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Top 20 Books That LRC Fans Are Reading This Week

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

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Only When We Know What Propaganda Is, And How It Works, Will We Be Free to Live Our Lives and Rule Ourselves

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

This article was first posted in 2022 but recently updated.

For those of us who study propaganda critically, and seek to do this all-important work as public intellectuals, these last two years have been uniquely challenging, and even dangerous, forcing us into a painful double bind.

On the one hand, we have never had so much to work with, nor has there ever been a greater need for our peculiar expertise. Whereas in the “democratic” West, propaganda used to be most evident as an intensive episodic practice, flaring up in wartime, in political campaigns and following immense state crimes like JFK’s assassination, 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks (among other national traumas engineered by governments), the propaganda blasting all of us non-stop today is no longer national, or merely multinational, but global; and the former intermittency of those most awful crises, with decades going by between one trauma and the next, has given way to a mind-numbing strategy of serial bombardment — one cataclysmic fuss after another (with, sometimes, one within another), as under openly totalitarian rule.]

Thus, throughout 2020 — Year One of the now-endless Covid crisis — we were inescapably suffused with terror of “the virus,” and thereby bullied into locking down (despite the scientific fact that lockdowns do more harm than good), while also masking all the time, and everywhere, and “social-distancing” as well (despite the scientific fact that neither practice “slows the spread” of any respiratory virus). While masking was imposed, ostensibly, to make us less afraid of Covid-19, it only made us more afraid of one another, and so compounded that disabling fear with a ferocious anger at all those not wearing masks (despite the scientific fact that masks would not prevent transmission of “the virus” even if the entire global population wore them all the time).

As propagated fiercely by the media — both corporate and “alternative” — throughout 2020, that sanctimonious division of ourselves into benevolent maskers and self-centred “anti-maskers” was just a pestilential variant of the “red”/”blue” divide that the media, with very few exceptions, had already fiercely propagated since the rise of Donald Trump; and that incapacitating tribalist division deepened, in mid-2020, with the George Floyd incident, and the emergent cult of BLM, whose blurry mission against “white supremacy” was suddenly and ostentatiously extolled throughout the media worldwide (George Floyd’s beatification being yet another stroke of global propaganda, the same big graphic of his quasi-tragic face popping up at rallies as far afield as France, Ghana and Japan), and anomalously hailed by Jeff Bezos, Mitt Romney, Jaimie Dimon, Bill and Melinda Gates, Nancy Pelosi, and other wealthy players not notable for their concern about black lives (on the contrary). Whereas the anti-lockdown protests flaring up (organically) that spring had been denounced throughout the government and media as lethal “super-spreader events” (despite the scientific fact that no respiratory virus ever has been known to spread asymptomatically, as even Dr. Fauci publicly admitted at one point), the multitudes of BLM protesters were applauded for assembling, although many wore no masks, or had their masks below their chins (nor were the rioters who followed them condemned for “putting everyone at risk,” either by their masklessness or by their vandalism, arson and/or physical assaults in cities nationwide — crimes pointedly denied throughout the media).

Now reaffirmed as a distinctly racial melodrama, with BLM (and Antifa) facing off against the “white supremacists” supporting Trump and (just like him) not masking, the mass division between Us and Them so thunderously propagated — and exacerbated — by the media exploded one more time, on January 6, 2021, when, during the gigantic peaceful protest going on in Washington that day (to move the Supreme Court to look into the evidence that Joe Biden’s election victory had been stolen), an ebullient little horde of (unarmed) “white supremacists” — including over 20 FBI assets — “forced their way” into the US Capitol (having been urged in by Capitol police), their noisy antics universally and stridently misrepresented, by the Democrats-and-media, as an “attempted coup.” As a propaganda sideshow to the mammoth protest going on outside the Capitol that day — a protest as diverse as it was peaceable — this FBI-backed “insurrection” served the purpose of impugning that far larger gathering, intended to protest the likely theft of the election, as a “fascistic” mob intent on taking “our democracy” by force; and since the anti-Biden vote was driven mainly by resistance to the stringent “Covid measures” favoured by the Democrats, the propaganda over “January 6” served to advance those measures, by demonizing their opponents as “extremists,” while making it now practically illegal to voice any doubts about Joe Biden’s inexplicable election “victory.”

Meanwhile, with millions now fixated on that raging “anti-fascist” propaganda drive (whether they believed it, or resisted it), Year Two of the Covid crisis started with the rollout of the most fascistic “Covid measure” of them all — the long-awaited “vaccination” program, which Bill Gates, in a televised exchange with Stephen Colbert, had hyped, indiscreetly, as “the Final Solution.” Thus, the propaganda inescapably instructing everybody to mask up (“Wearing is caring”), on the lunatic collectivist presumption that your mask will not “protect” you unless everybody’s wearing them, was now suddenly and inescapably instructing everybody to “get vaccinated,” as if anyone not getting jabbed was thereby (somehow) putting all those jabbed “at risk.” Thus, “vaccination” was now not only certified as “safe and effective” — by governments at every level, and by all the media, both corporate and “alternative,” and by hundreds upon hundreds of celebrities, and by every pharmacy, and by the schools, from grade schools up to colleges and universities, and, of course, by the “vaccine” manufacturers, along with Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates — but one’s own “vaccination” was now urged weirdly as (to quote Pope Benedict) “an act of love.”

And having thundered on through 2021, and into 2022 — with all those blithe assurances of “safety” and “effectiveness” disproved ever more dramatically by data out of country after country, harrowing research by independent scientists and doctors the world over, Pfizer’s and Moderna’s own clinical trials, and the ever-rising global toll in “sudden deaths” and incapacitating “vaccine injuries” — all at once that propaganda seemed to stop (the “Covid measures” abruptly dropped or modified by states and cities all around the world), as we were suddenly and (yet) still inescapably confronted, and surrounded, and pervaded, by another propaganda drive entirely; or so it seems.

This propaganda drive is, or was, not about “the virus,” or the “measures” used (allegedly) to stop it, but, exclusively, about Ukraine — and yet this drive is (or was) essentially the same as what preceded it; for just as that one had us all obsessed with Covid, the benevolence of those who followed every rule for “fighting” it, and the evil of all those who disobeyed, this one has (or had) us all obsessed with Ukraine’s struggle to defend itself against the monster Putin, the benevolence of all those who “stand with” Ukraine, and the evil of all those who don’t. And just as Covid once had everyone applauding, every evening, those courageous “frontline workers” in the hospitals (all “overrun,” reportedly, by Covid), so are (or were) we now attending vigils for Ukraine, signing petitions for Ukraine, sending money to Ukraine, and wearing Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow on our backs, and in our hair, and on our nails and our lapels, and hanging Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow in doorways and/or windows, and marvelling at public monuments now bathed in blue-and-yellow lights, to show our solidarity with that upright democracy against the Nazi Putin’s bloody effort to assassinate its noble leader, wipe out its brave soldiers, and exterminate its people, in his ruthless drive to conquer all the world.

I put that rough description of this latest propaganda drive in both the past and present tense lest this one soon ends, or seem to end, as suddenly as it upstaged the Covid propaganda; and since it too, in turn, will surely give way to some other inescapable campaign, it is appropriate to note the several further crises that the media, and heads of state, have variously floated, on and off, these past two years. (Such terroristic forecasts of imminent ordeals are in themselves a way to keep the widespread fear and anger simmering.) The possible next acts include a cyber-attack (“by Russia”); a breakdown of the world supply chain, and consequent food shortages, or famine (likely to be blamed on Russia); a heightened “climate crisis,” necessitating further lockdowns; “terrorist” attacks, by “white supremacists” and angry blacks (portending war between the races); an “alien attack” on Planet Earth, as in The War of the Worlds or Independence Day; and — of course — another plague or two, or three, caused by some further Covid “variant,” smallpox (Bill Gates’s favourite), the Marburg virus, and/or whatever other pathogen, real or imaginary, might serve the same old purpose (though this next pestilence is likely to be blamed on Putin, not the CCP). Such looming sequels to the Covid propaganda, which has arguably killed or injured millions through the mass injection program, and the Ukraine propaganda, which could bring on a nuclear war (and whose origins in 2014 led indirectly to the current bloodshed in that country), would also each inflict a vast amount of further suffering on humanity — and so those of us who study propaganda critically, as public intellectuals, must speak out loud and clear, to set things right.

This means, first of all, doing what the “fact-checkers” claim to do, and doing it far more conscientiously, and thoroughly, than they “debunk” whatever facts or theories contradict, or complicate, the narrative pumped out by governments and media. Whereas the “fact-checkers” do quick and sloppy work, and then move on, we work in depth, in scholarly commitment to the truth, which may take decades to discover — as with JFK’s murder, and the other key assassinations at that time, and 9/11; and just as we persist in careful refutation of the propaganda still obscuring those historic crimes, and others, so, throughout these last two years, have we been digging for, and trying to tell, the widely buried truth about the Covid crisis, its true origins, the actual lethality of SARS-CoV-2 (whatever that may really be), the PCR tests used to measure “cases,” the “Covid measures” hatched (allegedly) to “slow the spread,” the absolute futility of lockdowns, and their catastrophic harms, the homicidal impact of the standard Covid “treatment,” and the actual availability of valid remedies, the cynical redefinition of such key terms as “pandemic,” “cases,” “herd immunity,” “vaccine” and, “fully vaccinated,” the likely motives driving this whole crisis (and those still to come), the actual low number of those killed worldwide by Covid, and — above all — the ever-growing global toll of the experimental “vaccination” program; and now that Covid, and its “variants,” and “vaccination” have been pushed out of the spotlight by “Ukraine” (though governments-and-media continue warning us hysterically of “Covid” and its “variants,” and shouting at us to “get vaccinated”), we strive to find, and tell, the buried truths about that conflict — how and why it started, how it’s being fought on either side, and the fact that dozens of “atrocities” ascribed to Russia have turned out to be as bogus as those crimes charged to “the Hun” in World War One, the Iraqi army in Kuwait in 1990, and Bashar al-Assad, president of Syria, from 2011 until his imaginary barbarism was eclipsed by “the coronavirus,” and then Putin’s barbarism in Ukraine.

And yet our goal must be not merely to instruct the public in those many truths blacked out by the propaganda over Covid, or Ukraine, but to urge the public toward a firmer grasp of propaganda overall, and so our larger goal must be to explain the factors that have ultimately helped turn the West’s “free press” into the propaganda juggernaut now keeping millions upon millions in ferocious ignorance. That real-life Ministry of Truth was not set up ex nihilo by some iron faction of totalitarian oligarchs but gradually took shape out of a corporate media cartel with interlocking boards, heavily dependent on the advertising revenues of Amazon, Big Pharma (especially Pfizer) and the media’s own parent companies (among other giant players), and with its assets closely managed by BlackRock, Vanguard and UBS; and as that vast commercial system has become more unified, it also has maintained, or even tightened, its covert relations with the military and “intelligence community” — essentially the same caste of untouchables that engineered JFK’s murder, and the media’s long cover-up thereof. And while the commercial media system has been thus corrupted top to bottom, through and through, the “public” media and “alternative” press — from NPR, PBS, the BBC and CBC (et al.) to nearly every single outlet on “the left” — have also been absorbed into the juggernaut primarily by their funding through such sturdy CIA pass-throughs as the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Open Society Institute.

Such is the “free press” that has been turned into a bio-fascist fear machine, its propaganda services assured by Bill Gates’ “strategic media partnerships,” and the concomitant “fact-checking” operation that he also largely funds. The propaganda gushing daily, hourly, from that system also has depended on the wisdom of such global PR firms as Weber Shandwick, Edelman and Hill+Knowlton Strategies, the keen participation of innumerable celebrities, and, within the Fourth Estate, the rise to managerial authority of “journalists” prepared, in university, to be far less concerned with honest journalism than with (somehow) serving “social justice.” And all the false and hateful “content” pumped out by this wholly-owned “free press” is, every minute, amplified enormously on “social media,” where millions serve (for free!) as avid vectors of the propaganda, while those who contradict it, or just question it, are censored and defamed.

This brings us to that double bind in which we propaganda analysts have found ourselves these past two years; for, while there has never been so great a need for our analyses, there having never been so much disinformation, or so much highly poisonous disinformation, to correct, nor has there ever been so huge and powerful a propaganda system to explain, neither has it ever been more difficult, or dangerous, to contradict its claims, or show exactly how it works. Today, we recognise in Julian Assange a ravaged brother to us all, his long, brutal punishment on Airstrip One having anticipated the abuse now threatening anyone who dares to cast a shadow on the propaganda narrative roared everywhere by governments and media, as he, or Wikileaks, did with “Collateral Murder,” the gunship footage that lit up the dark side of the heroic “war on terror” propaganda. His long ordeal for that unpardonable sin foretold the (mostly lesser) punishments now undergone by doctors, scientists, journalists, and academics who have variously gone off-script, especially these past two years (although such heretics were also punished long before the rollout of “the virus”).

All such dissidents are doing what we do, in one way or another; and so — since every winning propaganda drive depends on censorship — all dissidents have been blacked out on “social media,” kept off the air by “our free press,” and/or variously cancelled by “woke” activists. Since they can’t argue with the dissidents, whose claims are either indisputable or largely true, the propaganda managers have heaped us all with slime, without (of course) allowing us to answer it; nor is that all, as those countering the propaganda also have been fired, delicensed, jailed, involuntarily consigned to psychiatric wards, and, evidently, even killed, to shield the narrative. Most of those thus punished have been Covid dissidents; though those now speaking out against the “Ukraine” propaganda also are at risk, especially those living in Ukraine, where the Nazi forces have been seizing, torturing and murdering dissident reporters, and where American-Chilean commentator Gonzalo Lira disappeared on April 15, re-emerging six days later, having been detained by the SBU.

What, then, are we to do, as analysts of propaganda? For now, under this ever-rolling thunder of Big Lies, all we can do is keep on doing what we’re doing, while maintaining a thick skin, and taking due precautions, as it is ever more important that we tell the truths we know to those still capable of hearing them, and then of looking for them on their own. (This is especially true of younger people who are largely more receptive than their elders.) In the longer term, however, we must re-conceive and rebuild all our democratic institutions, whose absolute collapse has brought this whole world to the brink. Specifically, we need to rebuild journalism, so that it actually reports the news, just as we need a whole new medical establishment — one that will reclaim its Hippocratic duty to make people well instead of very profitably sick (or dead). And, of course, we need a new Academy, to educate its students, not indoctrinate them, teaching them not what to think but how to think, while introducing them to all the arts and sciences that better us as fully human beings; and, as we have learned so painfully these past two years, what these new schools must finally do — and not only our colleges and universities, but all our lower schools as well — is teach our students about propaganda: how to recognise it when it’s everywhere they look, and even (or especially) when they find themselves agreeing with it.

Only when We the People finally know what propaganda is, and how it works, will we be free at last to live our lives and rule ourselves.

This article was originally published on EarlKing56.family.blog.

The post Only When We Know What Propaganda Is, And How It Works, Will We Be Free to Live Our Lives and Rule Ourselves appeared first on LewRockwell.

RFK Will Kill You, Say Losers

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

Earlier this week the New York Times published an op-ed by a number of former directors of the Centers for Disease Control called, “We Ran the CDC: Kennedy Is Endangering Every American’s Health.”

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

Were I a former CDC director, out of shame and embarrassment I would avoid the spotlight for the rest of my life, given how sick Americans are after years and years of the leadership of people like my friends and me. I think pretty much any normal person would behave the same way.

You will not be surprised to learn, however, that former CDC directors are not normal people.

No, they’re unhappy that they and their equally useless friends are in the process of being purged.

For heaven’s sake what exactly would these people have to do before their firings would be justified?

In response to the article, Dr. Joseph Marine writes:

The arrogance and self-importance of these CDC bureaucrats is beyond belief. The reality is that the US would have been better off with no CDC at all during the pandemic. Their performance was a Chernobyl-level catastrophe….

They cannot credibly argue that the CDC saved a single life. And their message is still based on fearmongering. It is all that they know and all that they have. Fear of unknown infectious disease “threats.” They have learned nothing at all from the pandemic. Nothing.

Dr. Kevin Bass reminded me of how former CDC director Mandy Cohen developed policy. She’d talk to her friends on the phone, they’d talk about what they were doing, and then make that a policy. She said she used to call the Secretary of Health and Human Services in Massachusetts, for example:

“But you know, when she was like, are you are you going to let them have professional, um, football? And I was like, nope. And she’s like, okay, neither are we, neither are we. Uh, so, um, so, uh, you know, it was like conversations like that.”

She laughs as she recounts this.

Trust “the science” indeed.

Last week I shared the news of the resignation from the CDC of Dr. Demetre Daskalakis. He’s just so concerned with public health, you see.

Well, despite favoring the pointless shutdown of society over Covid, Daskalakis wanted you to know in 2023 that it was not necessary for homosexuals to modify their own behavior in light of the monkeypox situation.

Thus in 2023 Dr. Daskalakis defended the Biden administration on the grounds that it aimed to “support peoples’ joy as opposed to calling them ‘risky.'” After all, he said, “one person’s idea of risk is another person’s idea of a great festival or Friday night.”

(That’s Daskalakis on the left.)

So it’s all right if we ruin YOUR life, but don’t you dare disturb a fun Daskalakis Friday night!

Americans are suffering from chronic disease at an unprecedented rate, and these tone-deaf oafs, rather than accepting the tiniest bit of responsibility for any of it, want to point fingers at the guy who thinks maybe we could use some new blood around here.

Never pay for a book again: TomsFreeBooks.com

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Symbols of Disruption: The Demonic in an Age of Uncertainty

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

From the Minneapolis shooter drawing a picture of himself staring into a mirror with his reflection not human but a beast with horns, to the recently resigned senior physician at the Centers for Disease Control proudly displaying photos of himself on social media dressed in full sadomasochistic leather regalia with the same horned demonic image tattooed on his chest—affirms the point that Satan is having a cultural moment.

Baphomet, the horned goat-like figure that evokes centuries of occultism and demonic possession, stands as a symbolic embodiment of inner torment, moral ambiguity, and an identification with evil. For the Church of Satan, the goat-like figure is a symbol of occult power and rebellion.

While Baphomet itself is not mentioned in the Bible, it is associated with themes that the Bible condemns, including idolatry and the worship of false gods like Baal or Molech. In Genesis 3 we are warned about Satanic deception; and in Deuteronomy 18, sorcery and divination are strongly forbidden. Yet, none of this appears to have dissuaded anti-religious zealots from adopting the image as a symbol of evil resistance to the good, the true, and the beautiful.

The resurgence of Baphomet is not just aesthetic. Rather, it is reflective of deeper cultural tensions around tradition, identity, and the sacred. And it is not only sadomasochistic gay physicians and troubled teens who are drawn to the satanic symbolism.

In 2018, The Satanic Temple temporarily erected (on the grounds of the State Capitol in Little Rock, Arkansas) an 8-foot bronze statue of Baphomet flanked by two children. Intended to protest the use of public property to display the Ten Commandments, Lucien Greaves, co-founder of The Satanic Temple, told the cheering crowd that had gathered for the First Amendment rally: “I present to you Baphomet.” Refusing to denigrate the satanic representation, NPR downplayed the symbolic weight of the event, framing The Satanic Temple’s intent not as an endorsement of devil worship but as a strategic push for religious pluralism, free expression, and the preservation of church-state boundaries.

At the root of the growing fascination with Baphomet, pentagrams, and satanic imagery is a cultural shift that signals a deeper rejection of traditional religious institutions—especially Christianity. These symbols, once confined to the margins, are increasingly gaining traction as potent expressions of hostility toward traditional religious frameworks. Their rise reflects a broader cultural moment in which spiritual authority has become diminished, leaving a void for hateful expressions of symbolic resistance.

To begin to overcome the rise of hateful spiritual symbolism requires a renewed commitment from people of faith to speak truth into the cultural void that remains. For Catholics, the growing embrace of satanic imagery by troubled individuals is a reminder that Satan is real; and, as the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel reminds us, he “continues to prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” Despite our “modern” culture, we no longer can deny the reality of demonic forces operating in our lives here on earth.

Religious writers have often called Satan an “evil genius” because of his ability to hide in plain sight and tempt us in subtle ways. C.S. Lewis offers a compelling description of the ways in which the “Father of Lies” cunningly tries to convince us to turn away from God. In his satirical Screwtape Letters, Lewis creates a senior demon named Screwtape who is instructing Wormwood, his young protégé, on how best to capture a soul for Hell. In Letter VII, Screwtape tells the young demon that the most effective thing he can do to bring souls to Hell is to convince people that Satan does not even exist.

The fact that “devils” are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that, he therefore cannot believe in you.

In the increasing prevalence of the Baphomet symbolism, no one is thinking of Screwtape’s little demon in red tights. Most of us are finally acknowledging evil in our midst. Our late Holy Father, Pope Francis, often warned of this evil. At a memorable Mass in the Vatican’s St. Martha guesthouse in 2014, he warned the faithful that they must always be on guard against deceit. He warned against the seduction of demonic evil. He cautioned that there is a battle, and a battle where eternal salvation is at play:

Satan always seeks to destroy man: that man whom Daniel saw there, in glory, and who Jesus told Nathaniel would come in glory. From the beginning, the Bible tells us about Satan’s seduction to destroy. Perhaps out of envy. …the battle is a daily reality in Christian life, in our family, in our people, in our Churches…unless we fight, we will be defeated.

The horrific symbolism of today’s demons posted clearly on the social media pages of troubled individuals provides a clear picture of the darkness we are warned of in the Bible—the one who prowls about the world seeking the ruin of souls. We need to fight this evil with prayer. And if the growing embrace of Satanic symbolism has revealed anything, it is an affirmation that spiritual forces—both good and evil—remain deeply relevant in our world.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

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Did the United States Have Only One Founder?

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or affairs for the last thirty years than Thomas Paine. There can be no severer satyr on the age. For such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf, never before in any age of the world was suffered by the poltroonery of mankind, to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine. — John Adams

If 37-year-old Thomas Paine had died when he was carried off the ship in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774, suffering “dreadfully with the Fever” and “unable to turn in [his] bed without help,” there would likely have been no Declaration of Independence for anyone to sign 19 months later. A failure in life, Paine had left England on the advice of Benjamin Franklin to seek perhaps a tutorial position in the colonies. As it happened he found his calling in life.

He began writing essays for the Philadelphia Magazine in January 1775, and finished the year with a problem: How to get an incendiary pamphlet published he had carved out on the recommendation of Benjamin Rush, a physician and a delegate to the Continental Congress. With Rush’s help he found a printer quickly: Robert Bell, “well-known for his fearless private support of independence,” who had a proven track record of publishing.

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” Paine beseeched readers of Common Sense that Bell started publishing on January 10, 1776. The 47-page pamphlet swept through the colonies like a viral post of today, seducing commoners and elites alike, and prompted an irresolute Congress to break with England and to declare the colonies as assuming among the powers of the earth as free and independent states.

Other tracts, such as Jefferson’s A Summary View of the Rights of British America, written in 1774, called on the King “to interpose with that efficacy which your earnest endeavors may ensure to procure redress of these our great grievances, to quiet the minds of your subjects in British America . . .” Paine, in his tavern-style eloquence, wrote in Common Sense, “In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which, in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. . . . Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”

Jefferson wrote for his elite colleagues in Congress, Paine wrote for anyone who could read.

When historians get together to nominate candidates for Founders of the United States, they doubtless have criteria that eludes logic. Stated simply: No Common Sense, no United States. Yet, Paine is almost always missing. One source, Founders Online, “an official website of the U.S. government,” lists seven “major shapers of the United States.” Calling them “shapers” instead of “founders” removes some of the glow from their titles. The magnificent seven shapers are George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison.

If you had to reduce the number of Founders to one, who would you choose? Certainly Thomas Paine would be in the running. As John Adams said, though the exact wording is apocryphal, “Without the pen of the author of ‘Common Sense,’ the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”

Jefferson wrote beautiful words about all men possessing inalienable rights, “as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.” Yet he held some 600 people in bondage and freed only a few at his death in 1826. Of the 56 signers of the Declaration at least 41 were slaveholders during their lifetime.

Paine posted sharp words against slavery in his March 8, 1775 essay African Slavery In America: “Certainly, one may, with as much reason and decency, plead for murder, robbery, lewdness and barbarity, as for this practice.” Though his authorship of the essay has been questioned in recent years, he was among those who joined The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage, at a meeting on April 14, 1775 in Philadelphia.

Declaration of Independence

Five members of Congress were chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence, with Jefferson nominated as the chief author. One draft, copied by John Adams, was submitted to Roger Sherman to review and approve before showing it to Congress. On the back of Sherman’s copy is a note that reads:

A beginning perhaps – Original with Jefferson – Copied from Original with T.P.’s permission.

Does this terse note indicate Paine’s role? The Sherman Copy states:

“We hold these truths to be ‘Self evident.’” In contrast, the Jefferson rough draft originally reads: “We hold these truths to be ‘sacred and undeniable,’” with those words visibly crossed out and replaced with “Self evident.” . . . this suggests that the original draft’s author initially used “Self evident,” which Jefferson later changed to “sacred and undeniable” before reverting back to “Self evident” after the Committee of Five and Congress made their edits.

Given Paine’s ability to express high-minded thoughts in everyday language, his close friendship with Jefferson, along with his authorship of the famous pamphlet that led to the Committee of Five, it is not unreasonable to think Paine was close at hand, if not the original drafter.

Much more could be added to his record, including his role as a writer-soldier in Washington’s army. It was Paine’s first American Crisis essay, written on the head of a soldier’s drum and read to the troops on a freezing Christmas evening, that helped inspire the men to cross the ice-strewn Delaware and shock hung-over Hessian mercenaries at Trenton early the next morning, bringing Washington his first victory. The essay’s immortal opening line — “These are the times that try men’s souls.” — have become synonymous with American resolve.

Conclusion

Thomas Paine died in his sleep on an overcast morning of June 8, 1809, having suffered intense physical pain for months and the harassment of certain people wanting him to repudiate his strong deist beliefs before dying. In Paine’s words,

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. But . . . I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

Raised as a Quaker, he was denied a plot in New York City’s Quaker cemetery and was buried instead on his estate in New Rochelle. Today, if he’s acknowledged at all, he’s considered a second-tier Founder at best.

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Everything Democrats Do Forces Us To Live in Fear and Poverty Without Families or Freedom

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

The leadership of the so-called Democrat party are Communist, along with most of inner-city followers; the balance of the supporters are Communists, and don’t even know what a communist is.

Everything Democrats do is to follow the Communist Manifesto to impoverish and enslave the people. People need to know the actual specifics defining the Communist Manifesto that follow in outline format:

1…Abolish private property: Land, Home, Autos and Everything.

2…Progressive Income Tax: We have it.

3…No Inheritances: In the process.

4…Confiscation of Property: In the process.

5…Centralization of Credit: Federal Reserve Bank, Fiat Money, and CBDC in process.

6…Nationalization of Communication and Transportation: In process.

7…Expand Industry and Control Agriculture: In process, well on the way.

8…Phony Obligation to labor: In process.

9…Free Public Education: We already have poor education with emphasis on propaganda.

10…Elimination of Child Labor: Propaganda

In addition to the preceding. the Democrats aka Communists want to destroy America, Marriage, the Family, Religion, and reduce the population to absolute poverty and submission, the opposite of Freedom. They want power.

Following are some specific examples of what they are doing to achieve hell on earth for the people: Forcing auto companies to produce electric cars (EV) was unlawful and financially impossible, because we had neither the raw materials nor the electric capacity. Most importantly, most of the publiccould not afford them, even with government subsides. The objective was to deny people their private transportation. This would force people to use public transportation and live in public Stack-and-Pack vertical housing, known for miserable and dangerous living conditions in or near poverty.

The Democratic party did everything it could to reduce the use of affordable energy from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. The left pushed the most expensive and inadequate Solar and Wind energy as “renewables”. In short, the left wanted to reduce the use of affordable energy which would directly reduce the standard of living of the people, a major Communist aka Democrat goal.

The left further reduced prosperity by making everything more expensive to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. “Climate Change” is a major scam for power and money. Climate has been changing on its own for thousands of years. I don’t question the fact that Greenhouse Gases could change the climate, but has it been our fault and could we control it? This scam was designed to further reduce the living standard of the people by increasing the cost of everything for control and profit.

So-called “Climate Scientists” who promote the concept of humans as the cause of climate change were found to be falsifying evidence. I refuse to give up beef because of cow piles and gas. Then we have the Left’s Green “New Deal” Scam that would require prohibitively expensive retrofitting of buildings, removing gas appliances, etc.

The left seldom mentions that without carbon dioxide, we would be dead, because it is essential for human and plant life and countless commercial applications.

The Democrats in Congress, without significant opposition from Republicans, allowed and financed the unlawful invasion of over 20 million illegals. The Constitution calls this Treason, and most members of Congress should be so charged. If not quickly deported before the 2030 Census, these invaders will destroy America.

Let’s take a peek at our Communist Cities. They would not be possible without Unconstitutional Federal funding with the working people’s taxes from red states and rural areas.( Jail Congress!). Popular conception or misconception is that 50% of inner-city babies are aborted and the rest are raised by single mothers on welfare for life without the support of fathers, who don’t work, only fornicate. We have a study in Ohio where over 48.% of abortions were for Blacks when they were only 13% of population. Generally, Black abortions are five times that of Whites even with population disparity.

Know this, that before Government gave girls the option to have babies at our expense so long as a father figure was not evident, Blacks had stronger families and were more religious than Whites.

The Communist city officials support criminals and cash-free bail while defunding police, thus producing a very lawless and dangerous place not conducive for business or families. It may take a civil war to change this. If Trump allows his enemies to prevail and refuses to follow the Constitution, our economy will implode, resulting in Dystopia.

The Biden Administration was effectively Communist and an enemy of the people. They gained office by unlawful means and everything they did was to impoverish and enslave the people while destroying our Constitutional Republic. It was by the grace of God that President Trump was elected, which I believe prevented a civil war and allowed a short period to comply with the Constitution, which is the only way to survive Economically and so far has been ignored. Maybe Trump knows the solution but can’t act because he is being blocked by the Deep State, Jewish Lobby, the Media. and a corrupt Congress.

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Central Planning Is the Problem

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

It seems damn obvious that neither Jay Powell, Donald Trump, the 12 geniuses on the FOMC, nor any other set of Washington apparatchiks should be setting interest rates. That’s a job tailor-made for millions of players on the free market without any help, nudges, guidance, or big fat thumb on the supply/demand scale by the central bank.

It also seems equally obvious that under the current post-1987 regime of Keynesian activism at the Fed that interest rates have been way too low for most of the past four decades. Indeed, the very idea that interest rates on the money market should be negative or even close to zero in real terms is an out-and-out recipe for inflation, both with respect to goods and services prices on Main Street and also, most especially, with respect to financial asset prices on Wall Street.

Yet here is what we have had since Alan Greenspan and his heirs and assigns embarked upon the path of heavy-duty Keynesian macro-management of the US economy. Since the year 2000, the inflation-adjusted money-market rate (i.e., Fed funds) has been negative—often deeply so—more than 80% of the time.

Accordingly, the implicit thrust of Fed policy has been to severely punish savers, who, after taxes and inflation, have been badly crushed, and reward borrowers and speculators. The latter have essentially been offered free money on a short-term basis to fund their leveraged speculations via rolling over the Fed’s cheap overnight money day after day for years running.

Indeed, Wall Street speculators literally loved the negative carry pictured in the graph below: It became the foundation for trillions upon trillions of easy, arbitrage profits in the futures and options market and via an endless variety of highly leveraged bespoke trading schemes.

Needless to say, the politicians on the banks of the Potomac were also enthusiastic about their resulting ability to borrow on a massive scale while still paying diminutive levels of annual interest on the soaring public debt. In fiscal terms, the Fed’s negative real rates were the equivalent of a free lunch.

Still, the opposite ends of this 40-year chart tell you all you need to know about why central bank interest rate pegging is both counter-productive and unnecessary. Thus, back in 1984-1987, the real Fed funds rate was clearly not too high at positive 3-5%. That’s because it was exactly during this five-year period that the ballyhooed “Morning in America” Reagan Boom occurred. Real growth averaged 4.8% per annum between 1983 and 1987.

Now, according to GOP orators, the Reagan Boom of 1983-1987 was the be-all-and-end-all of spectacular economic performance. So why in the hell did Jay Powell and his merry band of money-printers insist that the real Fed funds rate in Q3 2024 was too high at barely +2.0% and therefore warranted the 100 basis point rate cut it administered on the eve of the November election?

Moreover, at the present moment, the story is even worse. The Donald was pounding the table for a 300 basis point cut a few weeks ago when, during Q2 2025, the inflation-adjusted Fed funds rate had posted at just +1.27%. So what he apparently wants is a return to the inflationary Fed print-a-thons of the last several decades and to an implied inflation-adjusted Fed funds rate of, well, -2.27%.

That’s right. After more than two decades of inflationary money-printing, the real money market rate has barely peeked its nose above the zero bound per the graph above. Yet we have both of our wanna-be monetary central planners—Powell and Trump—in a public shouting match about how much to cut, how soon to cut, and what flakey excuse should be offered to justify it.

Well, the hell with both of them!

Neither can possibly know the “correct” overnight interest rate (i.e., Fed funds), to say nothing of the level and shape of the entire yield curve all the way out to 30-year bonds or even 50-year loan maturities. The right levels for all the interest rates along the entire yield curve are constantly on the move and shape-shifting at any moment in time owing to a blizzard of changing real-world conditions with respect to the supply and demand for funds, and the undulations of the underlying macro-economy.

Indeed, the very idea of administered or state-pegged interest rates is as unworkable, counter-productive, and absurd as each and every failed past experiment in wage, price, profit, and rent controls with respect to Main Street commerce in daily bread, shelter, clothing, and transit has shown. And most especially so when the far superior alternative of a vast, liquid free market in debt and all other forms of financial assets is readily available.

The reason we have administered interest rates rather than free market rates, of course, is due to the great big Keynesian bugaboo about financial instability, the oscillations of the business cycle, and the alleged grand collapse of capitalism during the Great Depression.

That is, the implicit claim is that unless we have an all-powerful interest rate Sherpa managing debt yields and the related economic activity, a free market in money, debt, real estate, and other financial assets will inexorably tumble into thundering instability and ultimately send the main street economy into depressionary collapse.

The truth is, this is unmitigated humbug. In the first place, it is obvious that the financial and economic instability we have had during the half-century since the dollar was unshackled from its anchor in gold in 1971 has been caused by the “start and stop” policy interventions and interest rate pegging cycles of the Fed itself, not the free market.

As shown in the graph below, once the 12-person FOMC took lock, stock, and barrel control of the nerve center of capitalism—the financial markets and asset prices— after August 1971, there have been eight recessions and short-run volatility of economic activity that has ranged from +35% to -35% on an annualized basis.

If we were in the betting business, we’d wager that left to his own devices, Mr. Market would likely generate less instability than the Fed-controlled economy has displayed since 1971.

If the volatility reduction and business cycle flattening canard doesn’t cut the mustard in terms of justifying the Fed’s interest rate-pegging regime, neither does the claim that it enhances the trend rate of real economic growth and living standard gains. The underlying presumption is that the free market is too stupid to discover the rate of interest that induces optimum growth, so a monetary politburo known as the FOMC needs to take control of the rate-setting process.

Well, here’s an empirical test that can’t be gainsaid. To wit, between the so-called Fed-Treasury agreement in March 1951 and August 1971, we had a gold-anchored monetary system and a Federal Reserve run with an exceedingly “light touch” by William McChesney Martin. By contrast, after the gamblers of Wall Street brought the credit, housing, and equity markets down with the thundering crash in the fall of 2008, we had a rogue regime of massive money-printing and incessant, heavy financial market intervention by the Fed under Bernanke and his successors.

There is no contest on the growth and prosperity front, however, between the two periods. Real growth as measured by real final sales of domestic product rose at a 3.83% annual rate during the “light touch” era of Q2 1951 to Q2 1971, while the growth rate was barely half of that level at 1.94% between Q4 2007 and Q2 2025. Q.E.D.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post Central Planning Is the Problem appeared first on LewRockwell.

Making Palestinians Go Away

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

Donald Trump, recently sporting his red ballcap modestly featuring the words “Trump Was Right About Everything,” is apparently in regular contact with Israel’s genocidal Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Per Netanyahu, the most recent telephonic exchange had Trump expressing full support for the establishment of control over all of Gaza and the West Bank by the Israeli Army. Trump observed that Israel has been losing the “PR” (Public Relations) war over the carnage and must push ahead “with full force” to “finish the job” as quickly as possible.

There are also reports of a scheme perhaps launched during a White House meeting including Trump, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner which would give Palestinians willing to be ethnically cleansed a “relocation package” of $5000 and some other benefits to get the hell out. Where exactly they would go to is not very clear but it would eliminate the bad publicity if the Israeli army’s has to kill all of them. Gaza would then be freed up to develop the long-sought Trump Gaza Riviera under US trusteeship over the ruins and the tens of thousands of unburied bodies.

As the slaughter of mostly women and children in Gaza continues, the American public as well as voters in many European nations have turned sharply against Israel, presumably a manifestation of Trump’s “PR problem” for the Jewish state. But Israel is striking back with its own weapons, namely the tools that it has used to corrupt the government and media in the United States and all across Europe. There are numerous Jewish organizations as well as Christian Zionist churches backed by the ample funds contributed by Jewish billionaires that make sure that politicians and journalists know which side their bread is buttered on. But it is generally conceded that the most powerful component of the Israel Lobby is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC openly declares that its principal purpose is to strengthen the relationship between Israel and the United States. That actually in practice means subordinating US interests to those of the Jewish state but no politician or journalist on the make is going to defy AIPAC and cut off both the largesse and the political support. AIPAC says it has five million members, 17 regional offices, and “a vast pool of donors.” In 2022, it had 376 employees, an endowment of more than $10 million plus more than $79 million in revenue. AIPAC’s claims to be bipartisan – at its yearly policy conference in 2016 it featured both major parties’ nominees: Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.

One of AIPAC’s most prized initiatives is the arranging fully paid for trips by Congressmen and other prominent influencers to Israel, where they are wined and dined and fed the full panoply of lies that the Israelis use to justify their horrific agenda. The trips are in full violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) rules that organizations that operate on behalf of foreign governments must register and provide full information providing transparency both on their funding and their meeting with foreign government officials. As the last president to actually seek to have an Israel Lobby entity register was John F Kennedy, his fate might explain why none of the presidents since that time have attempted to do the same.

AIPAC’s latest trick was to send 22 House of Representative Republicans to Israel over the Congressional recess in August where they were hosted by Benjamin Netanyahu himself during what was dubbed a “week long educational seminar”. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. “The Prime Minister briefed the members of Congress on the war in the Gaza Strip and commented on the issue of the humanitarian assistance and the mendacious campaign being waged by Hamas against the State of Israel.” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Christian Zionist know nothing, was leading a separate delegation of five leading Republicans. He was treated to a private dinner with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings was a group of 23 Democratic Party congressmen who descended on Israel after the Republicans departed, also funded by AIPAC. The Democrat delegation was led by House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California and Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Steny Hoyer has led 20 Congressional trips to Israel.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald has observed how members of the US Congress travel to Israel more than any other country by a large margin. In fact, they make “more trips to Israel than to the entire Western Hemisphere and the continent of Africa combined.” That fact added to the other blandishments offered by the Israel Lobby to “opinion makers” means that Congress and the Media are dramatically pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian to an extent which the American public does not share. In Israel there is no such problem, with a recent poll indicating that a majority of the Jewish Israeli public believing that Palestinians are little more than animals and “should be killed.”

The non-existence status of Palestinians has in fact been a hallmark of the Trump Administration’s foreign policy. The latest move to place the Palestinians in a separate category when it comes to their being allowed to exist at all has come from the US State Department, which has blocked the issuance of visas for the Palestinian delegation which was expected to attend the opening of the United Nations General Assembly session later this month in New York. The State Department said it was doing this to hold the Palestinian Authority and the PLO “accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace” and there were also evidence-free claims that some of the delegation might have terrorist connections with Hamas. This was followed a few days later by a decision by the State Department to block the issuance of visas to any holder of a Palestinian Authority passport, even including Palestinians who have family in the United States. The new measures will affect visas for medical treatment, university studies, visits to friends or relatives and business travel.

The visa moves come on top of the ghastly tale regarding the fate of a number of Gazan children who were badly injured or wounded by the Israelis and who had the good fortune to fall into the hands of a US-based charity called HEAL PALESTINE that was able to get them out of the Strip for medical treatment in the United States and elsewhere. The children were in need of major surgery and other complicated treatment and were accompanied by at least one of their parents in most cases as they were unable to function independently. The blocking of the children came soon after a right-wing American Zionist extremist, Laura Loomer, described Palestinians from Gaza being brought to the United States for treatment as “jihadis” and “a national security threat.” Inevitably, after America’s Zionist cheering section learned of the arrival of the sixty or so children in the US and went to work, the US State Department, blocked the issuance of any more visas and is now engaged in a “full and thorough investigation” into how the travel was approved and arranged in the first place.

The moves against Palestinian travelers apparently came after a Netanyahu request to Secretary of State Marco Rubio to lower the profile of Palestinians who are likely to be in a position to protest publicly against behavior of Israel in Gaza and on the West Bank. The visa and travel curbs also follow declarations by a number of US allies, including France, the United Kingdom and Canada, that they plan to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN in the coming weeks. Some Trump officials, including the president himself, have strongly opposed this drive for international recognition, which Israel has condemned.

Palestinian officials have inevitably denounced the US action as a deliberate attempt to silence them at a time when Gaza faces mass displacement, starvation, and what UN and International courts have described as a genocide. The US move has drawn sharp criticism from legal experts and international diplomats, who say it violates the 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement, which obligates the United States in its role as the host country to facilitate access for all accredited delegations.

This has led to pushback by the United Nations itself, which reportedly has decided to stage the opening session of the General Assembly in Geneva instead of New York. In fact, in 1988, the UN similarly relocated to Geneva because the US denied a visa to Yasser Arafat, then head of the PLO. The current relocation is similarly intended to insure full Palestinian participation, particularly in a scheduled September 22nd segment which will be dedicated to Palestinian rights. President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to address the Assembly in Geneva, where he will call for international protection, recognition of Palestinian sovereignty, and accountability for Israeli war crimes.

The Geneva session is also expected to increase calls for action under the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, which empowers the General Assembly to recommend steps to take when the Security Council is unable to act due to political obstruction through exercise of vetos or lack of consensus. Advocacy groups are urging the UN to consider deploying an international protection force to Gaza and to suspend Israel’s privileges within the UN system until full humanitarian access is restored. It might also be useful to suspend the United States’ privileges, most particularly including its permanent veto rights on the Security Council, but, alas, that is perhaps asking for way too much!

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

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Trump’s Drug-War Murders in the Caribbean

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

Apparently taking a page out of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s drug-war playbook, President Trump is taking credit for the intentional military killings of eleven people in international waters near Venezuela.

Duterte is on trial right now before the International Criminal Court for allegedly ordering his drug-war goons to kill accused drug-war offenders on sight — that is, without arrest, prosecution, trial, and due process of law.

That’s what Trump just did. He ordered his military drug-war goons to blow a boat out of the water that was traveling in international waters near Venezuela, killing, Trump proudly claimed, eleven people in the process.

No stopping of the boat to search it. No arrests. No grand-jury indictments. No trials in federal district court. None of that. On Trump’s orders, his military drug-war goons dutifully, loyally, and obediently fired military projectiles at the boat knowing full well that they would be killing all of the boat’s occupants.

In my opinion, that’s just murder, pure and simple. Sure, it’s legalized murder. After all, there is no chance whatsoever that Trump’s Justice Department will seek criminal charges against Trump and his military killers. Even if it did, there is no possibility whatsoever that the U.S. Supreme Court would permit the charges to stand, given the extreme deference that the Court has always paid to the U.S. national-security establishment. The International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction over U.S. officials and even if it did, there is no doubt that Trump and his military drug-war goons would ignore any criminal proceeding against them anyway.

Let’s keep in mind something important: Drug-war offenses are criminal offenses. Even though we all call it a “war on drugs,” it is not a war in the true sense of the term. That is, we are not talking about a war like World War I or World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or the U.S. undeclared wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan. We are talking about federal criminal offenses, not acts of war.

That means that under our system of constitutional government, people are presumed to be innocent of criminal offenses until proven guilty in a court of law. Under the U.S. Constitution, which is supposed to control the actions of federal officials, U.S. officials are prohibited from simply killing people who they suspect have committed a crime, especially because everyone is innocent under the law until proven guilty in a court of law. As the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states, federal officials, including the president, the military, the CIA, DEA, and ICE, are expressly prohibited from depriving anyone of life without due process of law, which means, at a minimum, formal notice of criminal charges and a trial.

None of those eleven people who Trump and his military drug-war goons just killed was ever convicted of anything in a court of law. Nonetheless, Trump and his military drug-war goons knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately deprived them of life by shooting them dead, simply because Trump and his military drug-war goons were convinced that their victims were committing drug-related offenses.

Prior to Trump, U.S. drug-war policy in international waters has been consistent with the principles of American criminal jurisprudence (even though one could be forgiven for wondering why U.S. officials have the legal authority to enforce their drug war in international waters). If the U.S. Coast Guard, for example, suspects a boat traveling in international waters of carrying illegal drugs, Coast Guard officials stop it, board it, and search it. If illegal drugs are found, the occupants of the boat are transported to the United States, indicted, and tried for drug-related offenses in U.S. District Court.

That’s obviously not what Trump and his military drug-war goons did. They just blew that boat out of the water with the obvious intent to kill all of its occupants. Who needs a stinking trial, due process, and pesky criminal defense attorneys? Much easier to simply murder those drug-war suspects and save the taxpayers a lot of money.

What are those deadly U.S. military warships doing off Venezuelan waters anyway? Enforcing the drug war? Don’t make me laugh. Does anyone really believe that blowing up that boat and killing those eleven people will help bring “victory” in the decades-old, ongoing, never-ending, perpetual war on drugs? If you believe that, I’ve got a really nice bridge in the Sahara desert I’d like to sell you. Nothing — repeat nothing! — will ever win the war on drugs, except drug legalization. In fact, not even Rodrigo Duterte won the war on drugs in the Philippines. The war on drugs is a perpetual racket that will go on forever because there are too many people dependent on it, including both drug cartels and the vast U.S. drug-war governmental bureaucracy.

As James Madison once observed, in Roman times whenever there were signs of rebellion among the people, Roman emperors would start a foreign war, which would cause everyone to rally to the empire and forget what they were rebelling against. As I wrote in my July 22, 2025, article “Get Ready for a Big Foreign Crisis,” don’t be surprised if Trump does the same to suppress the rebellion relating to the continued secrecy of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

And so here we are, with U.S. warships off Venezuelan shores. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if those warships suddenly encountered a Gulf of Tonkin-like “attack,” after which Trump dramatically announces, “We’ve been attacked! Today a couple of Venezuelan rowboats initiated a surprise attack against our powerful warships that were just minding their own business off Venezuelan shores. We now have no choice but to defend ourselves. I have ordered our brave troops to invade Venezuela and effect a regime-change operation by capturing Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, who we all know is an illegitimate drug lord president, and to bring him back to the United States in chains, where we will parade him down the streets of Washington, D.C., before incarcerating him for the rest of his life in one of our high-security prisons or maybe even just execute him. God bless America.”

In the process, millions of American “patriots” will hop to, click their heels, support the troops, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, sing the Star Spangled Banner, and quickly forget the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

For many years, I have warned against the dangers of combining the war-on-terrorism racket with the drug-war racket, which is precisely what Trump is doing to justify his killing of those eleven individuals. But every American should keep two important things in mind: One, like drug offenses, terrorism itself is a federal criminal offense, not an act of war; and, two, the omnipotent power to kill drug-war suspects in international waters under the rubric of waging the “war on terrorism” can easily be extended to the United States and thereby help destroy the little that is left of American liberty.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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Why Do Vaccines Cause the Illnesses They Prevent

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

Medicine is built around memorizing foundational axioms from which all other medical decisions and policies are made and any dissenting perspective is relentlessly ridiculed—despite the fact these axioms aren’t always correct. In the case of vaccines, to sustain their market, they have been presented as both “safe and effective,” leading to doctors frequently assuming anyone vaccinated for a disease cannot catch it and that any injuries occurring immediately after vaccination are unrelated coincidence—resulting in a frequent failure by physicians to diagnose either of these.

In turn, throughout my life, I have noticed more people than I can count (including groups of people) come down with the flu after they receive the flu vaccine. Whenever this is brought up in medical circles, the response typically is “correlation is not causation” and being lectured on the fact the injected influenza vaccine does not contain any live viruses so it can’t give you the flu.

More recently, I (and quite a few of my colleagues) noticed that this also happened with the COVID vaccine and more concerningly, we would come across cases where the person we knew not only got COVID but in some cases became severely ill, had to be hospitalized and then died. While this was understandably “denied,” I soon came across research from the adverse event reporting databases which showed that the two most common causes of death seen in association with the COVID-19 vaccines were heart issues (e.g., dying suddenly) and COVID-19, with the heart issues typically being clustering near the time of vaccination, while after a few weeks, the most commonly reported cause of death following a COVID-19 vaccine was…COVID-19.
Note: this is also shown in national trends of COVID-19 cases and deaths, as they tended to spike after vaccination campaigns were conducted.

Since I saw this so frequently, it left me wondering exactly what was happening.
Note: one of the most convincing cases I saw came from a response submitted to a survey (Steve Kirsch had me analyze) where a man reported having a PCR confirmed (a-symptomatic) COVID-19 infection which immediately progressed to a severe infection after vaccination.

Initially, I suspected this was due to a hyper-inflammatory process. This was because many of the complications of COVID-19 are due to the immune system’s response to the virus rather than the virus itself (e.g., in hospitalized patients, as the disease progresses, the viral load often drops, but despite the virus being eliminated, the patients become more ill and the illness becomes more fibrotic in nature).
Note: one of the most interesting models I came across to treat COVID-19 came from Shankara Chetty, a South African doctor who concluded the body was forming an allergic response to the spike protein, which in turn necessitated either eliminating the virus early on (so this would not happen) or treating it as an allergy once the second phase began. Given that this worked for 7,000 people and his model matched what many of us observed, I found this theory quite compelling.

Since vaccines excessively stimulate the immune system, I theorized that the inflammatory response the vaccines create are tipping an already stressed system over the edge into a dangerous hyperinflammatory state.
Note: this is a common component of the Cell Danger Response, a chronic dysfunctional mitochondrial process which underlies many chronic conditions including chronic fatigue, long COVID and vaccine injuries.

This hypothesis in turn was reinforced by an inconvenient discovery with the HPV vaccine. For reference, the HPV vaccine was pushed upon the world under the theory that a chronic HPV infection could transform cervical tissue into cancerous tissue, and that since HPV was thus the cause of cervical cancer, preventing women from getting HPV through a vaccine could hence prevent women from getting cervical cancer.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of holes in that chain of logic. One of these was the discovery that if someone was vaccinated for a strain of HPV they already had, it significantly increased their risk of getting cervical cancer.

Note: an identical effect was also found with GlaxoSmithKline’s competing HPV vaccine Cervarix. In a previous article on the subject of disease provocation, I took a deeper dive on the HPV vaccine provocation data and the other immense dangers of the vaccine.

However, requiring women to be tested for HPV prior to getting the vaccine would have significantly reduced vaccine sales (e.g., those who had already been infected wouldn’t vaccinate and many patients wouldn’t return for a follow-up visit once their negative test results had come in). This I believe explains why a decision was made to ignore this glaring problem and instead simply recommend beginning HPV vaccination at a much younger age (at 9-12) under the hope this would precede their first sexual exposure to the virus—which was unfortunate because the HPV vaccine had a very high rate of severe side effects, and it was not dosed at a lower amount for younger (and hence smaller) children.
Note: similarly, while individuals acutely ill with COVID were encouraged to wait a few days before vaccinating, the current guidelines do not advocate for having PCR test for COVID prior to vaccination (despite the fact so many were given that many Americans were receiving them on a weekly basis).

Like the COVID-19 example, I assumed “negative vaccine efficacy” had to be due to a hyperinflammatory response from vaccination (as the reason HPV created cervical cancer was due to the chronic inflammation it created in the cervical tissue).

Recently, as I began reviewing a remarkable collection of literature on the forgotten dangers of vaccination, I discovered that what I had observed with these vaccines was actually a longstanding problem that had been seen in the past with many other vaccinations, but sadly, again and again, that lesson was forgotten. Because of this data, I now believe this primary issue is not excessive inflammation but rather vaccine-induced immune suppression.

Note: a variety of mechanisms have been proposed to explain the significant immune suppression observed following COVID-19 vaccination (e.g., the COVID vaccine being shown to destroy of the hematopoietic stem cells which create a pivotal part of the immune system or antibody dependent enhancement—something known to observe with various vaccines including influenza and SARS). In this article I will primarily focus on one mechanism.

Original Antigenic Sin

Original Antigenic Sin (OAS) refers to the observation that if someone is vaccinated for a different strain than what is currently circulating (e.g., of the flu) they tend to have a worse immune response than those who were never vaccinated. Furthermore, multiple studies have shown that OAS affects completely different species (e.g., if you receive an influenza vaccine, you are less able to mount a response to “flus” caused by other respiratory viruses) and that OAS can persist for at least a year after vaccination.

Note: in a previous article, I discussed a 2009 article, a 2009 study, a 2010 review, a 2010 study, and a 2013 study (published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet), which collectively found a 40-166% increase in the likelihood of getting infected with a virus which differed from the strain you were vaccinated against (e.g., a pandemic influenza strain which had a greater risk of hospitalization) and up to a 100 fold increase in one’s viral load (which increases transmission). Additionally, in children who received a non-matching influenza vaccine, a 2012 study found they were 267% more likely to be hospitalized for influenza and another 2012 study found that 29.0% developed an infection with a non-influenza upper respiratory virus (compared to 3.4% of the unvaccinated). Finally, a 2023 study inadvertently showed influenza vaccination significantly increased one’s risk of being hospitalized for the flu.

OAS is thought to be a result of off-target immunity leading to partial immune suppression. Specifically, since the immune system has a finite ability to respond to threats, if it becomes hyper-primed to target one antigen (e.g., the vaccine antigen it is continually provoked to target), its focus is diverted away from other antigens it needs to respond to. This in turn makes sense since the immune system (which does not have an infinite number of immune cells) has to prioritize targeting life threatening infections, but unfortunately, since it did not evolve in tandem with the era of vaccination, it is not always prepared to appropriately to respond to the artificial immune stimulation vaccinations create.
Note: typically speaking, vaccine components persist in the body for a prolonged period (as the immune system cannot break down the immunostimulatory aluminum adjuvant they contain). This issue became a much greater problem with the COVID vaccines because the body has difficulty breaking down the synthetic mRNA they contain, which in many cases has led to the (immunostimulating) vaccine spike protein still being produced more than a year after vaccination.

In the case of influenza vaccinations, since the vaccines require months to produce and hence need to be made before the seasonal circulating strain is known, the wrong strain is frequently chosen. This leads to the annual vaccine often being ineffective, and worse still, frequently leading to OAS and exacerbating the existing flu season.
Note: in most “bad” influenza years, I typically hear colleagues argue that it’s a bad season because the wrong vaccine was chosen, but it’s still essential to vaccinate because had lots of people not vaccinated, that year’s flu would have been even worse (an effective marketing slogan which was repurposed throughout COVID). However, my own experience has been that whenever I saw someone in the ICU for an influenza infection during one of those “bad” seasons, their chart always showed they were vaccinated—an observation directly supported by some of the studies I linked to above.

Disease enhancement from a mismatching vaccine is a rarely discussed but well-known problem. For example, a reader and physician who worked in the NIH was assigned to study this issue from 2009-2011 and followed a cohort of vaccinated children and pregnant months over 3 flu seasons also discovered a clear trend of negative vaccine efficacy. When she submitted her analysis, however, she was removed from the NIH and blacklisted from future employment (and as a result, she understandably harbors great disdain for Anthony Fauci).

The solution Fauci and the NIH in turn pushed for was to utilize mRNA technology to produce seasonal influenza vaccines since the production time for them was much shorter (so they could begin being produced once the circulating flu strains were essentially known). Unfortunately, since SARS-CoV-2 mutated much faster than a typical influenza virus, even with this shortened production time, it was still not quick enough to match the circulating variants (even when now boosters were rolled out multiple times each year).

In turn, because of the focus over the last few years on studying everything related to COVID, a study of 51011 people at the Cleveland Clinic gave the most overt proof of OAS I have seen in the scientific literature as more vaccinations were directly correlated to one’s susceptibility to repeating COVID infections:

Note: there are many cases you can read online of individuals who have received multiple COVID boosters continually getting COVID (e.g., Igor Chudov periodically compiles them).

More recently, the Cleveland clinic published another dataset of 53,402 employees showing that the influenza vaccine actually increased ones likelihood of getting the flu.

One of the most tragic examples of OAS immunosuppression was Peter Aaby’s WHO studies which found childhood DTwP vaccination in Guinea-Bissau (a vaccine which is no longer used in the United States due to its toxicity) caused children to be 5 times more likely to die (3.93 for boys and 9.98 for girls)—something, which in most cases, was due to them succumbing from one of the many lethal infectious diseases circulating in Subsaharan Africa. Sadly, while his data was published, it was largely ignored by the global public health apparatus since it would have required abandoning a practice they were deeply invested in.

Read the Whole Article

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The Zionist Experiment Is Over

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

Contrary to the assertions of Scofield-duped Christian Zionist evangelicals, God gave NO everlasting unconditional promise of national perpetuity to the Old Covenant nation of Israel. God’s promises of blessings to Old Covenant Israel were conditional to Israel’s obedience to God.

An unconditional everlasting promise was given to the man Abraham. And this promise was fulfilled in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. (Galatians 3:16, 28, 29) But to the nation of Old Covenant Israel was no such promise given.

In my third Prophecy Message from Romans 11, I provided much Scripture that delineated the differences between the unconditional everlasting seed promise given to Abraham (fulfilled in Christ) and the conditional land promise given to the Old Covenant nation of Israel—a covenant that Israel broke—and God then cursed Israel and took the land away from them forever.

Prophecy Message Three is entitled God’s Chosen People, and we have that message in both a DVD and PDF format.

Moses, the man through whom God gave Israel its conditional covenant, made it crystal clear to the nation just how conditional God’s covenant was to them.

But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee:

The LORD shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me.

The LORD shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.

Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people.

And thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations whither the LORD shall lead thee.

Thou shalt beget sons and daughters, but thou shalt not enjoy them; for they shall go into captivity.

Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee:

And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever.

Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things;

Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.

And it shall come to pass, that as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good, and to multiply you; so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you, and to bring you to nought; and ye shall be plucked from off the land whither thou goest to possess it.

(See Deuteronomy 28:15 – 68)

In these and many other passages of Scripture, God promised to remove the children of Israel from the promised land (Canaan) forever, because of their disobedience. In this chapter in Deuteronomy, Moses predicted the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians, the destruction of Judah by the Babylonians and the destruction of the Judahite remnant by the Romans.

In short, Old Covenant Israel violated its covenant with God, and God did what Moses declared He would do: He expelled them from the promised land and destroyed their nation forever. The Israelis in Palestine today are NOT Biblical Israelites; they are NOT the biological descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and they are NOT God’s chosen people.

The Israelis are the children of Japheth, not Shem, as are the rest of the Eastern Europeans from which they descended. They have ZERO God-given land covenant in Palestine. They have ZERO promise of national perpetuity from God; there is ZERO promise from God for anyone who attempts to bless, assist, aid or support the Zionist state.

In truth, from its very inception in 1948, the State of Israel has proven itself to be a devilish, murderous, barbaric people—a plague of racism, hatred, ethnic cleansing, war and genocide upon the world. And the more the United States has entangled itself economically, militarily, morally and spiritually with Israel, the more America has invoked the curse of God upon it to the point that today America is little more than a vassal state of the most vile, wicked and bloodthirsty country on the planet.

And after two years of supporting Israel’s maniacal genocide in Gaza, the people of the entire world hold both Israel and the United States in utter contempt. And for good reason. America’s financial and military support for Israel’s crimes against humanity in Palestine are contemptible.

Donald Trump has proven himself to be as much or more of a lackey for Israel as Joe Biden. He is the one man in the world that has the capability to put an end to Israel’s slaughter of innocents in Gaza and the West Bank, but he refuses to do it. As with almost the entire Congress in Washington, D.C., Trump is nothing more than a pimp for Israel. They are all bought and paid for by the Israel lobby. They are the worst kind of prostitutes. They make street walkers look like Sunday School teachers by comparison.

But, ladies and gentlemen, Israel is doing more than murdering hundreds of thousands of innocents; it is expediting its own destruction. Israel has passed the point of no return. Its collapse is certain—and probably imminent.

As it always does, the Western media ignored it, but Yemen’s Houthis delivered a devastating missile attack against Israel, after Israel assassinated Yemen’s civilian prime minister and 12 of his cabinet members.

Here is a YouTube technical analysis from Conflict Skies & Steel of the attack:

Today we are witnessing a historic escalation in the Middle East that is shaking the foundations of regional security. Yemen’s Houthis have launched a daring strike against Israel, targeting the heart of Tel Aviv with a combination of long-range missiles and advanced drones.

This is not just a headline, it is a demonstration of reach, precision and the growing boldness of non-state actors in the modern battlefield. The world is now watching closely as the Houthis challenge one of the most technologically advanced nations in the region, sending a clear and shocking message to Israel and its allies.

Tel Aviv, a city known for its bustling economy and dense population, is now under fire with emergency sirens blaring and streets evacuated in panic. Smoke rises from multiple districts, while Israel’s air defense systems scramble to intercept incoming threats.

The scale of this attack is unlike anything seen in recent years, highlighting a new phase in asymmetric warfare, where precision and surprise trump sheer size and firepower. Citizens report sudden explosions, shaking windows and streets filled with confusion, a stark reminder that modern conflict can reach civilian centers with devastating speed.

The Iron Dome has successfully neutralized a large portion of the attack, but gaps in coverage were exposed, demonstrating that even the most sophisticated defense networks are not infallible.

Streets once crowded with civilians now appear deserted, as emergency sirens and warnings drive people into shelters. This attack is remarkable for its precision, with missiles targeting strategic locations rather than random destruction, showcasing the Houthis’ intelligence and tactical planning.

For Israel, this is a psychological blow as much as a physical one. The population’s sense of security is shaken, and the government must quickly reassess its defensive posture.

Conflict Skies and Steel [YouTube Channel] has been closely analyzing the data, and what stands out is the speed, coordination and audacity of this operation, reflecting a level of sophistication that goes far beyond what many had expected from Houthi capabilities.

The interior of this operation, though brief in visible details, tells a story of meticulous planning and technological evolution. The Houthi appear to have synchronized multiple missile launches with drone operations to overwhelm Israel’s defenses. Open-source satellite imagery suggests that launch sites were strategically positioned and camouflaged deep inside Yemeni territory. Real-time intelligence likely guided the drones to ensure maximum accuracy. The operation reflects a calculated approach, balancing the need for impact with operational security to avoid exposing critical assets.

Even with limited resources compared to a conventional army, the Houthis demonstrated that precision, timing and adaptability are force multipliers capable of challenging the world’s strongest defenses.

Performance of the strike has been extraordinary. Missiles reportedly traveled over 100 to 200 kilometers, demonstrating a significant extension of Houthi range capabilities. The simultaneous use of drones adds an unpredictable element, complicating interception strategies.

The attack successfully stressed Israel’s air defense systems, creating gaps that allowed some missiles to reach their targets. Analysts are evaluating the types of missiles used, with indications of modified scud variants and precision-guided munitions.

Drones provided real-time reconnaissance, potentially allowing operators to adjust trajectories mid-flight. This combination of missiles and UOV highlights the Houthis’ ingenuity, blending traditional long-range attacks with modern drone technology to create a complex battlefield problem.

The unique selling points of this Houthi operation are clear and remarkable.

First, the ability to strike Tel Aviv from Yemen demonstrates a significant leap in operational reach and capability.

Second, the synchronized use of multiple weapons systems, including missiles and drones, showcases an integrated approach rarely seen from non-state actors.

Third, the psychological impact on both Israel and the international community is immense, sending a signal that the Houthis can operate far beyond their traditional theater of conflict.

In conclusion, Yemen’s Houthi strike on Tel Aviv is both shocking and strategically significant. It exposes vulnerabilities in advanced air defense systems, demonstrates the evolution of non-state actors into formidable military threats and emphasizes the psychological and political dimensions of modern warfare.

Civilians are facing unprecedented threats, militaries are forced to reconsider their strategies and analysts are left re-evaluating the assumptions of regional power dynamics.

Israel is hemorrhaging economically, militarily, culturally, politically, psychologically, emotionally and internationally.

The Zionist experiment is over.

Almost every country in the world sees Israel for the satanic monster that it is, and they are enraged. The only major government in the world that remains unconditionally supportive of Israel is the United States—and among the population of the U.S., opposition to Israel is two to one. And Donald Trump’s favorability rating is now worse than was Joe Biden’s—mainly due to his sycophantic support for Israel.

Geopolitical, academic, military and intelligence experts such as Col. Douglas Macgregor, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Major Scott Ritter, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Professor John Mearsheimer, intelligence officers Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern and Phil Giraldi are unanimous in the opinion that Israel’s collapse will come sooner than later.

Netanyahu and his fellow fascists in Israel are possessed with the intention of slaughtering or removing all 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. They really do intend to turn Gaza into Trump’s Riviera of the Middle East. Then, they fully intend to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. Then, they intend to conquer Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Then, they intend to liquidate the Palestinians and Arabs in Jordan and Eastern Egypt (including Cairo) and seize those land areas, including a large segment of Saudi Arabia.

But their devilish designs for a Greater Israel are falling apart. The little country of Yemen is showing the world that Israel—even with the military support of the United States—is ripe for destruction. After decades of missile attacks from Saudi Arabia and the United States (under both Biden and Trump) the Houthis are still standing toe-to-toe against Israel with much mental acumen and military aptitude.

If Israel is stunned and frightened by Yemen, wait until they attack Iran again and see what happens. Plus, the money-worshipping Arab states in the Persian Gulf that have sat back like scared little pussycats and done NOTHING to help their Arab brethren in Palestine know that history is going to forever shine the light of truth on the Arab monarchies for the moneygrubbing cowards they are, while the Houthis will go down in history as the brave little David who stood courageously against the Zionist Goliath—and won.

Israelis by the thousands are fleeing the country. They know the nation is on its last legs. Netanyahu knows his only hope for staying out of prison (or maybe even staying alive) is to keep Israel at war. He doesn’t care one whit how many innocent people he kills, as long as it keeps him in power. He is a demon-possessed madman. And he is trying his best to drag the United States into all-out war along with him.

And given Trump’s slavish devotion to the Jewish billionaires that have been his financial benefactors throughout his entire life, he is proving to be in no mood to put America first, all of his campaign rhetoric notwithstanding. After all, Trump started seven businesses, and all seven went bankrupt. And all seven times the Zionist billionaires bailed him out. It is a fantasy to think that Trump would put the interests of the United States above those of Israel. Trump is Zionist-owned lock, stock and barrel.

But the question might be: Who will die first, Donald Trump or Israel? Because both are on life support.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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Inflation Is Caused by the Announcement of Its Arrival

Lew Rockwell Institute - Sab, 06/09/2025 - 05:01

Publix’s latest back-to-back price rises have raised 12 ounces of Community coffee to $13.60 from $11, 12 ounces of Greenfield uncured bacon to $9.19 from $7.99. Seattle’s Best coffee held its price by reducing its offering from 12 ounces to 10. Just to fix a sandwich lunch at home today costs as much as to eat a gourmet evening meal at Claridges in London in 1963.

Today the nightly price of a room at Claridges is $2,258. On November 19 the price drops to $1,874. Today traditional afternoon tea at Claridges is priced from 95 British pounds ($128 dollars) and up per person. In 1963 the price of a full course evening meal at Claridges for two couples (4 people), with chocolate mousse and vintage port totaled 20 British pounds which was $56. So, in 1963 four persons could enjoy a full course meal at one of the finest restaurants in the world for half the price one person pays for an afternoon tea today.

I can’t imagine the price of the 1963 dinner meal for four that I participated in today. Looking at the restaurants bar prices, one fluffy margarita royal cost 2 British pounds more than our gourmet dinner for four.

The cheapest dinner menu today for four is 360 British pounds. Compared to the 20 pounds of my day, it is devoid of exotic offerings. No chocolate mousse. No vintage port. Today even Claridges offers a Signature Burger at 32 British pounds. A hamburger on Claridges’s dinner menu was an impossibility in 1963-64.

If you go to the a la cart menu, you can get a selection of oysters, tuna curdo, scallop ceviche, Cornish crab and a whole lobster for 185 British pounds, which is $250. If we add a starter of a half dozen raw oysters on the half shell at 32 British pounds and an iceberg lettuce and avocado salad at 22 pounds, and some miso glazed carrots at 8 pounds, we have a dinner for one priced at 247 British pounds or $336. For four people the bill today would be $1,344 compared to $56 in 1963, and the present day dinner doesn’t reach the level on the one I had in 1963, which came to 5 British pounds per person. There is no vintage port and no chocolate mousse.

I turned to Claridges’ current wine menu. There is no vintage port on the menu. There is no Veuve Clicquot champagne on the menu and no Dom Perignon. A bottle of Krug, Grande Cure is 450 pounds or $605. Apparently, not even oil sheiks and narcotics barons can afford vintage port.

I have used restaurant prices as an example of inflation, about which more I will write in a moment. It is not the British who sustain these prices. It is Arab oil barons and Afghan drug cartels, and perhaps CIA and MI6 agents on expense accounts hoping to infiltrate these organizations. The example shows not only a decline the quality of an evening meal that even Claridges can offer, but its inaccessibility to any but the rich. In 1963-64 when I enjoyed Claridges I was a graduate student on scholarship with wife at Oxford University. Imagine that today.

I used to write more about economics and inflation. But I found that economics was not a popular subject with my audience. As best as I could figure, the reason is that most thought economics was too difficult to understand. Moreover, they thought they knew enough. For Republicans the problem was the government spent too much and burdened the economy with too much debt. For Democrats the problem was that the rich had too much money, saved too much of it, and left the economy with insufficient consumer demand to maintain full employment. For one party the solution was to cut government; for the other party the solution was to increase it.

My economic lesson for today is that having lived for decades with economists’ explanations of inflation, there is one that they have overlooked. Inflation is caused by Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and the media declaring its presence. Once inflation is declared, everyone has cover to raise his prices. This is our present cause of inflation. It is a way of boosting profits. Inflation is declared, using for example, Trump’s might be tariffs, and Community Coffee jumps from $11 to $13.60, bacon from $8 to $10. Organic eggs never came down from the virus that resulted in the slaughter, for some reason, only of egg laying chickens. Organic eggs are approaching one dollar per egg. I can remember when a dozen eggs cost 69 cents.

In past writings I have pointed out that the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures inflation in a manner than minimizes it. The same for unemployment. The numbers have little, if any, reliability. Yet markets are moved by the announcement of fake numbers.

This is endemic. What controls stock prices more than speculation about the Fed’s next move on interest rates? If the Fed is expected to lower interest rates, up goes stock prices. If the Fed is expected to raise interest rates, down go stock prices. Equity prices are determined by the amount of money chasing them, not by the soundness of the company’s position and earnings record.

How is it that despite what we constantly hear about the growth in knowledge and education, increasingly unreality is taking the place of reality?

Recently I read a scary article that children who spend their time in video games have difficulty in transitioning from virtual reality into real reality, which is perhaps a development that our masters intend.

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Scott Horton Brain Dump on Lex Fridman

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 05/09/2025 - 23:36

I don’t even know where to start with Lex Fridman’s 10 hour interview with Scott Horton. All I can really say is that if you’re a foreign policy geek and you have followed or been aware of U.S. military interventions since the end of the cold war, you honestly have to listen to this. Scott rambles off the top of his head the whole time. It’s absolutely incredible! I can honestly say that he is the most underrated policy wonk in probably the history of our country.

From Neocons to Afghanistan, to Israel, Syria, Iraq, Iran and everything in between, Scott just runs wild with it all.

I frequently talk about the Wolfowitz Doctrine — the Neocon “new world order” US-is-the-king-of-the-world policy since the end of the cold war. What I didn’t know is that the Neocons were also helping to implement Israel’s own Yinon Plan. Just from the standpoint of the Neocon to Israel connection, Scott’s take on why we always do Israel’s bidding even though it isn’t in our country’s interests to do so comes full circle.

He has every footnote, every article, and every source to back it all up. He’s literally a walking encyclopedia and we’re all not worthy.

I get it. This isn’t a 5 minute easily consumable 3×5 card. It’s not for everyone. But damn, this is THE rabbit hole! This is the “red pill.” It is time well spent.

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JAG Arrests Former Deputy AG Sally Yates for TREASON

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 05/09/2025 - 21:03

Click Here:

Real Raw News

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Interview with Jenny McCarthy

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 05/09/2025 - 20:50

Click Here:

John Leake

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The Real Historical Story of the Soviet Union, Unvarnished and Pulling No Punches

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 05/09/2025 - 20:47

The real Soviet story is brutal. This documentary, based on released KGB files, is uncompromising. Though it starts by telling the story of the murder of millions of Ukrainians in the “Holodomor” in 1933, the 2008 documentary film goes far beyond merely exposing Soviet atrocities.

The film shows the close connections – philosophical, political and organizational – between the Nazi and Soviet systems. Russians, who have spent decades whitewashing their own history and making Soviet communism palatable, protested the film.

The Soviet Story offers an alternative history of an Allied power which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. The Soviet Story’ also discusses the impact of the Soviet legacy on modern day Europe and helps us understand Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

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Stagflation Arrives — Unemployment & Inflation Are Rising Together

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 05/09/2025 - 17:32

Throughout all of human history, central planning has a perfect 100% failure rate. Yet, there is never a shortage of central planners. Even America, which began with a very limited government, has morphed into a web of planners, and agencies, and red tape, and unelected bureaucrats galore. Prices are manipulated to such an extreme degree that rational decision-making and investment become near impossible. Forget consumers. The goal is to get in charge of the state, and force your will onto everyone else. Eventually, this all falls to pieces; and everyone is forced to re-learn what freedom and limited government means again … That is, until the next batch of central planners arrive on the scene.

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Reality

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 05/09/2025 - 16:50

Writes Bill Madden:

The video below, like most communications these days, is entirely too long. But, you might want to watch about 10 minutes of the video as I feel the warning is legitimate and totally opposite of the feel good B.S. being fed to us every day by the mainstream media. More people are not concerned because most people are ignorant and apathetic

Also, I don’t feel comfortable having a political leader like Donald Trump who was elected because he wasn’t Kamala. If overly large egos equated to effective governance, we’d be in good shape but overly large egos are a detriment to effectiveness in any endeavor.

Trump is upset with Putin because he won’t stop the war in Ukraine that we started and funded with over $200 billion of taxpayer money. Putin doesn’t work for Trump. Trump is upset with Fed Chairman Powell because he won’t lower interest rates when real inflation: www.shadowstats.com is soaring. Try reducing spending Mr. President and interest rates will eventually come down. You might begin with the military aid going to Israel and Ukraine.

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Why, as a Former History Teacher, I Never Watch (or Recommend Others to View) the History Channel

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 05/09/2025 - 14:50

The History Channel’s Mendacious Propaganda Concerning the World Wars, by Charles Burris

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What a Great Gift to RFK, Jr. (and American Taxpayers)

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 05/09/2025 - 14:32

Some 1,000 CDC bureaucrats have reportedly signed a letter demanding that RFK, Jr. resign. What a great gift to RFK, Jr. — and the nation. Now he knows exactly who to fire immediately.

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