5 Rules To Survive in a Gang-Controlled Neighborhood appeared first on LewRockwell.

Davidson College officials have launched an investigation into a student, Cynthia Huang, the president of Davidson College’s chapter of Young Americans for Freedom. In two separate incidents, Huang spoke out against Palestinian and transgender claims.  In a disciplinary  letter, Mak Tompkins, Davidson’s director of student rights and responsibilities, wrote that she was accused of spreading “misinformation” that could foster Islamophobia and transphobia.

Huang has previously received death threats from peers for criticizing abortion, according to the site College Fix. However, Davidson is investigating her because she distributed a pamphlet last fall titled “Five Myths About Israel Perpetrated by the Pro-Hamas Left” that argued that Palestinians are not a distinct people and rejected the premise of a Palestinian state.  She was also faulted for social media comments by YAF about Olympic boxer Imane Khelif, whose gender was controversial during the 2024 Olympics.

Huang has refused to yield and cited, in an op-ed, incidents of being threatened and harassed for her conservative views on the liberal campus.

Her account is all too familiar for many of us in higher education. As I discuss in my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” administrators are often on a hair-trigger when it comes to conservative speech while turning a blind eye to inflammatory rhetoric.

I have defended faculty who have made an array of disturbing comments on “detonating white people,” denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer,  strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements.

Yet, liberal professors and students tend to enjoy the full protection of academic freedom and free speech. Indeed, at the University of California campus, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display.

The support enjoyed by faculty on the far left is in sharp contrast to the treatment given faculty with moderate, conservative or libertarian views. Anyone who raises such dissenting views is immediately set upon by a mob demanding their investigation or termination. Conservatives and libertarians understand that they have no cushion or protection in any controversy, even if it involves a single, later deleted tweet.

One such campaign led to a truly tragic outcome with criminology professor Mike Adams at the University of North Carolina (Wilmington). Adams was a conservative faculty member with controversial writings who had to go to court to stop prior efforts to remove him. He then tweeted a condemnation of North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper for his pandemic rules, tweeting that he had dined with six men at a six-seat table and “felt like a free man who was not living in the slave state of North Carolina” before adding: “Massa Cooper, let my people go.” It was a stupid and offensive tweet. However, we have seen extreme comments on the left — including calls to gas or kill or torture conservatives — be tolerated or even celebrated at universities.

Celebrities, faculty, and students demanded that Adams be fired. After weeks of public pummeling, Adams relented and took a settlement to resign. He then killed himself a few days before his final day as a professor.

I do not see anything in the Huang material that is not protected speech. The rationale that it is “misinformation” is revealing in that sense. Davidson is objecting to Huang’s views as simply wrong, enforcing a familiar orthodoxy in policing what administrators deem to be information or misinformation.

Higher education is based on the free flow of ideas, including those that challenge orthodoxy. Some of the greatest social and scientific breakthroughs came only after intellectuals were declared heretics or charlatans. Even if Huang escapes punishment, she will be subjected to an investigation as a chilling message to others who may not want to face such public scrutiny or controversy.

Davidson should instead investigate the handling of this matter and expressly bar the use of disinformation and misinformation as the basis for such disciplinary actions.

This originally appeared on JonathanTurley.org.

The post Davidson College Investigates Student for Speaking Out Against Palestinian and Transgender Positions appeared first on LewRockwell.

Pro-Israel lobbies and organizations got what they paid for in 2024.  Hundreds of millions of dollars of pro-Zionist donations to the Trump campaign and Trump-aligned PACs helped elect Trump, and every important appointment, and some less important ones are vocal Israel-firsters.  Pre-existing massive military and other aid from the US taxpayer to Israel has been expanded under Trump.  Avid Zionists lead the State Department, the Pentagon, and direct national intelligence.  Zionist Steve Witkoff serves as the President’s envoy and chief diplomat in the two major wars the US has been supporting for years, wars Trump wants to resolve in the first half of his last term.

Why, it should be almost perfect, from an AIPAC point of view: a completely controlled executive branch, and a 99% controlled US Congress!  The only Republican member of Congress without an AIPAC handler is Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, and both parties have seen its Israel-questioning members successfully primaried or otherwise replaced.

We should be seeing celebrations in the lobby headquarters, and a kind of confidence that I saw way back in 2002 when Israeli generals owned the Pentagon, with full and on-demand access to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

But instead of celebrating, the lobby has huddled and mustered. It’s working over the lower level appointee process now, with its Senate investment Tom Cotton leading the charge against those they see as unreliable.  Their unhinged reaction to the appointment of realist Ridge Colby as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy is telling.

Stefanik is now out as a potential US Ambassador to the UN – the reason?  Unlike AIPAC which draws mightily from both parties to get their initiatives, Trump needs more reliable Republican votes and a bigger margin.  In other words, AIPAC has created a 99% pro-Israel Congress, yet, the Christian Zionist they needed in the UN has to be sent back to Congress because Trump needs her there.

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff is in trouble with the Republican Jewish Coalition now, based on his frank and open conversation with Tucker Carlson last week.  Their complaint is addressed by a welcome tweet from JD Vance saying “The people sniping at him are mad that he is succeeding where they failed for 40 years.  Turns out a lot of diplomacy boils down to a simple skill: don’t be an idiot.”

Witkoff is getting heat from the Jewish war lobby for being “fooled” by Putin and “fooled” by Hamas, and they want Rubio to conduct all the negotiations.  Bless their hearts, of course they do!

The recent Signal chat kerfluffle is interesting.  Signal is a commercial, open source, encrypted messenger app, and its security design and record is good.  In 2022, there was a hack of an unrelated cloud server that created a short-lived ability to impersonate a Signal user.  This particular breach could have been, and is, prevented by use of the Signal registration lock feature.  The Pentagon has policies on Signal app usage, and obviously the inclusion of former IDF soldier and neocon journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the Principals Small Group chat lies outside of those policies, as does the kind of information being chatted about – a Congressionally undeclared war against Yemen, US war-fighting for Israel, and the administration’s raw contempt for peace in the Middle East, and for Europe’s lack of gratitude for “all the US does” to secure Europe’s dwindling trade and security trade interests. Max Blumenthal’s take at The Gray Zone is clear, and he calls out Goldberg correctly, in a way that the bumbling SecDef tried to.

What we do know is that the Signal “leak” wasn’t a whistleblower attempt – Goldberg has few Constitutional principles and only opposes Trump’s foreign policy when it deviates from that of Netanyahu.  We also know that a normal journalist who stumbles on government information important for taxpayers to know about, keeps the source open and protects it.  He does not quickly remove himself (as Goldberg did) from that unique source of information.  What a goldmine for a Pulitzer, had Goldberg been interested in that kind of reward!  We also know that in the time between the leaked chat and the subsequent attack on Yemen, days went by as several normally quiet and unknown Senators on the Intelligence Committee became extraordinarily well-prepared to attack DNI Gabbard and CIA Director Ratcliffe on the topic during the Trump’s first annual threat estimate presentation.  Warner nearly flubbed his lines, but it was a remarkably good show from Senators we rarely hear from. It also served to de-emphasize and distract from whatever was in that Estimate – including Iran isn’t making the bomb, and is a NPT signatory, unlike Israel which makes plenty of them and refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Furthermore, Gabbard and Ratcliffe were not the preferred candidates for Israel, so making them look incompetent, rogue, or otherwise needing to be replaced is part of a time- honored agenda for the Israel lobby.  Gabbard is honest, and while exceedingly pro-Israel she prefers peace and diplomacy over fighting someone else’s war.  Ratcliffe, while “good on Israel” is known as an America Firster, and more interested in a future conflict with China, something that would necessarily detract from fighting and subsidizing Israel’s endless wars.

Where was National Security Director Waltz – who would have thunk he’d miss the presentation of the National Threat Estimate?  He had added Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat, he’s not sure how, and he was in Greenland when Gabbard and Ratcliffe were facing the orchestrated wrath of suddenly security-conscious Senators.  Not surprisingly, AIPAC was Congressman Waltz’s top contributor between 2017 and 2024.

All is not well in Israel’s western capital.  Increasingly, AIPAC is dependent on Christian Zionists and lying politicians who will take their money but fail to completely deliver (although Waltz clearly did his part lately).  Even Huckabee – a rare Christian Ambassador to Israel – is not trusted by the various Israel lobbies for reasons that demonstrate a small but growing schism between American and Israeli jews, and Zionism in general.  AIPAC is finding it more difficult to recruit new generations of activists in the US. Increasing calls to publicly identify dual citizens in the US Congress, and to register AIPAC under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) are being heard.

Almost 20 years ago, John Mearshimer and Stephen Walt published a groundbreaking assessment of the influence of the Israeli lobby to jeers, condemnation and threats.  Today, everyone in Washington is in general agreement with that paper, casually reveal that influence, occasionally even complaining about it.  Today, Israel fights the BDS movement in the US through state and federal legislation.  It demands major restrictions on American speech, expression and assembly for those who dare to consider the Zionist state a brutal colonizer, warmongering, genocidal or racist, undeserving of our military or political assistance and support.  Two years before the latest US-funded genocide in Gaza, 37% of American Jews between 18 and 29 believed US is too supportive of Israel, while only 16% of American Jews over age 65 felt that way.  Trend lines like these are not good for organizations like AIPAC.

Trump thus far has refused to fire anyone over the Signal fiasco, despite the preparation and preference for this solution from the “lobby.”  If Waltz is safe, no doubt Ratcliffe and Gabbard are as well.   Trump’s sensitivities to spies in his midst, his concept of personal loyalty, and his simple and blessed inability to be bullied all work against AIPAC.  Trump’s ending of war in Ukraine with a settlement and ceding of territory could be applied to Israel.  Trump’s demand that Europe pull its own weight financially and defensively could be applied to Israel.  His preference to protect America here, via border control, revitalizing US industry, and designing Golden Domes all speak to ideas of America First, a desire to reduce foreign influence/spying and a shift away from American imperialism toward realism. These ideas, if applied to US-Israel policy, would end the current lop-sided relationship, and raise the costs of Zionism far beyond what Israel could afford on its own.

No wonder the Israel lobby is cranky.

The post Is AIPAC Getting What They Want in DC? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Carus Michaelangelo wrote:

Lew,

Thanks for sharing the Ayn Rand quote Roderick Long posted. Funny, the political class is more than happy to impose ever-more controls as fast as they can have them, but we peons must be satiated by gradual reductions in controls. Rothbard long ago exposed the fallacies of reverse Fabianism—the State’s tendency is to grow, not shrink, so gradualism in destatizing is doomed from the start. But more centrally, the only way for it to work is to move fast enough that your changes cannot be undone before you’ve completed them. 

The post Roderick Long appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Greg Privette:

Hi Lew,

I have been thinking about the current move to eliminate pennies. This discussion was in the news several years ago also. I do not remember the exact time frame but it was another period of commodity price inflation. At that time the MSM was discussing elimination of both the penny and the nickel because the value of the metals involved in their production had begun to exceed the face value of the coins. I remember telling people at the time that after more than a hundred years we finally had some part of our currency that was actually worth its face value and even though it was the lowest denominations it was driving the politicians and media nuts. Certainly the last thing anyone would want is to have currency that is actually worth what the government says it is worth! I think this bothers them because it reveals the effects of the constant devaluation of the currency.

The current discussion on eliminating pennies once again revolves around the “cost to government” of producing them. Since when did the monetary cost of anything matter to government? They only costs they care about are political costs. There would be real cost to many retail businesses though. I am not sure what it would involve, but surely all retail businesses would have to make some type of software changes in order to round every sale up to the nearest 5 cents. It makes me wonder if the real reasoning behind this is to give more retail businesses an excuse to begin refusing cash altogether and push people toward accepting the idea of 100% digital payments. I think it is important to remember the big banks and their subordinates in government hate cash.

The post Eliminating the penny appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

The most principled peacemaker in the House of Representatives, Congressman Thomas Massie, was recently interviewed about the Trump administration’s military strikes on the Houthis. 

See here.

The post Thomas Massie Interview: Houthi Strikes Not America First appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

Are you supportive of a movement that runs counter to the foreign policy of the United States? Then, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, you are a lunatic who meets the standard of individuals who will be eligible for deportation.

See here.

The post Supporters of Movements Running Counter to US Foreign Policy Meet Standard for Deportation appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Vicki Marzullo:

I guarantee Putin knows more U.S. history than anyone in our government does.

See here.

The post US has been plotting to annex Greenland since the 1860s – Putin appeared first on LewRockwell.

Joseph Salerno wrote:

Lew, my brother posted this on Facebook.

She walked into the Roman arena where the wild beasts awaited her. She trembled not from fear but from joy. Her name was Vibia Perpetua. She was just 22, a young mother singing hymns as the crowd jeered and a lion, leopard and wild cow encircled her.

One of the beasts attacked, hurling her to the ground. She covered an exposed thigh with her bloody robe to preserve her modesty and groped in the dust for her hair pin so she could fix her disheveled hair.

And when a Roman executioner approached Perpetua with a sword, her last words before collapsing were aimed at her Christian companions: “Stand fast in the faith, and love you all one another and do not let our sufferings be a stumbling block to you.”

History remembers Perpetua because she kept a diary during her imprisonment entitled “The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity” (Felicity was a pregnant slave girl arrested with Perpetua). Her diary is one of the rare and  oldest-surviving documents written by a Christian woman. The emotion in the diary is almost unbearable. Perpetua describes the pain of leaving her infant son, who she was still nursing. She describes a prison visit from her weeping father, who kissed her hands while pleading with her to renounce her faith.

A narrator picks up the story in the diary after Perpetua was sent to her death.  He wrote in the diary that Perpetua’s faith was so inspiring it caused the prison’s warden to convert. The narrator also describes Perpetua’s death. While she was imprisoned, Perpetua says God gave her visions to reassure her. After one, she wrote: “I understood that I should fight, not with beasts but against the devil.”

 If only we were so wise!

SAINT PERPETUA, pray for us! 

The post St. Perpetua appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Ellen Finnigan:

Dear Lew, 

I read the article you linked to written by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman in Crisis Magazine in which he stated that Pope Francis’s condemnations of Israel’s actions “represent the Church’s clear teachings on war found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.” 

I take issue with this statement. The Church’s teachings on this matter are not clear. In the latest episode of the CAM podcast, I take a closer look at what is in the Catechism. Here is Part I.

The post Crisis Magazine is Wrong: Catholic Church Teaching on War is Not Clear appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Drop Site News

The post “The Target Is Unmistakable”: The Shooting of Gaza’s Children appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tariffs are very risky business. They’re like playing with fire. We run into the same unsolvable problem that we have with The Fed. They don’t know what interest rates should be. It’s all arbitrary. In the same way, the president doesn’t know what the price of cars, or lumber, or any other product should be. While the president is not literally price-fixing like the Fed, he is arbitrarily interfering with market prices and trade. Our inescapable problem in America is the overwhelming size of government, spending, debt and empire. All of these variables are still going in the wrong direction.

The post The Arbitrary Nature of The Tariff Regime appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

Never doubted it.

The post How to amp up the numbers of “Russian” kills appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Mike Sanders.

Activist Post

The post Parents: Measles Didn’t Kill Girl In Texas appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

The EO leaves electronic voting machines in the election process. It refers to improving the security of these machines which are called “systems.” Mike Lindell is still hopeful they will be eliminated from the election process in the future. 

See here.

The post Trump’s Election Integrity EO appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

The bureaucrats in the US Agencies are sadists who enjoy lording it over people. They hate strong, independent Americans like the Maude family because the bureaucrats are weak.

See here.

The post USFS Goes After Cattle Rancher in South Dakota appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Andy Thomas.

The post Auron MacIntyre – How To Destroy High-Trust Societies appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Gail Appel:

Somali “refugee” State Legislators are so grateful for U.S. taxpayer dollar largesse.

Get them all the hell out of here. They HATE us!

See here.

The post Medicare Fraud Funding Munition and Arms to Somalia appeared first on LewRockwell.