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From The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution the West (Clarity Press, 2013)

“The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and immigration advocates, such as the American Immigration Lawyers Association, immediately went to work to defeat or to water down the amendment. Senator Grassley’s attempt to prevent American corporations from replacing American workers with foreigners on H-1B work visas in the midst of the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression was met with outrage from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a business lobby determined to protect the multi-million dollar bonuses paid to American CEOs for reducing labor costs by replacing their American employees with foreign employees.”

“On January 23, 2009, Senator Grassley wrote to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

“I am concerned that Microsoft will be retaining foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American employees when it implements its layoff plan.  As you know, I want to make sure employers recruit qualified American workers first before hiring foreign guest workers.  For example, I cosponsored legislation to overhaul the H-1B and L-1 visa programs to give priority to American workers and to crack down on unscrupulous employers who deprive qualified Americans of high-skilled jobs.  Fraud and abuse is rampant in these programs, and we need more transparency to protect the integrity of our immigration system.

“Last year, Microsoft was here on Capitol Hill advocating for more H-1B visas.  The purpose of the H-1B visa program is to assist companies in their employment needs where there is not a sufficient American workforce to meet their technology expertise requirements.  However, H-1B and other work visa programs were never intended to replace qualified American workers.  Certainly, these work visa programs were never intended to allow a company to retain foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American workers, when that company cuts jobs during an economic downturn.

“It is imperative that in implementing its layoff plan, Microsoft ensures that American workers have priority in keeping their jobs over foreign workers on visa programs.

“My point is that during a layoff, companies should not be retaining H-1B or other work visa program employees over qualified American workers. Our immigration policy is not intended to harm the American workforce. I encourage Microsoft to ensure that Americans are given priority in job retention. Microsoft has a moral obligation to protect these American workers by putting them first during these difficult economic times.”

In the Senate John McCain was the spokesman for the corporate interests who put their performance bonuses ahead of the economic welfare of the American work force.  McCain declared Senator Grassley’s effort to protect American workers to be “protectionism” and harmful to America. McCain said that protecting American jobs would cause a second Great Depression.  The only depression it would cause would be in the performance bonuses of corporate executives. The protection of American incomes would actually boost aggregate demand and GDP.

US Chamber of Commerce Thomas Donohue said it was “economic patriotism” to put foreigners first. President Obama appointed corporate apologists for moving American jobs offshore to his National Economic Council.  The American work force has a long history of being put last.

Microsoft and the rest of the unpatriotic American corporate world ignored Senator Grassley and put their bonuses ahead of the welfare of the American work force.  Americans with mortgage payments, car payments, kids in school, were pushed into unemployment so that corporate executives and boards could claim performance bonuses–the largest component of their pay–for laying off Americans and replacing then with lower cost foreigners on work visas, thus lowering labor costs and raising profits. They did the same thing by offshoring their manufacturing.  These unAmerican practice continues today.  Indeed, the work visas have  been endorsed by Elon Musk and President Trump.

I can remember when conservatives and libertarians saw the conflict as government vs. business and lined up with business against a government associated in their minds with dystopian novels of tyranny. They did not understand that government was something that the corporations used to advance their interests.  

The notion has been successfully lobbied into the minds of the members of the House and Senate  that the United States is incapable of producing enough trained people to staff US industry. I think that this is a disinformation success that even exceeds the Israel Lobby’s success.

The United States has about 6,000 universities and colleges, of which about 4,000 are degree-granting institutions.  Does anyone really believe that the United States cannot produce an educated work force?

Does anyone really believe that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, University of California, MIT, Georgia Tech, Cal Tech and the other giants of education cannot produce the engineers and scientists that the American economy needs?

The notion that the United States, still acknowledged worldwide as the premier nation despite its decline, is incapable of producing a work force sufficient for its economy and must rely on India, China, and other countries is absurd.  Yet this absurd notion was instilled in the members of the US Congress, in the presstitute media, in Elon Musk and President Trump.

What are we going to do about this?

In 2013 I published a book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism  and Economic Dissolution of the West. The book was published in translation in a number of foreign countries in addition to the US.

In the US nothing has been done about this problem.  Indeed, Musk and Trump see as a virtue what is undermining the US economy. 

For years the booming stock market and growth in billionaires has rested on profits from corporations cutting labor costs, which means laying off American workers.  Americans are replaced by foreigners on H-1b and L-1 work visas and by having their jobs outsourced to Asia and Mexico. They are replaced by robotics and AI. So where does the consumer income come from to drive the economy?  It comes from rising indebtedness.  Many Americans live on their credit card, paying the minimum due, thus building their debt.  

We are left with the picture that the American economy is based on consumer debt, and not on any real economic foundation.

Stock prices are based on Federal Reserve money creation and on artificial profits from replacing US labor with cheaper foreign labor.  Is the American economy a house of cards surviving on the dollar’s role as reserve currency?

A reader whose career was stolen from him by foreign labor asks if Americans get reparations for the discrimination they have suffered by being excluded from the US job market. See this.

The post Jobs Offshoring and Work Visas Are Means of Enriching Corporate Executives With ‘Performance Bonuses’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

You’ve got to wonder how the Party of Chaos thought they would get away with the Stacey Abrams grift-of-grifts. In case you forgot, Stacey Abrams ran for governor of Georgia twice, lost, and claimed she was “real governor” for years after. In the meantime, she parlayed her celebrity persona to a $3.17-million net worth by 2022, doing nothing but running for office. She claimed it derived from giving speeches, publishing romance novels, and “wise investments.”

That was then, and this is now. Stacey popped up again this week in what looks like a textbook case of political scamming, uncovered by The DOGE team of forensic financial investigators. As “Joe Biden” racked up Democratic presidential primary wins in 2024, the shadowy claque behind him allocated $27-billion to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from the huge Inflation Reduction Act, ostensibly for “climate change action.” The money was stashed at Citibank, where it became a hidden slush-fund to keep payoffs flowing to party favorites no matter who won the 2024 election. An EPA “special advisor on climate action,” one Brent Efron, told a Project Veritas investigative reporter that “President Biden” was “throwing gold bars off the Titanic”.

The key to understanding how the Democratic Party works is how it uses federal grants to redistribute taxpayer money into jobs programs for its rank-and-file. As seen in the recent USAID scandal, the action revolves around the creation of countless NGOs (non-governmental orgs). They are easily created, poorly supervised, and assembled into large networks of self-serving, inter-dependent organisms whose main mission is paying staffers — and secondarily pretending to do good works, as suggested by a given group’s name is. These staffers make up the matrix of Democratic Party activists, well-paid foot-soldiers in do-nothing jobs who can be called upon to cheer-lead for the party, organize street protests and, most critically, harvest ballots when the time comes.

Stacey Abrams became a kind of field marshal for setting up NGOs around her campaigns for office and then later turned them into money laundromats for the trillions of dollars fire-hosed out of the US Treasury during the Covid-19-darkened “Biden” years. Here are some of Stacy’s NGOs:

· The New Georgia Project and its affiliated NGP Action Fund — set up for her 2018 run for governor. It was eventually fined $300,000 for failing to disclose millions in contributions, failing to register properly, and sixteen violations of campaign laws. Its main purpose was providing jobs for an army of activists. One question that might have been asked: how many of Stacey Abrams’ books were purchased by The New Georgia Project, juicing her royalties?

· The Southern Economic Advancement Project, founded in 2019 to “promote equity” in twelve southern states, paid Stacey a $700,000 annual salary.

· The Fair Fight Action group raised nearly $62 million in dark pool donations by 2022, with 96-percent from 252 large, unidentified donors.

· The Fair Count Project was created to lobby for counting illegal aliens in the 2020 US Census, in order to pad state congressional districts.

· The Third Sector Development group, created as an “incubator” for other groups (including the New Georgia Project).

· The Fair Fight 2020 group, created to “train voter protection teams” in twenty “battleground states.” That is, ballot harvesting.

Out of the $27-billion from “Joe Biden’s” Inflation Reduction Act sent to EPA in 2024, $2-billion from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) ended up in the Stacey-associated Rewiring America org and its offshoot the Power Forward Communities org. Stacey was listed as “senior counsel” to Rewiring America, which also happened to “partner” with her prior NGOs Fair Count and Southern Economic Advancement Project.

What you might surmise from all this is that “Joe Biden’s” green energy agenda was used as a green smokescreen for a giant patronage racketeering operation. The billions allocated would go ostensibly to innumerable corporations set up to carry-out “green” good deeds, most of which would never actually happen, but would, along the way, pad thousands upon thousands of bank accounts for favored contractors.

Stacey’s Power Forward Communities NGO was incorporated in the state of Delaware where loose corporate governance requires such orgs to pay out only five percent of the org’s funds to its stated mission recipients each year. The rest of the $2-billion not allocated to staff salaries can be socked away in safe investments garnering, say, $50-million-a-year in returns, which can be rolled back into the org and used for spinning out new NGOs with more paid staff positions. . .grift upon grift. . . .

That is what patronage is, and that, by the way, is how it became such an urgent national issue over a hundred years ago when it was openly known as the “spoils system” in electoral politics — to the victor go the spoils— which was resolved by the 1883 Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Alas, in our time patronage (that is, corruption) has reinvented itself as the blob, the runaway system that almost sank the country.

Do you see how all this works now? The ever-expanding matrix of NGOs creates an army of useful idiots working hand-in-hand with an ever-expanding rogue bureaucracy that has become effectively a fourth branch of government accountable to nobody. This is how your tax dollars disappear down a rat-hole and why the US government is insolvent.

The difference now is that the Democratic Party no longer has its hands on the levers of power. Different managers are in place at the critical agencies, most particularly Pam Bondi at DOJ, Kash Patel at the FBI, Russell Vought at OMB, Lee Zeldin at EPA, and Elon Musk in the DOGE. In the past, nothing was done about these shenanigans. This time is different. The Democratic Party will lose its principal means for staying alive. That’s why senators like Chuck Schumer, Chris Coons, and Adam Schiff are out mewling and hollering in the streets. Meanwhile, the blob is getting methodically disassembled, one bureaucratic office at a time. Before much longer we are going to be a different country, and most probably a better one.

Reprinted with permission from JamesHowardKunstler.com.

The post Funny Money appeared first on LewRockwell.

They must be sweating bullets in the Washington Swamp. Kash Patel was just confirmed by a 51-49 Senate vote as FBI director, and that means there is going to be a caravan of DOGE trucks hauling out the dead bodies right soon.

Especially after the FBI went all-in on the Deep State campaign to defenestrate Donald Trump in 2016 and after, the level of lawlessness and blatant attacks on constitutional processes emanating from the J. Edgar Hoover Building literally knew no bounds. Soon we will have black and white documentation that the FBI not only knew all along that the Russian election interference story was a complete hoax, but that top officials of the FBI were actually even more deeply complicit in its manufacture and dissemination than has already been revealed.

But lawlessness at the nation’s purported leading law enforcement agency was nothing new. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is a rogue institution of the Washington Swamp steeped in a lifetime of ignominy and disdain for constitutional liberty and democracy.

Its forerunner was created during the horrific Red Scare Raids of Attorney General Mitchell in 1918-1919 when thousands of citizens were rounded up without warrants—merely for the crime of holding socialist or other leftwing opinions or for being sympathetic to Germany.

It then flourished during the the “G-man” period, prosecuting the idiotic regime of Prohibition in the 1920s. Yet the overdue repeal of the latter in 1933 simply paved the way to an even more malefic run during the J. Edgar Hoover era of communist witch-hunting and vicious prosecution of civil rights and peace leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. Indeed, Hoover’s malicious campaign to expose Dr. King’s personal life was so odious as to make the fact the FBI headquarters is still called the “J.Edgar Hoover Building” a national disgrace–and one that far outranks obscure courthouses in the south named after some defunct confederate generals.

As it happened, Hoover kicked the bucket in May 1972 while in his 48th year in office, but he had accumulated such as an extensive file of dirt on any and all Washington politicians and national leaders he considered unfit that his personal secretary, Helen Gandy, immediately set upon shredding his files—lest Nixon’s men discovered them first.

In fact, Hoover’s FBI had files on tens of thousands of Americans for no good reason other than their holding opinions or political beliefs that the FBI director disdained. Your editor even got in on that act as young man uninterested in being sent to the jungles of Southeast Asia to slaughter “gooks” who had given the people of our rural county in southwest Michigan no offense that we could ascertain. Yet since we went to SDS anti-war marches and signed “We won’t Go” petitions we earned a “red file” at the FBI—something we still consider a badge of honor.

Unfortunately, Hoover’s passing did not lead to the cleansing of the institution that was long overdue. Instead, during the misbegotten War on Terror it became a fount of false fear-mongering, stings and entrapment ploys. Here are just three of the more notable FBI entrapment operations during this period—all of which were obviously designed to create public fear, arouse the legislators and cause budgets and manpower levels at the FBI to relentlessly expand.

1. The Newburgh Four Case (2009): In this case, four men were convicted of plotting to bomb synagogues and shoot down military planes. The FBI used an informant to encourage and facilitate the plot, providing fake bombs and weapons. Actually, there was not a shred of evidence that the defendants were predisposed to commit such acts on their own, but instead were systematically lured into the FBI’s entrapment.
2. The Fort Dix Plot (2007): Here, six men were arrested for planning an attack on Fort Dix, a U.S. Army base in New Jersey. The FBI used an informant who infiltrated the group, encouraged them to carry out the plot and provided the planted evidence that led to their conviction.
3. The Michigan Militia Case (2020): This scam involved a cooked-up plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The FBI used multiple informants and undercover agents to encourage and facilitate the plot. In this case, the plot ended in acquittals and a mistrial because the FBI’s facilitation was so clumsy and obvious.

Even then, the bad guys at the FBI were not done. So what eventually led to the condign justice of Kash Patel’s confirmation, was the blatant weaponization of the FBI by Deep State nomenklatura determined to destroy the duly elected President of the United States in 2016 and after. In that endeavor, however, they truly crossed a line. The Donald’s justifiable revenge for the outrageous FBI raid on his own home after he left office will be thorough and unstinting, and he could have no more capable and powerful instrument of vindication than his newly confirmed FBI director.

In short, Patel’s confirmation marks the end of 100 years of assault on the rule of law, not its promotion. And, as we have argued in “How To Cut $2 Trillion” ( https://amzn.to/40rgiq40 ), that sordid history is reason enough to abolish the FBI completely.

The fact is, there never was need for the FBI in the first place—outside of political opportunism and the furtherance of crusades which are not within the proper purview of the Federal government. Yet in this sphere of government aggrandizement, so-called Republican “conservatives” share much of the blame owing to their misguided view that “law and order” is a proper Federal pursuit.

Then again, however, we do have 90,000 units of state and local government for a reason. Namely, in order to decentralize, disperse and mute the exercise of government power. So surely the enforcement of the criminal laws is precisely one of those functions best kept as far away from the nation’s capital as possible, as the checkered history of the FBI proves in spades.

In any event, as a practical matter crime prosecution and enforcement is already overwhelmingly conducted by state and local police forces and courts. For instance, there are currently about 7.5 million arrests in the US each year, but only about 10,000 of these are executed by the FBI. That’s just 0.14%.

Likewise, there are currently 1,214,000 police and law enforcement personnel on the payrolls of state and local governments in the USA. That compares to just 15,000 FBI officers (out of 37,300 staff) involved in domestic criminal law enforcement. This includes all agents and support personnel who work on a wide range of matters such as cybercrime, drug trafficking, violent crime, and white-collar offenses, but, again, it amounts to only 1.2% of the state and local police force level.

At the end of the day, just $2.5 billion of the FBI’s $11.4 billion budget is involved in what it generously classifies as “counter-terrorism”. We’d say cut that figure by 60% and spin these personnel and activities off to a $1 billion per year counter-terrorism unit in DOJ. Any real threat of terrorism in the US, as opposed to self-serving FBI concocted stings like the above-mentioned plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, can be readily handled on a $1 billion annual budget.

After that, Kash Patel’s real mandate should be to gather up and reveal all of the crimes and abuses of the FBI’s scarlet history; set up a museum to dishonor the joint somewhere in

Flyover America, perhaps Alabama as he has suggested; and then shutdown everything else to the tune of a 34,000-headcount reduction and direct compensation cost savings of $5.4 billion per year—along with another $5 billion of savings from FBI overhead, contractors, occupancy, travel and other costs.

The fact is, outside of a residual counter-terrorism function America does not need the FBI to keep the nation’s communities, streets and homes safe. Local law enforcement can handle that function with alacrity.

After all, there is no correlation whatsoever between crime rates in America and the relentless rise of the FBI’s budget. For want of doubt, consider the 64-year arc of the US homicide rate depicted in the graph below.

As it has happened, the murder rate of 4.7 per 100,000 is the same today as it was in 1960—after a long cycle of rising and then falling rates in the interim, largely driven by demographics. That is to say, young men between 16 and 40 years of age commit most of the violent crime—so it was essentially the passing of the Baby Boom through the population that caused the crime rate to rise and fall as shown below.

Nevertheless, the FBI exploited public fears of crime to a fare-the-well to justify budgets that kept on expanding especially during Republican administrations keen to exploit the

law and order issue. For instance the constant dollar FBI budget (2024 $) rose by 54% during the Reagan administration and 42% during the eight years of Bush the Younger— both gains far outpaced the rise during administrations before or after.

Obviously, the relentless 7X rise in FBI spending per capita between 1960 and 2024 had no correlation whatsoever with the demographics-driven chart above. So, at last, the chance to finally uproot this rogue agency from the Washington Swamp may have finally arrived.

Constant Dollar FBI Budget Per Capita:

• 1960: $5.00.
• 1980: $9.00.
• 1988: $13.85.
• 2000: $20.65.
• 2008: $29.25.
• 2024:$35.00

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post Time To Kash-Out the Rogue FBI appeared first on LewRockwell.

There is history worth remembering as Trump is lauded in certain circles on the so-called “right” and “left” as a peacemaker with Russia over the US/NATO proxy war against Russia via Ukraine: President Richard Nixon, who ran as the peace candidate in 1968 with a “secret plan” for peace in Vietnam that was actually a plan for more war, visited China in February 1972 in a move to exploit the Soviet-China split, and yet the US war against Vietnam went on until April 30, 1975 when the U.S. was driven out of Vietnam.

I think extreme caution is advised when it comes to Trump’s plans to end the U.S. proxy war against Russia, which, following the Nixon-Kissinger script, seems to be aimed at splitting the Russian-Chinese partnership now threatening U.S. world domination.

Trump, like his predecessor Joseph Biden who presided over the proxy war against Russia and the genocide of Palestinians by Israel, is no man of peace. He is fully in support of the extinction of the Palestinians and behind Israel’s war aims in the Middle-East. So when it comes to his recent overtures to Russia and a resolution to the U.S./NATO proxy war against Russia, one needs to reflect on history and Trump’s inclination to make “a deal.”  The man, after all, was a reality-television star and has long reveled in radical reversals of previous statements and intentions. For example, in his first term, he often talked of withdrawing from NATO but never did; NATO, in fact, expanded under his watch. He talked about ending the U.S./NATO support for Ukraine’s bombing of Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine, only to withdraw from the Minsk Accords and send military equipment to Ukraine to bomb those areas.

Those who are praising him now say he is a changed man after time “in the wilderness” these last four years (one is reminded of Nixon’s wandering wilderness days from 1960-1968). Would a changed man have Elon Musk as his right-hand man or have as Vice President JD Vance whose career has been backed by Palantir Technology’s Peter Thiel?

Investigator journalist Whitney Webb has reported extensively on Thiel and Vance’s ties and the interconnections between them and other supporters of the surveillance state tied to the Democrats, such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, among others. If you assume the surface war between Trump and the Democrats is the real deal, Webb’s work will have you wondering. They have their differences, of course, but a reading of history would suggest both fully back the surveillance panopticon that has stolen American’s freedom and privacy in the name of what else – freedom and privacy.

Now Trump-Musk-Vance are touting their dedication to free speech and their opposition to censorship, which are clearly admirable goals. But one needs to remember Marshall McLuhan’s adage that the medium is the message, and that the medium touted by Trump – front and center – is represented by the omnipresence of Elon Musk, whose face symbolizes the smirking machine and the use of digital technology to accumulate and exert power. In a digital age, technological technique is King Propaganda, and technique transforms everything it touches into a machine.

As in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, the brothers Tweedledee Democrat and Tweedledum Republican fight over their rattle as the audience focuses on their battle while their joint racket goes unattended.

‘I know what you’re thinking about,’ Tweedledum; ‘but it isn’t so, no how.’

‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’

‘I was thinking, Alice said very politely, ‘which is the best way out of this wood: it’s getting so dark. Would you tell me please?’

It is dark. Of course, the way out is to stop reacting and do what the press is obligated to do: be skeptical, question authority, and don’t be cheerleaders for anyone in power, whether they be Biden or Trump or someone else.

The opposite of such skepticism has been happening, and many in the alternative press, who [including me] have correctly accused Biden and the Democrats of war crimes, lies, censorship, Russiagate propaganda, etc., are now awash with grandiose praise for Trump, many calling him a revolutionary in a good sense. This is absurd.

Such hyperbole is quite naïve, as has been the calling of Vice-President JD Vance’s Munich Security Conference speech historic and Ciceronian. It was a good speech [text here] in many ways, but . . . .

He rightly ripped the Europeans for their censorship of dissidents and their repression of alternative voices, although his examples were weak and narrowly focused.

His statement, while surely partisan, was true that “I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation.”

His defense of democratic mandates was strong when he said:

You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society.

When he criticized European leaders for allowing mass migration into their countries, his hypocrisy stood out. As any fair person should recognize, immigration policies have long been an issue in need of reform. But the mass creation of people fleeing their countries for safe havens in Europe are the direct result of US/NATO war policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Syria, etc., policies supported by Republicans and Democrats alike and seconded by their lapdogs in Europe.

The same is true for immigration here in the U.S.A. where immigration policy has long been in need of reform that neither party would undertake, but the main contingent of immigrants entering this country comes here to escape horrendous conditions in their home countries due in great part to U.S. foreign policies in support of repressive regimes and economic policies favoring the rich amid U.S. efforts to control Latin America. Without those immigrants, the U.S. economy would collapse.

But Vance’s speech is a minor part of my argument here.

The real issue is Trump and the question of whether or not he is for real in his efforts for peace in Ukraine. I am very skeptical and think it is justified.

I am convinced that the US/NATO war against Russia will not be ending unless NATO is dissolved, which Trump is not proposing. He only wishes to strengthen NATO with European money, not that of the U.S. NATO’s only raison d’être is to destroy Russia as an independent country and create regime change there through multiple means. This has always been so. This is why NATO has existed for so long and has expanded. Open warfare in Ukraine is just one means among many they have used over the years. You can end the overt war and continue the covert.

If NATO is not dissolved, the undermining of Russia will continue under Trump, who seems to recognize that the proxy war is lost on the battlefield, a fact obvious for years despite U.S. government and mainstream media propaganda to the contrary – propaganda so blatantly false that it raises questions about people’s gullibility. How many foreign leaders does such media need to call the new Hitlers before people wise up?

Trump’s theatrical antics will persist, however, and Trump and Putin will probably eventually meet and some deal may be struck on Russia’s terms, but if Russia doesn’t want to be tricked again, it should beware the possibility of a Trump Trojan horse.

Apropos today, in 1964 and then in 1965, the great French sociologist Jacques Ellul published his classic studies. First came The Technological Society to be quickly followed by Propaganda, linked books in which he brilliantly shed an early light on what we now find everywhere – a digital world where propaganda is vital for the state’s functioning and where words like democracy, truth, and fact yield to the technologue’s magic wand.

Another French social thinker, Paul Virilio, spoke of the information bomb, the glut of information produced by digital media and the Internet. One key aspect of this marriage is speed, Virilio’s specialty being dromology, the study of speed. It is worth noting how fast Trump has acted in his first month in office. This is no doubt aided and abetted by his right-hand man Elon Musk, Mr. X., Mr. Space Shot, Mr. Digital World himself, who is prominently displayed by Trump’s side at every photo op. Unlike the Biden warmongers who presented themselves in a more circumspect manner while propagandizing the American public, Trump makes it very clear that digital technology is his key to rule. And flooding the information superhighway with a rapid-fire series of orders and pronouncements is presented as government efficiency at its finest. But things happen so fast one can’t keep pace with them.

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are two technological billionaires who should be considered crucial to Trump’s plans. As Ellul’s work makes clear, such men are key to effective propaganda. How can anyone consider such men benign supporters of democracy and justice?

I think the talk of a Trump revolution in favor of peace and democracy is hyperbolically irresponsible. It is unworthy of good journalism that requires prudence and patience when the powerful pitch their deals. The propaganda from the Biden administration and their mainstream media accomplices should have taught everyone that. But the appeal of a savior is very powerful.

You know, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post Hold the Applause for Trump, the ‘Peacemaker’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Joseph T Salerno:

Now they are trying to panic the entire population into getting a measles vaccine booster.

Measles cases are rising in the U.S. Do adults need a vaccine booster?
With a measles outbreak growing in West Texas, and cases popping up across the country, experts say vaccination is your best protection. And it’s not just for kids. Some adults may need a booster.

Read in NPR.

The post NPR: Measles cases are rising in the U.S. Do adults need a vaccine booster? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks,  Saleh Abdullah. 

Daily Wire

The post Almost Fired For Working With DOGE, Social Security Fraud Expert Now Leads The Agency appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Mike Sanders.

CBS News

The post Over 150 false killer whales stranded on Australia beach cannot be saved, experts say appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff.

Rachel Maddow Brings Back Russiagate INSANITY.

The post Glenn Greenwald: Dems hellbent on igniting conflict between world’s two main nuclear powers appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

Sound Money

The post Auditing America’s Gold Is Not Just Important, It’s Critical appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Ben Bartee

The post Savory Schadenfreude: Lib Violins Out For Fired Bureaucrats Crying on TikTok appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Gail Appel:

What a terrific , brilliant , inspirational young man. More impressive is his enthusiasm and lack of artifice. He’s congenial, polite and connects so easily. Great family relationship and values, but he’s not a nerd Elon hired him and proves his cultural awareness. Young people are naturally attracted to him because he enjoys likes them.He’s not patronizing or pedantic..

This isn’t the GOP. It’s a celebration of independence.

The post The Truth Behind Elon Musk Hiring Savant To Run D.O.G.E. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Gail Appel:

How rich. Schumer feigning concern over DOGE and Elon’s handpicked team of prodigies presenting a national security threat. Schumer, who threatened a SCOTUS judge, is flanked by Ilhan Omar, Tlaib , Adam Schiff, Maxine, Warren, AOC Nadler,  Blumenthal , Jasmine Crockett and Kaine. Schumer, who’s stages a July 4th All-American barbecue, placing a slice of cheese on a raw burger.

The post Meet Akash Bobba, Indian-origin engineer in Elon Musk’s DOG appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks Gail Appel.

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Writes Jerome Barber:

Normalizing and glorifying dystopia.

This is from tonight’s NBA All-Star game

Shaquille O’Neal walking out with a robot

You see where this is going? They are normalizing this technology. They know the majority of people are going to think this is cool. One day you’re going to wake up but by then it’s going to be… pic.twitter.com/TCYoEOa2Ni

— Vision4theBlind (@Vision4theBlind) February 17, 2025

The post The NBA All Star Game appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer 

Trans Sanctuary City

The post Tim Dillon – Trans Sanctuary City appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Rick Rozoff.

TASS News

The post Trump was ready to stop military aid to Ukraine over Zelensky’s impudence appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s been said that “He who has the gold, makes the rules.” That never applied more to the United States than after WWII. At that time, Ft. Knox stored around 75% of the world’s gold, the U.S. was a manufacturing powerhouse, and was a creditor nation! But alas, the United States would go down the fateful road of war & empire. Today, manufacturing is gone, America waved goodbye to being a creditor nation and became the most indebted nation in history — and now President Trump needs to check if the gold is still there at Ft. Knox.

The post Trump To Storm Ft. Knox? — What Will He Find? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Lifesite News

The post Mark Carney has history of supporting CBDCs, endorsed Freedom Convoy crackdown appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Lifesite News

The post Christian prelates cry out as Israel moves to expropriate church property in Jerusalem appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Lifesite News

The post Expert Confirms There’s a “Population Collapse No One Wants to Admit” appeared first on LewRockwell.