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John Leake

 

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Writes Bill Madden

It’s difficult to call the turning point when the empire stopped growing, leveled off and then began contracting or, in our case, imploding.  The confluence of two major factors was, I feel, the beginning of the end for our country.  The late 1960s was close to the end of the post-war boom that made the USA such a great place to live domestically and a world leader internationally.  In 1965, we were about 90% European ancestry and our controllers felt that we were too White for easy control on their part.  So, we had the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act which drastically reduced White immigration and increased immigration of poor, uneducated people from mostly third-world countries.

In 1965, the few people who realized what was going on claimed that such a stupid immigration policy was bad for the country.  Time has proven them correct.

 

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Robert Morrow wrote:

Howdy Folks,

Here is a good thread at the Education Forum that has good information on the complete innocence of Lee Harvey Oswald in the shooting of JFK, the shooting of John Conally, the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit, the attempted shooting of Gen. Edwin Walker on the night of April 10, 1963.

What is the best and most concise evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was framed? – JFK Assassination Debate – The Education Forum

A murdered Oswald got posthumously framed for all of that in the wake of the JFK assassination. I personally think Lyndon Johnson murdered both JFK and then two days later Lee Harvey Oswald using his Dallas connections to procure Jack Ruby for the dirty deed.

 

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Il cappio al collo dell'UE continua a essere stretto, soprattutto dal punto di vista energetico. È un ricatto mafioso quello degli USA quando la vogliono costringere, pena dazi, ad acquistare il loro GNL... ma questa è power politics. Tutti fanno parte di una cupola mafiosa, solo che adesso gli USA si sono stancati di essere fregati dagli intrallazzi europei/inglesi. O scendono a più miti consigli accettando le condizioni di un nuovo assetto mondiale in cui gli USA dettano per davvero le regole (senza infiltrati esteri... inglesi... nelle loro stanze dei bottoni), oppure pagano le conseguenze fino in fondo della loro narrativa (in questo caso essersi tagliati fuori da una fonte energetica a basso costo come quella russa per trascinare in guerra gli stessi USA). Le recenti ondate di “terrorismo mediatico” su sconfinamenti russi o potenziali attacchi degli stessi in territorio europeo servono principalmente a far ingoiare il boccone amaro ai contribuenti europei: “Siete voi la nostra garanzia collaterale e pagherete per la nostra testardaggine, perché altrimenti verremo spazzati via come classe dirigente”. Questa tesi è supportata anche dalle recenti dichiarazioni del Pentagono in ambito “assistenza militare” nei confronti dei Paesi Baltici. Nel frattempo, come ricordato anche altre volte, gli Stati Uniti si apprestano a spostare l'asse commerciale del mondo verso l'Artico, costituendo un polo di scambi tra Russia e Cina. La notizia del WSJ riguardo la Exxon è un ulteriore segnale in tale direzione.

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di Thomas Kolbe

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/la-resa-dei-conti-della-francia-il)

La Francia è intrappolata in una spirale di debito e ora il presidente della Corte dei conti francese mette in guardia dalle conseguenze dell'inazione politica.

Pierre Moscovici è presidente della Corte dei conti francese da cinque anni, la quale supervisiona le revisioni periodiche delle finanze pubbliche del Paese. Dal 2012 al 2014 è stato Ministro delle finanze francese e poi ha ricoperto per cinque anni la carica di Commissario europeo per gli Affari economici e finanziari, la fiscalità e le dogane. Un uomo che sa come gestire le casse vuote.

Di recente Moscovici ha invitato il Primo ministro, François Bayrou, ad adottare misure urgenti per consolidare le finanze pubbliche. La situazione di bilancio della Francia, ha affermato, è sfuggita di mano, soprattutto nel 2023 e nel 2024. Se non si raggiungerà presto un'inversione di tendenza, i mercati dei capitali la imporranno. “Possiamo ancora agire volontariamente”, ha avvertito il governo, “ma domani i mercati potrebbero imporre misure di austerità”.

Per ora regna la calma nei mercati obbligazionari

Una volta che le tessere del domino iniziano a cadere, la situazione precipita: gli investitori si liberano in massa dei titoli di stato francesi, i rendimenti aumentano, i prezzi crollano e rifinanziare l'enorme debito pubblico del Paese diventa ancora più costoso. Già oggi il pagamento degli interessi assorbe il 10,6% del bilancio statale francese, all'incirca la stessa cifra destinata all'istruzione. Con l'aumento del debito, il margine di manovra fiscale si riduce.

Con un debito sovrano al 114% del PIL, la trappola potrebbe scattare inaspettatamente. Per ora i funzionari europei continuano a puntare il dito contro gli Stati Uniti, i cui indici di indebitamento sono simili, ma nessuno può dire per quanto tempo questa tattica di sviamento funzionerà. Il rischio di credito si materializza all'improvviso, di solito senza preavviso.

Punto di non ritorno

Ciò che sappiamo è questo: un rapporto debito/PIL superiore al 100% è già considerato critico. A quel punto anche ambiziosi sforzi di riforma raramente bastano a uscire dalla situazione critica e a meno che il Paese indebitato non emetta la valuta di riserva mondiale, saranno i mercati dei capitali a emettere il loro verdetto, come abbiamo visto durante la crisi del debito dell'Eurozona quindici anni fa.

Ciò che segue è familiare: l'intervento della banca centrale per mantenere liquide le finanze pubbliche, azionando la stampante monetaria e trasferendo il conto ai cittadini attraverso l'inflazione.

La Francia non è mai stata nota per il suo conservatorismo fiscale. Anni di stallo politico, maggioranze mutevoli e coalizioni instabili hanno spinto i deficit annuali ben oltre la soglia del 3% di Maastricht. Nel 2024 il deficit ha raggiunto il 5,8% del PIL. Anche con le prime misure di risanamento, si prevede che quest'anno rimarrà al 5,5%, ben al di sopra dell'obiettivo.

Nessuna ripresa economica in vista

Se i policymaker francesi contano su una ripresa della crescita economica, potrebbero rimanere delusi. A maggio l'indice dei direttori degli acquisti (indice PMI) per il settore manifatturiero si è attestato a 48,1 e per i servizi a 49,6, entrambi in territorio di contrazione. I PMI riflettono il sentiment delle imprese, valori superiori a 50 indicano crescita e inferiori, invece, una contrazione. Sono considerati indicatori precoci delle tendenze economiche e industriali.

In altre parole: nonostante – o forse proprio a causa – dell’ingente spesa pubblica, l’economia francese è bloccata in recessione.

Rischio di contagio

La crisi fiscale che si sta profilando in Francia è più di una semplice tragedia nazionale. Insieme a Germania e Italia, la Francia è sottoposta a un attento esame da parte di analisti e investitori di tutto il mondo. Parigi riuscirà a portare a termine il consolidamento fiscale? La fiducia nell'affidabilità creditizia della Francia è instabile da anni. Nel 2023 Moody's è stata l'ultima grande agenzia di rating a declassare la Francia dal rating AAA, assegnandole un outlook negativo.

Se i mercati dei capitali dovessero ulteriormente declassare il debito francese, le conseguenze si estenderebbero all'intera Eurozona. Qui vale la vecchia regola: o si resta uniti, o si muore divisi. I mercati obbligazionari tendono a passare da un anello debole all'altro, rivalutando rigorosamente l'affidabilità creditizia in situazioni di crisi. Chi vacilla paga interessi più alti, o perde del tutto l'accesso al mercato. Moscovici lo sa bene.

La pressione sui governi nazionali sta aumentando: o si vara una riforma di bilancio drastica, o si aumenta il carico fiscale sui cittadini.

L'eccezione francese

La Francia è un caso speciale. Con un rapporto spesa pubblica/PIL pari al 57,3%, il suo Stato sociale si colloca tra quelli più pesanti al mondo. Di conseguenza la pressione fiscale complessiva è salita al 45,6%, ben al di sopra della media UE di circa il 40%. I cittadini stanno già rinunciando a quasi metà del loro reddito per mantenere le illusioni assistenziali di Parigi.

La pace sociale viene comprata con denaro che non esiste più, finanziata dal debito e sostenuta dall'illusione della sovranità fiscale. Quando persino il massimo revisore dei conti del Paese chiede un consolidamento, una cosa è chiara: la situazione sta per farsi seria. L'equilibrio sociale stesso, fondamento del patto politico ombra che tiene a bada i disordini nelle banlieue, è in gioco.

La storia ce lo insegna: quando i governi tagliano i programmi sociali in Francia, la pace sociale crolla e le periferie – da Parigi a Marsiglia a Lione – vanno a fuoco.

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

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I suppose that every Royal Rascal that discovers himself to be powerful is tempted by the Devil to create an empire. And usually succumbs.

In the case of the U.S., I’d say that the Spanish-American war in 1898 was the test to see if the U.S. was powerful enough yet for empire. Then, in 1907, President Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet around the world.

Painted white to signify peace, the fleet was a display of American naval power, showcasing the U.S. as an emerging global force.

So of course, you would expect a dull college president like President Woodrow Wilson to buy into the narrative that the U.S. was “an emerging global force” and jump into World War I in 1917 “to save the world for democracy,” and he did.

And of course, as you’d expect with a college president, Woodrow Wilson botched the peace in the subsequent punitive Treaty of Versailles, which led to the Federal Reserve’s first botched credit crisis in 1929, which led to Literally Hitler.

Then there was World War II, in which the U.S. cast itself in the starring role of not just saving democracy but annihilating Nazism. But, oh no! After World War II the U.S. found that the Communist Soviet Union had occupied half of Europe, so we had to rev the U.S. Empire up into overdrive to save the world from Communism.

No problem, because the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989-91; so the Cold War was won.

Of course, after the defeat of Communism the political and administrative leaders of the U.S. didn’t step up to the mark and wind up the U.S. Empire. Instead, the institutions created to fight the Cold War waddled along into well-fed middle age and dined on the Middle East and then Ukraine. What’s the point of the State Department and the CIA and the whole USAID ecosystem if it isn’t meddling in other countries’ politics and manipulating regime change — to save democracy?

Although well-fed, President Trump is no administrative bureaucrat. He lived his life “in the arena” of risk-taking business. And the rest of the world seems to be waking up to find that in the Trump Era they are not in Kansas anymore.

Here’s Gregory Copley:

U.S. President Donald Trump, during the first year of his second presidency, severely shook strategic relationships with key historical allies in the Anglosphere, the traditionally English-speaking societies of the world.

And the Canadians are really, really offended, so Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is really going to… Well, just wait and see: after all, Mark Carney in his former life was a great and powerful Oz central banker, so there!

Then there’s Aris Roussinos, who feels that the “West” is now paying for blindly following the U.S. into the future of the 1990s: letting manufacturing wither, advocating for human rights, saving the world for climate change, encouraging mass immigration because diversity is our strength.

Now “the West” finds that its blind followership has led to decline and decay. And the U.S. has elected a president who has pulled the plug on its post-WWII imperium. But how are, e.g., the Brits going to dig themselves out of the mess the U.S. led them into?

The old UK regime is dead in office: the time is running out to shape the Britain that will replace it, in anything other than Farage’s image.

Oh no! Not the dreadful Nigel Farage! Yes, Minister, Sir Humphrey Appleby has threatened to resign if Farage becomes Prime Minister.

Don’t worry, says Newt Gingrich. He realized in the 1980s that the Soviet Union was doomed because the “World War II Soviet military was being made obsolete by the information revolution.”

Now the world is changing again in the current technological revolution:

Ukraine will build 4 million drones this year, including autonomous vehicles capable of hitting targets 1,900 miles away.

I wonder if all those plump generals and admirals present at Quantico last week are up to the task. Did they play with toy drones and Minecraft when they were kids?

And I wonder if the rules of empire haven’t changed drastically. Used to be that emperors sent their Hoplites or legionaries or archers or Bluebellies or Doughboys or GIs off to war. So where does the Pentagon get its skilled drone operators and strategy game experts for the next war?

Or have the rules of the game completely changed, so that a great empire no longer sends armies into the field but rather startup entrepreneurs and tech gurus and VC capitalists and “art of the deal” businessmen to conquer the other economy? Today, economic imperialists like Elon Musk find that the kids are lining up at the door begging for a chance to be on the team to Occupy Mars.

Has any academic expert in critical theory researched the difference between Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Mars?

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

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In his novel The Autumn of the Patriarch, which is eerily evocative of our current political plight, Gabriel Garcia Marquez described how a Latin American autocrat “discovered in the course of his uncountable years that a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth, [and] became convinced … that the only livable life was one of show.”

In amassing unchecked power spiced with unimaginable cruelty, that fictional dictator extinguished any flicker of opposition in his imaginary Caribbean country, reducing its elite to a craven set of courtiers. Even though he butchered opponents, plundered the treasury, raped the young, and reduced his nation to penury, “lettered politicians and dauntless adulators… proclaimed him the corrector of earthquakes, eclipses, leap years and other errors of God.” When his slavishly loyal defense minister somehow displeased him, the autocrat had him served up, in full-dress uniform laden with military medals, on a silver platter with a pine-nut garnish to a table full of courtiers, forcing them to dutifully consume their slice of the cooked cadaver.

That macabre banquet presaged a recent luncheon President Donald J. Trump hosted at the White House for this nation’s top tech executives, which became a symphony of shameless sycophancy. Billionaire Bill Gates praised the president’s “incredible leadership,” while Apple CEO Tim Cook said it was “incredible to be among… you and the first lady” before thanking him “for helping American companies around the world.” Other executives there celebrated him for having “unleashed American innovation and creativity… making it possible for America to win” again and making this “the most exciting time in America, ever.” As Trump served up the corpse of American democracy, those tech courtiers, like so many of this country’s elites, downed their slice of the cadaver with ill-concealed gusto.

With Congress compliant, the Supreme Court complicit, and media corporations compromised, President Trump’s vision for America and its place in the world has become the nation’s destiny. Since the inauguration for his second term in office in January 2025, he has launched a radical “America first” foreign policy that seems primed to accelerate the decline of Washington’s international influence and, more seriously and much less obviously, degrade (if not destroy) the liberal international order that the U.S. has sustained since the end of World War II. Largely ignored by a media overwhelmed by daily outrages from the Oval Office, that initiative has some truly serious implications for America’s role in the world.

Trump’s Geopolitical Vision

Amid a torrent of confusing, often contradictory foreign policy pronouncements pouring out of the White House, the design of the president’s dubious geopolitical strategy has taken shape with surprising, even stunning speed. Instead of maintaining longstanding security alliances like NATO, Trump seems to prefer a globe divided into three major regional blocs, each headed by an empowered autocrat like himself — with Russia dominating its European periphery, China paramount in Asia, and the United States controlling North and much of South America (and Greenland).

Reflecting what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called a “loathing of European freeloading” and Vice President JD Vance’s complaint that Europe has abandoned “our shared democratic values,” President Trump is pursuing this tri-continental strategy at the expense of the traditional transatlantic alliance embodied in NATO that has been the foundation for U.S. foreign policy since the start of the Cold War.

Admittedly, Trump’s reach for complete control over North America does lend a certain geopolitical logic to his otherwise quixotic overtures to claim Greenland, reclaim the Panama Canal, and make Canada the 51st state. In Trump’s vision of fortress America, the country’s more compact defense perimeter would encompass the entire Arctic, including Greenland, march down the mid-Atlantic with an anchor at the Panama Canal, and encompass the entire Pacific. Not only does such a strategy carry the high cost of alienating once-close allies Canada and Mexico, but every one of its key components comes laden with a potential for serious conflict, particularly the administration’s plans for the Pacific, which run headlong into China’s ongoing maritime expansion.

Demolishing the Liberal International Order

At a broader level, President Trump’s foreign policy represents a forceful repudiation of the three key attributes of the “liberal international order” that has marked U.S. global hegemony since the end of World War II in 1945: alliances like NATO that treated allies as peer powers, free trade without tariff barriers, and an ironclad assurance of inviolable sovereignty for all nations, large and small. In a matter of months, Trump has crippled NATO by expressing doubt about its critical mutual-defense clause, imposed an escalating roster of punitive tariffs antithetical to free trade, and threatened to expropriate several sovereign states and territories.

Not only is his ongoing demolition of Washington’s world order inflicting a good deal of pain on much of the globe — from Africans and Asians denied the U.S. Agency for International Development’s life-saving medicines (and potentially suffering 14 million deaths) to Eastern Europeans threatened by Russia’s relentless advance — but it also undercuts America’s future position on a post-Trumpian planet. His successor could, of course, try to reconcile with Canada and Mexico, placate an insulted Panamanian leadership, and even repair relations with NATO. But the president’s ongoing demolition of Washington’s world system is guaranteed to do lasting, long-term damage to the country’s international standing in ways that have so far eluded even informed observers.

To grasp the full extent of the harm Trump is inflicting on America’s place on this planet, it’s important to understand that Washington’s “liberal international order” is nothing more than the latest iteration of the “world order” that every global hegemon has created as part of its apparatus of power since the fifteenth century. To understand our own present and future, it’s necessary to explore the nature of those world orders — how they formed, how they functioned, and what their survival and destruction tell us about America’s declining imperial power.

For the past 500 years, every succeeding global hegemon — Spain, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States — has not only amassed wealth and military strength but also used that extraordinary power to propagate a world order that often transcended its narrow national interests. And once the inevitable imperial decline set in, a fading global hegemon often found that its world order could serve as a diplomatic safety net, extending its international influence for years, even decades beyond its moment of imperial glory.

While even the most powerful of history’s empires eventually fall, such world orders entwine themselves in the cultures, commerce, and values of countless societies. They influence the languages people speak, the laws that order their lives, and the ways that so many millions of us work, worship, and even play. World orders might be much less visible than the grandeur of great empires, but they have always proven both more pervasive and more persistent.

By structuring relations among nations and influencing the cultures of the peoples who live in them, world orders can outlast even the powerful empires that created them. Indeed, some 90 empires, major and minor, have come and gone since the start of the age of exploration in the fifteenth century. In those same 500 years, however, there have been just four major world orders — the Iberian age after 1494; the British imperial era that began in 1815; the Soviet system that lasted from 1945 to 1991; and Washington’s liberal international order, launched in 1945, that might, based on present developments, reach its own end somewhere around 2030.

Successful global empires driven by the hard power of guns and money have also required the soft power of cultural and ideological suasion embodied in a world order. Spain’s bloody conquest of Latin America soon segued into three centuries of colonial rule, softened by Catholic conversion, the spread of the Spanish language as a lingua franca, and that continent’s integration into a growing global economy. Once permanent mints were established in Mexico City, Lima, and Potosí during the seventeenth century, Spanish galleons would carry millions of minted silver coins — worth eight reales and thus known as “pieces of eight” — across the globe for nearly three centuries, creating the world’s first common currency and making those silver coins the medium of exchange for everyone from African traders to Virginia planters.

During its century of global hegemony from 1820 to 1920, though it seldom hesitated to use military power when needed, Great Britain would also prove the exemplar par excellence of soft power, espousing an enticing political culture of fair play and free markets that it propagated through the Anglican church, the English language, an enticing literature, authoritative mass media like the global Reuters news service and the British Broadcasting Corporation, and its virtual creation of modern athletics (including cricket, football/soccer, tennis, rugby, and rowing). On a higher plane of principle, Britain’s protracted anti-slavery campaign throughout much of the nineteenth century invested its global hegemony with a certain moral authority.

Similarly, the raw power of U.S. military and economic dominance after 1945 was softened by the appeal of Hollywood films, civic organizations like Rotary International, and popular sports like basketball and baseball. Just as Britain battled the slave trade for nearly a century, so Washington’s advocacy of human rights lent legitimacy to its world order. While Spain espoused Catholicism, and Britain an Anglophone ethos of rights, the United States, at the dawn of its global dominion, courted allies through soft-power programs that promoted democracy, the international rule of law, and economic development.

Such world orders are not the mere imaginings of historians trying, decades or centuries later, to impose their own logic on a chaotic past. In each era, the dominant power of the day worked to reorder its world for generations to come through formal agreements — with the Treaty of Tordesillas dividing much of the globe between Spain and Portugal in 1494; the 1815 Congress of Vienna (convened to resolve the Napoleonic wars) launching a full century of British global dominion; the San Francisco Conference in 1945 drafting the U.N. charter and so beginning Washington’s liberal international order; and the Moscow meeting in 1957 assembling 64 communist parties at the Kremlin for a shared commitment to socialist struggle and putting the Soviet Union atop its own global order.

Just as the British imperial system was far more pervasive than its Iberian predecessor, so Washington’s world order went beyond both of them and the Soviet Russian system, too, to become deeply embedded on an essentially global scale. While the 1815 Congress of Vienna was an ephemeral gathering of two dozen diplomats whose influence faded within a decade or two, the San Francisco conference of 1945 formed the United Nations, which now has 193 member states with broad international responsibilities. By the start of the twenty-first century, moreover, there were nearly 40,000 “U.N.-recognized international nongovernmental organizations” like the Catholic Relief Services, operating “in the remotest corners of the globe.”

But the similarities were perhaps more important. Note as well that both victorious powers, Great Britain and the United States, used those peace conferences to launch world orders that militated successfully against major wars among the great powers, with the pax Britannica lasting nearly a century (1815-1914) and the pax Americana persisting for 80 years and still counting.

Empires Fade but World Orders Persist

If world orders are so pervasive and persistent, why don’t they last forever? Each transition from one to the next has occurred when a massively destructive cataclysm has coincided with major social or political change. The rise of the Iberian age of exploration was preceded by a century of epidemics, known as the Black Death, which killed 60% of the populations of Europe and China, devastating their respective worlds. Similarly, the British imperial era emerged when the ravages of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe coincided with the dynamism of the industrial revolution launched in England, unleashing the power of coal-fired steam energy and formal colonial rule to change the face of the globe.

After the unprecedented devastation of World War II, Washington’s leadership in rebuilding and reordering a damaged planet established the current liberal international order. By the middle decades of our present century, if not before, global warming caused by fossil-fuel emissions will likely equal or surpass those earlier catastrophes on a universal scale of “disaster magnitude,” with the potential to precipitate the eclipse of Washington’s world order. Compounding the damage, President Trump’s sustained, systematic attack on America’s “liberal international order” — its alliances, free trade, and institutions like the U.N. — is only serving to accelerate the decline of a system that has served the world and this country reasonably well since 1945.

After the Fall

Even if the empire that created it suffers a complete collapse, a deeply rooted world order can usually survive that fall, while serving as a kind of diplomatic safety net for a fading power. The Iberian empires had lost their preeminence by the seventeenth century, but even today Latin America is deeply Catholic and Spanish remains the main language for much of the continent.

Understanding its limits as a small island nation with a vast global empire, Great Britain conducted a relatively careful imperial retreat that enfolded former colonies into the British Commonwealth, preserved the City of London’s financial clout, retained international influence as Washington’s strategic partner, and maintained its global cultural authority through civil institutions (the Anglican Communion, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and leading universities). Today, a full 50 years after the end of its empire, Great Britain still plays a role in world affairs far beyond its small size as a nation of just 70 million people living in a country no bigger than the state of Oregon.

Even though it’s been 35 years since the Soviet empire collapsed with spectacular speed, testifying eloquently to the crude coercion and economic exploitation that lay at its heart, Moscow still maintains considerable diplomatic influence across much of the old Soviet sphere in Eurasia.

Without Donald Trump’s systemic subversion of the liberal international order and its chief creation, the United Nations, the United States might have retained sufficient international influence to lead the world toward a shared governance of a global commons on a planet whose environment is sorely threatened — its seas depleted, water evaporating, storms raging, heat waves soaring, and its Arctic wildly warming. Instead, the United States has fully ceded leadership of the campaign against climate change to China, while not only denying its reality but blocking the development of alternative energy projects critical not only for the planet but for America’s global competitiveness. While China is already leading the world in efficient electric vehicles and low-cost solar and wind power, Trump’s America remains firmly wedded to an economy based on high-cost carbon energy that will, in the fullness of time, render its output grossly overpriced, its industries uncompetitive, and the planet a disaster zone.

Back in 2011, six years before Trump first entered the Oval Office, political scientist G. John Ikenberry argued that, while the U.S. ability to shape world politics would decline as its raw power retreated, its “liberal international order will survive and thrive,” including its emphasis on multilateral governance, open markets, free global trade, human rights, and respect for sovereignty. With Trump having essentially demolished the U.S. Agency for International Development’s global humanitarian work and sent a “wrecking ball” toward the United Nations, while condemning it in a recent speech to its General Assembly — “I ended seven wars … and never even received a phone call from the United Nations” — it would be difficult to make such a sanguine argument today.

Instead, Mark Twain’s classic futuristic assessment of American world power seems more appropriate. “It was impossible to save the Great Republic. It was rotten to the heart. Lust for conquest had long ago done its work,” he wrote in an imagined history of this country from a far-off future. “Trampling upon the helpless abroad,” he added, “had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home.” After watching the U.S. occupation of the Philippines in 1898 descend into a bloodstained pacification program replete with torture and atrocities, Twain suggested that empire abroad would, sooner or later, bring autocracy at home — an insight Trump confirms with his every tweet, every speech, every executive order.

Whether the United States will emulate Britain in a managed global retreat with minimal domestic damage or fulfill Mark Twain’s dismal vision by continuing to attack its own world order, diminishing if not destroying its legacy, is something for future historians to decide. For now, listening to Trump’s recent rant at the U.N. complaining about a stalled escalator and condemning climate-change science as a “green scam” and “the greatest con job ever perpetrated,” ordinary Americans should have received a clear sign that their president’s autocratic aspirations are subverting their country’s claims to world leadership, both now and in the future.

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.com.

The post In the Autumn of America’s Empire appeared first on LewRockwell.

By now, it’s a very well known historical narrative: during the Middle Ages, kings were all powerful over their subjects. They ruled with a divine right, and therefore could raise taxes at will. After all, as God’s chosen rulers on earth, who would contradict them? Certainly not the king’s subject who, with the help of the Church, were all utterly cowed by the idea that to disobey the king was to risk eternal damnation.

But then came the Renaissance, the narrative tells us, and people discovered the idea that they had rights and that political rulers ought to be restrained by the law. These novel ideas were then magnified by the “Enlightenment” which further overturned the old despotism of the Middles Ages and the “will of the people” prevailed.

This narrative, however, is largely based on myth. It was not the case that the princes and kings of the Middle Ages could raise taxes with impunity or that they ruled with untrammeled power. Nor is it the case that the subjects of the medieval lords meekly accepted abuses of power. Moreover, the Church opposed the medieval rulers’ prerogatives at least as much as the Church supported them. Churchmen like Thomas Aquinas, for example, condemned tax increases as “sinful” while the general public condemned the Lords’ taxes as threats to well established property rights.

It was not the Renaissance or the Enlightenment that gave us ideas about limiting state power, opposing taxes, or protecting private property. Indeed, the best political ideas of the Renaissance—those that called for limits on political power—were holdovers from earlier medieval thought. In contrast, the late Renaissance is more characterized by innovations in political thought that asserted taxation is a good thing, and that kings ought to be able to raise taxes more easily for the good of a new thing we now call the sovereign state. It’s not a coincidence—as Rothbard points out—that absolutism in Europe comes on the heels of the late Renaissance.

Rather, during the Middle Ages, taxation was considered to be appropriate only as an extreme measure in times of emergency, and as a last resort. Kings were expected to subsist on revenues from their own private property, and to respect the private property of others. Importantly, public opinion often held to the idea that taxation was both unjust and parasitic. Modern post-Enlightenment notions, holding taxation to be a reflection of the “will of the people” would strike a great many medieval farmers, burghers, and nobleman as a very odd idea indeed.

The Prince’s Revenues and Scholastic Opposition to Taxes 

In the Middle Ages in Western Europe—and especially where feudalism remained widespread—taxes were not considered to be the ordinary means by which a prince or lord could obtain revenue. Historian Martin Wolfe states that:

The prince’s revenues … were not what we would call taxes but rather were rents, tolls, seigneurial dues, and a host of other items conceived of partly as the ruler’s family property and partly as God’s method of providing princes with what they needed to fulfill their proper functions.1

This type of self-funded civil government was also the assumed normative method of collecting revenue according to medieval churchmen who were influential on the matter. For example, Thomas Aquinas, answers the question of the prince’s revenues this way:

You asked whether it is licit for you to make exactions from your Christian subjects. In regard to this, you ought to consider that the princes of the earth were instituted by God not to seek their own gain, but to look after the common utility of the people… For this reason the revenues of certain lands were established for princes, that, living on them, they might abstain from the despoiling of their subjects…

For Aquinas, and for the Scholastics overall, taxation could be necessary as an extraordinary measure to keep the peace of for some other measure that is judged to be for the “common good.” (In medieval thinking, “common” necessarily means something that it literally good for everyone, such as the punishment of highwaymen.)

Jacob Viner further explains the Scholastic position this way:

To understand the Scholastic treatment of taxes one must bear in mind that taxation, as we now know it—namely, as a routine, normal, and respectable method of providing for the financial needs of government—is a comparatively modern phenomenon. In feudal times, on the other hand, rulers derived their revenues mainly from personal estates, customary tributes and dues paid by their vassals, tolls on strangers and on traffic on roads and rivers, war booty, rapine and piracy, and, in times of special need, from ‘‘aids,’” subventions, donations, etc., … All of St. Thomas’ references to taxation that I know of treat it as a more or less extraordinary act of a ruler which is as likely as not to be morally illicit.2

After all, with so many routes of access to riches other than taxation, why should any good steward of resources need to resort to taxation?

This idea was further reflected in “In Coena Domini” (article 5), a recurrent papal bull between 1363 and 1770, first written by Urban V and modified by later popes until Pope Urban VIII. The text reads “All who shall establish in their lands new taxes, or shall take it upon them to increase those already exiting, except in cases provided for by the last in the event of obtaining the express permission of the Holy See.”

That is, taxation could be licit, but rare enough that the levying of new taxes ought to require a nod from the Pope.

Public Opposition to Taxes 

Wolfe notes that from the Middle Ages into the early Renaissance, a general bias against taxation remained well established, and continued into the sixteenth century. Contrary to more modern views contending that tax revenues can strengthen economic prosperity and address the needs “of the people,” the medieval assumption was that taxes represented a net loss for society. Wolfe notes that

[F]rom the late thirteenth century until well into the Renaissance [the tax debate] reflects the prevailing view that regular national taxing—that is, annual royal revenue beyond traditional domainial income and occasional emergency aid—could have only bad effects on the economy. As late as Jean Bodin (around 1576) going theory held that as far as taxes were concerned the prince’s gain had to be the people’s loss. A favorite Renaissance metaphor was that the fisc was a parasite (le rat au corps), growing fat and sleek as its host grew thin and lifeless.3

The view of the secular activists and theorists on taxation was even less forgiving than that of the Scholastics. In his commentary on French views of taxation in the Middle Ages, Wolfe notes that among the French commentators

There were two associated pivots about which swung all late medieval and early Renaissance arguments on wealth and taxes: the inviolability of private property and the importance of restricting the royal fisc to its sources of traditional revenue. In the middle ages the ideal prince was an armed judge-a force useful to society primarily as an arbiter and as a protector of feudal, natural, and divine law. Therefore the men of this era did not regard royal revenues as contributions by participants in a commonwealth to expenditures that would increase the well-being of the people. They thought of the fisc as a householding operation, intended to support the royal family in proper style and to provide a small surplus which, when husbanded as it should be, would provide funds for emergency military affairs. The prince’s revenues, mainly, were not what we would call taxes but rather were rents, tolls, seigneurial dues, and a host of other items conceived of partly as the ruler’s family property and partly as God’s method of providing princes with what they needed to fulfill their proper functions.4

As is usually the case, then as now, the needs of warfare impelled many princes to press for ever larger tax revenues. In the Middle Ages, taxpayers in many cases responded with additional calls for respecting both private property and customary law under which taxes were largely fixed in place and not increased with ease. Moreover, dissenters contended that those who abused the people with tax increases would face dire spiritual consequences:

The new national taxes, the bruising fiscal expedients, and the hordes of new tax officials brought in by fourteenth-century kings trod painfully on important toes and on established ideas about property. Moralist writers then and in the early Renaissance took up and elaborated Aquinas’ findings that private property is itself part of God’s dispensation, the very basis of family life and public order, and as important as ruler- ship itself. They taught that any prince who fleeced his subjects so that he might live in pomp or gratify his lust for conquest was com- mitting a deadly sin; the sweat and the blood his subjects needed to produce this taxed wealth would stand as a permanent and vengeful witness against him until the final day of judgment. Another strand of hostility to the rising tax power of the Crown came from the “feudalists,” mainly legal experts working for great barons, who emphasized customary law for its importance in protecting each man in the fruits of his labor, his property, and his rights.5

Notably, the taxpayers were not fooled by monetary debasement either, and saw it as the form of taxation that it was. Wolfe continues:

This is why, when late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century kings were pushed by their higher expenditures to debasing the coinage and to imposing national taxes, they were scolded so often by being reminded of the good king Saint Louis-apart from his “crusader tithes,” this ruler was supposed to have managed very well on his traditional revenues alone. The belief that a well-ordered state should be funded without taxing, therefore, was an important part of medieval political views…6

But even in places where taxes were tolerated, taxation was often believed to be appropriate only to the loftier classes. For example, In England where the Commons had pushed new taxes in the early fourteenth century, few taxes were hated as much as what George Holmes called the “disastrous aberration of the poll taxes.” from 1377 to 1381.7 This tax, implemented by Parliament, violated “principles of taxation according to property and taxation only of the more prosperous…”8 The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 brought the taxes to an end.

The lack of public support for taxes stemmed in part from the fact that there was, at the time, no clear acceptance of the idea of the civil government as a “public” institution. There was the prince and his domains, and the prince performed necessary services as a condition of his wealth and high status. If the prince levied taxes, this was largely seen as the prince seeking to enrich himself and his close associates, family members, and allies.

Is the King a Man or an Institution? 

At the time, Europeans had not yet fully developed the modern rationalization that tax revenues, once collected, were somehow the property of the “public” or held by the sovereign who functioned as a representative of “the people.” The evolution of this idea is described by Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottieri who note the that the civil government was not simply the ruler himself, but some sort of public institution. They write:

separation between the king as a person and the king as a function originated in the medieval age and immediately had some consequences for forms of ownership and resource extraction by the public apparatus.9 

Nonetheless, in most of Europe, it was not until the early modern period that national monarchs were able to fully establish themselves as the accepted head of a state organization that collected and spent taxes as part of a “common utility.” For most of that period, kings and princes were forced to largely rely on their own private funds and

“… For a long time, using [Ernst] Kantorowicz’s words, “the distinction between what pertains ad coronam and what may be held de rege” … was not crucial. Such a political order impeded a modern and strong presence of state power in society. When a ruler was basically a person and not a function or a role, it was almost impossible to build a sovereign order based on the supremacy of the state.10

Along these lines, Wolfe shows that one means of opposing taxation was to preserve a sharp distinction between the king’s property and everyone else’s. This helped to emphasize that the king did not represent a “public interest,” and thus the public’s wealth was not the king’s:

For the feudalists, a king’s property had to be delineated sharply from that of his people; when the king needed funds beyond his traditional revenues he had to request them from the French, both those living in the royal domain and those in the remaining fiefs.11

Another cultural foundation behind medieval opposition to taxation may have been a long-established aversion to taxation from the late Roman Empire when taxation was high but brought few benefits. This would have been especially true in the periphery of the old Empire where Roman tax officials, as late as the fifth century were strong enough to collect taxes, but the Roman state was not strong enough to actually protect farmers from criminals. As historian Paul Freedman has noted, for peasants, the shift from the Roman state to early feudalism not at all necessarily a step down from the late Roman Empire: “you weren’t worse off in the eighth century than you would have been in the fourth century,” Freedman says, “In fact, you might be better off because the taxation infrastructure wasn’t there” As the Roman bureaucrats disappeared from the lives of European peasants, “there was, in a way, more violence, but less state violence.” And the absence of Roman bureaucracy also meant the disappearance of countless Roman regulations that limited the freedom of peasants: “fewer rules, fewer repressions on the ability of ordinary people to do things like hunting or keeping their own produce or making arrangements among their own communities.”

In other words, the disappearance of the Roman state and Roman taxes (in the West) was hardly the end of the world for many Europeans, and this reality may have become engrained in European ideas about the alleged necessity of tax-financed states in later centuries.

Moreover, Chris Wickham notes that Roman taxes in the later days of the empire were not exactly well appreciated, writing that “Roman taxation was perceived as heavy, Complaints about its weight are endless; whole rhetorical systems were developed to characterize its oppressive nature.”12

Tax collectors in this period – the fifth century- were described as “tyrants” and “brigands.” These taxes were accompanied by “ferocious imperial laws” and the end result was “a world in which pretty much everybody, from the top to the bottom, was oppressed by the tax system.” Nor was the magnitude of the tax burden simply a matter of the Roman subjects’ imagination. Taxes were “genuinely high” under the Romans in the late empire, Wickham tells us, much of it imposed as a land tax on farmers.

The End of the Middle Ages and the Rise of Absolutism

While much of the anti-tax sentiment of the Middle Ages survived into the Renaissance—now called the “early modern period”—these ideas were slowly replaced by more modern ideas that laid the foundation for mercantilism and absolutism. As Murray Rothbard shows in his history of economic thought, Niccolò Machiavelli played an important role in this by de-Christianizing political theory and replacing it with amoral, consequentialist, technocratic thinking on the potential “benefits” of taxation. The morally privileged place of private property—recognized by Scholastics and many others of the Middle Ages—was reduced to merely one consideration among many. It was replaced by new theories, and under Bodin and other absolutists, taxes came to be seen as a means of forging a prosperous society through a strong state.

The absolutists, however, were unable to expunge from the minds of European taxpayers the notion that there remained a critical distinction between the king’s property—and thus the state’s property—and private property. It was perhaps Rousseau who dealt the greatest blow against the solicitous and resilient idea that the state and its taxes are not “ours.” With Rousseau, however—the most influential theorist inspiring the French Revolution—it could be said that everything the king or his state expropriated from the taxpayers remained “ours.” In the Rousseauean conception, everything the state does is a reflection of “the general will” and thus the distinction between property, tax, and state is essentially eliminated.

Yet, today, the common historical narrative on these matters tells us that it was the medieval mind that favored and actualized untrammeled state power while later proponents of absolutism, mercantilism, and a centralized state were somehow the ones who favored greater freedom. That version of history is problematic, to say the least.

Image credit: Medieval French manuscript illustration depicting three classes of medieval society: clergy, peasants, and the warrior class. Via Wikimedia.

—

1 Matin Wolfe, “French Views on Wealth and Taxes from the Middle Ages to the Old Regime,” The Journal of Economic History 26,No. 4 (Dec. 1966), p. 467-8.

2 Jacob Viner, Religious Thought and Economic Society (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1978) p. 104-5.

3 Wolfe, “French Views,” p. 467.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 469-470.

6 Ibid., p. 469.

7 George Holmes, The Later Middle Ages, 1272-1485 (Edinburgh, UK: Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd, 1962) p. 228.

8 Ibid.

9 Luigi Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottieri, “Taxation and Forced Labor: “The Two Bodies of the Citizen in Modern Political Theology,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 27, No. 1 (2023): 226.

10 Ibid.

11 Wolfe, “French Views,” p. 470.

12 See Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800, (Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press, 2005).

The post Why Taxes Were So Hated in the Middle Ages appeared first on LewRockwell.

In ancient Rome, interregnum was the term given to the period between stable governments when anything untoward might occur, and sometimes did – civil unrest, warfare between warlords, power vacuums and, finally, succession wars. But eventually the dust would settle and the victors, whoever they might be, would at some point restabilise the empire, often with a new map, showing the latest lines of geographic possession.

In 1929, the Italian Antonio Gramsci was in a fascist prison, writing about what he considered to be a new interregnum – a Europe that was tearing itself apart. He anticipated civil unrest, war between nations and repeated changes in the lines of geographic possession.

At that time, he was attributed as saying, “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

And, of course, looking back from our vantage point in the twenty-first century, we have no difficulty in confirming that he was correct in his prognosis. The world war that followed brought forward the worst traits in mankind. The sociopaths of the world came centre-stage. By the time the dust had settled, tens of millions were dead.

What we do have difficulty with is recognizing that the same pattern is again with us. National leaders and their advisors are spoiling for war, building up weaponry, creating senseless proxy wars in other nations’ backyards and playing a dangerous game of “chicken” with other major powers.

This will not end well. It never does. Once the shoving-match has begun, it only escalates. At some point, whether it’s the false-flag assassination of an Archduke, as in World War I, or the false flag attack on Germany by Poland, as in World War II, we can always count on some excuse being created to justify diving headlong into war.

It’s also true that, when empires get into economic trouble that’s too far gone for any viable solution, a trick that’s always employed by political leaders to keep the citizens from removing them from their seats of power, is to start a war. A people will, if they believe their homeland is in peril, accept the “temporary” removal of their freedoms.

Even in the United States, the famed “Land of the Free,” political leaders have routinely imprisoned dissidents in times of warfare. People tend to get behind their leaders in wartime, no matter how undeserved that loyalty might be.

And so, now is the time of monsters, as Mr. Gramsci rightly stated. A time of uncertainty, when countries are in turmoil and would-be leaders are jostling for power with existing leaders. An interregnum.

Troubled times tend to bring out all the crazies – all the sociopathic-types that would find it hard to succeed in stable, prosperous times.

In such times, the average person becomes worried that things are not going to turn out well. That’s perfectly understandable. Unfortunately, most people lack both the imagination and the courage to cope with how the times are impacting their lives. They instead rely on others to provide a torch that might help them escape from the darkness.

Not surprising then, that every snake-oil salesman in town sees an opportunity to offer big promises – promises that he has neither the ability nor the inclination to fulfill.

At such times, the people of a country tend to become polarized, placing their faith in one political party or another, hoping that their party will “make the bad stuff go away.”

In the US we see, on the liberal side, promises for “free health care for all,” a guaranteed basic income, housing for those who cannot afford it, and an endless stream of promises that, if the government were to implement them all, they will not be able to pay for them, even with 100% taxation from those who presently pay tax.

On the conservative side, we see promises such as “Make America Great Again,” with tax rebates that do not rejuvenate the economy, breaks for firms that have expatriated, but do not fool them into returning, claims to cut budgets, only to increase them, and promises to eliminate debt, only to expand it.

To be sure, the problem begins at the top. But it doesn’t end there. It sifts down to the proletariat, who, unable to come up with constructive solutions, create their own monsters, trashing the shops and burning the cars of people who had no hand in creating the problem.

But surely this is just a one-off phase, in which the best and brightest are temporarily pushed offstage, but will soon return, yes?

Well, unfortunately, no. Historically, a period such as this one is followed by one of increased madness. Historically, the next step is societal breakdown. Riots, secessions and revolutions become commonplace, accompanied by economic collapse.

Out of these events come the worst monsters of all. It’s in the wake of such developments that the people of any country then turn away from those that made the empty promises and toward those who promise revenge against an ill-defined group who are characterized as having caused the problems.

That’s when the Robespierres, the Lenins, the Hitlers – the greatest monsters – are swept into power. They invariably deliver the same message – that they’ll seek out the aristocracy, the gentry, the patricians, and strip them of their positions and possessions.

Invariably the way that this shakes out is not that the average man rises up, taking his “fair share” of the spoils. Instead, the leaders take the spoils and the proletariat are reduced to an equality of poverty.

Our friend Mr. Gramsci found himself imprisoned by Benito Mussolini and died from illnesses incurred in prison. Unfortunately, his approach was to complain, but remain, as his country deteriorated around him. This proved, for him, to be the worst of choices.

And, so it is today.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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During the weeks ahead, I will be watching Israel and Iran like a hawk.  Prior to the 12 day war between Israel and Iran earlier this year, it was clear that something was up.  Now we are witnessing similar signs, and many experts are concerned that the very fragile ceasefire that was agreed to at the end of the 12 day war could soon collapse.  Iran is rebuilding their nuclear sites and is telling western countries that there will be no more negotiations.  On the other side, the U.S. and Israel have both pledged that Iran will not be allowed to rebuild their nuclear program.  In fact, on Sunday President Trump publicly threatened to bomb Iran again…

“They were going to have a nuclear weapon within a month,” Trump said. “And now they can start the operation all over again, but I hope they don’t because we’ll have to take care of that too if they do, I let them know that. You want to do that, it’s fine, but we’re going to take care of that and we’re not going to wait so long.”

Of course President Trump knows very well that Iranian officials have repeatedly stated that they will never give up their nuclear program, and satellite images prove that Iran has been conducting construction work at two very important enrichment facilities…

Three months after US and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, new satellite images show signs of construction work at two of its key enrichment facilities.

An analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery captured by Maxar Technologies on 18 September reveals work on a new perimeter and tunnel south of the Natanz enrichment complex.

Multiple construction vehicles are visible in an area south of the complex while digging work appears to be underway. Images also show work to extend a perimeter around that same area.

The Iranians responded to Trump’s threat of more bombing on Monday.

They called the U.S. “a law-breaking country”, and they made it clear that there will be no negotiations…

Iran’s foreign ministry on Monday branded the United States a “law-breaking” country, rejecting any prospect of talks with Washington after US President Donald Trump warned he would again bomb Iran if it resumes nuclear activities.

Trump’s public remarks amounted to an admission of “a criminal and illegal act” that only reinforced America’s image as a violator of international law, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmail Baghaei said during his weekly briefing.

“It will be clear to the international community and to the Iranian nation that the United States is a law-breaking country,” Baghaei added. “We have no plan for negotiations.”

The Iranians have clearly made their choice.

So how long will Trump wait before he pulls the trigger again?

We were surprised by Trump’s timing during the 12 day war, and we may be surprised the next time it happens too.

If we bomb Iran, one of the first places that Iran will hit will be our base in Qatar.

Interestingly, President Trump recently signed an order that makes any attack on Qatar a “threat to the peace and security of the United States”…

President Donald Trump signed an order Monday offering a U.S. guarantee for Qatar’s security — a significant commitment for the rising non-NATO Arab ally.

“The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States,” the order, made public Wednesday, read in no uncertain terms.

“In the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures — including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military — to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”

Recently, the U.S. military sent a whole bunch of air tankers to our base in Qatar, and that created quite a stir.

Because the last time we witnessed a deployment of air tankers of this magnitude, Iran got bombed…

Behnam Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tells the Daily Mail, while ‘correlation is not causation’, he can’t help but think of the last time there was a mass tanker deployment by the United States.

‘Soon after that something went boom in the Middle East. Critically, in Operation Midnight Hammer, the Trump administration executed a decoy or deception effort to mask the flight of the B-2 bombers to Iran,’ Taleblu said, emphasizing that he is the only US president in two decades to deploy over military force against Iranian nuclear facilities.

‘Big military movements on his watch are something to keep an eye on,’ Taleblu added.

Of course it is also possible that those tankers may have been deployed to assist Israel in new strikes against Iran.

As I discussed in a previous article, Iranian forces have already been put on high alert because Iranian leaders are extremely concerned that new attacks could happen at any moment.

And the Institute for the Study of War has come to the conclusion that those running Iran “believe that the ceasefire with Israel will collapse”…

Officials in Iran believe that the ceasefire with Israel will collapse and that conflict will resume in the future, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

The assessment by the Washington, DC think tank outlined how Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SCNC) had directed military and civilian officials to designate successors in the event of leadership disruption to ensure continuation in the event of war.

If at some point the Iranians are convinced that an Israeli strike is imminent, could they actually choose to strike first in order to get the upper hand?

Israeli politician Avigdor Liberman is convinced that this is the case, and he is urging Israeli citizens to “be careful and close to protected spaces” during Sukkot…

He urged Israelis to celebrate cautiously on the coming Sukkot, which starts Monday night and lasts for seven days: “Spend time with family and friends, but be careful and close to protected spaces.”

This year, the first day of Sukkot runs from the evening of October 6th to the evening of October 7th.

Needless to say, October 7th is a very significant date for Israel.

Two years ago, the war in the Middle East started when Hamas terrorists came pouring across the border.

It looks like the conflict in Gaza may be wrapping up, but things with Iran are a long way from being resolved.

Before Israeli leaders sign a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement, they want the threat that Iran poses to be completely neutralized.

So I think that we will soon see major events occur in the Middle East, and when that happens the entire globe will be shocked.

Reprinted with permission from The Economic Collapse.

The post Trump Is Threatening To Bomb Iran Again, But Israel May Beat Him To It appeared first on LewRockwell.

Everything before October 7 explains why October 7 happened, and so does everything that’s happened since.

Look at what happened before October 7 and you’ll see year after year of murder, oppression and abuse.

Look at everything that’s happened since October 7 and you’ll understand the kind of sadistic, psychopathic regime the Palestinians have been living under this entire time.

Israel supporters don’t want you looking at what happened before October 7, and they don’t want you looking at anything that’s happened since. They just want you to pretend history began and ended with a bunch of Hitlerite savages attacking innocent Jews for no reason.

Never forget October 7th 2023, that fateful day when Israelis were brutally massacred by Israeli tanks and Israeli helicopters and Israeli drones and Israeli soldiers and Israeli bullets, and also by Hamas a bit. pic.twitter.com/bwjdARVQ0p

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 7, 2025

And they don’t even want you looking at the day of October 7 too closely, either. Looking too closely at the events of that day bring up inconvenient questions about the Hannibal Directive and what percentage of the death toll was actually caused by the IDF firing on their own people. Inconvenient questions about the suspicious stock trading in the lead-up to the attack and the mountains upon mountains upon mountains of evidence that high-level Israeli officials allowed the attack to proceed undefended in order to advance the genocidal land grab we’re seeing advanced now.

They only want you looking at the parts of October 7 that make Israel look like an innocent little lamb who was attacked completely out of the blue and had no choice but to reluctantly respond with military force.

Forget the scorched earth incineration of the Gaza Strip.

Forget the bombed-out hospitals and methodically dismantled healthcare system.

Forget the hundreds upon hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza who’ve been deliberately starved to death.

Forget the fact that every relevant human rights institution on earth has determined that Israel is committing genocide, and that zero comparable humanitarian institutions have said it isn’t.

Forget the fact that human rights experts had been describing Gaza as a giant concentration camp or open-air prison for years prior to October 7.

Forget the fact that Israel had been routinely murdering Palestinian children and other civilians in the months prior to the Hamas attack.

Don’t look at any of that stuff. Just look at the stuff that makes Israel look like the victim.

That’s the story, anyway. Luckily, fewer and fewer people are buying into it.

The longer this genocide goes on for, the more the world has come to view October 7 as Israel reaping what it had long been sowing.

________________

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The post Everything Before and After October 7 Explains Why October 7 Happened appeared first on LewRockwell.

Washington politicians and bureaucrats are controlling much of your daily life. The more paternalistic government becomes, the more the state is a symbol of the superiority of some people over everyone else. How much wiser must some people be to entitle them to dictate how everyone else lives?

The President Is a Lot Smarter Than You Think was the book title of a 1973 collection of Doonesbury cartoons. The book cover showed a construction worker glaring at a college punk who did not appreciate the wisdom of the commander-in-chief. The cartoon was originally a jibe at diehard Richard Nixon supporters. But since then, the notion that government is smarter than it seems has become the mantra of many social scientists, editorial writers, and pundits.

Paternalism is fashionable in part because it is self-evident — at least inside the Washington, D.C., beltway — that Washingtonians are superior to the rest of the nation. But the paternalist calculus only works if one assumes that the paternalist class is composed of saints untouched by the self-interest, vanity, or vindictiveness that trademark other humans. Paternalism requires the illusion that the political-bureaucratic class has no motivation except serving humanity. In reality, the self-interest of the paternalists leads them to exaggerate their successes, hide their failures, and multiply their prerogatives.

In the same way that premodern political orders presumed that kings and aristocrats were innately superior to peasants, so today’s leviathan requires assuming that bureaucrats are vastly more proficient than private citizens. But it is not sufficient to show that government policymakers have more years of education or more graduate degrees than private citizens. Instead, paternalists need to prove that government officials are almost as superior to average citizens as zookeepers are to caged animals.

Contemporary paternalists presume that citizens will benefit even when policymakers do not know what they are doing. Champions of government intervention tend to focus solely on the mental and moral defects of private citizens and markets. Philosophy professor Sarah Conly, in a 2013 New York Times op-ed headlined, “Three Cheers for the Nanny State,” noted that an “enormous amount of study over the past few decades [shows] that we are all prone to identifiable and predictable miscalculations.” Conly declared that people suffer from “cognitive bias. A lot of times we have a good idea of where we want to go, but a really terrible idea of how to get there.”

But private follies do not magically generate official wisdom. Niclas Berggrena, a Swedish economist, analyzed proposals for government intervention in 2012 and found that 95 percent of paternalist proposals “do not contain any analysis of the cognitive ability of policymakers.” His study noted that propaternalist economists “simply assume that one set of actors [politicians and bureaucrats] is free from irrationality…. Political actors were assumed by many economists to be benevolent maximizers of a social welfare function.” Many of the articles that Berggrena analyzed were cited by Cass Sunstein, one of the most prominent paternalists and the Obama White House’s “regulatory czar” and a zealot for government “nudges.”

The disaster of public housing

The pretenses of paternalism are tricky to reconcile with the record of federal agencies. In 1934, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes promised that, thanks to the Roosevelt administration’s public housing program, “Our children will become healthier men and women. There will be a reduction in crime.” But public housing quickly became notorious as the most dangerous locale in many cities. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) conceded in 1979 that some public housing projects had crime rates 20 times higher than the national average. George Sternlieb, director of the Center for Urban Policy Research at Rutgers University, observed in 1982 that public housing creates “a moral and psychological bankruptcy” in “the people who live in it.”

Though public housing is routinely a social disaster, it is often a political success. In Chicago, city aldermen long resisted efforts to raze high-rise housing hells and replace them with smaller housing units. Public housing blocks were advantageous for politicians — even if the police refused to enter them because of sniper fire. As the Chicago Tribune noted, tenants in Chicago Housing Authority high-rises “were beholden to the [local political] machine for the very roofs over their heads.”

In 1994, the National Academy of Public Administration declared that if HUD was not operating “in an effective, accountable manner” within five years, “the President and Congress should seriously consider dismantling the department and moving its programs elsewhere.” HUD continued floundering long after that five-year benchmark. In 2011, the Washington Post compiled hundreds of satellite images to prove that HUD’s largest home-building program was a “dysfunctional system that delivers billions of dollars to local housing agencies with few rules, safeguards or even a reliable way to track projects.” HUD claimed to have no idea that billions of dollars of its grants had been misused. HUD ignored a barrage of complaints from individuals whose neighborhoods were harmed and property devalued by its nondevelopment debacles. The Post noted that HUD “has largely looked the other way: It does not track the pace of construction and often fails to spot defunct deals, instead trusting local agencies to police projects. The result is a trail of failed developments in every corner of the country. Fields where apartment complexes were promised are empty and neglected. Houses that were supposed to be renovated are boarded up and crumbling, eyesores in decaying neighborhoods.”

A cycle of violence

Government routinely blindfolds both itself and its victims. In 1985, the District of Columbia enacted the Youth Rehabilitation Act to expunge the criminal records and avoid giving harsh sentences to offenders under the age of 22. That law, sparked by concern about the high incarceration rate of black males, helps generate some of America’s highest homicide rates. Between 2010 and 2016, 121 offenders who previously received wrist slaps under that Youth Act were charged with murder. The D.C. government and its judges did not even bother tracking subsequent crimes by recipients of Youth Act sentences. As a result, the “cycle of violence has been largely shrouded from public view or oversight,” the Washington Post noted. The toll was exposed only after the Post created software to extract details of every D.C. criminal case since 2010.

The federal government shares the blame for D.C. carnage. In 1997, as part of a budget bailout for the District of Columbia, Congress took over the D.C. parole system and created the federal Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA). The federally funded agency routinely fails to notify D.C. police when offenders vanish or otherwise violate the terms of their parole. Almost 1,500 violent crimes were committed by CSOSA-supervised offenders in 2016. CSOSA even ignored the fact that parolees routinely disabled their GPS monitor devices until one of its “clients” (as the agency calls its parolees) brutally raped a college professor in 2016. The Post noted, “About once a week, a D.C. offender under federal supervision ends up as either a victim or a suspect in a homicide investigation…. By August 2015, nearly half of the suspects that D.C. police were charging in killings were offenders under the supervision of CSOSA or were free pending trial.” The CSOSA refused to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Post seeking data on recidivism by its “clients.” CSOSA director Nancy Ware explained her agency’s leniency: “With our population, we want to give them the benefit of the doubt.” But hapless District residents receive no such “benefit of the doubt” from violent predators.

Smokescreens and deception 

Some federal agencies emit smokescreens that completely envelop their operations. In 2011, Defense Secretary Robert Gates lamented his failure to curb Pentagon waste: “My staff and I learned that it was nearly impossible to get accurate information and answers to questions such as ‘How much money do you spend?’ and ‘how many people do you have?’” Chuck Hagel, who became Defense Secretary in 2013, fought the same battle. In 2014, consultants brought in by the Defense Business Board quickly discovered $125 billion in bureaucratic waste. The Washington Post reported, “Pentagon leaders had requested the study to help make their enormous back-office bureaucracy more efficient and reinvest any savings in combat power. But after the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.” The study revealed far more outsiders on the payroll than previously suspected. For instance, “the Army employed 199,661 full-time contractors,” which “exceeded the combined civil workforce for the Departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development.” The report also revealed that “the average administrative job at the Pentagon was costing taxpayers more than $200,000 [a year], including salary and benefits.” After Hagel resigned as secretary in 2015, Pentagon leaders disavowed the study and resumed their regularly scheduled pleading of budgetary poverty.

The arrogance of the elite

Regardless of the perennial pratfalls of agencies like HUD and the Pentagon, many academics tacitly presume that the federal government is guided by a “brain trust.” That term was first showcased during Franklin Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign. Once he took office, he appointed supposedly the smartest people in the land to solve the nation’s problems. Most of the original brain trust were lawyers whose heavy-handed economic interventions produced more chaos than prosperity. But their faith in massive federal spending remained unshaken. As FDR’s team floundered, “brain trust” became a derisive label for arrogant policymakers.

Because most Americans are slackers on history, the Roosevelt administration did not permanently destroy the credibility of a federal “brain trust.” Citizens are still encouraged to believe that there are people smart enough to solve all the problems politicians create. Forty-nine percent of Americans favor “having experts, not government, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country,” according to a 2011 poll. The survey respondents did not specify which army or nuclear warheads the experts would use to enforce their judgments.

Actually, the type of experts trumpeted by the media perennially offer dreadful advice. Philip Tetlock, a University of California research psychologist, analyzed 82,000 predictions made over a 20-year period by 284 widely recognized political experts. In his 2005 book Expert Political Judgment, Tetlock found that experts’ predictions were “only a tiny bit better than random guesses — the equivalent of a chimpanzee throwing darts at a board.” Tetlock noted “a perversely inverse relationship between indicators of good judgment and the qualities the media prizes in pundits.” In Washington, a reputation for wisdom suffices for a grasp of the facts. Experts achieve prominence thanks to their swagger and bluster, not their foresight. As long as experts err in favor of leviathan, their blunders are speedily expunged.

The policy elite, despite their credentials, routinely ignore the “lessons of history” that they piously invoke. Even worse, experts are biased in favor of government interventions that put them in the spotlight. For instance, members of the Council on Foreign Relations are consistently far more enthused about launching foreign wars than the American public. Leslie Gelb, a former top State Department official and one of the most prominent council members, confessed in 2009: “My initial support for the war [in Iraq] was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility. We ‘experts’ have a lot to fix about ourselves.”

Omniscient paternalism

The Washington area has more certified experts per square mile than anywhere on earth. The District of Columbia has 120 times more political scientists per capita than the rest of the nation. But rather than producing “good governance,” the 3,200 political scientists and legions of other would-be Brain Trusters provide endless pretexts to further extend the federal sway.

In 1956, Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev, in a secret speech condemning the late Josef Stalin, denounced the establishment of a cult presuming that a ruler “supposedly knows everything, sees everything, thinks for everyone, can do anything, is infallible in his behavior.” Contemporary political scientists eschew Stalinist assumptions to justify government interventions. Instead, they tacitly assume the existence of endless mini-Stalins, ready and able to take the helm of every new program. As a result, America is becoming a caretaker democracy in which rulers dupe and punish citizens for their own good.

Paternalism requires degrading assumptions about citizens and deluded assumptions about rulers. But the friends of leviathan have never proffered a cure for the blind spot at the core of their salvation scheme. As novelist Upton Sinclair quipped in 1935, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Paternalism is a desperate gamble that lying politicians will honestly care for those who fall under their power.

This article was originally published in the September 2025 issue of Future of Freedom.

The post Washington’s Brain Trust Mirage appeared first on LewRockwell.

Peter recently appeared on the Land Development Podcast to lay out a simple case: inflation is the central problem for the economy, and the market is already signaling that through the surge in precious metals and commodity prices. He ties that trend to current policy choices — tariffs, deficit spending and energy misallocation — and warns those choices will raise costs for ordinary buyers and borrowers.

He starts by noting how the market has rewarded holders of foreign stocks and commodities this year, including precious metals, and how that strength is showing up in client portfolios:

Of course, gold and silver stocks, a lot of silver stocks have tripled, quadrupled this year. Gold stocks have more than doubled. So it’s probably the best year that I’ve had as far as returns for my clients. Even my non-gold stocks, you know, my standard portfolios are up over 40% on the year. So it’s a great year to be invested in foreign stocks, in precious metals, commodities in general, I think.

Peter reads those moves in the precious metals complex as a direct signal about inflation — not as a speculative fad but as the market’s way of pricing in currency debasement. He points the finger at Washington’s policies, arguing that political promises to “get rid of inflation” collide with actions that create it:

I mean, gold is not almost $3,800 an ounce, because there’s not an inflation problem. Silver is not over 46, because we don’t have to worry about inflation. The precious metals are telling us that the thing that we should be worried most about is inflation. And that’s because that’s basically Donald Trump’s economic policy is to create inflation. Even though he campaigned on getting rid of inflation, his entire presidency is about making more inflation.

He explains why politicians tend to avoid the medicine that would actually cure inflation — the short, painful adjustments that markets require — and how that avoidance locks in worse long-term outcomes:

The reason he doesn’t want to actually solve the problems is because doing that brings about a severe recession that nobody can deny. It’s going to mean higher interest rates. It’s going to mean lower stock prices, lower real estate prices. A lot of companies are going to fail because they won’t be able to pay their debt. The government’s going to have to cut spending, including on entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, and that’s going to anger a lot of voters.

Those policy choices have concrete effects for everyday purchases, not only for retirees or investors. Peter points to tariffs as a clear, immediate driver of higher costs in housing and construction materials, compounding inflation rather than solving anything:

If you buy a new home and you want some furniture, now there’s 30% extra tariffs on any of it that’s upholstered. So Trump keeps on slapping tariffs. We got them already on steel, on aluminum, and lumber. All the stuff that you need to build homes are not only more expensive because of the tariffs, but they’re going to be more expensive because of inflation, which is going to drive the cost of everything. So you’re not going to have a lot of new supply.

That makes the government’s recent tilt toward promoting cryptocurrencies even more baffling to Peter. He sees a political push to encourage retail buying of Bitcoin and other tokens as a kind of national-scale pump-and-dump that distracts from real investment in productivity, while wasting scarce energy resources that could serve AI development and data centers:

Now they’ve taken the Bitcoin pump and dump scheme and they’ve basically gone national with it where the government is doing the pumping. So the government is trying to help sucker people into buying Bitcoin or Ethereum or all these other you know alt coins … But it is very unfortunate that Trump is encouraging all this, because first of all I talked earlier about where’s the energy going to come from for AI. Well, we’re wasting a lot of energy mining all these tokens. So that’s one thing that we could give up.

This article was originally published on SchiffGold.com.

The post Inflation Is the Threat appeared first on LewRockwell.

It was unexpected, but the advocates of generalized war, the Straussians, expelled from the governing bodies of the United States, have regrouped in intergovernmental organizations. To everyone’s surprise, they are present in the European Union, but especially in the United Nations and in the Contact Group on the Defense of Ukraine. Institutions dedicated to peace have been hijacked by the warmongers.

For nearly a year, President Donald Trump has been putting America back in order. He has reestablished the principles of equality before the law and merit-based promotion at the expense of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). He has slashed federal budgets for anything related to imperial spending and attempted to restore the military’s primary function: homeland defense.

At the same time, we all see how he is failing to achieve the peace he hoped for in Ukraine and Palestine. He is letting the Europeans fight not for Ukraine, but against Russia and Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition persisting in its program of a “Greater Israel,” that is, the annexation of its neighbors  [ 1 ] .

However, we fail to see the worst of it: the Straussians, who held the upper hand under George Bush Jr., Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, are still not defeated. They have retreated into two intergovernmental organizations: NATO and the UN.

Outside NATO, they have taken control of the Contact Group on the Defence of Ukraine (formerly the Ramstein Group), which, since 9 September, no longer meets alternately at the US military base in Ramstein and at NATO headquarters in Mons-Brussels, but now also in London.

They, along with Ukrainian intelligence, organized drone flights over Western and Northern European airports. They then pushed for the delivery of German Patriot missile batteries to Ukraine, after secretly organizing the transfer of the first batteries from Israel.

They are still the ones who falsified the reports of the UN General Secretariat on the meetings of the Security Council on 19 and 26 September  [ 2 ] . Contrary to these reports – which we were wrong to believe – the Security Council did not validate the return of sanctions against Iran. Moreover, it did not have the power to do so.

This summer, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom adopted a strange common position on the JCPoA, the nuclear agreement signed during the 5+1 negotiations with Iran. As a reminder, the United States led these negotiations ostensibly to end Iran’s military nuclear program and prevent the country from possessing an atomic bomb. After a round of discussions, the meetings were interrupted for a year while Washington and Tehran concluded a secret protocol about which we know nothing. Then the negotiations resumed and were immediately concluded by a treaty in Vienna. It is also important to remember that China and Russia, who participated in the negotiations, both attested that there had been no Iranian military nuclear program since 1988.

The JCPoA was validated by Security Council Resolution 2231 on July 20, 2015. As a result, the sanctions that the council had adopted against Iran were gradually lifted. However, by the following year, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany were questioning the agreement on the grounds that Iran was conducting research on missiles capable of delivering atomic bombs. Ultimately, on May 8, 2018, President Donald Trump (in his first term) decided to withdraw from the agreement on the grounds that it had not prevented Iran from increasing its military power in the Middle East. On September 19, 2020, Elliott Abrams, President Trump’s representative for Venezuela… and Iran, announced the reinstatement of US sanctions, allegedly by resorting to paragraph 11 of the resolution (” snapback mechanism  “). However, neither Washington, nor London, nor Paris, nor Berlin have ever attempted to resort to paragraph 36 of the JCPoA for the simple reason that they would have had to admit that they were wrong.

However, as Iran, China and Russia have been repeatedly saying for the past five years, the JCPoA was included in Resolution 2231. Therefore, it is not possible to activate paragraph 11 of the resolution without taking into account the commitments signed in the JCPoA  [ 3 ] . And these were initially violated by the Europeans and the United States. China stated: “The United States has re-imposed and continuously tightened unilateral sanctions against Iran and adopted maximum pressure measures. As a result, Iran has been unable to enjoy the economic benefits arising from the JCPOA and has been forced to no longer comply with part of its obligations under the JCPOA.”  [ 4 ] Under international law, there is no doubt that the mechanism of resuming sanctions must be considered a unilateral punishment against Iran and an unfair measure.

These legal considerations are not quibbles. Respect for them is essential to international law. There is a hierarchy of standards and one cannot apply a provision of a text without first applying that of a previous text which is linked to it  [ 5 ]

The fact that the UN administration falsified the minutes of two Security Council meetings, as evidenced by the verbatim transcripts of these meetings, leaves no room for doubt  [ 6 ] . This administration is no longer impartial, but is playing into the hands of the opponents of peace in the Middle East.

Do not imagine that the war supporters only control the UN press service. The day after the publication of the falsified summaries of the Security Council meetings, the General Secretariat drafted a “note verbale” (reference: DPPA/SCAD/SCA/4/25(1)) instituting sanctions against Iran as if they had been approved  [ 7 ] . Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia , the Russian Permanent Representative, almost choked. He immediately drafted a letter to the Secretary-General (reference S/2025/610) which he had distributed to the Security Council  [ 8 ] .

We are going through a situation where the General Secretariat, abandoning the impartiality of its function and the principles of international law, has aligned itself with the legal interpretation of two states, permanent members of the council, France and the United Kingdom.

We remember that in 2016, during the war against Syria, the number 2 of the UN, the American Jeffrey Feltman, and his assistant, the German Volker Perthes, had drafted in their office in New York not a peace plan, but a plan for the capitulation of Syria  [ 9 ] . I had commented on this document that I had analyzed for President Bashar al-Assad in my book Before Our Eyes . Taken aback by its content, most historians remained circumspect. The Syrian Arab Republic having been overthrown by the United Kingdom and Turkey. This secret document will be disclosed on the occasion of the publication of this book in German.

In 2016, the United Nations, formed in 1948 to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” was able, contrary to its official purpose, to act to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic. It implemented the plan A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm [10]  , written by the Straussians for Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996. It can therefore, once again, act for war.

This is likely what President Donald Trump was referring to in his speech to the 80th session of the General Assembly on September 23  [ 11 ] . In that speech, he did not criticize the UN in the name of “American exceptionalism”  [ 12 ] like other US presidents before him, but because it did not intervene in his peace efforts on different continents, in seven different conflicts.

We must understand what is happening today: the enemy is no longer Uncle Sam, it is still the Straussians  [ 13 ] , now within the United Nations and the Contact Group on the Defense of Ukraine. They still want to lead us towards generalized war. They now rely on the Israeli revisionist Zionists  [ 14 ] and the Ukrainian integral nationalists  [ 15 ] .

—

[ 1 ]  “  Netanyahu and Nazism  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , September 23, 2025.

[ 2 ]  ”  Security Council opposes continued easing of UN sanctions against Iran  ” and ”  Iranian nuclear: Security Council endorses return to UN sanctions against Iran by rejecting extension of 2015 resolution 2231  “, United Nations.

[ 3 ]  “  Russian position on the British-German-French interpretation of the “snapback”  ”, Voltaire Network, August 29, 2025.

[ 4 ]  “  Chinese position on the British-German-French interpretation of the “snapback”  ”, Voltaire Network , August 19, 2025.

[ 5 ]  “  Iranian protest against accusations from the United States, France and Ukraine  ”, by Amir Saeid Iravani, Voltaire Network , 5 August 2025. “  Russia’s warning to the UN Secretary-General  ”, by Sergei Lavrov, Voltaire Network , 27 September 2025.

[ 6 ]  Minutes of the meetings of the Security Council of 19 and 26 September 2025. United Nations S/PV.10001 and S/PV.10006 .

[ 7 ]  “  General Secretariat reinstates sanctions against Iran  ”, UN (General Secretariat), Voltaire Network , September 27, 2025.

[ 8 ]  “  Russia asks the UN to withdraw its sanctions against Iran taken in violation of the decisions of the Security Council  ”, by Vassily Nebenzia, Voltaire Network , September 29, 2025.

[ 9 ]  “  Germany and the UN against Syria  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Al-Watan (Syria), Voltaire Network , January 28, 2016.

[ 10 ]  “  A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Kingdom of Israel  ,” by Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, Voltaire Network , July 1, 1996.

[ 11 ]  “  Excerpt from Donald Trump’s speech at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly  ”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network , September 23, 2025.

[ 12 ]  Proceedings of the conference organized by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy: American Exceptionalism and Human Rights , Michael Ignatieff, Princeton University Press (2005).

[ 13 ]  “  Vladimir Putin declares war on the Straussians  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , March 5, 2022. “  The Straussian coup in Israel  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , March 7, 2023.

[ 14 ]  “  The veil is torn: the hidden truths of Jabotinsky and Netanyahu  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , January 23, 2024.

[ 15 ]  “  Who are the Ukrainian integral nationalists?  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , November 15, 2022.

The post Straussians Take Control of the United Nations and NATO appeared first on LewRockwell.

“When they came in the middle of the night, they terrorized the families that were living there. There were children who were without clothing, they were zip tied, taken outside at 3 o’clock in the morning. A senior resident, an American citizen with no warrants, was taken outside and handcuffed for three hours. Doors were blown off their hinges, walls were broken through, immigration agents coming from Black Hawk helicopters … This is America.”—Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson

When the government can label anyone or anything an enemy in order to wage war, we are all in danger.

That danger is no longer theoretical.

In the same breath that the administration touts lethal military strikes against Venezuelan boats in Caribbean waters, federal agents are conducting coordinated militarized raids on homes in Chicago, rappelling down on apartment buildings from Black Hawk helicopters, dragging families out of their homes, separating children from their parents, and using zip ties to immobilize them—even citizens.

The message—spoken and unspoken—is that the government is on a war footing everywhere: abroad, at sea, and now at our front doors.

This “everywhere war” depends on a simple redefinition: call it a war, and the target becomes a combatant. Call the city a battlespace, and its residents become suspects.

What the White House is doing overseas to vessels it deems part of a terrorist network (without any credible proof or due process), it is now mimicking at home with door-kicking raids, mass surveillance, and ideological watchlists.

With the stroke of a pen, President Trump continues to set aside the constitutional safeguards meant to restrain exactly this kind of mission creep, handing himself and his agencies sweeping authority to disregard the very principles on which this nation was founded—principles intended to serve as constitutional safeguards against tyranny, corruption, abuse and overreach put in place by America’s founding fathers.

Take National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), for example.

NSPM-7 directs a government-wide campaign to “investigate,” “disrupt,” and “dismantle” so-called domestic threats, ordering agencies to pool their data, resources, and operations in service of this agenda.

What makes NSPM-7 so dangerous is not only its declared purpose but its breadth and secrecy. There are no clearly defined standards, no meaningful transparency, and no external oversight. The public is told only that the government will protect them—by watching them.

Yet the danger is not only in what the government hides, but in what it chooses to see.

Even more troubling is the way “threats” are defined.

What is being sold as a campaign to disrupt left-wing conspiracies has expanded to include ideology, rhetoric, and belief.

Clearly, this is not just another surveillance program.

NSPM-7 is a framework for rebranding dissent as a danger to be quashed.

The government has a long history of using vague definitions of “extremism” to justify ever-expanding control. Once dissent is rebranded as danger, every act of resistance can be swept into the government’s dragnet.

Whether through counterinsurgency tactics abroad or domestic militarization at home, the pattern is the same: dissent is rebranded as danger, and those who resist government narratives become subjects of investigation.

NSPM-7 merely formalizes this cycle of suspicion.

It also resurrects an old playbook with new machinery—COINTELPRO, digitized and centralized. The tools may be different, but the logic—neutralize dissent—is the same, now scaled up with modern surveillance and stitched together under executive direction. From there, the apparatus needs only a pretext—a checklist of behaviors, viewpoints, associations and beliefs—to justify recasting citizens as suspects.

For years now, the government has flagged certain viewpoints and phrases as potential markers of extremism.

To that list, you can now add “anti-Christian,” “anti-capitalist,” and “anti-American,” among others.

What this means, in practice, is that sermons, protests, blog posts, or donor lists could all be flagged as precursors to terrorism.

Under this policy, America’s founders would be terrorists. Jesus himself would be blacklisted as “anti-Christian” and “anti-capitalist.”

Anything can be declared a war, and anyone can be redefined as an enemy combatant.

The definition shifts with political convenience, but the result is always the same: unchecked executive power.

The president has already labeled drug cartels “unlawful combatants” and insists the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict.”

The raids in Chicago and the White House’s evolving attitude towards surveillance confirm what follows from that logic: this war footing is not confined to foreign shores. It is being turned inward—toward journalists, political opponents, and ordinary citizens whose beliefs or associations are deemed “anti-American.”

By anti-American, this administration really means anti-government, especially when Trump is calling the shots.

According to local news reports, agents arrived in Black Hawk helicopters, trucks and military-style vans, using power tools to breach perimeter fencing, destroying property to gain entry, and zip-tying family members—including children—as they were separated and escorted from the building.

The imagery is unmistakably martial: a domestic operation staged and executed with battlefield methods.

This “everywhere war” lands on a country already saturated with domestic watchlists and dragnet filters.

Federal agencies have leaned on banks and data brokers to run broad, warrantless screens of ordinary Americans’ purchases and movements for so-called “extremism” indicators—everything from buying religious materials to shopping at outdoor stores or booking travel—none of which are crimes.

The point isn’t probable cause; it’s preemptive suspicion.

At the same time, geofence warrants and other bulk location grabs have exposed who went where and with whom—scooping up churchgoers, hotel guests, and passersby across entire city blocks—while a sprawling web of fusion and “real-time crime” centers ingests camera feeds, social posts, license-plate scans, facial recognition, and predictive-policing scores to flag “persons of interest” who have done nothing wrong.

This is how dissent gets relabeled as danger: by surrounding every American with the presumption of guilt first, and constitutional safeguards—if any—much later.

When merely looking a certain way or talking a certain way or voting a certain way is enough to get you singled out and subjected to dehumanizing, cruel treatment by government agents, we are all in danger.

When the president of the United States and his agents threaten to “intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country”—i.e., those who don’t comply with the government’s demands, we are all in danger.

When the police state has a growing list of innocuous terms and behaviors that are suspicious enough to classify someone a terrorist, we are all in danger.

Today it is drug cartels. Yesterday it was immigrants. Tomorrow it could be journalists, political opponents, or ordinary citizens who express views deemed “anti-American.”

With NSPM-7, the Trump White House is not merely amplifying surveillance power—it is institutionalizing a regime in which thought, dissent, and ideological posture become the raw material for domestic investigations and suppression.

Make no mistake: this is an unprecedented escalation in the government’s war on privacy, dissent, and constitutional limits.

Consider the secret phone-records dragnet operated for more than a decade across multiple administrations—formerly “Hemisphere,” now “Data Analytical Services.”

By paying AT&T and exploiting privacy loopholes, the government has gained warrantless access to more than a trillion domestic call records a year, sweeping in not only suspects but their spouses, parents, children, friends—anyone they might have called. Training on the program has reportedly reached beyond drug agents to postal inspectors, prison officials, highway patrol, border units, and even the National Guard.

This is how a surveillance apparatus becomes a governing philosophy.

A presidency armed with NSPM-7 can fuse that kind of dragnet data with interagency “threat” frameworks and ideological watchlists, collapsing the wall between intelligence gathering and political control.

This is how tyrants justify tyranny in order to stay in power.

This is McCarthyism in a digital uniform.

Joseph McCarthy branded critics as Communist infiltrators. Donald Trump brands enemies as “combatants.”

The mechanism is the same: redefine dissent as treachery, then prosecute it under extraordinary powers.

For those old enough to have lived through the McCarthy era, there is a whiff of something in the air that reeks of the heightened paranoia, finger-pointing, fear-mongering, totalitarian tactics that were hallmarks of the 1950s.

Back then, it was the government—spearheaded by Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee—working in tandem with private corporations and individuals to blacklist Americans suspected of being communist sympathizers.

By the time the witch hunts drew to a close, thousands of individuals (the vast majority innocent of any crime) had been accused of communist ties, investigated, subpoenaed, and blacklisted. Careers were ruined, suicides followed, immigration tightened, and free expression chilled.

Seventy-five years later, the same vitriol, fear-mongering, and knee-jerk intolerance are once again being deployed against anyone who dares to think for themselves.

All the while, the American police state continues to march inexorably forward.

This is how fascism, which silences all dissenting views, prevails.

The silence is becoming deafening.

What is unfolding is the logical culmination of years of bipartisan betrayals of the Bill of Rights, from the Cold War to the digital panopticon

What once operated in the shadows of intelligence agencies is now openly coordinated from the Oval Office.

For decades, presidents of both parties have waged a steady assault on the Constitution. Each crisis—Cold War, 9/11, pandemic—became an excuse to concentrate more power in the executive branch.

The Patriot Act normalized warrantless surveillance. The FISA courts gave secret cover for dragnet spying. The NSA’s metadata sweeps exposed millions of Americans’ phone records. Predictive policing and geofencing warrants turned smartphones into government informants.

Each measure, we were told, was temporary, limited, and necessary. None were rolled back. Each became the foundation for the next expansion.

Against this backdrop, NSPM-7 emerges as the next, more dangerous iteration.

What distinguishes it is not merely scale but centralization: the government has moved from piecemeal encroachments to a bold, centralized framework in which the White House claims the prerogative to oversee surveillance across agencies with virtually no external checks.

Oversight by Congress and the courts is reduced to a fig leaf.

This is how liberties die: not with a sudden coup, but with the gradual normalization of extraordinary powers until they are no longer extraordinary at all.

It is the embodiment of James Madison’s nightmare: the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judicial, in the same hands.

From red-flag seizures and “disinformation” hunts to mail imaging, biometric databases, license-plate grids, and a border-zone where two-thirds of Americans now live under looser search rules, the default has flipped: everyone is collectible, everyone is rankable, and everyone is interruptible.

That is how a free people become reduced to databits first and citizens as an afterthought.

The constitutional stakes couldn’t be higher.

The Fourth Amendment promises that people shall be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. That promise is empty if the President can authorize the government to sweep up data, monitor communications, and track movements without individualized warrants or probable cause.

The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, association, and press. Those protections mean little if journalists fear their calls are tapped, if activists believe their networks are infiltrated, or if citizens censor themselves out of fear.

Separation of powers itself is on the line. By directing surveillance policy across government without legislative debate or judicial review, the White House is usurping authority never meant to rest in a single set of hands.

The risks are not hypothetical.

COINTELPRO targeted civil rights leaders and dissidents. The NSA’s bulk collection swept up millions of innocents. Fusion centers today track and analyze daily life.

What was once shocking—the idea that the government might listen in on every phone call or sift through every email—is now treated as the price of living in modern America.

If those older, less centralized programs were abused, why would NSPM-7—with broader reach and weaker oversight—be any different?

This is not speculation. We have seen this progression before.

In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued reports on so-called “rightwing extremism” that swept broadly across the ideological spectrum. Economic anxiety, anti-immigration views, gun rights advocacy, even the military service of returning veterans were flagged as potential red flags for extremism.

The backlash was immediate, and DHS was forced to walk back the report, but the damage was done: dissenting views had been equated with dangerous plots.

That same playbook now risks becoming institutionalized under NSPM-7, which consolidates ideological profiling into a White House-directed mandate.

Imagine a journalist investigating corruption within the administration. Under NSPM-7, their sources and communications could be quietly monitored.

Imagine a nonprofit advocating for immigration reform. Its donors and staff could be swept into a database of “domestic threats.”

Imagine an attorney representing a controversial client. Even attorney-client privilege, once considered sacrosanct, could be eroded under a regime that treats dissent as subversion.

These scenarios are not alarmist—they are logical extensions of a system that places no real limits on executive discretion.

With NSPM-7, the line between foreign and domestic surveillance blurs entirely, and every citizen becomes a potential target of investigation.

Unless “we the people” demand accountability, NSPM-7 will become the new normal, entrenched in the machinery of government long after this administration has passed.

We must insist that surveillance be subject to the same constitutional limits that govern every other exercise of state power. We must demand transparency. We must pressure Congress to reclaim its role and courts to enforce constitutional duty. Most of all, we must cultivate a culture of resistance.

The Bill of Rights is not self-executing; it depends on the vigilance of the citizenry.

Civil liberties groups have already sounded the alarm, warning that NSPM-7 authorizes government-wide investigations into nonprofits, activists, and donors. Law scholars call it a dangerous overreach, a program as vague as it is menacing. Even law firms, normally cautious about critiquing executive power, are voicing concern about the risks it poses to attorney-client privilege.

When so many diverse voices converge in warning, we should pay attention.

And yet warnings alone will not stop this juggernaut, because NSPM-7 is not simply about technology or data collection. It is about power—and how fear is weaponized to consolidate that power.

If we are silent now, if we allow NSPM-7 to pass unchallenged, we will have no excuse when the surveillance state tightens its grip further.

When ideas themselves become a trigger for surveillance, the First Amendment loses.

America has entered dangerous territory.

A government that answers only to itself is not a constitutional republic—it is a rogue state. And NSPM-7, far from securing our freedoms, threatens to extinguish them.

Unchecked power is unconstitutional power.

As U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan cautioned in a recent ruling: “The government’s arguments paint with a broad brush and threaten to upend fundamental protections in our Constitution. But ours is not an autocracy; it is a system of checks and balances.”

Those checks only function if we insist on them.

With congressional Republicans having traded their constitutional autonomy for a place in Trump’s authoritarian regime, the courts—and the power of the people themselves—remain the last hope for reining in this runaway police state.

Cognizant that a unified populace poses the greatest threat to its power grabs, the Deep State—having co-opted Trump and the MAGA movement—is doing everything it can to keep the public polarized and fearful.

This has been a long game.

The contagion of fear that McCarthy once spread with the help of government agencies, corporations, and the power elite never truly died; it merely evolved.

NSPM-7 is its modern form, and Trump a modern-day McCarthy.

That anyone would support a politician whose every move has become antithetical to freedom is mind-boggling, but that is the power of politics as a drug for the masses.

That anyone who claims to want to “Make America Great Again” would sell out the country—and the Constitution—to do so says a lot.

That judges, journalists and activists are being threatened for daring to hold the line against the government’s overreaches and abuses speaks volumes.

One of Trump’s supporters sent an anonymous postcard to Judge William G. Young, a Reagan appointee assigned to a case challenging the Trump administration’s effort to deny full First Amendment protection to non-citizens lawfully present in the United States. The postcard taunted: “Trump has pardons and tanks… What do you have?”

Judge Young opened his opinion with a direct reply: “Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People—you and me—have our magnificent Constitution. Here’s how that works in a specific case.”

The judge then proceeded to issue a blistering 161-page opinion that hinges on the language of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

“No law” means “no law,” concluded Judge Young,

In other words, the First Amendment is not negotiable.

Non-citizens lawfully present in the United States “have the same free speech rights as the rest of us.”

This is the constitutional answer to NSPM-7’s everywhere-war logic.

When a president declares anything a battlefield and anyone a combatant, the First Amendment answers back: No law means no law.

It is not a permission slip the government can offer only to favored citizens or compliant viewpoints. It is a boundary the government may not cross.

So the question returns to us, the ones Judge Young addressed: “What do we have, and will we keep it?”

We have a constitutional republic, and we keep it by holding fast to the Constitution.

We keep it by refusing the normalization of the Executive Branch’s extraordinary overreaches and power grabs.

We keep it by insisting that dissent is not danger, speech is not suspicion, and watchlists are not warrants.

We keep it by demanding congressional oversight with teeth, courts that enforce first principles, and communities that resist fear when fear is used to rule.

In closing, Judge Young quoted Ronald Reagan’s warning, issued in 1967: “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation  away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.”

Reagan’s words would be flagged under NSPM-7, but it doesn’t change the challenge.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the hard work of defending freedom rests as always with “we the people.”

Let’s get to it.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

The post Trump’s Everywhere War: An Insurrection Against the Constitution appeared first on LewRockwell.

Recently I explained that “Presidents have little control over their governments.”

The same holds for monarchs and “authoritarians.” There are many examples. I will use one in front of me at this moment as I reread Harry Elmer Barnes’ book, The Genesis of the World War.

World War I was planned by the French President, who wanted to recover Alsace-Lorraine, which Napoleon 3rd lost to Prussia in 1871, and the Russian foreign minister and Russian ambassador to France, who wanted to take from Turkey the Dardanelles Straits that connect the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Their conspiracy to ignite a European war in order to achieve these goals was put in place over several years. The French president, Poincare, and the Russians, Foreign Minister Sazonov and Russian Ambassador to France Izvolski, were not confident to take on Germany and Austria-Hungary without British support. Consequently, they brought the British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey into their plot, without the awareness of the British monarch.

Once the alliances and reassurances among the war plotters were in place, the Russians and French arranged, encouraged, the Serbian assassination of the Austrian Archduke, successor to the throne, and his wife, and if not responsible seized on the assassination to set in motion the wheels of war. Russia took the line that it had to protect Serbia from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire’s retaliation and used Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia as an excuse to order Russian mobilization.

The three monarchs–the British King, the Russian Tsar, and the German Kaiser were first cousins, all being Queen Victoria’s grandsons. On receipt of a telegram from his German cousin warning that a European catastrophe awaited them if war broke out, the Tsar ordered the Russian mobilization to be halted, convinced that the mobilization would not serve to intimidate Austria but to provoke European war. The Tsar’s ministers told him it was too late to countermand the general mobilization, and it proceeded.

The Tsar had been left out of the plot and at best was only vaguely aware of what was afoot. Once the light dawned on the Tsar, he found himself unable to control the military zeal in his government. In a telegram to his German cousin he confessed his helplessness before the militarists:

“I foresee that very soon I shall be overwhelmed by the pressure brought upon me, and be forced to take extreme measures which will lead to war. To try and avoid such a calamity as a European war, I beg you in the name of our old friendship to do what you can to stop your allies (Austria) from going too far.” The Tsar was asking Germany to restrain Austria’s actions against Serbia, which the Kaiser tried to do.

The Kaiser’s response to his Russian cousin’s telegram was: “A confession of his own weakness, and an attempt put the responsibility on my shoulders.”

The war, which resulted from the inability of the British, German, Russian monarchs, and French people to prevent it, destroyed Europe. The war destroyed the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and left Russia in the hands of Lenin. The deaths World War I inflicted on France and the British wiped out a generation of leaders, eliminated aristocrats, who at least had a system of honor whether or not they abided by it, from leadership, and turned the leadership over to “jackets and sheep” to use the apt term of Giuseppe Di Lampedusa. Britain was left so financially weak that it was easy for US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to use WW II to push the British aside and assume for the US dollar the role and power of the country of the reserve currency.

Germany, whose Kaiser tried to prevent WWI was held responsible for it. Consequently, at Versailles, Germany in violation of US President Wilson’s guarantee, was faced with territorial loss and unpayable reparations, which caused WWII and left Europe with Soviet rule over Eastern Europe.

Today the world faces an even more absurd situation. Israel, a tiny country with no resources except American money and protection, has Western foreign policy, and apparently also Russia’s, in its tiny hands. For a quarter century Americans have fought to destroy Arab nations for the sake of expanding Greater Israel. American soldiers were told by their lying government that they were dying and being permanently disabled to protect America from a non-existent Muslim terrorism, when in fact they were dying for Greater Israel.

Now we are on a new road to our destruction in pursuit of the Zionist American neoconservatives’ agenda of a hegemonic America and Israel.  Where is the leadership to stop it?

The post Our Existence Becomes Increasingly Tenuous by the Day appeared first on LewRockwell.

A few years ago I wrote a column titled “Be Angry,” in which I defended anger as a legitimate response to the many scandalous actions of Pope Francis. The proximate cause of the article was the appointment of then-Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernández as head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith as well as some problematic papal selections for the Synod on Synodality, but those acts were just the latest in a string of scandals during the Francis pontificate. While I knew I was in danger of falling into the “angry trad” stereotype, I simply couldn’t pretend the last pontificate didn’t justify righteous anger.

I still think my anger was justified. Frankly, I’m still angry at the Francis pontificate: it was a disastrous reign that led many souls astray. Francis was akin to an abusive father, who attacked those most faithful to the Catholic religion. It’s understandable and reasonable for a child to be angry at a father who abuses him. As I wrote a few months after my “Be Angry” article, Francis had lost the benefit of the doubt. I also wrote that of course “we cannot let anger rule and control our hearts. Yes, be angry, but make sure it is a righteous anger.” Anger is a dangerous emotion, but it’s not always inappropriate.

Now we have a new Supreme Pontiff in Pope Leo XIV, and a lot of Catholics are starting to get angry with him, particularly after last week. And as weeks go, Leo did have a bad one. First, he seemed to suggest that Catholics who accept the perennial teaching of the Church regarding the permissibility of the death penalty were not “pro-life.” Then, he essentially endorsed Cardinal Cupich’s evil plan to give a lifetime achievement award to a pro-abortion Catholic politician. Finally, the pope presided over a weird environmental gathering in which he blessed a large block of ice. These actions produced many denunciations and much anger in Catholicland. Beyond last week’s actions, some Catholics are already assuming the worst regarding the pope’s first apostolic exhortation, due to be released on October 9, on the subject of the poor and social justice.

Although Leo clearly had some missteps last week (and will continue to have them in the future), I’m not angry and I don’t think other Catholics should be, either. Does this mean I’ve changed my attitude about anger since my previous column? Perhaps a bit, but moreso I believe the situations are not the same.

My columns on being angry and on Francis’ loss of the benefit of the doubt were published in 2023, a full ten years after Jorge Bergoglio’s election. He had a long history of undermining the faith and attacking the faithful. The catalog of problematic papal acts was large and growing. The potential for justified anger, in other words, had been perculating over a long period of time.

St. James in his epistle writes, “Know this, my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God” (James 1:19-20, emphasis added). While justified and righteous at times, anger—particularly toward a pope—should not be the default reaction for a Catholic; it should be something that occurs only in extreme situations, and after serious contemplation and consideration. In the case of Pope Francis in 2023, even one who was very slow to anger realized that anger was justified. Pope Leo, on the other hand, has been Supreme Pontiff for only five months; being angry at him already is the definition of “quick to anger.”

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying one cannot be critical of certain words and acts of our Holy Father. But there’s a difference between careful, calm criticism and anger.

Why are people so quick to be angry at our new pope? Surely the society in which we live in party to blame. It promotes and platforms anger like never before. Social media in particular is fueled by anger: the algorithm rewards anger, so that’s what fills our timelines and influences our emotions.

Yet I don’t think that’s the main driver behind today’s anger at the new pope. I think it’s a hangover effect from Pope Francis. For twelve years the Catholic faithful endured a pope who was, as I’ve said, an abusive father; a man who palpably despised us and what we believe. Now we suddenly have a new father, and so all the emotional baggage from the last father, which is difficult to jettison, is transferred onto him. Any mistake Leo makes brings us back to our feelings toward Francis and projects those feelings onto Leo. This, however, is unfair and uncharitable toward our new Holy Father, and it violates the biblical command to be “slow to anger.”

I have no idea how the Leo pontificate will unfold, and it’s possible we’ll reach the point where it’s clearly justified to be angry at him. Yet Leo is not Francis. There’s no indication that he hates us or hates the traditions of the Church. To look for reasons to be angry with him is, first of all, counterproductive in addressing the crisis in the Church today, for it hides our legitimate criticisms behind a flurry of emotional outbursts. It’s also spiritually destructive to the soul who engages in unnecessary anger. What does it profit a man to fight for the Church and forfeit his soul?

We can lament papal mistakes, and we can urge the pope and other Church officials to more fully embrace the traditional faith as handed on to us, but let’s take a step back, remain calm in our criticisms, and carry on in the faith. Let’s follow the advice of St. James, to be “slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.”

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post Slow to Anger appeared first on LewRockwell.

Once again the CDC put out the alarm with this headline:

CDC Endorses Standalone Chickenpox Vaccination For Younger Children

(Story reported by Epoch Times presented on Zero Hedge with no paywall, HERE).

“The CDC is now advising that children aged 1 (!!!) receive a standalone chickenpox vaccine, its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement.”

Question:

Is it possible someone – Anyone – at the CDC could just take a minute to see the fundamental flaw in their thinking? 

While we shouldn’t hold our breath for that happy event we can, at least, arm ourselves and our families with some solid knowledge to neutralize the CDC’s fear porn.

I highly recommend listening to this short video by Dr Sam Bailey, HERE.

Then, please review the excellent references Dr Sam provides.

Thank you.

 

The post New CDC Chickenpox Clown Show appeared first on LewRockwell.

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Writes Tim McGraw :

This is a good video. It shows how radial engine maintenance is done in the Amazon. I helped do a twin-engine change on a DC-3 in the US Virgin Islands in 1983. We used the same old WWII lifting cranes. The engines and propellers are fairly easy to remove and install. It’s the engine overhauls that are expensive. To do it right by overhauling the engine, replacing all the hoses and accessories, with overhauled propellers, is about $250,000 for both engines. It could be more.

The flight time between overhauls is probably about the same as for the Pratt & Whitney R-985, which is 1600 flight hours. My guess is that these DC-3s fly their engines and propellers until something breaks, then they fix it, and fly it until something else breaks. It’s a risky way to fly, but it’s cheaper than a total overhaul.

Flying on these DC-3s over the Amazon is very risky business.

And yes, you have to watch out for the kids around the airplane.

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