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Will Rodgers once said, “It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.”

One way or another we have all been given this sage advice, and some of us have learned the lesson the hard way. Reputation is everything.

Except for Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs seems to defy reputation risk time and time again. The story of the 1MDB (Malaysian Development Berhad) scandal shows beyond much doubt, Goldman can pretty much do whatever the hell it wants. If Goldman gets caught, it enters a deferred prosecution agreement, — as was the case with 1MDB — or pays a fine and then goes on its way as if nothing happened.

In the case of 1MDB, Goldman reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the feds in 2020, but until last week, its former partner and Southeast Asia chairman, Tim Leissner, stubbornly stuck around as annoying residue from the scandal.

Leissner pleaded guilty in 2018 to money laundering and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by arranging over $1 billion in bribes to officials in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates to obtain lucrative underwriting mandates for Goldman.

Those mandates earned Goldman Sachs at least $600 million in underwriting fees. Leissner also vigorously ratted on fellow Goldman-ite Roger Ng, who received a 10 year sentence in 2023. Prosecutors asked for leniency, saying in a March 15 letter to the judge that “Leissner’s cooperation was of tremendous value and was central to the government’s ability to swiftly indict and successfully prosecute numerous individuals and entities involved in the 1MDB scheme.”

Goldman’s general counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, responded May 21 with a letter to the judge that argued against leniency.

Leissner’s serial lies, fraud and deception at Goldman Sachs continued from the day he first brought the transactions to the firm through the day he left. Mr. Leissner’s efforts in this regard are worthy of sanction, not praise.

Before sentencing Leissner, U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie asked Prosecutor Drew Rolle what he thought of the letter.

Hilariously, Rolle retorted that Goldman’s letter was “the equivalent of a getaway driver showing up at a cooperator’s sentencing and saying: ‘You know judge, we wouldn’t be in this mess if he hadn’t decided to rob a bank.’ ’’

Leissner wrote his own letter to the judge that, according to the Wall Street Journal, his crimes cost him his career, marriage and time with his children. More from the Journal’s account:

He apologized at his sentencing for his actions, saying they were driven by career ambitions. “If I could turn back time, I would and I would do so without hesitation,” Leissner said, choking back tears. “Unfortunately, that is not possible.”

Goldman Sachs has paid over $5 billion in fines and settlements, including $2.9 billion in the U.S for a deferred prosecution agreement on criminal charges and $2.5 billion to Malaysia as well as a guarantee to recover at least $1.4 billion in stolen assets to settle the fiasco.

In 2018 the New York Times reported that in 2012, then-Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein met privately with the “mastermind” of the scheme, Malaysian national Jho Low, despite numerous concerns raised by Goldman Sachs compliance staff about Low prior to the meeting.

The meeting between Mr. Low and Mr. Blankfein, described to The New York Times by three people familiar with it, shows the expanding scope of a scandal that is rocking Goldman. Federal prosecutors are examining the 2012 meeting as they conduct a criminal investigation of the bank, two of the people said. And the existence of a face-to-face meeting between Goldman’s chief executive and the man accused of being at the center of a sprawling fraud undercuts an argument the bank has made: that its problems stem from the actions of a small number of rogue employees.

Goldman spokesman Jake Siewert stated that “Mr. Blankfein does not recall any one-on-one meeting with Mr. Low, nor have we seen any record to suggest such a meeting occurred.”

Low, who remains at large, introduced Goldman’s Leissner and Ng to various corrupt Malaysian government officials, including Malaysian Prime Minister Razak Najib.

Leissner and Ng then siphoned more than $1 billion from the bond sale proceeds to pay bribes to the corrupt Malaysian and United Arab Emirates officials, not only for these lucrative bond deals but also to try and secure an even greater score, bringing Malaysian national energy companies public. The funds raised for 1MDB were supposed to go for various infrastructure projects in Malaysia. Much of the debt was sold to the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Investment Fund and other state-controlled concerns.

Leissner and Ng skimmed approximately $115 million for themselves, Leissner $80 million and Ng $35 million. Leissner used his haul to live large, buying among other things a $15 million yacht, part of the Inter Milan soccer team and a Beverly Hills mansion.

Read the Whole Article

The post Nothing Stops Goldman Sachs appeared first on LewRockwell.

• Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared plans to establish a “Jewish Israeli state” in the occupied West Bank, explicitly rejecting international calls for Palestinian statehood.
• French President Emmanuel Macron urged European nations to take a stronger stance against Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, threatening sanctions over the humanitarian crisis and advocating conditional recognition of a Palestinian state as a “political necessity.”
• Katz announced new illegal West Bank settlements as a direct response to Macron, framing the move as a security imperative and vowing Israel would not bow to international threats.
• Katz accused Macron of waging a “crusade against the Jewish state,” dismissing claims of a Gaza aid blockade as “blatant lies” and alleging France was “rewarding terrorism” by pushing for Palestinian statehood.
• The Israeli Foreign Ministry linked Macron’s stance to Hamas’ approval, implying alignment with Israel’s enemies, and vowed defiance: “Do not threaten us with sanctions… The State of Israel will not bow its head.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has declared that Tel Aviv will establish a “Jewish Israeli state” in the occupied West Bank, rejecting Palestinian statehood in a defiant response to international pressure, particularly from France.

French President Emmanuel Macron recently urged European nations to take a firmer stance against Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank. Macron warned that France could impose sanctions if the humanitarian crisis in Gaza persists. He then suggested that recognizing a Palestinian state, under certain conditions, is “not only a moral duty but a political necessity.” France is reportedly considering such recognition ahead of a UN conference co-hosted with Saudi Arabia in mid-June to outline a roadmap for Palestinian statehood while ensuring the security of Israel.

As a response, Katz promoted new illegal settlement projects in the West Bank as a direct rebuke to Macron.

“They will recognize a Palestinian state on paper and we will build the Jewish-Israeli state on the ground. The paper will be thrown in the trash can of history and the State of Israel will flourish and prosper,” the defense minister said in his speech on May 30. Referring to the territory by its biblical names, Judea and Samaria, Katz framed the expansion as a security imperative: “This is a historic moment for settlement in Judea and Samaria, which will bolster it as Israel’s protective wall, and will also strengthen security in this region.”

Katz framed the policy as a “crushing response” to those seeking to “harm and weaken our hold on this region.”

“Do not threaten us with sanctions because you will not bring us to our knees. The State of Israel will not bow its head in the face of threats. We are a people with a long and glorious history. We will stand tall and continue to lead the State of Israel on a safe and strong path, until victory,” he said. (Related: Israel declares major LAND GRAB in West Bank.)

Katz accuses Macron of launching a “crusade against the Jewish state”

Aside from rejecting Palestinian statehood, the Israeli Foreign Ministry escalated tensions further by accusing France of launching a “crusade against the Jewish state.”

In a post on his official account on X, Katz dismissed Macron’s claims about the humanitarian aid blockade in Gaza as “blatant lies” and accused him of ignoring facts.

“The facts do not interest Macron. There is no humanitarian blockade. That is a blatant lie. Israel is currently facilitating the entry of aid to Gaza through two parallel efforts,” he posted, pointing to nearly 900 aid trucks entering Gaza this week and the distribution of over two million meals in four days through the newly established Gaza Humanitarian Fund.

Read the Whole Article

The post Israel Vows To Annex West Bank, Rejects Palestinian Statehood Amid Rising Tensions With France appeared first on LewRockwell.

The New York Times has just published one of the most insane headlines I have ever seen it publish, which is really saying something.

“Gaza’s Deadly Aid Deliveries,” the title blares.

If you were among the majority of people who only skim the headline without reading the rest of the article, you would have no idea that Israel has spent the last few days massacring starving civilians at aid sites and lying about it. You would also have no idea that it is Israel who’s been starving them in the first place.

Who keeps shooting and killing starving Palestinians during “aid deliveries”? Who starved them in the first place? pic.twitter.com/IljdDFmuT6

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) June 4, 2025

The headline is written in such a passive, amorphous way that it sounds like the aid deliveries themselves are deadly. Like the bags of flour are picking up assault rifles and firing on desperate Palestinians queuing for food or something.

The sub-headline is no better: “Israel’s troops have repeatedly shot near food distribution sites.”

Oh? They’ve shot “near” food distribution sites, have they? Could their discharging their weapons in close proximity to the aid sites possibly have something to do with the aforementioned deadliness of the aid deliveries? Are we the readers supposed to connect these two pieces of information for ourselves, or are we meant to view them as two separate data points which may or may not have anything to with one another?

The article itself makes it clear that Israel has admitted that IDF troops fired their weapons “near” people waiting for aid after they failed to respond to “warning shots”, so you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened here. But in mainstream publications the headlines are written by editors, not by the journalists who write the articles, so they get to frame the story in whatever way suits their propaganda agenda for the majority who never read past the headline.

We saw another amazingly manipulative New York Times headline last month, “Israeli Soldiers Fire in Air to Disperse Western Diplomats in West Bank,” about the IDF firing “warning shots” at a delegation of foreign officials attempting to visit Jenin.

This was a story which provoked outcry and condemnation throughout the western world, but look at the lengths the New York Times editor went to in order to frame the IDF’s actions in the most innocent way possible. They were firing into the air. They were firing “to disperse western diplomats”—like that’s a thing. Like diplomats are crows on a cornfield or something. Oh yeah, ya know ya get too many diplomats flockin’ around and ya gotta fire a few rounds to disperse ’em. Just normal stuff.

It’s amazing how creative these freaks get when they need to publicly exonerate Israel and its western allies of their crimes. The IDF commits a war crime and suddenly these stuffy mass media editors who’ve never created any art in their lives transform into poets, bending and twisting the English language to come up with lines that read more like Zen koans than reporting on an important news event.

It’s impossible to have too much disdain for these people.

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On Monday’s Episode of the Tucker Carlson Show, Carlson interviewed Catholic Bishop Robert Barron, largely to discuss topics related to the election of Pope Leo XIV. Most of the interview is unremarkable for our purposes here at mises.org, but at one point, the discussion touched on the problem of usury and the modern financial economy.

Usury has long been a topic of confusion and imprecision among those interested in learning the history of Western political thought vis-à-vis market economics. It is often presumed that Christianity’s historical prohibition on usury would, if applied consistently, prohibit money lending in exchange for any compensation paid to the lender. We often call this compensation “interest” in modern speech.

This was indeed the context around the usury discussion as presented on Carlson’s show, and, unfortunately, neither Bishop Barron nor Carlson demonstrated much knowledge of the topic. Barron seemed to assume that the usury question has not been sufficiently addressed in recent centuries, and implied that the topic is now ignored as a result of pressure from capitalists. As we will see, this is not the case. The topic has not been ignored in recent centuries.  Nor does does the prohibition of usury necessary proscribe the collection of compensation for making loans.

The Barron-Tucker Discussion

Carlson begins the discussion by asking Barron about “loaning money at interest.” Barron responds that “the Church has been against it from time immemorial”—presumably because of the prohibition on usury. He then goes on to say that a non-specified “transition” happened which changed the thinking on the matter. Barron almost immediately sidesteps the issue, however, and goes into a general discussion of market economics. Overall, Barron appears to imply that the “transition” on the topic was some sort of concession to modern industrial capitalism, and Tucker appears to be (rightly) dissatisfied with this explanation.

Barron likely shifted the discussion on this topic because it is an obscure one, and he probably has not read up on the topic lately. Few have. If we do look more closely, there are at least two key points we can make on the topic. The first is that Church thinking on usury clearly does not forbid a lender from receiving compensation for making loans. The second is that this is not a new idea, and it is certainly not any kind of concession in the wake of industrialization or the advent of modern financial markets. Rather, the idea that lenders can be compensated for their loans goes back at least to the Middle Ages. Moreover, there has never been any clear universal, doctrinal prohibition on receiving compensation for lending money. While some regional councils in the first millennium prohibited this for laypeople, the general consensus was against clergy receiving compensation for lending money.

Usury vs. Interest vs. Money Loans vs. Compensation for Lending

The reader may have noticed that I keep using the phrase “compensation for lending money” rather than “loaning at interest.” This is because once one delves into the history of the debate over usury, one quickly finds that there is seemingly endless debate over the proper definitions of terms like money, interest, and usury. This is to be expected when we’re talking about concepts that have changed over more than twenty centuries.

For example, the debate over usury is colored very much by the fact that the understanding of what money is has evolved significantly over time. Two thousand years ago, when the money economy was miniscule, money was assumed to be only a store of value and used overwhelmingly for immediate consumption only. This is why so much ancient thinking about money in this context focuses on the idea that charging interest essentially takes bread out the mouths of the poor. Moreover, since the money economy was so primitive, and there were so few avenues for lending and borrowing money, it was also assumed that lending money inflicted very little opportunity cost on the lender.

These conditions, tied to a specific time and place, are what have us the general view of usury: the act of lending out money but demanding back more than the value of the money in return. In the ancient world, it was thought that this was unfair and exploitive because it was thought that the value of money did not change over time, and doing without money for a time imposed little opportunity cost on the lender. Modern observers of money, of course, will scoff at these assumptions, but it was all far more plausible in, say, the fifth century BC or the first century AD.

Centuries later, however, writers on usury began to see that money could be used for purposes other than consumption. Consequently, these writers began to think of usury more carefully as interest charged specifically on “non-productive loans.” Money was increasingly lent for productive purposes, like building structures, rather than for simple consumption.

By the Middle Ages, it was admitted that it was abundantly clear that loans were often made in a way that could not possibly be characterized as exploitive. Moreover, as the complexity of the economy grew, it became impossible to maintain that lending money did not involve a significant opportunity cost for the lender.

As a result, it became difficult to argue that morality required that a borrower be able to demand a loan while providing nothing to compensate the lender. By the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas described how the lender was giving something up to make loans, and thus basic justice required compensation. Theologian John Finnis summarizes some of the situations where lenders were entitled to compensation:

(1) Share of profits in joint enterprises. If I “lend” my money to a merchant or craftsman on the basis that we are in partnership [societas]…so that I am to share in any overall losses or profits, my entitlement to my dividend of the profits (as well as to the return of my capital if its value has not been lost by the joint enterprise) is just and appropriate.

(2) Recompense or indemnity [interesse] for losses. In making any loan I can levy a charge on the borrower in order to compensate me for whatever expenses I have outlaid or losses I have incurred by making the loan. And the terms of a loan can include a fee or charge which is payable if you fail to repay the principal on time, and is sufficient to compensate me for the losses I am liable to incur if the principal is not repaid on time.

In contrast to an ancient agrarian economy, the developing economy of Aquinas’s time presented many risks and costs for lenders. Thus, potential for serious loss and financial ruin from a deadbeat borrower required some way for defraying the potential for financial misadventure. Finnis also noted that by Aquinas’s time, markets were already beginning to develop a “price” that represented the risk and opportunity cost that accompanied these loans. This “price” would generally today be called an “interest rate.” In any case, we can clearly see in Aquinas’s work that thinking on usury and its applicability had to change to fit changing knowledge about the nature of money and lending.

Gradually, then, the idea of what was fair and just for both parties in a lender-borrower relationship began to change. For example, the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517) stipulated that lenders could morally collect enough compensation to “defray the expenses of those employed and of other things pertaining (as mentioned) to the upkeep of the organisations.” The Council forbade the collection of “excess” compensation in the form of profit, but it was clear that compensation for lending was, in and of itself, not usury. Notably, however, no clear objective was offered for what constituted “excessive” compensation.

Again, in 1745, Pope Benedict XIV condemns usury, precisely defined, but notes that

By these remarks, however, We do not deny that at times together with the loan contract certain other titles—which are not at all intrinsic to the contract—may run parallel with it. From these other titles, entirely just and legitimate reasons arise to demand something over and above the amount due on the contract. (Emphasis added.)

Given all this, it is not at all clear that the development of thinking on usury is some kind of concession to modern industrial capitalism. Collecting compensation for the act of lending money was already established as potentially necessary and beneficial by the thirteenth century, well before the development of industrial capitalism. Thus, the implied historical claims about the “transition” on usury in Barron’s remarks on the Tucker Carlson Show are questionable.

Rather, one could certainly argue that thinking on this matter has been fairly consistent for at least 800 years.

For an illustration, one might consult the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia which states:

Is it permitted to lend at interest? Formerly … the Church rigorously condemned the exacting of anything over and above capital, except when, by reason of some special circumstance, the lender was in danger of losing his capital or could not advance his loan of money without exposing himself to a loss or to deprivation of a gain. These special reasons, which authorise the charging of interest, are called extrinsic titles. (Emphasis added.)

We see here simply an extrapolation of Aquinas’s work in the thirteenth century. In part, the underlying thinking here is that fairness and justice requires that neither side exploit the other. To demand loans that place the lender in a risky position without compensation is not fair or just.

The phrase “extrinsic titles” as mentioned in the Encyclopedia entry is also a key to understanding how “compensation for lending money” is properly viewed in this context. For Aquinas, and for many later commentators—including those writing textbooks on the topic—this compensation for the lender was not interest, strictly speaking, because the compensation was not directly tied to the money being lent. That is, in a case where a lender was collecting some sort of indemnification or compensation for risk and potential loss, the compensation was “extrinsic” to the money itself and was, in a way, a type of restitution or insurance to the lender for a risky service provided.

This laborious discussion over precise definitions nonetheless continues in modern books. This can be seen, for example, in Thomas Higgins’ ethics textbook from 1949 in which he states:

When the lender of money suffers no detriment in making a loan, he is entitled to nothing more in justice than the return of the money lent. Should he incur loss because of parting with the money lent, he is entitled to compensation for that reason but not because of the loan itself. This title to redress for loss sustained is extrinsic to the loan. Today, money, or rather its modern equivalent, credit, is truly a capital good capable of producing further wealth. Therefore a person who parts with money on a loan loses a chance for profit, and because money lent today is genuinely risked, money may in good conscience take advantage of legal rates of interest.

Again, we see in Higgins the same themes that show up in Aquinas, and later in Benedict XIV.

This is not to say that the economic theory here is sound. It’s not. Higgins’s description of money as a capital good is just one example of his problematic understanding of money.

Nonetheless, Higgins’s discussion—from the standpoint of ethics and moral theology—on lending, money, and usury helps to illustrate the historical reality of the development of thinking on usury. It is not the case, as the Barron-Tucker discussion implies, that all “lending at interest”—as commonly understood—is usury. Nor is it the case that Christian theologians simply chose to look the other way as a means of pleasing the parties of industrial capitalism. Rather, the development of thinking on usury reflects changes in the nature of money and lending over time. These changes mean views of justice and fairness change as well, and new explanations had to be sought in a world where lending money commonly imposes real costs and risks on the lender.

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

The post Why Lending Money (at Interest) Is Not Usury in the Modern World appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Poles are the latest Europeans to send the message that they want their storied nation to be sovereign and socially conservative. Political newcomer and former boxer Karol Nawrocki was officially declared president-elect on Monday.

Voter turnout was the largest since the election following the collapse of communism in 1989, at nearly 72 percent. Nawrocki defeated Warsaw’s leftist mayor Rafal Trzaskowski by a margin of less than two percent, with 50.9 percent of the votes.

Nawrocki’s victory is a blow to Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s liberal, pro-European Union government. While the Polish president doesn’t have the power to create policy, he can veto legislation. And since Tusk’s government doesn’t hold a three-fifths parliamentary majority, Nawrocki, like his predecessor, will likely make use of that power.

Trump Endorsement

Nawrocki’s victory is being attributed, at least in part, to the most visible politician in the world. The Wall Street Journal reports:

He got what was perhaps his biggest boost from more than 4,000 miles away, when President Trump gave him a nod of approval.… Trump’s backing might not have been the deciding factor in catapulting Nawrocki to Poland’s presidential palace, but it gave him an edge in a tight race. At a time when Trump-styled conservatism has faltered in other recent elections such as in Canada, Australia and Romania, it found fertile ground in Poland and helped Nawrocki as he was looking to establish a political identity.

Milan Nic, a senior research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, told the Journal that a May 1 meeting between Nawrocki and Trump generated a photo of the two together that boosted his political value. “Among everything that came out of Washington, the photo with Trump was the most important for Nawrocki — to make him look credible,” according to Nic.

Nawrocki also received an endorsement from U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who told attendees at Poland’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on May 27, 2025 that he needed to be the next president.

Background and Political Views

The Law and Justice Party tapped Nawrocki as its candidate six months ago. He is a Polish historian and an expert on communism and wrote his doctoral thesis on Poland’s anti-communist resistance. He reorganized the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, where he was born. Nawrocki is president of the Institute of National Remembrance, which conducts research on modern Polish history and investigates crimes committed during the Nazi and Communist occupations. He is a former amateur boxer and soccer player.

His campaign promises included economic and social policies that benefited Poles over other nationalities. Like those who make up other European populist movements, his supporters want stricter immigration laws contrary to the ones imposed by the European Union.

Nawrocki will likely to block the current government’s pro-abortion and LGBTQ agenda. Tusk wants to introduce civil partnerships for same-sex couples and dial back Poland’s near complete abortion ban. Poland’s Catholic demographic, which includes Nawrocki, comprises an overwhelming majority of the nation’s population.

Not a Globalist

While Nawrocki‘s former opponent supported the prime minister’s vision of a Poland perfectly aligned with mainstream Europe, Nawrocki believes Poland has given enough of its autonomy to the Eurocrats in Brussels. In addition to opposing the suicidal migration policies EU globalists have leveled across the continent, he also opposes their climate change policies.

When it comes to Ukraine, which Poland shares more than 300 miles of border with, he supports sending weapons. But he doesn’t support sending Poles. He signed off on party platform objectives that included not sending Polish troops to Ukraine and keeping Kyiv out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for fear that it would draw Poland into a war with Russia.

Poland, which already has the largest military in the EU, will spend about five percent of its GDP on defense, the most of any NATO nation. Tusk has said that by year’s end, he’d like for every Polish man to have military training. Nawrocki, by all indications, supports a strong Poland.

Globalists aren’t happy about Nawrocki’s victory. Armida van Rij of Chatham House told The Washington Post, “Voters are presented with a really stark choice: either rules-based liberal democracies or MAGA-esque ethno-nationalist types of leaders.” Borys Budka, a member of the European Parliament, told Reuters that he believed the PiS aimed to “overthrow the legal government,” adding, “This may be a big challenge for the government, which will be blocked when it comes to good initiatives,”

Nationalist Trend

Nawrocki’s victory is the latest in what has become a crystal-clear pattern of anti-EU, nationalistic populism boiling over in Europe. Despite the blatant skullduggery that has emerged and tried to keep this rising political tide at bay, Europeans are undeniably rejecting globalism and the engineered liberal values that have been imposed on them.

The watershed moment when the dam began breaking was, of course, in 2016. Not only did Donald Trump pull off a shocking victory in the U.S. elections, but the people of U.K. voted to leave the EU because they sought to regain control over their nation’s policies. Ever since, populism has become more pronounced in nation after nation in Europe.

France

In France, Marine Le Pen’s brand of nationalism was such a threat that they torpedoed via an obvious act of lawfare removed from any semblance of legitimacy her entire candidacy. In Germany, the rising popularity of the nationalist Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) endangers the globalists’ grip on one of the most important EU nations. The statists there are getting so desperate that they’re on the precipice of banning the entire party.

Read the Whole Article

The post Nationalist Wins Polish Presidency After Nod From Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Ginny Garner.

Information Liberation

The post Rep. Thomas Massie: End All US Military Aid to Israel Now! appeared first on LewRockwell.

. . . in Vietnam, India, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Serbia, UK, Ireland, Dubai, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, Turkey, and Uruguay and invest in America instead?  That is after all his stated purpose in starting an international trade war.

The post Will President Trump End or Sell Off His Ongoing Real Estate Ventures . . . appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Zelensky On The Ropes? With Guest Philip Giraldi appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.

The post Doctor, Insurance Company, and Big Pharma make more money to make you sick appeared first on LewRockwell.

Mark Levin was at the White House today, lobbying for war with Iran. To be clear, Levin has no plans to fight in this or any other war. He’s demanding that American troops do it. We need to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons, he and likeminded ideologues in Washington are…

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 5, 2025

The post Tucker Carlson on X: Mark Levin was at the White House today, lobbying for war with Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

David Martin wrote:

You either want to burn children alive, or you don’t. You either want to deliberately starve civilians, or you don’t. You either want to bomb hospitals, or you don’t. You either want to deliberately assassinate Palestinian journalists while forbidding foreign journalists entry into Gaza, or you don’t. You either want to deliberately massacre civilians and systematically destroy civilian infrastructure in order to force the removal of Palestinians from a Palestinian territory, or you don’t. And if you don’t, you must oppose the state of Israel.

This Is Israel – LewRockwell

The post Re: This Is Israel appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Responsible Statecraft

The post In twist, Europe appears to be deliberately undermining Iran talks appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Antiwar.com Blog

The post US Wields ‘Hand of Genocide’ by Vetoing Yet Another UN Gaza Cease-Fire Resolution appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

972 Magazine

The post How six months in the West Bank undid a lifetime of Zionist indoctrination appeared first on LewRockwell.

“George Clooney says today’s fear is more pervasive than McCarthy era.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviews actor George Clooney on the set of his Broadway play, “Good Night, and Good Luck” which is focused on Edward R. Murrow’s famous battle with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Watch CNN’s special presentation of George Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck” on Saturday, June 7 at 7pm ET streaming live on CNN.com.”

Rather than viewing the actions of CBS News against Senator Joseph McCarthy (as portrayed in the 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck, which received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Director (Clooney), and Actor (Strathairn) as a heroic case of the mainstream news media working against state power, I believe it was precisely the opposite.

The destruction of McCarthy and his populist crusade against the elites governing America was a triumph of the most powerful forces of the deep state.

The “Roy Cohn” Speech

(This speech was written by Murray N. Rothbard, and delivered by his colleague George Reisman in the 1950s at a Roy Cohn event at which Joe McCarthy was present.)

George Clooney’s celebrated film does not delve into Joe McCarthy’s preliminary investigation of CIA covert activities and how CBS chairman William Paley, CBS News president Fred Friendly, and CBS Evening News anchor Edward R. Murrow were part of the Agency’s Operation Mockingbird to provide deflection and cover for the Agency’s ‘family jewels’ of the day. CBS News president Sig Mickelson (1954-61) was later liaison to the CIA. Because of his frequent communications, Mickelson even had a direct private phone line installed to the Agency.

I would suggest reading chapter ten, ‘Things Fall Apart: Journalists,’ in Hugh Wilford’s book, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How The CIA Played America, for background on these crucial events. It outlines how the Columbia Broadcasting Service was closely connected to the Central Intelligence Agency during this period.

CIA director Allen Dulles, CBS chairman William Paley, and CBS board director Senator Prescott Bush were intimate associates in various sociopolitical networks of the northeastern seaboard establishment found in Washington and New York during the days of the early Cold War.

Whether they would meet in their private clubs, at the Harold Pratt House of the Council on Foreign Relations, or in Wall Street corporate and bank board rooms, these old birds of a feather flocked, connived, schemed, and conspired together.

There is so much more to Senator Joe McCarthy, the CIA, and 1950’s America than found in a Hollywood film treatment or presented by ‘court historians’ anointed by the establishment regime media, particularly how the CIA mobilized its Operation Mockingbird media assets to engage in a counter-attack upon old “Tail Gunner Joe” when he was building up momentum in going after the Agency’s “family jewels” of the time after his highly-publicized campaigns against communist spies in the state department and the army.

For more on the mainstream news media and the CIA, see this article on Operation Mockingbird.

And see also the classic Rolling Stone article, ‘The CIA and the Media,’ by former Washington Post investigative journalist Carl Bernstein which is discussed in detail in The Mighty Wurlitzer.

Two interesting books of Establishment Studies (or power elite analysis) have outlined how CIA director Allen Dulles directed his counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton to find a means of destroying McCarthy. Angleton chose a veteran of the OSS, James McCargar, to undertake this covert espionage/disinformation action against McCarthy. These facts are discussed in Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA; and Gregg Herken, The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington.

In the fascinating and absolutely compelling book by David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, we find the following:

In March 1954, McCarthy’s subcommittee convened a hearing on “alleged threats against the chairman.” One witness — a military intelligence officer named William Morgan who had worked for C. D. Jackson in the White House — stunned the subcommittee by recounting a conversation that he had the previous year with a CIA employ named Horace Craig. As the two men were discussing how to solve the McCarthy problem, Craig flatly stated, “It may be necessary to liquidate Senator McCarthy as was [assassinated Louisiana senator] Huey Long. There is always some madman who will do it for a price.” (pages 223-224)

As with much other conventional establishment history, Americans have been lied to and bamboozled yet again. It’s time for yet more ‘revisionism’ on this topic.  And libertarians should lead the way.

The post Hollywood Leftist Actor/Director (and top tier elite Council on Foreign Relations member) George Clooney Still Crying Wolf Today Concerning “McCarthyism” During the New Donald Trump Administration appeared first on LewRockwell.

Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato "fuori controllo" negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa è una storia di cartelli, a livello sovrastatale e sovranazionale, la cui pianificazione centrale ha raggiunto un punto in cui deve essere riformata radicalmente e questa riforma radicale non può avvenire senza una dose di dolore economico che potrebbe mettere a repentaglio la loro autorità. Da qui la risposta al Grande Default attraverso il Grande Reset. Questa è la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso è accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

____________________________________________________________________________________

da CoinTelegraph

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/perche-tether-si-rifiuta-di-conformarsi)

Tether è conforme allo standard MiCA?

Il nuovo regolamento dell'UE sui mercati delle criptovalute, meglio noto come MiCA, è il primo grande tentativo da parte di una potenza economica mondiale di creare regole chiare e valide per tutta la regione e le stablecoin sono un elemento importante.

Il MiCA impone le migliori pratiche, se una stablecoin deve essere scambiata nell'UE, il suo emittente deve seguire alcune regole rigorose:

1. C'è bisogno di una licenza

Per emettere una stablecoin in Europa, è necessario diventare un istituto di moneta elettronica (IMEL) completamente autorizzato. Si tratta dello stesso tipo di licenza di cui hanno bisogno le aziende fintech per offrire portafogli elettronici o carte prepagate. Non è economico, né veloce.

2. La maggior parte delle riserve deve essere depositata presso banche europee

Questa è una delle parti più controverse del MiCA. Se si emette una stablecoin “importante” – e USDT di Tether rientra certamente nei requisiti – almeno il 60% delle riserve deve essere detenuto in banche con sede nell'UE. La logica è quella di garantire la sicurezza del sistema finanziario.

3. La piena trasparenza non è negoziabile

Il MiCA richiede informative dettagliate e regolari. Gli emittenti devono pubblicare un white paper e fornire aggiornamenti sulle proprie riserve, audit e modifiche operative. Questo livello di rendicontazione è una novità per alcune stablecoin, soprattutto quelle che storicamente hanno evitato il controllo pubblico.

4. Le monete non conformi vengono rimosse dalla lista

Se un token non è conforme, non sarà negoziabile sulle piattaforme regolamentate dell'UE. Binance, ad esempio, ha rimosso le coppie di trading USDT dagli utenti dello Spazio Economico Europeo (SEE). Altri exchange stanno seguendo l'esempio.

L'Autorità europea degli strumenti finanziari e dei mercati (ESMA) ha chiarito che in Europa le persone possono continuare a detenere o trasferire USDT, ma non possono offrirlo al pubblico o quotarlo in sedi ufficiali.

In altre parole, potreste ancora avere USDT nel vostro wallet, ma buona fortuna se volete provare a scambiarlo su una piattaforma regolamentata.

I motivi principali per cui Tether rifiuta le normative MiCA

Tether è unica in quanto ha spiegato il motivo per cui non vuole avere nulla a che fare con le normative MiCA. I vertici dell'azienda, in particolare l'amministratore delegato Paolo Ardoino, si sono espressi apertamente su quelle che considerano gravi lacune nella normativa, dai rischi finanziari alle preoccupazioni sulla privacy, fino al quadro più ampio di cosa sono realmente le stablecoin.

1. La regolamentazione bancaria potrebbe ritorcersi contro

Una delle regole più discusse del MiCA stabilisce che le stablecoin “importanti” – USDT di Tether – debbano detenere almeno il 60% delle loro riserve presso banche europee. L'idea è di rendere le stablecoin più sicure e trasparenti, ma Ardoino la vede diversamente.

USDt is the most successful tool for US Dollar hegemony and distribution across emerging markets.

Tether built, over the last decade, the widest physical and digital distribution network, spacing from thousands of kiosks in Africa and South America to digital remittances… https://t.co/KD2oUzemT8

Ha avvertito che ciò potrebbe creare nuovi problemi, costringendo chi emette stablecoin a fare troppo affidamento sulle banche tradizionali e l'intero sistema potrebbe diventare eccessivamente fragile. 

Dopotutto, se si verifica un'ondata di rimborsi e le banche non hanno abbastanza liquidità per tenere il passo, assisteremmo contemporaneamente a una banca in difficoltà e a una crisi delle stablecoin.

Tether preferisce invece conservare la maggior parte delle sue riserve in titoli del Tesoro USA, asset che afferma essere liquidi, a basso rischio e molto più facili da rimborsare rapidamente in caso di necessità.

2. Non si fidano dell'euro digitale

Tether ha anche un altro problema con la direzione che l'Europa sta prendendo, soprattutto per quanto riguarda l'euro digitale. Ardoino lo ha apertamente criticato, sollevando allarmi sulla privacy.

Egli sostiene che una valuta digitale controllata centralmente potrebbe essere utilizzata per monitorare come le persone spendono i loro soldi e persino per controllare o limitare le transazioni se qualcuno perde il favore del sistema.

I sostenitori della privacy hanno espresso preoccupazioni simili. Mentre la Banca Centrale Europea insiste sul fatto che la privacy sia una priorità assoluta (con funzionalità come i pagamenti offline), Tether non ne è convinta. Ai loro occhi, affidare così tanto potere finanziario nelle mani di un'unica istituzione equivale a cercare guai.

3. Gli utenti di Tether non sono a Bruxelles, bensì in Brasile, Turchia e Nigeria

In sostanza, Tether si vede come un'ancora di salvezza per le persone nei Paesi che devono affrontare problemi di inflazione, sistemi bancari instabili e accesso limitato al dollaro.

Si tratta di Paesi come la Turchia, l'Argentina e la Nigeria, dove USDT è spesso più utile della valuta locale.

Il MiCA, con tutti i suoi ostacoli in termini di licenze e obblighi di riserva, costringerebbe Tether a cambiare strategia e a investire per soddisfare gli standard specifici dell'UE. L'azienda afferma di non essere disposta a farlo, non a scapito dei mercati che ritiene più bisognosi di strumenti finanziari come USDT.

Lo sapevate? La Turchia è tra i Paesi con il più alto tasso di adozione delle criptovalute: il 16% della popolazione è impegnata in attività legate alle criptovalute. Questo elevato tasso di adozione è in gran parte dovuto alla svalutazione della lira turca e all'instabilità economica, le quali spingono i cittadini a cercare alternative come le stablecoin per preservare il proprio potere d'acquisto.

Cosa succede quando Tether non è conforme al MiCA

La decisione di Tether di saltare il MiCA non è passata inosservata. Sta già avendo conseguenze concrete, soprattutto per gli exchange e gli utenti in Europa.

1. Gli exchange stanno eliminando USDT

Grandi nomi come Binance e Kraken non hanno aspettato: per non incorrere nelle sanzioni imposte dalle autorità di regolamentazione dell'UE, hanno già rimosso le coppie di trading USDT per gli utenti dello Spazio Economico Europeo. Binance le aveva rimosse lo scorso marzo. Kraken ha seguito a ruota, rimuovendo non solo USDT, ma anche altre stablecoin non conformi come EURT e PYUSD di PayPal.

2. Gli utenti hanno meno opzioni

Se vi trovate in ​​Europa e possedete USDT, non siete completamente sfortunati: potete ancora prelevarli o scambiarli su alcune piattaforme. Ma non potrete più trattarlo sui principali exchange. Questo sta già spingendo gli utenti verso alternative come USDC ed EURC, pienamente conformi al MiCA e ampiamente supportati.

Anche i principali processatori di pagamenti in criptovalute stanno ritirando il supporto, lasciando agli utenti meno possibilità di spendere direttamente le proprie criptovalute.

3. Un colpo alla liquidità? Probabile

Il ritiro degli USDT dalle borse europee potrebbe rendere i mercati un po' più instabili. Meno liquidità, spread più ampi e maggiore volatilità durante i grandi movimenti di prezzo sono tutti fattori in gioco. Alcuni trader si adatteranno rapidamente. Altri? Non così tanto.

Lo sapevate? Tether (USDT) è la criptovaluta più scambiata a livello globale, superando persino Bitcoin in termini di volume giornaliero. Nel 2024, ha facilitato transazioni per oltre $20.600 miliardi e vanta una base utenti di oltre 400 milioni in tutto il mondo.

Tether & regolamentazione MiCA

Tether potrebbe non essere in sintonia con l'UE, ma è ben lungi dall'essere in ritirata. Anzi l'azienda sta raddoppiando gli sforzi altrove, alla ricerca di un terreno più amichevole e di orizzonti più ampi.

In primo luogo, Tether ha scelto El Salvador come sua nuova base, un Paese che ha pienamente abbracciato le criptovalute. Dopo aver ottenuto la licenza per la fornitura di servizi in asset digitali, l'azienda sta aprendo lì una vera e propria sede centrale. Anche Ardoino e altri dirigenti di alto livello si stanno muovendo lì.

Inoltre, dopo aver incassato oltre $5 miliardi di profitti all'inizio del 2024, Tether sta mettendo a frutto il suo capitale:

• IA: Attraverso la sua divisione venture capital, Tether Evo, l'azienda ha acquisito partecipazioni in aziende come Northern Data Group e Blackrock Neurotech. Tether ha anche lanciato Tether AI, una piattaforma di intelligenza artificiale open source e decentralizzata progettata per funzionare su qualsiasi dispositivo senza server centralizzati o chiavi API. L'obiettivo è utilizzare l'IA per potenziare le operazioni e, magari, sviluppare nuovi strumenti lungo il percorso.

• Infrastrutture e AgTech: Tether ha investito in Adecoagro, un'azienda focalizzata sull'agricoltura sostenibile e sulle energie rinnovabili. È una mossa sorprendente, ma si inserisce nella strategia più ampia di Tether, volta a supportare sistemi resilienti e concreti.

• Media e oltre: ci sono anche segnali che indicano che Tether vuole lasciare il segno nei contenuti e nelle comunicazioni, dimostrando che sta pensando ben oltre il solo settore delle criptovalute.

L'uscita di Tether dal MiCA evidenzia il caos normativo globale delle criptovalute

L'abbandono del MiCA è un'istantanea di un problema molto più grande nel settore delle criptovalute: quanto sia difficile avviare un'attività in un mondo in cui ogni giurisdizione segue le proprie regole.

Il gioco dell'arbitraggio normativo

Non è la prima volta che Tether si trova ad affrontare normative di questo tipo. Come molte aziende crypto, ha padroneggiato l'arte dell'arbitraggio normativo, trovando la giurisdizione più favorevole e aprendo lì la propria sede.

L'Europa introduce regole severe? Bene, Tether si stabilisce a El Salvador, dove le criptovalute sono accolte a braccia aperte.

Se i grandi operatori possono spostare le giurisdizioni per eludere le normative, quanto sono efficaci queste norme? E questo tutela gli utenti al dettaglio o li confonde ulteriormente?

Un ecosistema delle criptovalute che è ovunque sulla mappa della Terra

Il problema più grande è che il panorama normativo globale è incredibilmente frammentato. L'Europa vuole piena conformità, trasparenza e obblighi di riserva. Gli Stati Uniti continuano a inviare segnali contrastanti. L'Asia è divisa: Hong Kong è pro-crypto, mentre la Cina rimane indifferente.

Anche Hong Kong ha approvato la Legge sulle stablecoin per concedere licenze agli emittenti garantiti da valute fiat e rafforzare le sue ambizioni Web3. Nel frattempo l'America Latina sta abbracciando le criptovalute come strumento di accesso finanziario.

Per le aziende è un vero disastro. Non si può costruire per un solo mercato globale; bisogna costantemente adattarsi, ristrutturare o ritirarsi completamente. Per gli utenti ciò crea enormi barriere all'accesso. Una moneta disponibile in un Paese potrebbe essere inaccessibile in un altro solo a causa delle politiche locali.

Un'ultima riflessione: la resistenza di Tether al MiCA è più di una semplice protesta contro la burocrazia. Infatti sta scommettendo che il futuro delle criptovalute verrà plasmato fuori da Bruxelles, non al suo interno.

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

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The political legacy of Elon Musk, the moral costs of Keynesianism, and the absurdity of Harvard and NPR as public goods.

Welcome back to the Power & Market Podcast, a weekly news recap from the Mises Institute’s editorial team.

This week, Ryan McMaken, Tho Bishop, and Connor O’Keeffe discuss the Department of Government Efficiency letdown, dissect the ongoing degeneracy of Keynesian economics, and explore the rising movement to defund elite universities like Harvard. Has the establishment finally overplayed its hand? What’s next for higher education?

For more information and to subscribe, visit https://Mises.org/P&MPod.ryan

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

The post DOGE Disappointment, Keynesian Degeneracy, and Cutting Off Harvard appeared first on LewRockwell.

The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts (the Kennedy Center), located on the east bank of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., opened in 1971 but was actually authorized by the National Cultural Center Act of 1958. Its original name, the National Cultural Center, was changed in 1964, two months after President Kennedy’s assassination.

The Kennedy Center is dedicated to the performing arts and features operas, concerts, plays, musicals, ballets, movies, and dances. It is the home of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera. It also hosts dinners, galas, conferences, receptions, and special events.

The Kennedy Center is a public-private partnership. It receives an annual appropriation for capital repairs, operations, and maintenance. Back in 2021, the Center disclosed that it had received “$269.4 million in federal funding since 2016” and paid its president, Deborah Rutter, “pay and benefits amounting to $5.1 million.”

Now, since the Constitution nowhere authorizes the federal government to have a cultural center or support the arts, the Kennedy Center should be a strictly private venture. Republicans who claim to be fiscal conservatives, follow the Constitution, and believe in limited government should be saying that the Kennedy Center should be self-supporting or sold to the highest bidder.

After Donald Trump was elected president, he criticized the Kennedy Center for its drag and LGBTQ programming. He fired members of the board of trustees, including the president, Deborah Rutter, because they “do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” and named his own board members, who elected Trump as the new chairman.

Trump then backed a $257 million federal funding package for the Kennedy Center, which is more than six times its usual annual support. The funding is part of Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” that is supported by the vast majority of Republicans in Congress.

Republicans spent much of the Biden years castigating the president and congressional Democrats for their out-of-control spending. They promised in their 2024 party platform that they would “immediately stabilize the Economy by slashing wasteful Government spending.” So, how is that compatible with appropriating $257 million for the Kennedy Center?

This shows hard-working, tax-paying, middle-class Americans the true nature of Republicans.

Republicans are more interested in controlling government agencies and programs than in eliminating them. They have no problem with government subsidies and spending as long as their projects receive the funding.

This is why Trump and the Republicans’ “one big beautiful bill” includes a new savings account for children that comes with a $1,000 deposit from the federal government—courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

It is only when some government agency or program does something that Republicans disagree with that they ever talk about cutting its budget or eliminating it. The only limited government wanted by Republicans is a government limited to control by Republicans.

The post Republicans Reveal Their True Nature appeared first on LewRockwell.

When I was a kid, the postman semi-annually delivered a booklet-sized mail-order catalog with an odd mix of hundreds of household gadgets and cheap novelties: personalized pencils, cat toys, jumping beans and kitschy doorstops, et al.

The catalog also displayed the above-pictured LP cover of Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast mockudrama. As did the sensationalistic record cover, the catalog’s caption said that panicked Americans ran screaming into the streets or had heart attacks after hearing a radio report that Martians had invaded the US; specifically, my native New Jersey. Intrigued, I uncharacteristically asked my mother to buy the record. She declined.

Fortunately, a few years later, in the sixth grade, one of my classmates brought this record to school and convinced our diminutive, permed-black-haired, forty-something teacher, Mrs. Kasper, to play it. Mrs. Kasper was very nice and didn’t push her students or herself too hard. It was a fun year in school and sports. If the schools and the town sports leagues had been closed, there would be a void in my memory where many pleasing memories reside.

Perhaps Mrs. Kasper rationalized that hearing this record would provide a pop sociology or life lesson. Regardless, I was excited to hear this bucket list LP. As they said on the TV ad for a rock anthology album, “Put the needle in the first groove and let it wail!”

It turned out that my mother had shown good judgment by not ordering that record. The radio show was, as were Coronamania Era videos of morgue trucks or Chinese guys falling onto sidewalks, hokey and unconvincing. Less than halfway through, I couldn’t wait for the record to end. Sometimes life is like that: the thing that you had to have or the place you had to go to can become that thing you’re eager to get rid of or the place you’re itching to leave.

Be that as it may, after the program ended, Mrs. Kasper reminded us, as had the mail order catalog and urban legend tellers, that, despite the show’s implausibility, many people believed that Martians were invading and consequently, freaked out.

Those who’ve studied the War of the Worlds reaction have concluded that the extent of the purported panic was exaggerated, especially by newspapers seeking to discredit the medium of radio, with which they were competing for audience and thus, advertising revenue. One historian reported that only 6 million Americans heard the program. Of those, only 20% believed the scam. Of these, only a fraction bugged out. While many called the police to see if Martians had really invaded, most correctly perceived the program as theater of the mind. They looked out their windows, saw neither UFOs nor incendiary death rays and went on with their nights.

But as during Coronamania, why let the truth get in the way of a good myth?

Having recently reached Piaget’s formal-operational stage of cognitive development, and thinking ourselves worldly-wise, we sixth graders laughed at what gullible bumpkins our Martin-fearing predecessors had been. We derisively asserted that we’d never fall for such silliness. We smugly concluded that humans had gotten much smarter as a species in the 32 years between the original War of the Worlds broadcast and when we heard it played back in 1970.

—

Fast forward fifty years to 2020. Some of the same classmates who mocked those who freaked out in 1938 about a phony alien invasion—and who had four-year, and even graduate, degrees from “good” colleges—fervently bought the 2020 Corona scam. On Twitter and FaceBook, these schoolmates spread “spiking-case” warnings, hurled “superspreader,” “grandpa killer” and “MAGA” epithets and displayed photos of themselves wearing masks. Later, they proudly posted virtue-signaling images of their vaxx cards, saying they couldn’t wait to resume normal activities 14 magic days later. They declined to respond to my emails that called the whole thing an extreme overreaction.

In 2020, I applied the same logic to Covid as I did in 1970 to a purported 1938 Martian invasion. Humans have been around for a long time. If supersmart aliens wanted to invade us, why hadn’t they done so before 1938? Analogously, after millennia, why would a super-killer respiratory virus suddenly emerge in 2020? Both scenarios seemed so far-fetched that they had to be hoaxes.

The chief difference between War of the Worlds panic and Coronamania is that, in the latter instance, believing government and media lies, hundreds of millions—not hundreds of thousands, as in 1938—did buy the viral Scam and demanded that everyone else do so. Both in public spaces and on social media, I saw widespread, persistent Covid panic and aggression with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. So did you.

—

Most contemporary people share a delusional conceit about how sophisticated they are compared to those in prior generations. They look back at popular acceptance of an earth-centric universe, alchemy, witchcraft and witch trials, bloodletting, phrenology and other discredited scientific paradigms and say, “Ha! We’d never fall for anything so stupid!”

Many humans still delusionally think that, as time marches on, the species is continuously getting smarter and improving the human experience. But intensive human interventions can be net negatives. For example, the CDC requires 72 serious-injury-causing vaccines between birth and age 18 for diseases that either aren’t lethal or were functionally eradicated a century ago as people lived in less squalid settings and consumed cleaner water and more protein. Pharma hawks pills and shots for an ever-growing array of conditions, while ignoring these products’ serious side effects and disregarding self-care via diet, exercise and sunlight. Similarly, “scientists” have relentlessly bred much more potent marijuana and politicians have legalized it to widen access. Farmers sow genetically uniform, hybridized seeds and use boatloads of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers to unsustainably grow nutritionally dubious monocrops. In the name of reproductive freedom, many who delayed attempts to conceive use IVF, freeze eggs, shop for sperm and eugenically select embryos and edit genes. Many live in solitude while focused on their phones or other screens. Artificial intelligence is ramping up, displacing human labor and thought and enabling deepfakes and other forms of deception.

All of the above, modern practices have caused and will continue to cause major economic, social and psychological dislocation. As time passes, more will belatedly question the wisdom of these Pandoran interventions.

—

In 2025, those who opposed the Covid overreaction say that, because so many have seen that they were duped by the viral hype and the ridiculous, damaging measures that were said to protect us, people should “Never again!” fall for such a scam.

But I wonder how many of those who supported the failed lockdown, school closures, masks and tests (collectively, “NPI”) and shots have been chastened. To protect their egos, many with whom I’ve spoken and social media commenters are sticking to their untenable narrative that a virus killed over a million otherwise healthy Americans and that the NPIs and shots saved millions of lives. Additionally, as during Coronamania, some will always, during social and economic disruptions, see profits and other opportunities therein and thus, endorse various interventions or products, not caring that these will harm others.

—

George Eliot closes Middlemarch by writing that “(t)he growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

The growing bad of the world similarly, commensurately depends on the misconduct of the panicky masses, who bought lies dressed up as sophistication and modernity. Between 2020-25, hundreds of millions who saw themselves as well-educated and intelligent showed that they were no smarter than those who freaked out about a bogus alien invasion eight decades earlier. And Team Covid Panic had hundreds of millions more members than did the Martian Phobes.

Increasingly, some—including millions of middle school students—are reflecting on Coronamania and mocking those who fell for it. Yet, as is often said, the winners write history. And though the NPIs and shots failed and caused tremendous, lasting harm, the Coronamania “winners” who used the Scamdemic to make money and sway elections will continue to recite their false, self-serving viral narrative.

As awareness of Coronamania’s damage widens over time, those who supported the NPIs and shots will, like St. Peter and the rapper, Shaggy, revisionistically say, “It wasn’t me!” or “We didn’t know.”

But they did support these measures. And they should have known it was all a Scam.

It’s too late to undo the harm that the Covid overreaction caused. Nonetheless, to enable more people to understand what happened, we must continue to call out the many viral lies and the liars who tell them. This will help people to see the linkage between the Covid response and the growing and social and economic problems that manifest themselves daily. We can also hope that, as War of the Worlds and Mrs. Kasper alerted us to peoples’ susceptibility to media-driven scams, more people will reject future government and media attempts to induce hysteria.

But does the bulk of society really get smarter as years go by?

Reprinted with permission from Dispatches from a Scamdemic.

The post Are We Smarter Than Our Ancestors? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” — Ayn Rand

Call it what it is: a panopticon presidency.

President Trump’s plan to fuse government power with private surveillance tech to build a centralized, national citizen database is the final step in transforming America from a constitutional republic into a digital dictatorship armed with algorithms and powered by unaccountable, all-seeing artificial intelligence.

This isn’t about national security. It’s about control.

According to news reports, the Trump administration is quietly collaborating with Palantir Technologies—the data-mining behemoth co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel—to construct a centralized, government-wide surveillance system that would consolidate biometric, behavioral, and geolocation data into a single, weaponized database of Americans’ private information.

This isn’t about protecting freedom. It’s about rendering freedom obsolete.

What we’re witnessing is the transformation of America into a digital prison—one where the inmates are told we’re free while every move, every word, every thought is monitored, recorded, and used to assign a “threat score” that determines our place in the new hierarchy of obedience.

This puts us one more step down the road to China’s dystopian system of social credit scores and Big Brother surveillance.

The tools enabling this all-seeing surveillance regime are not new, but under Trump’s direction, they are being fused together in unprecedented ways—with Palantir at the center of this digital dragnet.

Palantir, long criticized for its role in powering ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and predictive policing, is now poised to become the brain of Trump’s surveillance regime.

Under the guise of “data integration” and “public safety,” this public-private partnership would deploy AI-enhanced systems to comb through everything from facial recognition feeds and license plate readers to social media posts and cellphone metadata—cross-referencing it all to assess a person’s risk to the state.

Palantir’s software has already been used to assist ICE in locating, arresting, and deporting undocumented immigrants, often relying on vast surveillance data sets aggregated from multiple sources. In New Orleans, the company secretly partnered with local police to run a predictive policing program without public knowledge or oversight, targeting individuals flagged as likely to commit crimes based on social networks and past behaviors—not actual wrongdoing.

This isn’t speculative. It’s already happening.

Palantir’s Gotham platform, used by law enforcement and military agencies, has long been the backbone of real-time tracking and predictive analysis. Now, with Trump’s backing, it threatens to become the central nervous system of a digitally enforced authoritarianism.

As Palantir itself admits, its mission is to “augment human decision-making.” In practice, that means replacing probable cause with probability scores, courtrooms with code, and due process with data pipelines.

In this new regime, your innocence will be irrelevant. The algorithm will decide who you are.

To understand the full danger of this moment, we must trace the long arc of government surveillance—from secret intelligence programs like COINTELPRO to today’s AI-driven digital dragnet embodied by data fusion centers.

The threat posed by today’s surveillance state did not emerge overnight. The groundwork was laid decades ago through covert government programs such as COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), launched by the FBI in the 1950s and continuing through the 1970s. Its explicit mission was to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” political dissidents, including civil rights leaders, Vietnam War protesters, and Black liberation groups.

Under COINTELPRO, federal agents infiltrated lawful organizations, spread misinformation, blackmailed targets, and conducted warrantless surveillance.

Though exposed and publicly condemned by Congress, the spirit of COINTELPRO never died—it merely went underground and digital.

Post-9/11 legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act provided legal cover for mass surveillance, allowing intelligence agencies to collect phone records, monitor internet activity, and build profiles on American citizens without meaningful oversight. Fusion centers, initially conceived to coordinate counterterrorism efforts, became clearinghouses for domestic spying, facilitating data-sharing between federal agencies and local police.

Today, this infrastructure has merged with the tools of Big Tech.

With Palantir and similar firms at the helm, the government can now watch more people, more closely, for more arbitrary reasons than ever before. Dissent is once again being criminalized. Free expression is being categorized as extremism. And citizens—without ever committing a crime—can be flagged, tracked, and punished by an invisible digital bureaucracy that operates with impunity.

Building on this foundation of historical abuse, the government has evolved its tactics, replacing human informants with algorithms and wiretaps with metadata, ushering in an age where pre-crime prediction is treated as prosecution.

In the age of AI, your digital footprint is enough to convict you—not in a court of law, but in the court of preemptive suspicion.

Every smartphone ping, GPS coordinate, facial scan, online purchase, and social media like becomes part of your “digital exhaust”—a breadcrumb trail of metadata that the government now uses to build behavioral profiles. The FBI calls it “open-source intelligence.” But make no mistake: this is dragnet surveillance, and it is fundamentally unconstitutional.

Already, government agencies are mining this data to generate “pattern of life” analyses, flag “radicalized” individuals, and preemptively investigate those who merely share anti-government views. Whistleblowers have revealed that the FBI has flagged individuals as potential threats based on their internet search history, social media posts, religious beliefs, or associations with activist groups.

In a growing number of cases, individuals have found themselves visited by agents simply for attending a protest, making a political post, or appearing on the “wrong” side of a digital algorithm.

This is not law enforcement. This is thought-policing by machine.

The FBI has developed detailed dossiers on individuals based not on criminal activity, but on constitutionally protected expression—flagging citizens for visiting alternative media websites, criticizing government policies, or supporting causes deemed “extreme.”

According to leaked memos and internal documents, terms like “liberty,” “sovereignty,” and even the Gadsden flag have been cited as potential indicators of domestic extremism. In one case, a peaceful protester was interrogated for merely using encrypted messaging apps. In another, churchgoers were surveilled because their religious leader spoke critically of the government.

These are the logical outcome of a system that criminalizes dissent and deputizes algorithms to do the targeting.

Nor is this entirely new.

For decades, the federal government has reportedly maintained a highly classified database known as Main Core, designed to collect and store information on Americans deemed potential threats to national security.

Investigative journalists have revealed that Main Core may contain data on millions of individuals—compiled without warrants or due process—for potential use during a national emergency. As Tim Shorrock reported for Salon, “One former intelligence official described Main Core as ‘an emergency internal security database system’ designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law.”

Trump’s embrace of Palantir, and its unparalleled ability to fuse surveillance feeds, social media metadata, public records, and AI-driven predictions, marks a dangerous evolution: a modern-day resurrection of Main Core, digitized, centralized, and fully automated.

What was once covert contingency planning is now becoming active policy.

What has emerged is a surveillance model more vast than anything dreamed up by past regimes—a digital panopticon in which every citizen becomes both observed and self-regulating.

Imagine a society in which every citizen is watched constantly, and every move is logged in a government database.

Imagine a state where facial recognition cameras scan your face at protests and concerts, where your car’s location is tracked by automatic license plate readers, where your biometric data is captured by drones, and where AI programs assign you a “threat assessment” score based on your behavior, opinions, associations, and even your purchases.

This is not science fiction. This is America—now.

This is the panopticon brought to life: a circular prison designed so that inmates never know when they are being watched, and thus must behave as if they always are. Jeremy Bentham’s original vision has become the model of modern-day governance: total visibility, zero accountability.

Our every move is being monitored, our every word recorded, our every action judged and categorized—not by humans, but by machines without conscience, without compassion, and without constitutional limits.

And in this surveillance state, the people have become inventory. Lives reduced to data points. Choices reduced to algorithms. Freedom reduced to a permission slip. You are no longer the customer. You are the product.

In this new reality, we are not only watched—we are measured, categorized, and sold back to the very systems that enslave us.

We are no longer free citizens.

We are data points in a digital control grid—commodified, categorized, and exploited.

In this new digital economy, our lives have become profit centers for corporations that track, trade, and monetize our every move.

The surveillance state is powered not only by authoritarian government impulses but by a corporate ecosystem that sees no distinction between the marketplace and the public square.

We are being bought and sold, not as citizens with rights, but as consumers to be studied and shaped.

Our autonomy is being eroded by design, not by accident.

This modern surveillance state knows everything about you—where you go, what you buy, what you read, who you associate with—and it uses that information to predict your behavior, shape your preferences, and ultimately control your actions.

Your phone is tracking you.

Your car is tracking you.

Your smart TV, internet searches, and digital assistant—all of it is being harvested to feed a growing network of AI-powered surveillance.

Even your refrigerator and your doorbell are reporting on you.

Every electronic device you use, every online transaction you make, every move you make through a smart city grid, adds another data point to your profile.

This is the machinery of oppression, and it is being refined daily.

The difference between past regimes and the one being constructed now is its subtlety. Today’s totalitarianism doesn’t come with jackboots and secret police. It comes with convenience. With apps. With “national security” justifications. With the illusion of safety.

As in the dystopian world of Soylent Green, where the individual is reduced to a consumable product of the system, today’s surveillance state treats Americans not as citizens but as data points to be harvested, scored, and fed back into the machine of control.

We are no longer governed—we are managed.

It is no less dangerous—just more efficient.

The tragedy, however, is that most Americans don’t see the bars being built around them, because the architecture of tyranny is disguised as convenience and cloaked in comfort.

Most Americans are still asleep to the danger. They live in a prison masquerading as paradise, where surveillance is sold as safety, compliance is branded as patriotism, and convenience has become the currency of captivity.

We have been conditioned to love our servitude, to decorate our cells with apps and smart devices, and to mistake technological dependency for freedom.

The prison walls are invisible, the bars digital, the guards automated.

We are inmates in a high-tech prison, lulled by convenience and pacified by illusion. We carry our tracking devices in our pockets. We whisper our secrets into microphones embedded in our own devices. We voluntarily surrender our privacy to digital overlords.

Meanwhile, those who dare question this system—journalists, whistleblowers, dissidents—are silenced, surveilled, and punished. All under color of law.

Consider:

• The FBI has used geofence warrants to identify individuals at protests based solely on their location.
• Palantir tools have helped track people not for crimes committed but for potential future criminal activity.
• DHS fusion centers have profiled Americans based on political views and religious affiliations.
• AI-driven risk assessment scores are now influencing bail decisions, parole eligibility, and more.

This is predictive policing turned preemptive prosecution. It is the very definition of a surveillance state.

As this technological tyranny expands, the foundational safeguards of the Constitution—those supposed bulwarks against arbitrary power—are quietly being nullified and its protections rendered meaningless.

What does the Fourth Amendment mean in a world where your entire life can be searched, sorted, and scored without a warrant? What does the First Amendment mean when expressing dissent gets you flagged as an extremist? What does the presumption of innocence mean when algorithms determine guilt?

The Constitution was written for humans—not for machine rule. It cannot compete with predictive analytics trained to bypass rights, sidestep accountability, and automate tyranny.

And that is the endgame: the automation of authoritarianism. An unblinking, AI-powered surveillance regime that renders due process obsolete and dissent fatal.

Still, it is not too late to resist—but doing so requires awareness, courage, and a willingness to confront the machinery of our own captivity.

Make no mistake: the government is not your friend in this. Neither are the corporations building this digital prison. They thrive on your data, your fear, and your silence.

To resist, we must first understand the weaponized AI tools being used against us.

We must demand transparency, enforce limits on data collection, ban predictive profiling, and dismantle the fusion centers feeding this machine.

We must treat AI surveillance with the same suspicion we once reserved for secret police. Because that is what AI-powered governance has become—secret police—only smarter, faster, and less accountable.

We must stop cooperating with our captors. Stop consenting to our own control. Stop feeding the surveillance machine with our data, our time, and our trust.

We don’t have much time.

Trump’s alliance with Palantir is a warning sign—not just of where we are, but of where we’re headed. A place where freedom is conditional, rights are revocable, and justice is decided by code.

The question is no longer whether we’re being watched—that is now a given—but whether we will meekly accept it. Will we dismantle this electronic concentration camp, or will we continue building the infrastructure of our own enslavement?

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we trade liberty for convenience and privacy for security, we will find ourselves locked in a prison we helped build, and the bars won’t be made of steel. They will be made of data.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

The post Trump’s Palantir-Powered Surveillance Is Turning America Into a Digital Prison appeared first on LewRockwell.