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di Thomas Kolbe

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/la-bce-interrompe-il-ciclo-di-allentamento)

La Banca Centrale Europea ha raggiunto la fine del suo ciclo di tassi, intrappolandosi proprio in quei problemi che aveva contribuito a creare. A Sintra tutto questo era praticamente nascosto dietro una facciata di chiacchiere.

La conferenza annuale, appena a ovest di Lisbona, è utile alla BCE tanto quanto Jackson Hole lo è per la Federal Reserve. È un momento per fare il punto della situazione, guardare al futuro e collegare la politica monetaria dell'anno precedente a una narrazione più ampia. Per la presidente della BCE, Christine Lagarde, questa narrazione è facilmente riassumibile: dopo otto tagli i tassi ora si attestano al 2%, l'inflazione si aggira intorno all'obiettivo del 2%, l'occupazione nell'Eurozona rimane stabile e una nuova crisi del debito non è all'orizzonte.

Questa è stata l'essenza del discorso della Lagarde a Sintra, concepito per trasmettere un messaggio unico: tutto è sotto controllo. Persino incertezze come la volatilità commerciale dell'era Trump, gli sconvolgimenti geopolitici, o il crollo dell'industria tedesca non dovrebbero far deragliare la rotta prefissata dalla BCE. Dopo lo sconquasso durante i lockdown, la situazione è ora considerata normale: i mercati “oscillano” attorno al loro equilibrio. Nel gergo delle banche centrali: hanno trovato il “tasso neutrale”.

La chimera di un tasso neutrale

Il “tasso neutrale” è il Santo Graal del misticismo delle banche centrali. Quando i policymaker si sentono sicuri e le campagne mediatiche mascherano con successo l'erosione della moneta fiat, diventa un mantra. In questa visione del mondo, il tasso di riferimento della BCE e alcuni tassi di mercato teorici e consolidati si allineano, non per caso, ma intenzionalmente. Ancor prima delle osservazioni conclusive della Lagarde, i membri del Comitato esecutivo della BCE, Joachim Nagel e Philip Lane, avevano gettato le basi per tutto giugno trasmettendo ripetutamente il messaggio del “tasso neutrale”.

Il messaggio? Che avevano bilanciato le forze inflazionistiche e deflazionistiche e riportato l'Eurozona su una traiettoria di crescita. Tralasciamo i dibattiti sulle statistiche manipolate riguardo l'inflazione e sui dati sulla disoccupazione drasticamente sottostimati. Queste narrazioni sui tassi neutrali non sono altro che favole: comunicati stampa preconfezionati volti a evocare controllo. I ​​processi economici non si riducono a schemi così semplicistici, ma non è proprio questo il punto: la storia dei tassi neutrali è un sedativo, sia per gli stati che per i mercati.

Il peccato originale fiscale

La storia della BCE come custode della stabilità monetaria è una reliquia dei tempi della Bundesbank. Quell'epoca è ormai lontana. Le banche centrali di tutto il mondo, coinvolte in intricati intrecci politico-fiscali durante l'ultima crisi del debito di 15 anni fa, ne sono diventate dipendenti. Solo durante i lockdown, il PEPP della BCE ha assorbito €1.850 miliardi in debito sovrano dell'Eurozona e oggi detiene ancora circa un terzo di quella montagna di obbligazioni.

Oggi l'unico obiettivo della BCE è quello di mantenere liquidi questi debiti sovrani, acquistando obbligazioni scansate dal mercato per mantenere l'illusione che debito pubblico, Stati sociali generosi e interventismo keynesiano siano tutti elementi conciliabili.

I governi dell'Eurozona hanno a lungo fatto affidamento sulla liquidità esterna. Con un debito pubblico medio pari al 100% del PIL, molti stati membri sarebbero insolventi senza il sostegno della BCE. Ciò avrebbe conseguenze non solo per i mercati, ma anche per la coesione sociale, la stabilità interna e l'immagine di un'Unione Europea costruita su motori di welfare sovradimensionati che offrono ai cittadini un falso senso di sicurezza e sottovalutano pericolosamente la capacità pubblica.

Un ritiro della BCE da questo nesso di irresponsabilità fiscale, sostegno monetario ed eccesso politico è quindi impensabile. La banca centrale non è più solo un guardiano della moneta, ma lo stabilizzatore di un modello sociale in erosione. Attraverso mezzi indiretti e canali secondari, sta finanziando pensioni, bilanci previdenziali, ingranaggi burocratici e oscurando al contempo la fragilità dell'intero edificio.

La BCE è l'ultimo pilastro che tiene insieme questa struttura in rovina. Rimuovendola, il castello di carte crollerà all'istante. Ecco perché la Lagarde e i suoi collaboratori devono preservare l'illusione di un'Eurozona governabile.

I fatti raccontano una storia diversa

Al di là della patina di Sintra, nel mondo reale dei dati l'Eurozona è in grave crisi. L'industria continua a contrarsi e l'edilizia è in profonda recessione. Oltre il 50% delle aziende lamenta ordini insufficienti. Dal 2021 la sola industria tedesca ha tagliato 217.000 posti di lavoro ed entro la fine dell'anno ne perderà altri 100.000. La deindustrializzazione avanza, la produzione viene trasferita all'estero, i capitali fuggono e la produttività è ferma da otto anni consecutivi.

Il risultato: le basi imponibili dei Paesi si stanno erodendo. Le entrate diminuiscono e i costi del welfare aumentano, facendo aumentare il peso del debito. Senza riforme concrete, l'Eurozona rischia una crisi del debito che costringerà ancora una volta la BCE a fungere da prestatore di ultima istanza.

Anni di tassi di interesse pari a zero hanno immerso l'Eurozona nel dolce veleno del credito a basso costo. Ora le aziende dipendenti dai sussidi stanno crollando sotto i tassi reali positivi. Questa è “economia zombi”. E l'ultima vittima della pianificazione industriale verde – Northvolt – è solo l'ennesima a chiudere i battenti, conseguenza di una politica economica gestita centralmente.

La FED tiene duro

A peggiorare la situazione, dall'altra parte dell'Atlantico, la Federal Reserve mantiene ferma la sua strategia di consolidamento, mantenendo i tassi al 4,5%, ben al di sopra di quelli delle altre principali banche centrali. Gli Stati Uniti sono chiaramente disposti ad accettare un tasso di mercato positivo, dando alla loro economia lo spazio per eliminare gli elementi improduttivi. Ciò consente al capitale produttivo di riposizionarsi e alimentare un nuovo ciclo di investimenti. Con tagli fiscali, deregolamentazione energetica e ridimensionamento dei programmi verdi, gli Stati Uniti stanno diventando una calamita per i capitali, che le economie europee non possono che invidiare.

A Washington la visione è chiara: un periodo di sofferenza porta grandi ricompense. Mentre gli Stati Uniti si attrezzano amministrativamente, tecnicamente e innovativamente per l'era digitale, l'UE inscena una competizione su piani di welfare in continua espansione: limiti agli affitti, sussidi sociali, sussidi verdi, consumi decretati e regolamentati per sostituire i meccanismi produttivi della creazione di reddito.

L'Europa è diventata dipendente dalle sovvenzioni dello Stato sociale, aggrappandosi a un modello iperstatalista per rinviare le sofferenze sociali ed economiche. E sempre in agguato ci sono la BCE e la sua fatale pressione monetaria. Quanto durerà tutto questo solo il tempo ce lo dirà, ma le tensioni sui mercati stanno aumentando. Il giorno in cui queste tensioni innescheranno un terremoto, scuotendo le placche tettoniche dell'economia per un nuovo riallineamento, si avvicina sempre di più.

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

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As the Left and the neocons advance against us to take away our liberties, many people appeal to the Constitution. Isn’t it unconstitutional for the President to involve us in foreign wars? The Constitution vests the warmaking power entirely in Congress. All sorts of things are denounced as unconstitutional, usually on good grounds. We should not avoid arguments of this type, which are often of some use in blocking radical left judges from reading their own agenda into the Constitution. As the great Murray Rothbard noted, for example, “In my opinion, the Jeffersonian strict construction theory of the ‘necessary and proper’ clause is obviously the meaning most appropriate to the text: ‘necessary’ always means, in logical discourse, those steps that are truly essential and not just what some congressmen think to be conducive to the final result.”

But ultimately, the Constitution is a weak reed. As Rothbard also noted in the posthumously published Volume 5 of Conceived in Liberty, the Constitution was a triumph for those who wanted a large central government. It was a blow to those who believed in states’ rights and civil liberties. Here is what Rothbard says: “The Constitution was unquestionably a high-nationalist document, creating what Madison once referred to as a ‘high mounted government.’ Not only were the essential lines of the nationalistic Virginia Plan Report carried out in the Constitution, but the later changes made were preponderantly in a nationalist direction. Of the fundamental changes, only the equality of states in the Senate and their election by state legislatures, the former bitterly protested by the determined large state nationalists, was a concession to the opposition. In contrast, on the nationalist side congressional selection of the president was changed to chosen by popular election, admission of new states was made purely arbitrary, and the amendment power was transferred from the states to the Congress. While it is true that the general congressional veto over state laws and the vague broad grant of powers in the original Virginia Plan were whittled down to a list of enumerated powers, enough loopholes existed in the enumerated list: the national supremacy clause; the dominance of the federal judiciary; the virtually unlimited power to tax, raise armies and navies, make war, and regulate commerce; the necessary and proper clause; and the powerful general welfare loophole; all allowed the virtually absolute supremacy of the central government. While libertarian restraints were placed on state powers, no bill of rights existed to check the federal government. And slavery, albeit not explicitly named in the document, was cemented into American society by the nationalists’ twenty-year guarantee of the slave trade, in the three-fifths clause ‘representing’ slaves in Congress, and in the compulsory fugitive slave clause. The northern nationalists were willing, if shamefacedly, to agree in exchange for the right to regulate commerce and thus grant themselves commercial privileges, while the southern nationalists were willing to concede regulation of commerce in confident expectation of an early slave-state preponderance in Congress for the South and Southwest. Both wings of nationalists looked forward to a central government that could pursue an aggressive foreign policy, either on behalf of commercial interests to pry open the West Indies trade, or on behalf of interests in the western lands to push Britain out of the Northwest or Spain out of the southwestern Mississippi.”

But what about the Bill of Rights? Doesn’t it protect individual rights and limit the power of the federal government? Rothbard was not impressed. He says about the Bill of Rights: “The Ninth and Tenth Amendments were signed to give the stark rebuttal to the cynical Wilson-Madison-Hamilton argument that a bill of rights impairs people’s rights by permitting encroachment in unenumerated rights that would supposedly belong to the people. The Tenth Amendment specifies that ‘the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’ This amendment specifies that the national government is one of strictly delegated powers, and that powers not so delegated belong to the states or to the people. In other words, the power not specifically delegated or prohibited to the federal government cannot be assumed by that government and are reserved to the states. For many years the Tenth Amendment was the great weapon of the states-rightists and other anti-nationalists in their argument that the states (or the people of the states) are really sovereign, rather than the national government. This amendment did in truth transform the Constitution from one of supreme national power to a partially mixed polity where the liberal anti-nationalists had a constitutional argument with at least a fighting chance of acceptance. However, Madison had cunningly left out the word ‘expressly’ before the word ‘delegated,’ so the nationalist judges were able to claim that because the word ‘expressly’ was not there, the ‘delegated’ can vaguely accrue through judges’ elastic interpretation of the Constitution. This loophole for vague ‘delegated’ power allowed the national courts to use such open-ended claims as general welfare, commerce, national supremacy, and necessary and proper to argue for almost any delegation of power that is not specifically prohibited to the federal government—in short, to return the Constitution basically to what it was before the Tenth Amendment was passed. The Tenth Amendment has been intensely reduced, by conventional judiciary construction, to a meaningless tautology.”

Rothbard sums up his opinion of the Constitution in this way: “Overall, it should be evident that the Constitution was a counterrevolutionary reaction to the libertarianism and decentralization embodied in the American Revolution. The Antifederalists, supporting states’ rights and critical of a strong national government, were decisively beaten by the Federalists, who wanted such a polity under the guise of democracy in order to enhance their own interests and institute a British-style mercantilism over the country. Most historians have taken the side of the Federalists because they support a strong national government that has the power to tax and regulate, call forth armies and invade other countries, and cripple the power of the states. The enactment of the Constitution in 1788 drastically changed the course of American history from its natural decentralized and libertarian direction to an omnipresent leviathan that fulfilled all of the Antifederalists’ fears. With the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the new government was now a fact and the Antifederalists would never again agitate for another constitutional convention to weaken American national power and return to a more decentralized and restrained polity. From now on American liberals, relying on the Bill of Rights and the Tenth Amendment, would go forth and do battle for Liberty and against Power within the framework of the American Constitution as states’-righters and Constitutionalists. Their battle would be a long and gallant one, but ultimately doomed to fail, for by accepting the Constitution, the liberals would only play with dice loaded implacably against them. The Constitution, with its inherently broad powers and elastic clauses, would increasingly support an ever larger and more powerful central government. In the long run, the liberals, though they could and did run a gallant race, were doomed to lose—and lose indeed they did.”

But doesn’t the Supreme Court act as a check on the federal government, by sometimes ruling that Congress or the President has violated the Constitution? The problem with this is one that John C. Calhoun long ago pointed out: the Court can legitimize the federal government by affirming that what it has done is constitutional. What else would you expect—it is a branch of the federal government. As Rothbard pointed out in a review of a book by the leftist Yale Law School professor Charles L. Black, Jr., “Black is perhaps the first since Calhoun to realize that judicial review is not simply a welcome check on government power. More important is the function of judicial review in validating, in legitimatizing, government power, and in inducing the public to accept it. . . Now, judicial review, beloved by conservatives, can of course fulfill the excellent function of declaring government interventions and tyrannies unconstitutional. But it can also validate and legitimize the government in the eyes of the people by declaring these actions valid and constitutional. Thus, the courts and the Supreme Court become an instrument of spearheading and confirming federal tyranny instead of the reverse. And this is what has happened in America—so that the Constitution itself has been changed from a limiting to an aggrandizing and legitimizing instrument.”

Let’s do everything we can to promote a correct understanding of the Constitution, using it to defend liberty but also recognizing its limits, as the great Murray Rothbard has taught us.

The post Rothbard on the Constitution appeared first on LewRockwell.

American taxpayer money played a crucial role in keeping Moldovan President Maia Sandu in power, former USAID chief Samantha Power has claimed in a prank call with Russian comedians Vovan and Lexus.

Power, who led the US Agency for International Development under President Joe Biden, was recorded speaking to the pranksters as they posed as former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko. In the video, released Wednesday, she reflected on her time overseeing an agency with 15,000 staff and a multibillion-dollar budget, and cited expanded aid to Moldova as one of her successes.

“This was not a country that USAID had really had much of a presence in, very small,” Power said. “We expanded it massively, both for the sake of Ukraine, but of course also for Moldova. And it was a democratic brightspot with President Sandu, a Kennedy School graduate and a real reformer.”

According to Power, Sandu “narrowly squeaked by the last time,” though she did not specify whether she was referring to last year’s presidential election or the recent parliamentary vote in Moldova. Sandu and her party secured both contests with strong support from Moldovan expatriates in Western nations, while failing to secure a majority in the popular vote at home. Opposition figures argue the process was skewed to limit turnout in anti-government areas.

Sandu, a Romanian citizen, has faced criticism for what opponents describe as authoritarian tactics, including shutting down opposition media and branding rivals as Moscow-backed criminals. She has maintained that Moldova’s path to the European Union depends on her leadership.

Power said the Biden administration folded tens of millions of dollars for Moldova into broader Ukraine aid appropriation requests. “That money went much, much further in Moldova than it did in Ukraine because it’s such a small country,” she noted.

She also suggested people tend to associate Washington’s support with “arms, and maybe with Tori Nuland and interference,” but they overlook “forms of more subtle support.” Former US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland is widely described as a key architect of the 2014 coup in Kiev and the subsequent escalation of tensions with Russia.

Moscow reiterated criticisms of Sandu after her latest victory, which Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov branded a blatant example of “electoral fraud.”

This article was originally published on RT News.

The post Ex-USAID Chief Brags About Funding ‘Democratic Brightspot’ in Moldova appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission (the collective body that constitutes the Presidency of the EU), wants to add both Ukraine and Moldova to the EU, though at least one EU member-nation, Hungary, is opposed, and though the EU’s existing Constitution prohibits any new member-nation to be added unless all existing member-nations approve its application to join.

The EU’s Constitution is called the “Treaty on European Union”, and its Article 49 says that no nation can be added to the EU unless its existing member-nations are unanimous in approving its being added to the membership:

Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union. The European Parliament and national Parliaments shall be notified of this application. The applicant State shall address its application to the Council, which shall act unanimously after consulting the Commission and after receiving the consent of the European Parliament, which shall act by a majority of its component members. The conditions of eligibility agreed upon by the European Council shall be taken into account.

The conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded, which such admission entails, shall be the subject of an agreement between the Member States and the applicant State. This agreement shall be submitted for ratification by all the contracting States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.

Every EU Member-nation has a member in the EU Council, and all of those must be united in approving the applicant-nation’s application, in order for a new member-nation to be added.

Consequently, the EU will violate its tradition of never even accepting an application to join, unless all existing members are willing to consider that nation’s application. Implicitly, the EU is telling Hungarians to replace their existing Government, and are expecting that the newly elected Hungarian Government will support the applications of Ukraine and Moldova to join. It’s an implicit warning to Viktor Orban, Hungary’s current Prime Minister, that the EU will do whatever it can to get him removed and replaced by someone whom the EU will accept to represent Hungary.

On September 29th, Politico headlined “Costa seeks to bypass Orbán’s veto on Ukraine’s EU membership bid: Brussels’ rules requiring all 27 member countries to agree on new entrants will face scrutiny at a summit this week in Copenhagen.”

On September 30th, the Financial Times headlined “EU moves to advance Ukraine’s accession by sidestepping Hungary: Brussels advises Kyiv to advance technical work despite Budapest holding up talks”.

The FT article reported that, “Once Hungary was willing to lift its veto, the formalities could be sped up. ‘In theory you could then open and close a cluster on the same day,’ one of the officials said.” In other words: by breaking tradition on this, as von der Leyen wants, both Ukraine and Moldova might possibly be added to the membership almost immediately after the new, pro-war, Government becomes installed in Hungary and/or in any other possible anti-war existing EU member-nation.

In the eventuality that there would be no success at regime-change in Hungary, or if some other existing member-nation decides to oppose adding Ukraine and Moldova, the EU might get impatient with adhering to the existing Treaty on European Union, and try to Amend it by replacing the existing unanimity-requirement by making that instead something less, such as a mere majority-approval requirement. However, Amending that Treaty (the EU’s Constitution) has been made prohibitively difficult by the Treaty’s Article 48, which requires unanimity in order to Amend the document.

As-of now, there have been no Amendments to the Treaty on European Union. This would be the first.

The Treaty fails to include any Article or clause describing a process by which to expel a member-nation (such as Hungary) — even if they now might wish to do that in order to expedite their transition from having been almost exclusively an economic union, to becoming now a military union.

The EU’s apparent urgency to get at least Ukraine into its membership is actually part of the EU’s intention to become a replacement for NATO, an anti-Russian military alliance (the EU having been the anti-Russian economic alliance) which WOULDN’T be dependent upon the U.S. EU countries have been just colonies of the U.S. empire. Consequently, for example, the “New Union Post” a “Magazine on EU enlargement,” headlined on August 21st, “Is EU accession a security guarantee for Ukraine? Thanks to the mutual defence clause enshrined in the Treaties, EU enlargement could represent ‘a very strong guarantee on paper,’ says EUISS senior analyst Ondrej Ditrych. However, it needs to be backed up by capacities and plans to ‘fill the widening deterrence gap caused by uncertainty about the US’s credible commitment’ in Europe.”

This way, the EU could take over from NATO the war to conquer Russia.

Perhaps Europe’s billionaires see the potential to enable the armaments manufacturers that they control become the profiteers — no longer America’s billionaires to be that — from the war in Ukraine. They might make more money by competing against the U.S. empire than by being parts of the U.S. empire. For example: by replacing NATO as the drafter of technical standards for their weaponry, an all-European EU could then advantage European ‘defense’ firms (no longer U.S.-based ones), for purchases of weapons, by all European Governments. Whereas now, U.S. billionaires are the main profiteers from armaments (which are sold not only to the U.S. Government but to all Governments throughout the U.S. empire), European billionaires might come to replace them in that capacity. By far the most profitable segment of the S&P is the ‘defense’ (aggression) sector. So, replacing U.S. billionaires in that capacity might enormously boost their personal fortunes. The war in Ukraine is, after all, extremely profitable (though it enormously increases the indebtedness — and thus taxes — of EU Governments, and of the U.S. Government). Anyway, this is a sensible way to interpret Ursula von der Leyen’s initiative here.

This article was originally published on Eric’s Substack.

The post Ursula Von Der Leyen Tries To Change the EU’s Constitution appeared first on LewRockwell.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly acknowledged that his government is paying U.S. social media influencers up to $7,372 per post in an aggressive digital campaign to sway American public opinion in favor of Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The revelation, based on recent Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings and reporting by Responsible Statecraft, has sparked fresh scrutiny over foreign influence in U.S. media and political discourse.

Speaking at a closed-door meeting with American influencers at the Israeli Consulate General in New York, Netanyahu defended the strategy in stark terms. “We have to fight back. How do we fight back? Our influencers,” he said in recorded footage. “We cannot fight with swords anymore, that doesn’t work very well. We have to fight with weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we’re engaged in, and the most important ones are on social media.”

Netanyahu’s remarks underscore what many critics have long suspected: Israel sees social media as a critical front in its ongoing public relations war over its Gaza campaign and broader Palestinian policy.

The payments are part of a larger digital influence operation code-named the “Esther Project,” which runs from June to November 2025. The campaign is managed by Bridge Partners LLC, a Washington D.C.-based firm contracted by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The company bills Israel through Havas Media Group Germany, creating an added layer of operational opacity.

According to Responsible Statecraft, of the $900,000 allocated to the effort, approximately $552,946 has been used for direct payments to influencers between June and September 2025. With 75 to 90 posts made during this period, influencers are being paid between $6,143 and $7,372 per post on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

The “Esther Project” bears a curious resemblance in name to the Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther,” launched in late 2024, which focuses on dismantling pro-Palestinian activism in the U.S. by labeling Israel critics as “terrorist sympathizers.” While no formal connection has been confirmed, the overlap raises concerns about coordination between political, ideological, and state actors.

Bridge Partners, whose co-founders Yair Levi and Uri Steinberg each hold a 50% stake, describes its mission as promoting “cultural interchange” between the U.S. and Israel. The firm has enlisted former Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson Nadav Shtrauchler and the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, which previously represented the controversial Israeli spyware firm NSO Group.

The influencer campaign is just one element of Israel’s vastly expanded digital propaganda program—often referred to as hasbara. According to Jewish Insider, Israel’s public diplomacy budget has ballooned to $150 million in 2025, over 20 times what it was before the Gaza war escalated in October 2023.

This follows a series of exposed influence operations by the Israeli government, including a $2 million Ministry of Diaspora Affairs effort in 2024 that created hundreds of fake social media accounts targeting U.S. lawmakers—especially Black Democrats—to encourage continued American military aid to Israel, according to The New York Times.

Notably, the Esther Project coincides with the U.S. government’s controversial move to transfer ownership of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a consortium led by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, a Netanyahu ally and major donor to Israel’s military apparatus. The timing raises additional questions about whether access to U.S. digital platforms is being used to further Israeli strategic interests.

While Israel continues to rely heavily on American military and diplomatic support, the revelation that it is actively funding covert influence operations on U.S. soil—particularly through social media influencers—raises serious questions about transparency, ethics, and foreign interference in the digital age.

This article was originally published on Restoring Liberty.

The post Netanyahu Admits Israel Pays U.S. Influencers Over $7,000 Per Post to Shape Opinion on Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

At Naked Capitalism Yves Smith published a paper by Servaas Storm:

The AI Bubble and the U.S. Economy: How Long Do “Hallucinations” Last?

Yves writes:

This is a devastating, must-read paper by Servaas Storm on how AI is failing to meet core, repeatedly hyped performance promises, and never can, irrespective of how much money and computing power is thrown at it. Yet AI, which Storm calls “Artificial Information” is still garnering worse-than-dot-com-frenzy valuations even as errors are if anything increasing.

Storm’s introduction:

This paper argues that (i) we have reached “peak GenAI” in terms of current Large Language Models (LLMs); scaling (building more data centers and using more chips) will not take us further to the goal of “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI); returns are diminishing rapidly; (ii) the AI-LLM industry and the larger U.S. economy are experiencing a speculative bubble, which is about to burst.

I happen to a agree with the arguments and conclusion.

The current Large Language Models are part of the Generative Artificial Intelligence field. GenAI is one twig on the research tree of  Artificial Intelligence. LLMs are based on ‘neural networks’. They store billions of tiny pieces of information and probability values of how those pieces relate to each other. The method is thought to simulate a part of human thinking.

But human thinking does much more than storing bits of information and statistical values of how they relate. It constantly builds mental models of the world we are living in. That leads to understanding of higher level concepts and of laws of nature. The brain can simulate events in those mental model worlds. We can thus recognize what is happening around us and can anticipate what might happen next.

Generative AI and LLMs can not do that. They do not have, or create, mental models. They are simple probabilistic systems. They are machine learning algorithms that can recognize patterns with a certain probabilistic degree of getting it right. It is inherent to such models that they make mistakes. To hope, as LLM promoters say, that they will scale up to some Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) know-all machines is futile. Making bigger LLMs will only increase the amount of defective output they will create.

(Yesterday I watched a video of Jon, a baker in Mesa, in which he mentions how he had asked an LLM to half a recipe he was going to make. It did that correctly for all but one ingredient. The model had divided the amount of water needed by ten. Jon’s test bake had failed.)

But the hype around LLms is real and huge amount of money is flowing into the companies that are building such models. This while none of them has found ways to create sufficient revenue to support such investments. Training and running these models at scale is very expensive. There are simply too few real use cases that would justify paying the cost for them. It may be fun to create and play around (archived) with AI-slop videos on social media. But who is willing to pay for that? Especially when the use of social media is finally sinking (archived).

(For a more detailed discussion of LLMs, their costs, lack of use cases, and on the incestuous structures of the investments that are flowing into them see Edward Zitrons 18,500 words epos here: The Case Against Generative AI.)

There are still hundreds of billion dollars flowing into the already overvalued LLM hype:

AI startups’ aggregate post-money valuation (the valuation after the latest round of funding) soared to $2.30 trillion, up from $1.69 trillion in 2024, and up from $469 billion in 2020, which back then had already set a huge record, according to PitchBook.
…
OpenAI reached a $500 billion valuation in early September, when it offered eligible former and current employees to sell $10 billion of their shares in a secondary share sale to other investors, led by SoftBank, according to CNBC. In April, OpenAI had reached a breathtaking post-money valuation of $300 billion at a funding round when it raised $40 billion, primarily from SoftBank. The sky is not the limit.

Elon Musk’s xAI is supposedly shooting for a $200 billion valuation in a $10 billion funding round, according to sources cited by CNBC, which Musk denied on X as “fake news. xAI is not raising any capital right now.” Well, not right now. Or whatever.

Anthropic reached a $183 billion post-money valuation, after raising $13 billion in a Series F funding round in early September, according to Anthropic.

And so on. These valuations of AI startups are mind-boggling. How are these late-stage investors going to exit their investments with their skin intact?

They wont.

Dozens of specialized LLM data-centers are getting build to house a huge amount of expensive chips that lose their values faster than a newly bought hyper-car. All without a real use case for LLMs and without any hope for sufficient revenue to ever sustain the business.

This is bad for the U.S. economy.

The money that is flowing into the LLM hype is gone. It can not be invested somewhere else even when that would make way more sense for the larger society – for example in the revival of manufacturing or in apprenticeship programs. Like during the dot.com boom (archived) in the late 1990s the real economy gets crowded out by a virtual one. Trump’s tariffs will not lead to the revival of U.S. industries if there is no money left to invest in them.

The data-centers being build will need huge amounts of additional electricity which can not be generated within the foreseeable future:

The implications are brutal and stark. Curtailed and costly electricity supply for AI and manufacturing will impair American economic competitiveness, with knock-on effects for household affordability. These impacts are already becoming evident, with wholesale pool prices in the U.S. rising by 267% over the past 5 years, on the back of skyrocketing electricity demand from the AI sector (Bloomberg).

All recent U.S. stock market gains were powered by the LLM hype. When the bubble will burst, the stock market will sink and most people who are, directly or indirectly, invested in the LLM hype will lose a lot of their money.

Unfortunately there is no way to foresee when that will happen or how far the damage will spread.

But we can already see damage to the real economy. Investment in factories for real products gets crowded out and electricity prices are doubling and tripling, hitting manufacturers as well as private consumers.

Why don’t we have ways to prevent bubbles? Or why can’t we deflate them before they become threats to our societies?

This article was originally published on Moon of Alabama.

The post Is the AI Bubble Ready To Pop? appeared first on LewRockwell.

You just landed after a quick business trip. You have been on the red eye into Atlanta, tired but eager for a hot shower and your own bed. The Uber hums along I-285, headlights slicing through the night, when suddenly everything changes.

The dashboard lights flicker and die. The engine coughs and goes silent. The Uber rolls to a stop, and you realize every other vehicle around you has gone dark too. Traffic lights are out. The city that never sleeps is hushed in an unsettling way. You notice the rustle of leaves, the soft whistle of the wind between the buildings, and the distant, confused chatter of thousands of people.

This is the calm before the storm. EMP survival just became your reality.

You know what happened, an electromagnetic pulse just hit. Within the hour, confusion will turn to chaos. No phones. No power. No cars. Just millions of people trapped in a city that has suddenly gone silent. The question is: what do you do next?

Why EMP Attacks Are the Ultimate Urban Nightmare

The silence of a dead city feels heavier with each step. You catch the glow of headlights abandoned mid-lane, doors left hanging open, horns locked in a final frozen cry. It’s in this kind of darkness that fear multiplies. But your bag is more than fabric on your shoulders, it’s a contract you wrote with yourself long before tonight. Every zipper you pull is a promise that you’ll make it home.[/caption]

Your Insurance Policy in the Dark

When panic closes in, your Get Home Bag is more than sharp steel. It’s an insurance policy against the unknown.

Your get home bag is your lifeline. Here is what belongs in it:

Navigation and Communication

• Compass and backup compass

• Paper maps of your area

• Radio for emergency broadcasts (protected in a emp proof bag)

• Whistle and signal mirror

Water and Food

• Portable water filter and tablets

• Metal single wall container for boiling

• High calorie lightweight food for 72 hours

• Collapsible water containers

Shelter and Fire

• Lightweight tarp or emergency bivvy

• Fifty feet of paracord

• Fire kit with multiple ignition methods

• Rain gear or poncho

• Emergency blanket

Security and Tools

• Fixed blade knife, folder and or multitool

• Discreet defensive tools like a tactical pen

• First aid kit

• Cash in small bills

• firearm if possible

Read the Whole Article

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Confirmed by Israeli media. “Not Fake News”. Bibi has been giving money to Hamas

“Hamas was treated as a partner to the detriment of the Palestinian Authority to prevent Abbas from moving towards creating a Palestinian State. Hamas was promoted from a terrorist group to an organization with which Israel conducted negotiations through Egypt, and which was allowed to receive suitcases containing millions of dollars from Qatar through the Gaza crossings.” (Times of Israel October 8, 2023, emphasis added)

According to Netanyahu:

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanyahu] told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

Let us be clear. These deceitful money payments are NOT in support of Hamas as a Palestinian political entity involved in the Resistance Movement.  Quite the opposite.

What is at stake is an insidious intelligence op, in support of so-called “intelligence assets” within Hamas.

What is at stake is a carefully planned False Flag Agenda which from the outset on October 7, 2023, upholds Hamas as the alleged “Aggressor” against the people of Israel.

What is the truth, what is the lie?.  The Netanyahu government and its Ministry of Intelligence from the very outset have “blood on their hands”. They are responsible for Israeli deaths resulting from the False Flag agenda.

What is the relationship between Mossad and Hamas?  There is a long history.

Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya) (Islamic Resistance Movement), was founded in 1987 by Sheik Ahmed Yassin. It was supported at the outset by Israeli intelligence as a means to weaken the Palestinian Authority:

“Thanks to Mossad, (Israel’s “Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks”), Hamas was allowed to reinforce its presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, Arafat’s Fatah Movement for National Liberation as well as the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression and intimidation.

Let us not forget that it was Israel, which in fact created Hamas. According to Zeev Sternell, historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO)”. (L’Humanité, translated from French)

“How Israel helped to Spawn Hamas”. WSJ

“Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. WSJ January 24, 2009, emphasis added)

The Historic Statement of  Rep. Ron Paul 

“You know Hamas, if you look at the history, you’ll find out that Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat… (Rep. Ron Paul, 2011)

What this statement entails is that Hamas is and remains “an intelligence asset”, namely “an “asset” to Israel as well as US intelligence.

Video: Ron Paul. Israel Created Hamas

Newsmax reported on Ron Paul’s comments in 2011 when he ran for president:

The Texas congressman advanced the argument that Israel actually created Hamas, as well as blamed the CIA for radicalizing Muslims and the United States for supplying weapons and money that “kill Palestinians.”

Israel “aided Hamas directly — the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),” said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies. (Newsmax)

Israel’s support for Hamas “was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,” said a former senior CIA official. (See Global Research)

Concluding Remarks

The ongoing October 7, 2023 False Flag agenda is part of a longstanding historical process to destroy Palestine.

Flash Back to 2001:

A major False Flag operation was contemplated by Tel Aviv in 2001, predicated on the doctrine of “Justified Vengeance”. The strategic Blueprint was entitled:

“The Destruction of the Palestinian Authority and Disarmament of All Armed Forces”

It was presented to the Israeli government by chief of staff Shaul Mofaz, on July 8, 2001.

Israeli Victims. Bloodshed As a Justification

“The assault would be launched, at the government’s discretion, after a big suicide bomb attack in Israel, causing widespread deaths and injuries, citing the bloodshed as justification.

The subject was extensively discussed both by Israel’s military echelon and its political one, before it was decided to carry out the liquidation” (Yediot Aharonot, Nov. 25, 2001)).

According to the late Prof. Tanya Reinhart

“Israel’s moves to destroy the PA, thus, cannot be viewed as a spontaneous ‘act of retaliation’.  It is a calculated plan, long in the making.

The execution requires, first, weakening the resistance of the Palestinians, which Israel has been doing systematically since October 2000, “through killing, bombarding of infrastructure, imprisoning people in their hometowns, and bringing them close to starvation.”

All this, while waiting for the international conditions to ‘ripen’ for the more ‘advanced’ steps of the plan.” (Tanya Rheinart)

The original source of this article is Global Research.

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As a Patriot Writer & Veteran I must defend the Constitution by telling the truth knowing it could be fatal, but at 91, I have much less to lose than a young Soldier defending this country. The  Soldier, President  Trump and I, all swore to defend our Constitution  knowing it could be fatal.

We are at war and our Enemy is the Zionist Jewish Lobby, Media and Deep State, they are Venal Bloodsuckers , I call them the Evil Ones. For a more accurate description of the Evil Ones I refer to them as the Parasitic Super Rich Ruling Class (PSRRC). Those in government who violate their oaths of office to steal from and yes  kill The People are but minions of the PSRRC.

The Evil Ones (PSRRC) own or control the most effective media for propaganda in the world. Anyone who questions their actions is labeled an anti-Semite, fired, Assassinated, Blacklisted or otherwise scorned.

When the Evil ones kill someone it is difficult to know if it was a professional assassin or one of their millions of ignorant and brainwashed Communist supporters .

President Trump is far from perfect but he is uniquely  qualified to be president, the right man at the right time with support of the people..

The major problem with Trump is that he refuses to take actions that are absolutely required to save our Republic and The People. Of course if he does what must be done the Evil Ones (PSRRC) would lose control of the country and lose Trillions. We know from experience what happens to people who stand in their way, think Kennedy Brothers, Charlie Kirk and almost Trump twice. There are of course countless other victims of Communist mob violence instigated by propaganda.

It would be human nature for Trump to have serious reservations about defying the Evil Ones (PSRRC) after they tried to kill him, twice.

Students of history will tell you that the Evil Ones have been having their way with Europe for Centuries  and now Europe is destroyed.

To save this country at a minimum Trump must start by terminating  all Foreign Aid and returning all troops on foreign soil to America to confront and deport illegal invaders. In fact our military is so outnumbered by illegal invaders that we may have to resort to the draft.

America can’t be invaded, it can only be defeated by weapons of mass destruction or from within. America therefore has no legitimate interest in any foreign country, none. What other countries do is none of our concern. It is of concern to the Evil Ones because this is how they get most of their Blood Money , from death and destruction in Wars for Profit without a Declaration of War. We lost every one of these wars for the last 80 years along with 105,000 military dead and the treasure to maintain the American Dream on one income..

It is past time that we put an end to what is a crime against humanity and a curse on Americans for the millions of dead, entire countries devastated and impoverishment of the world by the Evil Ones, in our name.

It is absolutely impossible to save this country  Economically  unless you comply with the Constitution and return the relationship of the states and federal  government to what it was under the Constitution. I refer to the Roll Reversal caused by the Income Tax that allowed Federal Government to Usurp state functions jn violation of Enumerated Powers in Constitution.

The last major change required is to terminate the Federal Reserve bank and Fiat Currency, replacing with gold and silver money which would mostly end inflation and all kinds of scams on the people. They can’t print gold.

I would be remiss as a writer if I did not advise readers of two rare Cataclysmic Events that will have major, major effects on our country. The first is the assassination of Charlie Kirk  and the resulting Tribute of Unbelievable Magnitude. The second is the October 2,2025 podcast by Tucker Carlson with Jeffery Sachs. To know the power of these events you must experience them first hand. Only a Civil War could have a more dramatic effect on our country.

May God Bless The People and our Constitutional Republic.

The post Is Trump Petrified of Jewish Lobby & Deep State Allowing Them To Destroy America ? appeared first on LewRockwell.

This article is adapted from DiLorenzo’s lecture at the Our Enemy, the Bureaucracy Mises Circle in Phoenix on Saturday, April 26.

Economists have been studying and writing about government bureaucracy for quite a long time. Ludwig von Mises became the first “modern” economist to write a book on the subject with his 1944 Bureaucracy. The public choice school of economics, founded by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, among others, has produced a huge literature on the economics of bureaucracy, much of which is complementary to Mises’s pathbreaking work.

This literature has produced many easy-to-understand insights about the essence of governmental bureaucratic behavior. For one thing, it is vastly different from decision-making in the marketplace. In the market people voluntarily “vote” with their dollars to express their preferences. There is a market feedback mechanism whereby if one pleases his customers he prospers, if one displeases his customers he fails. In government, by contrast, we are basically told: You need this, this, this, this, and this, and if you do not pay for it, we will make you live like a dog in a cage for several years. That’s called being sentenced to prison for tax evasion. There is nothing voluntary about it.

As for the evaluation of government “services,” there never is any real evaluation based on the behavior of citizens; government bureaucrats and politicians tell us how wonderful their “services” are and then demonize us publicly if we dissent. Government today is so gargantuan that no human mind could possibly comprehend a smidgen of 1% of what government actually does. Consequently, most citizens are “rationally ignorant” of all but a few things their government is involved in.

Government bureaucracies use tax dollars to employ a large army of “intellectuals” and court historians to praise bigger and bigger government while castigating the free market and the civil society as “failures.” Anthony Fauci alone reportedly dispensed some $7 billion annually in research grants so that he could publicly boast, “I am science.” And that is just a single bureaucrat!

A government bureaucrat’s status and pay depend crucially on how many subordinates he or she has, which gives every ambitious bureaucrat an incentive to hire far more people than necessary to achieve any conceivable task. The first question posed to any bureaucrat seeking a higher-level job is, “How many people work under you?” Thus, bureaucratic bloat is rule no. 1 for every rule-following bureaucrat.

Speaking of rules, they are another hallmark of government bureaucracy. Since there are not profits (or losses) in an accounting sense in government, “success” as a bureaucratic “manager” is measured not by the bottom line but by how closely bureaucrats follow the rules dictated by their higher-ups. Breaking the rules can stymie or ruin a bureaucrat’s chances of promotion, so rules are rarely challenged or changed, oftentimes not for years or decades, no matter how foolish or dangerous they are. This is another stark difference from the marketplace, where stupid rules that harm the bottom line must be jettisoned—or else.

Another law of bureaucracy is that in government, failure is success. If welfare spending fails to reduce poverty, the welfare bureaucracy is given an even bigger budget. The reason bureaucrats give for their failures is always that the taxpayers are too selfish and stingy. When increased school spending correlates with declining test scores, the school bureaucracy gets more taxpayer dollars, not less—just the opposite of what happens in competitive markets. And on it goes.

Governments at all levels play the “Washington Monument syndrome” game. In 1969 when the National Park Service failed to get its budgetary wish list from Congress, the head of the Park Service closed down the Washington Monument, the most popular tourist attraction in Washington, DC. People from every state complained to their congressional representatives that their vacations to DC were ruined, forcing Congress to submit to the Park Service’s budget request. Since then, governments at all levels play the same game— always threatening to eliminate school buses, police departments, ambulances, garbage collection—whatever can succeed in bringing the voters or appropriation committee members to their senses and increasing taxes and spending.

Murray Rothbard greatly admired the writings of John C. Calhoun, especially his classic Disquisition on Government. In that 1851 book Calhoun articulated what is known as libertarian class theory. It’s not the Marxist class theory of conflict between the capitalist and worker classes. The real conflict in any democracy, said Calhoun, was between taxpayers and “tax consumers,” the former paying more in taxes than they receive in government benefits, whereas the latter receive more in government benefits than they pay in taxes. At the top of the list of tax consumers are government bureaucrats. Then there are all the beneficiaries of the welfare-warfare state administered by the welfare and military bureaucracies, followed by hundreds of other governmental programs.

Calhoun predicted that when it came to enforcing constitutional limitations on government, the tax consumers would easily overwhelm the taxpayers with an avalanche of arguments as to why governmental powers should be more or less unlimited. That is why he favored a system where people organized in political communities at the state and local levels have some kind of nullification or veto power over what they perceive as unconstitutional spending. A written constitution would never be sufficient, Calhoun argued, and history proved him right a long time ago.

Murray Rothbard and the “Civil Service” Scam

In his 1995 essay “Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States,” Murray Rothbard wrote that “no system has been more savagely derided by . . . Establishment do-gooders than . . . ‘the spoils system.’” He referred to the old system whereby when a newly elected president was from a different party than the incumbent, most or all of the incumbent’s political appointees would be fired and replaced by people from the new president’s party. This “spoils system” prevailed until the early 1880s when it was replaced by legislation that created the civil service system, where the best and brightest supposedly enter the government bureaucracy after taking entrance exams and are then given de facto lifetime tenure.

Rothbard—“Mr. Libertarian,” as Forbes magazine once dubbed him—also wrote that “no measure of government has been more destructive of liberty and minimal government than civil service reform.” Think about that one. The man who wrote a monumental history of the founding era, a history of money and banking in the United States, and hundreds of other articles, books, and monographs about the economics, politics, and philosophy of statism said that civil service reform was more destructive of liberty than anything else government in America has ever done.

So-called civil service reform created a never-ending expansion of the government bureaucracy, Rothbard explained, along with hundreds of thousands of rules, regulations, and central planning dictates, which are bureaucracy’s lifeblood. Here’s how that happened: Assume there are say, 10,000 federal bureaucrats. A different party ascends to the White House and can no longer fire the bureaucracy and hire its own supporters. To counter the influence of the existing bureaucracy, it will want to hire more than 10,000 of its own bureaucrats, more than doubling the size of the bureaucracy. Then the next time that party is deposed, the opposition party will do the same, perhaps tripling or quadrupling the size of the bureaucracy from the original 10,000. And on and on, ad infinitum.

As dubious as the spoils system might sound, it was actually in keeping with the original American idea of officeholders and bureaucrats “serving” in government for a few years and then returning to civil society to live under the laws and rules that they promulgated while in government. Civil service “reform” essentially created lifetime tenure for bureaucrats, for it became almost impossible to fire them. The head of a government agency who wants to get rid of an employee will surely be sued by a government employees’ union that will make his life miserable for months or years of internal litigation. It is far easier to bribe the unwanted employee with a promotion and pay raise in a different agency at a different location, which is what is done quite frequently.

Gone are the good ole days such as when President Andrew Jackson, one of Rothbard’s more highly regarded political figures, condemned the idea of a property right in a government job and fired 41% of the entire federal bureaucracy. Or when President John Tyler one-upped Jackson and fired 50% of the bureaucracy. This is but one reason why in his 2009 book Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty Ivan Eland rated Tyler as the best president in all of American history according to his criteria of how good a job presidents did in protecting rights to life, liberty, and property.

The Yankee Problem

Rothbard wrote of how the civil service reformers of the late nineteenth century were almost exclusively from New England and New York, were relatively highly educated, and were “shaped by the cultural and religious values of their neo- Puritan Yankee culture.” They wanted “good men” in government jobs, with the “good men” being themselves, wrote Rothbard. These were men who believed in “the inherent right of their sort to rule” over lesser citizens and believed in democracy, but only if guided by people like themselves.

Rothbard’s reference to the Yankee culture of the civil service reformers is almost identical to Clyde Wilson’s description of this particular cult in his 2016 book The Yankee Problem: An American Dilemma: “By Yankee I do not mean everybody from north of the Potomac and Ohio. Lots of them have always been good folks. . . . I am using the term historically to designate that peculiar group of people descended from New Englanders, who can easily be recognized by their arrogance, hypocrisy, greed, lack of congeniality, and penchant for ordering other people around. . . . Hillary Rodham Clinton . . . is a museum-quality specimen of a Yankee—self righteous, ruthless, and selfaggrandizing. . . . The Yankee temperament, it should be noted, makes a neat fit with the Stalinism that was brought into the Deep North by later immigrants.” These are the people who believe that they should instruct you on virtually every aspect of your life with their bureaucratic edicts, demands, threats, and punishments.

The political crusade for civil service reform began in the early 1870s during the Grant administration. When President James Garfield was assassinated in 1881 the Republican Party used his death to make political hay, just as they had done with Lincoln’s assassination. The “civil service reformers” among them falsely blamed the assassination on “a disappointed officeseeker” who was refused a government job. Rothbard commented on this by saying, “The idea that murder by an office-seeker can only be combated by abolishing offices to be sought, [a.k.a. civil service reform] is even sillier than the comparable argument that the way to eliminate assault or murder is to outlaw guns.”

The big lie about the Garfield assassination worked. President Chester Arthur signed the Pendleton Act on January 16, 1883, as a desperate act to cement in place Republican bureaucrats who would oppose the popular Grover Cleveland, who was elected president in 1884. Thus the deep state was created.

The end result of this, Rothbard wrote, was that “the ideals of ‘merit’ and a technocratic elite” were employed in the service of “big government, protectionism, inflationary bank credit, and imperialism and foreign war.” All achieved by our enemies, the bureaucracy.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post Public Enemies: Government Bureaucrats as Societal Parasites appeared first on LewRockwell.

I’ve been spending far too much time in hospitals, nursing homes, and rehab places this year. Not as a patient, but visiting loved ones. These facilities are all, every one of them, a national disgrace. If anything should be condemned, they should be. They are indistinguishable from one another in their cold, sterile neglect of human beings.

The lack of uniqueness in these places mirrors our crony capitalist system in general. They don’t compete with each other, trying to provide better service and care. They understand, as does everyone running any decent sized business in America 2.0, that John D. Rockefeller set the template for them all with his “competition is a sin” credo. At the rehab center I’ve been visiting several times a week, 99 percent of the staff is nonwhite. This includes the few doctors that ever appear. Most of them come from Africa. They are almost all surly, with accents one struggles to understand. One of them attempted to argue with me when I said I was pleasantly surprised that my loved one seemed better that day. They balk at bringing water to a patient. They don’t answer the buzzer every patient has. It’s literally criminal the way these once vibrant people are treated. The attractive White nurses at the hospital where I once worked were Florence Nightingales in comparison, and they were subpar themselves.

I am now sixty nine years old. I’m aware that some of those stuck in these godforsaken places are younger than me. I shiver at the prospect of ever being a patient, and not merely a visitor. I look into their wrinkled faces, as I pass them in the hallways. Some of them gesture, and try to say something, which I usually can’t understand. There are always loud cries of “help me” emanating from the rooms. To be fair, I heard those same cries nearly fifty years ago as a young hospital worker. I learned to ignore them, as the nurses invariably did. I wonder about those faces, and the white hairs that sit atop them. The eyes which still glisten, and seem to want to convey something that their mouths can’t. I wonder how many of them were extroverts like me. What did they do for a living? Some of them, undoubtedly, held positions of importance. All of them must have once walked through facilities like this themselves, and perhaps felt the same sympathy I do for those trapped there.

In many ways, these places are like prisons, and the patients are for all intents and purposes incarcerated. There may be no bars on their cells, but most of them couldn’t walk out to escape anyhow. How many of us picture our final years being like this? All alone, surrounded by often incompetent and usually uncaring strangers. “Caregivers” who don’t care. That seems like a brutal way to wind up our painfully short lifespan. My loved ones can count on me, and a few others, to come and see them. But there are so many cases, especially in the horrific nursing homes, where elderly people are relegated to staring out of the window at a world they no longer are a part of, with the full realization that their children or grandchildren aren’t coming. Some patients receive no visitors. Ever. Their families have forgotten them, naively secure in their fleeting youth. Or they don’t have any family. No children to not visit them enough.

It’s not like those of us who are “seasoned citizens,” as Rush Limbaugh used to say, have it that much better. Yes, we’re free. If we’re fortunate, we can still live in the house we bought decades ago, and considered our dream home. I’m holding out, still mowing my not unsubstantial lawn, but the probably illegal immigrant lawn crews are watching keenly, ready to take over. When I do anything now, I hesitate. I consider how old I am. I was hanging some lights today, and had to climb up on a bench. No problem, but I did think about it. You’re sixty nine- what if you fall? Be careful! If I’m lucky enough to ever have grandkids, will I shoot baskets with them? Play catch with them? Or will I hesitate? Pete Maravich dropped dead on a basketball court, and he was in his forties. That kind of fear takes the fun out of things. I’ve had a few minor falls in the past couple of years, and it sure takes a lot longer to fully recover.

My neighborhood is full of oldsters. Most of them even older than me. I see them taking walks, or standing outside on their lawns, aimlessly examining their landscaping. The ones who are still vigorous sometimes resemble pent-up animals. One old guy actually paces across the sidewalk in front of his house. I can sense his frustration. Too old for the workforce. Probably too old for sex. I don’t think he has any grandchildren, either. I should make an effort to engage him in conversation. He looks like he could be receptive to conspiracy talk. His wife was attractive enough to turn heads when we first moved into the neighborhood in 1998. She’s now just a thin, elderly woman. I know that’s life, but it’s still sad. She pitters around the yard, and probably thinks about her lost looks. I sometimes imagine the kind of conversations they have behind closed doors. I don’t picture them as being upbeat.

I don’t feel like I belong in this oldster’s brigade. I’m collecting Social Security, and will have to turn to Medicare once my wife retires, probably next year. Social Security certainly helps, but I know that our corrupt leaders want to eliminate it. It really irks them that they have to pay back the money they withheld from every worker’s paycheck. They probably celebrate every time some poor sucker dies before they have a chance to start collecting. I seem to be the only American that thinks Medicare is a really bad deal. Pay into it your entire working life, then pay a monthly fee that goes up every year, and still only get eighty percent of your medical bills covered. So you have to get “supplemental” coverage, in order to pay for all the inevitable maladies that come with old age. I don’t know why no one else is complaining. We should have no monthly fee, and 100% coverage. But then again, I am an extreme populist.

They say that Methuselah lived to be nearly a thousand years old. Apparently, other oldsters regularly lived for hundreds of years back then, circa 2000 B.C. They don’t explain how that could be possible. Certainly, there was no cutting edge technology, no modern medical advances we hear so much about, back in those prehistoric times. An early version of fact checkers has assured us that somehow months were mistranslated as years back then, so that Methuselah actually lived to be an America 2.0- appropriate seventy eight. I don’t know, but they lie about everything. Some “Biblical literalists” attribute his extreme longevity to a much better diet. Too bad we can’t all know the joys of this much better diet, and live for nearly a millennium. Think of all you could accomplish. You could be a great failure, and a great success, many times over. See the world multiple times and enjoy countless different careers.

I wonder if Methuselah lost any physical or mental capacity during all those centuries. Could he still run at 800? Have sex at 900? Did he start having aches and pains at middle age, which for him would have been maybe 475 years old? If he became like any other oldster, he must have really had to watch his step. Any fall can be the end for someone in their 80s, so how could a 500 year old survive one? The closest we have to a Methuselah today are those Russians in the hills somewhere, whom it is rumored can live to be 150 or so. They supposedly eat a lot of yogurt. As for ‘Murricans, our life expectancy continues to decrease, despite all the medical marvels so many television commercials remind us of. St. Jude’s doesn’t charge any money, which is great, but childhood cancer rates are skyrocketing. So exactly how is our “healthcare” system succeeding, when over 70% of the population is chronically ill? We may not ever be Methuselahs, but we should live longer. The average person mistakenly thinks we do.

Read the Whole Article

The post Keeping the Elderly Sheep in Line appeared first on LewRockwell.

Among the arguments of those who seem to be pushing for expanded war with the Russian Federation, one of the strangest is that Russia is a weak, third-world country and a “paper tiger.”  Those who make this argument point to the protracted three-year conflict in Ukraine and scoff at the Russians’ inability to subjugate a much weaker adversary.  These same voices usually ignore America’s ten-year war in Iraq and twenty-year war in Afghanistan, even though both wars cost Americans much and accomplished far fewer strategic objectives than Americans were promised.

Russia has chosen to execute a war of attrition that wears down Ukrainians’ will to fight.  At the same time, it has refrained from unleashing destruction on the scale of Dresden or Hiroshima that might trigger a wider U.S.-NATO response.  Three and a half years into the war, the Ukrainian people are desperate for the conflict to end.  So far, the war has been primarily limited to the territories of Russia and Ukraine.  From Russia’s point of view, Putin is threading the needle.

What is particularly discordant about calling Russia a “paper tiger” is that so many of the people who make this assertion simultaneously warn that Russia is preparing to conquer all of Europe.  In one breath, Senator Lindsey Graham, special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg, or former secretary of State Hillary Clinton describes Russia as a backward country whose nuclear capabilities pose little threat to the United States.  In the next breath, these same voices argue that Russia intends to reconstruct the Soviet Union and envassal the nations of Europe.  Online commenters mock the Russian bear as having no real teeth but then insist that France and Germany will soon see Russian tanks in the streets.

It is true that Russia has a smaller population than the United States or the combined countries of the European Union.  With a hundred and fifty million citizens, though, it is still one of the largest nations — by population — in the world.  By landmass, Russia controls nearly twice as much territory as the second largest country, Canada.  For centuries, Japan, China, France, the Turkish Empire, and the United Kingdom have attempted to take parts of Russia for their own, yet Russia has endured.  Even after a century of suicidal communism and post–Cold War chaos, the Russian people share a common identity that is as strong as anywhere else in the world.  Russia is a nation of people who actually define themselves by their ability to endure hardship.  While “woke” Westerners cry about pronouns and celebrate victimhood, most Russians are preparing for prolonged war.

Those who belittle Russia as no real threat to the superior military of the United States often dismiss its nuclear arsenal.  With as many warheads as the U.S. and the capability to deploy them by air, land, and sea, Russia remains a deadly foe, regardless of its relatively low per capita GDP.  Russia’s new Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile can reportedly deliver six warheads (each containing six submunitions) at speeds exceeding Mach 10.  Although Western analysts have a range of views regarding the Oreshnik’s effectiveness, it is a hypersonic weapon potentially capable of reaching all of Europe without interception.

Those who do not fear the fallout of a U.S.-Russia war seem to think Russia would be foolish to use nuclear weapons because doing so would guarantee its annihilation.  For those who think this way, I would pose this question: If American sovereignty were one day threatened, would we refrain from using nuclear weapons?

Such a scenario might seem unrealistic right now, but our world is rapidly reshaping into a multipolar one.  India (our ally/competitor) and China (our adversary/enemy) are home to three billion citizens.  Should those two countries put aside their historic differences and ally against the United States in the coming decades, the size of our military forces might be small by comparison.

Although the U.S.-controlled financial system has given America the wealth to exert power across the globe, there may come a day when that same system crashes and we find ourselves in economic straits.  Whereas China and India have grown their industrial and manufacturing sectors over the last three decades, the U.S. has offshored its most critical industries.  We are now reliant upon those who will one day challenge American hegemony.

It is not so difficult to imagine a time when America’s lethal military infrastructure remains the only deterrent keeping predators at bay.  If America were ever pushed into a corner and its existence were at stake, would we hesitate to use the worst weapons in our arsenal to beat back those who threaten us?  And if we would use them under duress, why would we expect any less from the Russian Federation?

There is an idea that has long been discussed in the august lecture halls of the West’s diplomatic houses.  It concerns a desire to break Russia into a dozen separate nations.  Using the same “divide and rule” tactics and strategies that have been employed since ancient times, the West would like nothing more than to foment public rebellion inside Russia.  Pulling such a mission off would be the magnum opus among the West’s numerous information warfare-driven “color revolutions” this century.  Dissolving Russia into a dozen states would allow the United States and the European Union to play them off each other, exploit their natural resources, and keep them geopolitically weak.  Every few years, some retired head of state or diplomatic heavyweight has one too many glasses of wine and acknowledges that a post-Putin world provides the ideal opportunity to carve up all of Russia.

What would we do if our enemies were so bold as to begin carving up the lands of the United States?  I suspect that many of us would fight to the death.  We should expect the Russian people — who view themselves as part of a historic civilization — to do the same.

I have become less optimistic that war with Russia can be prevented — primarily because U.S., European, and Russian officials all appear to be confirming that things will get worse.  Speaking from a summit in Copenhagen days ago, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán warned that “the E.U. has decided to go to war” against Russia.  Elaborating, Orbán described the situation as “serious” and said that “outright pro-war proposals” are being quickly advanced.

Meanwhile, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen accuses Russia of using drones, sabotage, and hybrid warfare to divide Europe and describes Russia as Europe’s “primary enemy.”  European politicians are hyperventilating so much about phantom Russian drones that Munich’s airport even shut down because some people saw mysterious lights in the sky.  European leaders are shoveling paranoia and hysteria to the public on an industrial scale (while “green”-energy regulations kill the rest of their industries).

Speaking at the Valdai International Discussion Club last week, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Europe’s “ruling elites … continue to whip up hysteria” and stated soberly that “all NATO countries are fighting us, and they’re no longer hiding it.”  He mocked the idea that Russia had any intention of attacking NATO but assured listeners that Russia is prepared for a larger war.

Similarly, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov recently observed, “NATO and the European Union … have already declared a real war on my country and are directly participating in it.”

Finally, Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin — a man whom some call “Putin’s brain” — recently penned an essay in which he concluded that “we cannot avoid a big world war,” that “monstrous trials await mankind,” and that what’s happening “now will seem like child’s play compared to what is ahead.”

Europe wants war.  Russia is ready for war.  War it will be.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post Armchair Generals and Diplomatic Gasbags Seek War appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gilbert Doctorow is a thoughtful and well-informed commentator on the challenges with which the West confronts Putin.  In his most recent postings, he asks and answers the questions, “What do the Russians think of Putin?  Does his war of attrition strategy today enjoy support?  Or do Russians want to end the War as quickly as possible by a decapitation strike on Kiev?” 

Judging by the discussion on controlled Russian state television, Doctorow concludes that the thinking class, the top echelons of power, sees another major Western escalation on its way with the provision of long range nuclear capable missiles to Ukraine along with $140 billion euros in stolen Russian assets.  This will prolong the conflict for several years while Europe builds up its war fighting capability.  The alternative of an Oreshnik strike on Kiev that would end Ukraine’s fighting ability looks to be the better choice. In short, the conflict has gone on too long. Time to bring it to an end. But can Putin bite the bullet and end the conflict with a victory?

Having watched Putin’s address to the Valdai Discussion Club, Doctorow concludes by choosing to ignore the new and increasing threats the West is presenting to Russia and relying instead on good relations with Trump, Putin has brought himself a big problem of his own making.

Doctorow goes on to say:

“I have over the past year spoken very critically of Paul Craig Roberts for his repeated denunciations of Putin as the man leading us to WWIII by his constantly turning the other cheek and allowing Russia’s red lines to be crossed.  Now, regrettably, I admit that PCR was right.  Yesterday at the Valdai Club Putin lost my respect and I think I am not the only one who understood that he is showing cowardice. The biggest loudmouth Russophobe on Capitol Hill, Senator Lindsey Graham must be sipping champagne right now.

“After all, the whole sense of the Oreshniks is that they can get the job done without opening the Pandora’s box of tactical nukes.  And yet Putin has just pulled up his own red lines with respect to American long-range missiles being supplied to Kiev.   A year ago, his policy line was that the supplier of the missiles and the provider of all the target input necessary to operate the rockets (USA) would be considered a cobelligerent, inviting a Russian missile strike in response.   And what did we hear yesterday? That these missiles do not change the situation on the battlefield.   That is a barefaced lie.

“The do or die moment for Russia is fast approaching.   And with Putin in charge, it looks like ‘die.’

“I say this as an outsider. After all, it is for the Russians to decide who governs them and they need no coaching from us.   But I – and you – are bystanders whose survivability on this planet depends on Russia’s leader making the right decisions. His apparent belief yesterday that ingratiating himself with Donald Trump is more important than publicly and forthrightly defending Russia’s red lines against what Trump and Merz and Starmer and Macron and Ursula von der Leyen are plotting puts us on a direct path to WWIII.”

Reading Doctorow’s comments on Putin’s Valdai speech, I get the impression that Putin and Lavrov have chosen to evade reality rather than to confront it.  I am unsure I would do any better when the reality is nuclear war.  But it doesn’t have to be nuclear war.  Putin has had the soft voice but not the big stick.  Consequently, the Kremlin seems irresolute and vulnerable.  Here are Doctorow’s comments.  Read them and make up your own mind.

“Good Americans, bad Europeans:  Putin’s latest policy position in a nutshell

“Yesterday I commented on President Putin’s speech to the Valdai Discussion Club gathering in Sochi, saying that it ignored the new and very serious threats that the USA and Europe are presenting to Russia and only repeated the now stale litany of Putin remarks on how the confrontation with the USA and NATO developed from the 1990s to today and how the new world order is unfolding with the support of the Global South.

“Actually, the speech was worse than I described.

“It was crystal clear from the speech and from his answers in the Q&A that Vladimir Putin is desperately seeking to keep Trump on his side for the sake of normalization of relations, whatever it takes.  By doing so, one might reason, Russia will tame the Europeans who have to back down in the face of a US-Russian fait accompli.

“It is only in this light that I can explain Putin’s very strange decision to publicly support the Trump 20-point ‘peace plan’ for Gaza that still awaits Hamas approval. True, he adds the condition that Israel must recognize the two-state solution. But that condition gets lost in the bigger fact that yesterday Putin  spoke approvingly of Trump’s naming Tony Blair to join the planned colonial style Peace Board that Trump himself will head to govern Gaza and Palestine until a suitable self-governing force emerges from some reformed Palestinian Administration.  Tony Blair, the unindicted war criminal who encouraged and enabled the murderous, illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq. This same Tony Blair was described by Putin yesterday as a very experienced statesman in whose residence he had spent a day or more at the start of the new millennium, had shared coffee while both were still in their pajamas.

“I believe that Putin is ignoring the obvious fact that Donald Trump has only contempt for those who try to ingratiate themselves with him. In this regard, Putin’s remarks yesterday have done Russia far more harm than good.

“Meanwhile, on the sidelines, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has compounded the damage to Russia’s standing by his latest interviews dealing with the question of U.S. supplied Tomahawks to Kiev. One such interview may be watched in English.

Doctorow explains, as I have, that Putin has created a picture of Russia as endlessly tolerant of provocations.  Doctorow thinks that Putin’s failure to stand up for Russia could result in his replacement.  Putin failed to defend any of his declared red lines and now has ceased to declare them. This fact has encouraged escalation. Putin’s efforts to reassure the West convinced the West of Russia’s lack of resolution. Putin mistakenly thought that the West would respond positively to good will.

People all over the world hoped that Putin would stand up against Washington’s hegemony as the Soviet leaders did.  The world is tired of being bullied by America’s Zionist Neoconservatives.  Hegemony has made America a looter rather than a producer.  Looting does not produce an economy that benefits the citizens, only the powerful. The distribution of income and wealth in the US is worse than anything imaginable in my youthful years. The American people are not benefitting from hegemony.  

Washington’s hegemony, mainly in service to Israel, aided and abetted by Putin, is driving the world to destruction.

The post War Is Creeping Up on Us appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Patrick Foy:

I came to the conclusion that the world had gone mad decades ago. What else is new? I guess it is only now becoming apparent to the average observer. 

BTW, President “America First” Trump has turned over TikTok to Billionare Israel First influencers. In the meantime, Israel continues its campaign of genocide in Gaza and on the West Bank, as Europe and America stand by and watch. Everything will become clear, as Netanyahu predicted years ago. How clearer could it get that the U.S. of A. has been hijacked? It was your country.

South China Morning Post

The post Here’s Proof that the World has gone Mad appeared first on LewRockwell.

Comments open on Rumble

The post Has America Reached the Point of No Return? appeared first on LewRockwell.

This week, I saw this headline:

Washington, DC, Superlawyer Bob Barnett Dead at 79 | CNN Politics

Mr. Barnett advised many Washington insiders including the Clintons, Obamas, Bushes, Cheneys and other household-name politicians on both sides of the aisle/swamp. Some people consider this impressive. But representing those who’ve climbed to the top of the political heap doesn’t mean you understand biology, the economy and society such that you can sensibly assess how to react to a respiratory virus.

—

I corresponded with Mr. Barnett sixteen months ago. I didn’t know then of his famous clients. I only knew that, in addition to practicing law in some way or other, he was a book agent.

Mark Oshinskie

Sun, May 12, 2024, 10:00 PM

Dear Mr. Barnett,

I’ve written, painted the cover art for, and self-published the attached book. In the first week, without trying very hard, I’ve sold the entire first run that I had printed. I’ll have another run printed this week. I’m confident I could sell tens of thousands of additional copies if I had more marketing knowledge/resources.

I’ve been writing on this topic since mid-March 2020 and have thousands of Substack followers and subscribers. Some have told me I’m the best writer on that platform. People say that my anecdotal approach is unique and that, instead of using more stats and graphs, my story/essays are crisp, compelling and relatable.

While many want to memory-hole the Scamdemic, millions of people in other nations–many in Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand read my posts– still strongly feel, as I do, that those who effected the lockdown, mask, testing and injection crusades were deeply dishonest and have done permanent harm, and that a reckoning is deserved and needed. Thus, I’m certain that many readers would embrace this unique and still very timely book.

The process of procuring an agent is opaque to an ex-litigator like me. If you wish to see a Word version of the 246-page text, I’ll send you one.

Thanks for considering this project.

Sincerely,

Mark Oshinskie

Barnett, Robert

Sun, May 12, 2024, 10:04 PM

Hi, Mark. I could not disagree more with your premises. The steps you criticize saved tens of thousands, if not millions, of lives. Sorry.

Mark Oshinskie

Sun, May 12, 2024, 10:17 PM

Bob,

You’ve bought a massive scam.

And you haven’t read either the 2/22 Hopkins study or the recent CDC study, each of which concluded that the NPIs were completely ineffective. The shots clearly failed to stop infection and spread. Stay tuned for more vaxx injuries.

You’ve also disregarded the irreparable harm done to billions of people worldwide by the Covid theater.

Unmasked, uninjected, never sick and always vital,

Mark

Barnett, Robert

Sun, May 12, 2024, 10:41 PM

Mark, you are, with respect, so naïve. I hope you get vaccinated and don’t get sick. All the best.

Mark Oshinskie

Wed, May 15, 2024, 6:11 AM

LOL, Bob.

I know much more about biology and health than you do. I’m also younger and in better physical condition than you are. The shots could do nothing but hurt me.

This is true for the vast majority of the population. All of the vaxxers I know have gotten sick multiple times. I, and other non-injectors I know, have been fine.

Be well,

Mark

—

On October 1, 2025 I say:

Rest in peace, Bob. You seemed like a nice enough guy, though excessively self-assured. You were plainly incorrect about the lockdowns, masks, tests and shots. As did the political celebrities you advised, perhaps you thought that repeating a false notion often enough would convince many people it was true. Maybe you fell for the Covid lies because you surrounded yourself with people who repeated these.

Since March, 2020, I’ve been disappointed that you and many lawyers I know from decades of legal practice smugly but wrongly supported the Covid response based on hearsay and other forms of evidence that either wouldn’t have been admissible at trial or withstood basic cross-examination. Very few lawyers scrutinized the purported viral proofs, which were never authenticated and lacked basic indicia of veracity.

Chinese guys keeling over on streets? Morgue trucks? “Spiking” cases and deaths? Locking down healthy people for the first time in history? Closing schools? Voting by mail though you can stand on Walmart lines? Please explain. From the beginning, the torrent of images and slogans reeked of phoniness and propaganda.

None of the “mitigation” measures you praised were logically or biologically sound. As did most attorneys during Coronamania, you forgot your legal training and the basic, dialectical prnicples and process that should guide any search for the truth. I wonder if you ever considered arguments against the Covid interventions or discussed these measures with anyone who saw these as senseless and destructive.

The secular sacramental shots you lauded may have hastened your seemingly unexpected death from “an undisclosed illness.” Regardless, the injections didn’t significantly extend your life or the lives of those who took them. Perhaps, as a DC insider, you would never have seen, heard nor admitted this.

But to those who were paying just a little attention, the shots and the Covid response, generally, demonstrated that Washington’s officials and power brokers either lacked basic science knowledge and good judgment or were pulling a massive scam. Hopefully, you were simply gullible and vulnerable to peer pressure and didn’t lie opportunistically about The Virus, as many officials did.

The politicians whose books you promoted were said to have sold many copies. I’ve heard that, to gain bestseller status, political books’ sales figures are inflated via various forms of chicanery, such as donors buying thousands of copies. Similarly, hospitals got big CARES Act subsidies for attributing, to Covid, deaths from other causes, especially old age. In both contexts, and many others, one can understand the otherwise inexplicable by following the money.

Ostensible literary and political popularity are often inversely correlated with truthfulness. The well-known officials you represented, and other exalted politicians and bureaucrats, repeatedly spoke falsehoods during Coronamania. In contrast, little-known, unbiased dissidents stated the truth regarding the reaction to a badly overhyped virus. Some of the dissidents were highly-credentialed. Others were, as I was, simply unaffiliated critical thinkers who knew a Scam when we saw one.

Those who might have learned the most from reading my book(s) and Medium and Substack posts, and the writings of others who also criticized the Covid panic, instead internalized and parroted politicians’ and “experts’” bogus doomsday narrative. The newspapers sure didn’t publish dissidents’ perspectives.

Millions who irrationally feared a respiratory virus obeyed their government’s absurd mandates and took the Covid shots no longer inhabit this Earth. I knew at least a dozen of them. Most were over 80.

Age-based risk stratification was always the core Covid reality: as people get older, they’re more likely to die. The costs of attempting to prevent inevitable deaths among the elderly never justified limiting the lives of the healthy under 80.

The viral response wasn’t about public health. If you took the shots, Bob, you may have been an insider who, as in a movie plot twist, unwittingly got ensnared in and victimized by a worldwide web of deception managed by people you trusted.

But then again, you were nearly 80 and, according to the obituary, “stocky.” That was the median age and body-type of those said to have died of Covid. Not coincidentally, the average American dies at that age.

In any event, the famous and either unwise or sinister men and women who implemented or, as you did, supported lockdowns, closures, the CARES Act giveaways, masks, tests and shots, caused billions of healthy, younger people, worldwide, to suffer deeply and irretrievably. Though you’ve left this earthly realm, the Covid measures opportunistically imposed by faux wise men like your clients and confidently endorsed by you have left one Hell of a permanent mess.

Sincerely,

Mark

This article was originally published on Dispatches from a Scamdemic.

The post The Unwise Man appeared first on LewRockwell.

The title of this column is the same as the title of a video analysis of the murder of Charlie Kirk on the Macintosh Team YouTube channel. Here is a transcription of that video along with my comments.

Everybody wants to know: Did Israel kill Charlie Kirk?

“No, no, no, don’t be ridiculous. A lone gunman did it.”

Always a lone gunman.

“A young man, unstable, angry, looking for attention. His own father turned him in; case closed.”

That’s the script. That’s the headline. That’s the truth we’re all supposed to swallow. Neat, tidy, packaged, ready to go.

But here’s the problem: Neat and tidy almost never means true. Every time the story is wrapped up this quickly, you should start sniffing for smoke.

And sure enough, the moment Kirk’s body was cold, the whispers began: “Israel. Could Israel have had a hand in this?”

“Absurd,” they said. “Insane,” they said. “Stupid.”

Netanyahu himself had to go on live television to shout it down. And if you saw that interview, you know exactly what I’m talking about. He wasn’t calm. He wasn’t confident. He was flustered, defensive, repeating himself like a man who knows the rumor cuts too close to the bone.

And here’s the kicker: On paper, it makes no sense.

Charlie Kirk was Israel’s guy. He spent years worshiping at their altar. He told students, “Palestinians don’t exist.” He smeared critics as radicals, spread their propaganda, flew on their trips, cashed their donors’ checks. He said Israel was America’s best friend over and over. He was loyal.

But loyalty in this game doesn’t mean forever. Loyalty means obedience. And the second you step out of line, you’re not a loyal ally anymore. You’re a liability.

And Charlie Kirk—America’s loudest campus Zionist—made the fatal mistake of asking questions. Epstein? Mossad? October 7th? Gaza? He started inviting Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly on stage. He started letting Dave Smith call Gaza what it really is: the slaughter of a captive people. And that was it. The alarms went off. Donors flipped. Zionist bloggers.

And now watch what happens: The media points left; the right points back. Social media collapses into chaos. Everyone’s screaming at everyone else: “Deep State. MAGA. Antifa. CIA.” No one agrees. No one unites. No one looks at the one country that always benefits from division: Israel.

Because while Americans lose their minds over Charlie Kirk, Israel is still in Gaza, still bombing, still starving children, still bulldozing homes. Business as usual.

That’s the genius of it. They don’t even have to deny it convincingly. Netanyahu just shrugs and says, “Stupid. Absurd.” And that’s enough. Because the real trick isn’t to prove innocence. It’s to stir the pot so no one cares. And boy, did it work.

So, let’s ask the old Latin question: Cui bono? Who benefits? Not the shooter. Not his father. Not America. The people who benefit are the same people who always benefit. The same people who suddenly don’t have to worry about 3,500 campus chapters shifting against them. The same people who saw Kirk’s hesitation as a threat. Because if Charlie Kirk, their golden boy, could doubt, then every conservative student in America could doubt too. That’s the nightmare scenario.

And what happened right after his death? Shapiro stepped up, ready with his new tour. Donors stopped complaining. Turning Point USA suddenly had new handlers. The machine didn’t miss a beat. The blood wasn’t even dry before the replacement program was rolling.

But hey, remember: It was a lone gunman. Always a lone gunman.

Isn’t it amazing how the lone gunman always seems to clear the field for the most powerful people alive? Kennedy, King, Malcolm, now Kirk. Just random nobodies with perfect timing, doing the dirty work history demands. “Nothing suspicious here.”

And while Americans rage at each other, left versus right, MAGA versus woke, CIA versus Deep State, Israel carries on like nothing happened. Bombing hospitals, cutting off water, starving [people].

So, “No, Israel didn’t kill Charlie Kirk. Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. It’s absurd. It’s insane. It’s stupid. Just a coincidence that he broke ranks and then got silenced. Just a coincidence that his enemies are smiling now. Just a coincidence that while America tears itself apart over conspiracy theories, Israel keeps winning in Gaza.”

That’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to believe they pulled the trigger. You just have to look at who’s still standing, still bombing, still collecting checks, while the rest of us drown in outrage.

And when you do, the picture gets very clear, very fast.

Well said, Macintosh Team!

I love the line: “No one looks at the one country that always benefits from division: Israel.”

Israel is a pariah state that only exists to destroy every Gentile nation it can via sowing division and chaos within those countries. Every goy killed by another goy is a goy that Zionist Jews don’t need to spend money killing.

And that’s exactly what Netanyahu’s puppet, Donald Trump, is trying to do to the United States. He is using the Zionist playbook and declaring American citizens “the enemy from within.”

Just this week, President Trump called all the U.S. military flag officers together to a personal meeting at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. An unprecedented event. President Trump told the generals and admirals of our nation’s military:

We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military… it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.
[Emphasis added]

Americans fighting Americans; Americans killing Americans; the American government setting the U.S. military against the American people. Who could possibly win by all of that? ISRAEL!

Will we ever be able to prove that Charlie Kirk was killed by an Israeli assassin? Of course not. Do I believe Charlie Kirk was killed by an Israeli assassin? You bet I do! That is, by a team of Israeli assassins.

I believe what I said in my Charlie Kirk Assassination Update address to Liberty Fellowship:

1. The official FBI narrative is impossible to believe. I am absolutely convinced that the killing could not have happened the way they said it happened.
2. I am absolutely convinced that the 22-year-old kid did not shoot Charlie Kirk.
3. I am absolutely convinced that Kirk was not shot with a .30-06 caliber rifle.
4. I am absolutely convinced that Charlie Kirk’s killing was a professional assassination.

And when it comes to professional assassinations, the State of Israel is the uncontested world leader. It is purely natural that millions of Americans believe in their gut that Israel killed Charlie Kirk. More than anyone else, Israel had motive, means and opportunity.

By eliminating Kirk, Israel eliminated the man they believed was their biggest traitor—and biggest threat.

Charlie had rebuffed Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer of over $100 million to toe the Israeli line and stop casting doubt on Israel’s behavior, stop inviting Israel truth-tellers such as Tucker Carlson to his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) events. He had rebuffed Zionist billionaire Bill Ackman’s threats, browbeating and intimidation to get back in line.

One day after the Ackman threat-fest, a shaken but defiant Charlie Kirk went on Megyn Kelly’s show to announce to the world how Zionists were threatening him over his criticisms of Israel. It was obvious that Charlie was going to double down on his sincere questions and doubts regarding Israel’s murderous conduct. That spells motive.

What about means and opportunity? No one had more of each than the State of Israel.

Israel is a world-class killing machine. It has assassins all over the world—including in the United States. It has the money, technology, transportation networks, munitions and political connections necessary to successfully plan, implement and escape detection of an assassination with ease.

Max Blumenthall reports that White House insiders who know Donald Trump say that Trump himself is very frightened of what Netanyahu would do to him if he does not toe the Israeli line.

It is self-evident that Israel would be the prime suspect in Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Just take a look at the assassinations that Israel has carried out over the past couple of years.

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Gaza’s political office and chief negotiator, was assassinated by an Israeli strike in Tehran. He was there on a diplomatic mission in pursuit of a peace agreement. He was reportedly killed by a missile that hit him directly in a state guesthouse where he was staying. July 31, 2024

Of course, Israel has assassinated hundreds of journalists, physicians, medical personnel, clergymen, civic leaders, aid workers and tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, a large number of them—small children and pregnant mothers included—by trained, expert snipers in Gaza. Even people in the flotilla of aid ships attempting to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza have been assassinated. Israel tried to assassinate Swedish activist Greta Thunberg but failed.

The Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, was attacked by Israel, killing many diplomats and negotiators. April 2024

Ali Shamkhani — Israel’s large-scale military attack on Iran targeted and killed this Iranian official who was the chief negotiator leading a committee on nuclear talks with the United States. The peace talks with the United States were arranged by President Donald Trump. June 13, 2025

Gazan negotiators were the target of an Israeli assassination in a residential area in the Qatari capital, Doha. Negotiators were there at the behest of President Donald Trump to discuss Trump’s ceasefire proposal. The negotiators survived the attack, but six others, including a Qatari security officer, were killed. September 9, 2025

Israel has also assassinated a host of civilian diplomats, leaders and ordinary citizens in Lebanon and Syria. And don’t forget the massive pager attacks that killed and wounded thousands of innocent people—mostly women and children—in Lebanon, Syria, London and other places.

Was it an act of respect or a graphic warning when Benjamin Netanyahu gave Donald Trump a golden pager during his visit to the White House? Was it a word of accomplishment or a word of warning when Netanyahu told the 250 Israel-supporting U.S. State legislators who were being wined and dined (and indoctrinated) in Israel, “Do you have cell phones? Do you have cell phones here? You’re holding a piece of Israel right there.”

Israel has been a violent aggressor/terror state since the day it was created in 1948. And today its violent aggression and terrorist activity have risen to the stratosphere of the most evil, violent regimes of human history.

Only Charlie Kirk and his brand of young evangelical Trump conservatives remained blind to the truth about Israel. Most of the others under the age of 35 are now ardent opponents of the Zionist state. That doesn’t bode well for Israel’s future. And then to learn that the scales were coming off the eyes of Charlie, and if he followed in the footsteps of his good friend Candace Owens, well, Israel was not going to let that happen.

Speaking of Candace, she is challenging the leaders of TPUSA who are attempting to downplay Charlie’s rejection of the Israel narrative and even attempting to denigrate Candace’s testimony of how determined Charlie was to break with Israel.

On a podcast this week, Candace said:

I’m gonna challenge Turning Point USA executives to issue a very clean statement saying that I am lying if this is not true.

About 48 hours before Charlie Kirk died, Charlie informed people at Turning Point, as well as Jewish donors and a rabbi, that he had no choice but to abandon the pro-Israel cause outright. Okay? Charlie was done. He said it explicitly, that he refused to be bullied anymore by the Jewish donors.

Can you guys answer? Did he express that? Did he also express that he wanted to bring me, Candace Owens, back because he was standing up for himself?

And then did he, just 48 hours later, conveniently catch a bullet to the throat before our onstage reunion could happen?

It’s a yes or a no.

Explicitly, I want to hear from Turning Point USA that I’m lying about that.

Yeah. I’m putting the fire here right at the feet of Turning Point, because I am disgusted. I am genuinely disgusted. I am looking around and wondering whether Charlie’s entire life was The Truman Show.

None of you guys are behaving in the way that you should be behaving. Okay? There is no way you are letting these lies fly unless, as I am hearing, unless it is true that there was a big, big, big payday that was on the line. And if Charlie radically stated that he was done with Israel, if Charlie said he had no choice but to abandon the pro-Israel cause because of, and I quote, Jewish donors, the behavior of Jewish donors, if he said that, yes or no, well then, I don’t know, maybe, maybe some people didn’t want to take that risk that he was gonna what? Become Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson at Turning Point USA with so much presence across college campuses? Maybe they didn’t want to take the chance.

You see, I’m just one person. So, it’s easy to just try to cancel my life and lie on me every second of every day. But Turning Point USA I think got a little bit bigger than Charlie, and I’m no longer gonna allow this lie and this narrative.

So, answer the questions, yes or no.

And I’m going to again challenge you to lie. And if you do lie, I’m going to expose the lies, and I’m going to start dropping videos actually. So, that’s where I’m at. Enough of games, enough with trying to allow Israel to wrangle a narrative that you know is not true.

Candace is emphatically clear: “Charlie was done. He said it explicitly, that he refused to be bullied anymore by the Jewish donors.”

I admire and applaud Candace’s convictions and courage to call out the wanna-be leaders of TPUSA. She has more courage than a thousand evangelical pastors put together.

I can’t prove I’m right, and you can’t prove I’m wrong. But along with millions of your fellow Americans, you feel it in your gut: Israel did it.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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It would be an interesting exercise if one might view and consider in retrospect the week that began with the United Nations General Assembly speech in New York on September 23rd that included the “Your countries are going to hell” performance by President Donald Trump followed on the 26th by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu experiencing the boycotting UN Delegate walk-out before moving on to Netanyahu subsequently at the White House revising the Trump plan for Gaza. The week concluded with the meeting by Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth at Quantico with America’s flag officers. One might, without any particular bias against either Trump or Netanyahu, well come to the conclusion that those days constitute the absolute worst that the United States government now has to offer the American people and to the world in general.

The absolute low points during the week have to be Trump’s pathetic pleading for “his” Nobel Peace Prize in light of the fact that he and Hegseth also were setting the stage for regime change by military intervention initiatives in both Venezuela and Iran, while also increasing tension with Russia and allowing war criminal murderer Netanyahu to have a free hand with the Palestinians. Media reports note the impending supply of new US missiles to NATO states confronting Russia and the movement of US aerial refueling tankers from the US bases toward the Middle East, similar to the preparations made to attack Iran in June. So is this all about new wars?

On Monday, regarding the release of “his” ceasefire proposal for Gaza, Trump enthused that “This is a big, big day, a beautiful day, potentially one of the great days ever in civilization.” He added that the deal would resolve millennia-old problems and bring “eternal peace.” He later qualified the enthusiasm by characteristically blaming the Arabs if the plan should not succeed, declaring that “If Hamas rejects the deal, Bibi you will have our full backing to do what you have to do” to “finish it” in Gaza. He added that “Hamas is either going to be doing it or not – and if it’s not, it’s going to be a very sad end.”

It should surprise no one that Netanyahu was privately allowed a final edit on the draft of the Trump 20-point Gaza plan/proposal that several Arab states had agreed to support in its first 21-point draft version. The “significant” changes were made on Sunday after a meeting between Chief US Negotiator Steve Witkoff and his colleague Jared Kushner together with Netanyahu’s chief negotiator Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer. The text inter alia had already conceded to Israel a “security” corridor around Gaza, not unlike confining the “Gazans in a concentration camp” situation that prevailed prior to October 7th, as well as other modifications, permitting a free hand to continue the slaughter no matter how things turn out.

The principal changes demanded by Netanyahu were related to two of the most sensitive issues in the negotiations: the actual disarmament of Hamas and the pace and substance of the Israeli Army’s physical withdrawal from Gaza. The issue of a future Palestinian state was ignored. The new proposal links the actual Israel withdrawal from territory to the “demilitarization” of Gaza and the ability of an international armed peacekeeping/policing force to take over the land, which will be a highly subjective process on both counts. Israel, in the edited text now being promoted by Trump, “will withdraw based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization that will be agreed upon between the IDF, ISF, the guarantors, and the US.”

The original text stated only that the IDF “will progressively hand over the Gaza territory that [it] occup[ies].” The revised proposal will instead allow Israel to occupy the “security” perimeter zone surrounding and even intruding into the Strip until Gaza is “properly secure from any resurgent terror threat.” That will be highly subjective and can be used to prolong the process or even subvert it.

Netanyahu has made clear that there will be no Palestinian state alongside Israel. In fact he sees the steps leading to denial of any Palestinian political entity as a long distance race rather than a sprint, particularly when he is speaking Hebrew to an Israeli audience, saying in a televised statement on Sunday night that “Now the whole world, including the Arab and Muslim world, is pressuring Hamas to accept the terms that we created together with Trump, to bring back all the hostages — the living and the dead — while the IDF stays in the Strip.”

Hamas has in fact clearly stated its willingness to release all the remaining Israeli captives in exchange for full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, even though it realizes that it would then have no leverage over the Netanyahu government. It has also indicated that it will not disarm until there is the creation of an actual Palestinian state or a Palestinian occupation force that could replace it. Hamas is also fully aware that the extermination orders for all Palestinians are still in place. On October 1st Israel ordered all remaining Palestinians to leave Gaza City, stating that anyone who remained would be considered a “terrorist,” therefore approved to be killed, including civilians. Defense Minister Israel Katz said: “Those who remain in Gaza will be (considered) terrorists and terror supporters.”

Hamas has, in fact, asked for clarification of the revised twenty points proposal in light of Israel having made some changes and it might still agree to the new text, though many observers doubt that it will do so. Hamas has demanded that “a distinction be made between retaining offensive and defensive weapons, as the latter is guaranteed by international law” and also insist on “a complete cessation of the war and that Israeli forces not return to the Strip.” Hamas also wants a clear timetable for the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza and insists that the committee that would run the Strip be Palestinian, not international.

Both Israel and Washington will in any case be prepared to trot out the usual lies about Palestinians and “terrorism” to justify anything Israel does and whatever that is it will be fully funded, armed and given political cover by Trump. Interestingly, if Trump and Netanyahu had been sincere about their plans to disengage from Gaza, Israel might have thrown a bit of encouragement into the process by suspending its bombing, shelling and shooting of Palestinians for a day or so while the proposal was being considered by Hamas. Hundreds of Gazans, mostly women and children, have been murdered by Israel since the ceasefire plan was first floated, with hundreds more dying of starvation. It is hardly a good sign particularly if one considers that Israel has broken every ceasefire and peace agreement that it has seemingly entered into over the past year in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria while also killing many more Palestinians on the West Bank. The US, often a guarantor of the arrangements, has never held Israel accountable for it actions. The Jewish state has also imprisoned under remarkably brutal conditions more than 10,000 Palestinians without any charges against them, all of which makes it difficult to be optimistic about the chances for peace.

And speaking of peace plans, what should one think about a ceasefire plan that is supervised and guaranteed by the likes of Trump as “Chairman” of the so-called “New Gaza Board of Peace” with Sir Tony Blair as his associate to help “oversee the Gaza transition.” They will no doubt be ably assisted by the Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has never turned down an opportunity to promote the devastation of Gaza and reconstruction and resettlement of its land by non-Palestinians to permit the building of the Trump Riviera Resort.

The appearances of Trump and Netanyahu at the UN Opening was wrapped around the expected ceasefire proposal to some extent but it also featured the tone-deaf Trump’s speech focused on himself and his achievements while Netanyahu lied aggressive before an almost completely empty hall after nearly all the delegates had walked out on him.

Trump’s fealty to Israel aside, the trip to Quantico to address America’s flag officers might have been even more bizarre than the performance at the UN and its aftermath. Trump, a draft dodger during the Vietnam War, fancies himself to be a tough guy with his constant waving of his little fist and threatening imprisonment for anyone who crosses his path and offends him in any way. He is notable for his general belligerency when dealing with critics and his own subordinates, as well as his disparagement of the military that he has inherited as “woke” and lacking the “will to win” which has led to the relabeling of the Defense Department as the War Department and his demand for a revival of “warrior ethos” with a belief in inflicting “maximum lethality” brought about by the fierceness of the troops and their leaders. These changes are being proposed even though America has pre-Trump not been threatened by any foreign power and all the wars going on currently are being engaged in by the US without any genuine national security interests being at stake. While Trump was leaving the White House on his way to the helicopter to speak at Quantico he quipped that if the Generals and Admirals did not like his message, he would “fire them right on the spot”!

Secretary of War Hegseth added to the atmosphere, if one chooses to call it that, by demanding “to ensure peace we must prepare for war” while complaining that too many senior officers were fat and out of shape. He called for steps to make them engage in physical training to become fit and able to lead their troops in battle. Trump’s tirade, which followed, also produced a lot of frowning among the 800 stony faced and silent flag officers, most of whom were wondering why they were there. For those who were aware of the US Constitution and the Posse Comitatus Act, the White House’s willingness to deploy soldiers to America’s cities as something like a training exercise to bring the city and state administrators into line while also teaching the armed troops to do whatever is needed to restore order is so far over the top that it defies one’s imagination even to recall it. The president elaborated how “defending the homeland” was the military’s “most important priority” and told the flag officers in the room that they might be tasked with aiding in “federal interventions” in Democratic-led cities such as Chicago and New York City. He described how “They’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within. I told [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth], we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military — National Guard, but our military, because we’re going into Chicago very soon. That’s a big city with an incompetent governor.”

But that is what one gets when voting into office a profoundly ignorant man who is full of himself and his presumed glory and who is inclined to repeat the last thing whispered in his ear by his equally ill-informed advisers. The end result may well become, unfortunately, goodbye America!

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

The post Another Week from Hell Thanks to the White House and Friends appeared first on LewRockwell.

Leaders of European countries with limited military ability are openly declaring their preparation for war with Russia.  The Baltic states, Poland, Netherlands, France, Germany, and the UK speak if they look forward to a war that would utterly destroy them.  It is a mystery as Russia poses no threat to them and wants nothing from them but a mutual security agreement.  

I believe Putin himself has responsibility for this state of affairs.  Putin’s efforts to restrain the conflict in Ukraine have been misunderstood.  Putin is perceived as irresolute and the Russian military as incapable.  Trump calls Russia a paper tiger and speaks of Ukraine with sufficient European help transitioning from the defense to the offense and invading Russia.

This extremely dangerous way of thinking is the reason I have often said that Putin’s never-ending, ever-widening war was a strategic blunder, a blunder that Putin continues to make.

With European politicians declaring their preparation for war, is Putin paying attention, or will he again be Putin-the-Unready as he was in South Ossetia in 2008, in Ukraine in 2014, in 2022 when Russia was forced to intervene in Donbas, and when the Russian strategic bomber force was attacked on June 1, 2025?

Putin’s restraint and Lavrov’s pleading for negotiations have convinced the West that Russia is an easy target.  This mistaken conviction is fomenting a major war.  

Russians do not seem to understand the situation.  This morning on RT political analyst Nadezhda Romanenko attributes the Western war talk to “Western anxieties and domestic political calculations.”  It would be more realistic to attribute the war talk to setting up Russia as an aggressor that must be deterred.  The Russians simply cannot comprehend that they are targeted as an obstacle to Western hegemony.   Everywhere in the West  the image that is maintained is Russian aggression.  Wikipedia, for example, describes the 2008 Russian war with Georgia as Russian aggression, the 2022 intervention in Donbas as a Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Estonia and Poland recently made claims of Russian entry into their air space.  Every possible sign of Russian aggression is created.  The West is uninterested in Putin’s reassurances.  Why is Russia unable to understand this?

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