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In Ed Curtin’s collection of essays that I recently reviewed, he explains in an essay, “Opening the CIA’s Can of Worms,” who created and maintains the fictionalized narrative-controlled world in which Americans live in ignorance of the real operating agendas. 

Curtin says it is the CIA, not the media or the Internet companies or the politicians, who controls the narratives.  The CIA’s own overlords are the powerful financial and corporate interests on which American success depends. Curtin’s account parallels US Marine Commander General Smedley Butler’s confession that he and his US Marines were the enforcers in Latin America for the United Fruit Company and the New York Banks.

There is endless documented evidence for Curtin’s conclusion.  Much has been written about the CIA’s “Operation Mockingbird,” now described by CIA media assets, such as Wikipedia, as “alleged operation.”  Beginning in 1950 the CIA began using bribes, such as “leaks” to American media that were designed to influence American and foreign opinion with controlled narratives that advanced secret agendas.  The CIA’s “leaks” made the careers of reporters who could attest to their editors “CIA source” and make the front page if not the headlines. Most journalists regarded as influential are CIA assets.

More recently, Udo Ulfkotte’s book, Bought Journalism, revealed that he, an editor at Germany’s largest newspaper, and most significant journalists in Europe are CIA assets.  This was confirmed by Otto Schulmeister, editor-in-chief and publisher of Austria’s Die Presse. His own CIA connections were revealed. See here.

We know it also from Stephen Kinzer’s book, The Brothers, which gives us the story of how US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA Director Allen Dulles used the State Department, CIA, and American and foreign journalist to serve the corporate clients of their powerful law firm.

Today, of course, the many proven facts are dismissed by the whore media and Wikipedia as conspiracy theory.  The CIA’s assets continue to do their assigned job of controlling the narratives.

Curtin endorses Douglas Valentine’s statement in his revealing book, The CIA As Organized Crime: “The CIA and the media are part of the same criminal conspiracy.”  In his own words, Curtin adds:

“The corporate mainstream media are stenographers for the national security state’s ongoing psychological operations aimed at the American people, the same as they have done for an international audience.  We have long been subjected to this ‘information warfare,’ whose purpose is to win the hearts and minds of the American people and pacify them into being victims of their own complicity, just as it was practiced by the CIA in Vietnam and by the New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, etc, on the American people over the years as the American warfare state wages endless wars, coups, false flag operations, and assassinations at home and abroad.  . . .  the roles that the CIA and the corporate mainstream media play cannot be distinguished from each other.”  

And still millions of dumbshit Americans sit in front of TV “news” and submit to their indoctrination. A people this stupid cannot survive in freedom.

In The Secret Team, Fletcher Prouty documented that the CIA has placed operatives in every agency of the US government.  Frances Stonor Saunders (The Cultural Cold War) and Joel Whitney (Finks) explained how CIA officers Cord Myer and Frank Wisner operated secret programs that converted supporters of the First Amendment into voices for censorship. We have seen the results.  We have a fake tale of 9/11, fake tales of our wars in the Middle East, a fake tale of Covid and the Covid “vaccine,” a fake tale of “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” a fake tale of “Iranian nukes” but not a word about Israeli nukes.  We are victims of a massive lie machine.  

Curtin reminds us that not long ago the New York Times gleefully reported that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has been documenting for years the adverse effects on children of vaccines, was “barred from Instagram over false virus claims.” The woman, Jennifer Jett, who wrote the line did not use the word “alleged.”  How would Jennifer Jett or Instagram have the slightest qualification to know Kennedy’s claims are false?  

What we see here is media being used by Big Pharma to discredit a highly knowledgable source.  For years I have been watching highly credible experts discredited by media operatives of zero accomplishment. Nobodies of whom no one has ever heard become the experts.

As far as I can tell, the last two generations of graduates of the US educational–in reality brainwashing–system were not taught to read. They can recognize a limited number of words, but they cannot master the meaning of the words on the page.  This is partly by design and partly the results of integrated schools that demand equal racial performance outcomes.  The ruling elite finds it much easier to deceive and to control people who cannot understand what they read. As it is not permissible for white and Asian ethnicities to perform better as a group than blacks and Hispanics, standards are reduced to the point that everyone can have the same grade.

I recently attended a high school graduation ceremony in north Florida. 41% of the graduating class were Summa Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, and Cum Laude.  What do you think the explanation is?  A hot spot of genius genes, or standards dropped to hide racial differences in educational performance?  In a few more years, 100 % of the graduating class will be Summa Cum Laude, and the distinction will mean nothing.

In the Autumn 2023 issue of City Journal, Renu Mukherjee reports the destruction of America’s elite high schools, such as Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in northern Virginia, Stuyvesant High School, and Bronx High School of Science. The schools had strict entrance tests to ensure that the students admitted were capable of benefitting from the expensive and demanding experience.  As Asians and Whites comprised most of the student bodies, educational standards based on merit have been declared racist by the DEI tyrants that rule us and have control over American education.  

In place of entrance tests, each middle school in the geographic area is allowed a share of the admissions. Perhaps from there it becomes a lottery. Whatever, the result is to drop the percentages of the most qualified and to raise the percentages of the least qualified. For the least qualified to graduate with an equal share of the honors, the standards must be lowered.  In the interests of DEI the elite preparatory high schools are being destroyed.  The fact that elite high schools succumbed to the propaganda that merit is racist foretells the demise of American science and engineering. As time passes the US will become dependent on Chinese, Indian, and Russian immigrants for its science and technology.

Just as cum laude distinctions are losing their meaning, so are US presidential appointments.  It formerly meant something to be appointed an Assistant Secretary.  It no longer does.  After Biden’s DEI appointments, which included sexual perverts, the honor that was associated with the appointment and its Senate confirmation is no longer there.  The same has happened to the judiciary.  The incompetent two-bit punk ideologues that Congress has appointed to the bench are hardly to be respected.  They are the enemies of justice and the American people.  They are currently busy at work overturning the presidential election.  Little wonder the ruling establishment let Trump win.  They knew that they could stop him cold with the judiciary and move him in their direction with advice that gives him “broader perspectives.” 

Maga-Americans should consider that if President Trump refuses to accommodate the ruling establishment, he faces the possibility that the mid-term elections will be stolen for the Democrats.  Again in charge of Congress, they will impeach and convict Trump.  Then indict him and his government, terrorize his supporters, and establish DEI Woke Truth over America.

The end of the Founding Fathers experiment could be very near.

But don’t expect dumbshit Americans to realize that. They are easy pickings because they are implicated by their own complicity.

The post American Democracy Is a Hoax — The Rulers of America Are Not the People appeared first on LewRockwell.

This post started with my decision to comment on this note:

This is so satisfying to watch….

– elizabeth nickson

Read on Substack

What I wanted to stay was that “what I would find satisfying is seeing her (Sara Levin) on trial, along with every other government official abusing their power for personal or political gain.”

Then I realized that this is a subject that just does not want to leave me alone.
The point that no state actor ever gets punished for crimes committed under the protective mantle of the state.

In my post “The fifth moment” I mentioned that I received the 300 page file of the Hungarian State Security Archives on myself. I found none of the information in it I was hoping for. Nothing from, or about the state actors involved. I wanted to write about it, but a year and a half later, I still couldn’t make myself to do it. The crimes of the communists are safely in the books of history, whitewashed, redacted, sanitized.

I mentioned in my post Emily and the House of Terror that on that building there are hundreds of pictures of the victims who were killed there. There are no pictures, no names of the perpetrators. As I pointed out in “Hate is a big word”, I have good reasons to think that my stepfather was one of them.

We seem to be desperately hanging onto the idea that justice exists. However much we may dislike lawyers, we still give them immunity for the crimes they may and do commit in their official capacity.
I already wrote several posts demanding accountability for, but at least full exposures of the crimes of various state actors.
I searched for the must severe punishment for prosecutorial misconduct in the US.
Make a wild guess what it is…. I will give it to you in a minute.

elizabeth nickson

, the poster of the video above, has a painful family history with MK-Ultra.
Just like the Tuskegee experiment, it is now also in the history books. Nobody ever has been investigated, tried or punished for them. None of the criminals responsible for them has even been exposed. Being ‘safely in the history books’ means that they never will be.

As are, and will be the crimes of the CIA, the FBI and Big Pharma or any other agency you care to add to the list.

When Trump was running in the 2016 election, the crowds at his rallies were chanting “Lock her up”.
Eight years later, there is still no attempt to investigate Hillary Clinton, let alone putting her on trial.
She has been implicated in over 100 premeditated/suspected murders. Several books have been written about their criminal enterprise with Bill. The writer of one of those books, just like Jeffrey Epstein got (officially) suicided. ‘Officially’ means that they will NOT be investigated.

Barak Obama ordered the spying on the Trump campaign. That is an impeachable offense, yet it was Trump who got impeached; more than once under bogus charges.

Joe, ‘the big guy’ Biden was openly bragging about blackmailing the Ukrainian government. It is common knowledge that he is a corrupt criminal with the involvement of his whole family. No justice in sight.

On Jan 6th 2021 there were hundreds of ‘agent provocateurs’ on the streets. None has been investigated.

But I am just repeating myself, I discussed this already in my post “There can be no peace without justice”

So let me give you the answer to the question I asked above, “what was the most severe punishment for prosecutorial misconduct in American history”

The answer is ten days in jail, only five served. This prosecutor was also disbarred and had to pay a $7,500 dollars fine. This was the only case the AI engines were able to find.
But the kicker is this: the state, meaning you, the taxpayer, had to pay $2,000,000 in damages for the wrongful conviction.

“Prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity from civil lawsuits for actions taken in their official prosecutorial duties”

“Prosecutorial immunity shields prosecutors from most civil lawsuits, limiting financial penalties. Criminal charges are rare due to high legal thresholds and institutional reluctance to prosecute prosecutors.” (From a Grok search result; emphasis mine)

Isn’t it grand to be a lawyer?
The documentary on patent trolling, linked in my post Shakedowns, clearly exposes a criminal enterprise made possible by corrupt lawyers and judges using the law and its procedures as weapons to shake down small businesses. Just the legal costs amount to 29 billion dollars per year.
The only thing that is needed is the willingness to prosecute these criminals. Which leaves us with the most important question: why is it not happening?

The only answer I can come up with is that the state needs to protect its own legitimacy, irrespective of political colors or any transgression, corruption, even crimes.

Lavrentiy Beria, probably the worst of the Soviet communist scumbags, was responsible for the elimination of 1.5-2 million innocent people. He personally executed hundreds, including over a hundred women whom he raped before killing them. Yet, when he was finally executed, it was not because of his crimes, but because he, and his knowledge, represented a very real danger to the lives of the rest of the scumbags in the communist party leadership. It was not justice, it was internecine murder.

Nuremberg was not about justice, it was a political statement and a strategic move to eliminate potential political opposition. Nazi politics was on trial, not war-crimes.

The lawfare against Donald Trump had nothing to do with whatever he did or did not; it was attempted political assassination. Lawfare is about power, not justice.

When politicians want to drag Putin or Netanyahu to the ICJ, that’s not about justice, but politics. In both cases, their adversaries are far more guilty of the same crimes than the accused are themselves.

The self-preservation instinct of the state cannot afford justice, as it must maintain the illusion of its infallibility.

The illusion that the law is above itself, meaning that it can break its own rules to protect itself and its reputation as the custodian of justice. It’s all for the greater good. In this perception, any attack on the agents of the state and its institutions are seen as an attack on the state itself that will weaken its legitimacy. The legitimacy of the state must be absolute, we cannot allow its reputation to be tarnished by some bad actors.

This is a conundrum I cannot see the way out of. I would like to believe that such self policing, the weeding out of corruption and bad actors could increase respect for the system, but this is clearly not the way the system sees itself. I am not quite comfortable with this anthropomorphizing of the state, but the tendency is so universal, that I have no other way to explain it.

The gravest injustice is protecting injustice itself, but waiting for justice for the crimes of the state is like watching Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel.

John Adams said that

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”

I am afraid, that the whole Western civilization became that ‘any other’.

This article was originally published on Politics is Personal.

The post There Is No Justice for Its Miscarriage appeared first on LewRockwell.

Whatever one may think of the Catholic Pope’s religious authority, the fact remains that the Papacy—also known as the Holy See—in spite of several centuries of decline in prestige, is an international institution that is difficult to ignore. There are good reasons, after all, why the heads of state from major global powers choose to meet with the Pope and with his representatives. In spite of lacking any significant military force or sizable territory, the Papacy exercises what the Americans like to call “soft power.”

With the election of a new Pope—the American-born Pope Leo XIV—the Holy See has an opportunity to wield this soft power in a way that enhances the freedom and human rights of individual persons. This is also an opportunity to change direction. This is important and necessary because during the twelve years of Pope Francis’s pontificate, the Holy See largely employed its power and influence to ill effect. Under Francis, the Holy See chose to chase popularity with global intellectuals and states while sowing disunity and confusion within the Church itself. At that time, the Holy See also chose to sacrifice the Church’s own independence—as with Francis’s China deal. In short, the Church became an instrument supporting the current and morally debased international status quo, rather than one that demanded its reform.

Pope Leo, however, can change this, and there are at least three key ways that he can do so. The first is to defend the family with force and clarity. The second is to foster peace among states and within them. The third is to both unify the Church and assert its independence from state power.

Defend the Family

The family exists today as the most important non-state institution, and as an institution that competes with the state. Even in our modern era, family ties continue to foster loyalties and affections among individuals, and direct those affections away from the state. As such, the family represents one of the last few obstacles that stands in the way of the state’s efforts to reduce every person to an atomistic individual with no binding or lasting relationship other than the relationship with the state.  As the great French liberal Benjamin Constant noted, non-state institutions like the family “contain a principle of resistance which government allows only with regret and which it is keen to uproot. It makes even shorter work of individuals. It rolls its immense mass effortlessly over them, as over sand.”

More fundamentally, as a previous pope, Pope Pius XII, noted the family precedes the state and ought not be measured according to the needs or priority of the state. That is, the family is “natural” and not an adjunct of the state. He writes:

[T]here would be danger lest the primary and essential cell of society, the family, with its well-being and its growth, should come to be considered from the narrow standpoint of national power, and lest it be forgotten that man and the family are by nature anterior to the State, and that the Creator has given to both of them powers and rights and has assigned them a mission and a charge that correspond to undeniable natural requirements.

Not surprisingly, totalitarian states and the revolutionary Left have long sought to abolish the family, redefine it, or otherwise reinvent it in an image more suitable to the needs of regimes. From the French Revolution to the modern Left of today, the natural family remains under almost constant attack.

For his part, Pope Leo is off to a good start on this matter. At his May 16 audience with the Holy See’s diplomatic corps, Pope Leo stated in no uncertain terms that  “It is the responsibility of government leaders to work to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies. This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman.” Leo then quotes his predecessor Pope Leo XIII, recounting, like Pius XII, that the family has precedence over civil governments. The family is, according to Leo XIII: “a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society.”

On this matter, Leo’s predecessor Pope Francis was timid and often contradictory. He often sacrificed clarity in an effort to pander to global elites and win friends among members of the press. Pope Leo, hopefully, will be different, and stick to his own comments in which he stated: “For her part, the Church can never be exempted from speaking the truth about humanity and the world.”

Promote Peace

There are few greater threats to the family than war. Some will argue that wars are inevitable, but even in those cases—assuming the “inevitable” cases even exist—the proper response always is to seek ways to both shorten wars and lessen their severity. This, of course, has always been the point of international law—such as the Geneva Conventions—designed to make wars less terrible, even when they occur. The longer wars last, and the more the belligerents ignore the rights of noncombatants, the more disastrous will the outcomes be for families and individuals. The greatest beneficiaries of wars have long been states, which can use wars as a means of extending the state’s despotism both in time and space.

A primary goal of Popes must always be to encourage negotiations with warring parties and to offer forums and resources for rapprochement. This, of course, has a long history within the Church itself, dating philosophically at least as far back as Augustine’s just war theory, and later coalescing as a mass movement in the form of the Peace and Truce of God movement of the early Middle Ages, which worked to limit feuds among nobles in the Middle Ages.

Pope Leo would do well to continue this tradition, and he has already signaled an effort to do so. He has condemned the war crimes committed by the State of Israel against innocents in Gaza, and he has offered Vatican City as a venue for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. He should continue on this path. Indeed, in doing so, he follows the lead of Pope John Paul II who vehemently opposed the American invasion of Iraq, ostensibly justified by the Bush administration’s lies about “weapons of mass destruction.” Indeed, Pope Leo has also signaled an affinity for John Paul’s efforts in this regard. At his May 11 address, Leo stated “never again war,” a phrase employed by John Paul against the American war on Iraq, and other conflicts.

In contrast to this, the “diplomacy” of Pope Francis—if it can be called diplomacy at all—was not so much focused on alleviating the costs of war as it was focused on promoting a certain ideological agenda. Under Francis, calls for peace tended to be vague, non-specific and generally served as a vehicle for Francis to push “social justice” and environmentalism.

Assert the Church’s Independence from the State

In his history of political thought, historian Ralph Raico—following Lord Acton—notes that the idea of freedom in the West owes much to the fact that the West’s political institutions were formed during a period of competition between Church and state throughout the Middle Ages.

As Raico notes, Europe was formed out of incessant conflict between civil authorities and Church authorities, each of which sought to assert its own prerogatives against the other. AThis conflict established the idea that some institutions are simply not subject to the authority of states and—more importantly—that states are limited in who and what they can legally or morally dominate. In many ways, then, Church and state—at least in the West, in contrast to the Caesaropapism of the East—are natural enemies. The byproduct of this conflict paved the way for other institutions—cities, guilds, nobles, etc.— to assert their own independence from the state as well.

Clearly, the modern Church enjoys only a tiny fraction of the independence it enjoyed prior to the rise of the modern sovereign state, but it is essential that Pope Leo continue to assert the Church’s independence overall.

Most pressing in this matter is a repair of Pope Francis’s disastrous China policy which granted far greater control over Church prerogatives that was thought acceptable under Francis’s predecessors. As noted by the heroic Cardinal Zen, Francis essentially threw in the towel on maintaining Church independence from Beijing.

Leo needs to assert the Church’s independence once again in China, and in so doing engage in the same battle for independence that characterizes—as with, for example, the investiture controversy—centuries of Church-state conflict.

This general attitude also ought to be expressed not just in explicit assertions of independence, but also in a policy of refusing to allow the Church and the papacy to be caught up in the minutiae of modern domestic policy conflicts in the world’s current states.  Moreover, no state ought to be treated as indispensable or exceptional. It is good that Pope Leo gave no special attention to J.D. Vance during Vance’s recent visit to the Vatican, nor has Leo pledged to visit the United States any time soon. The Papacy is uniquely equipped to send this message since the Holy See predates every state on earth by many centuries.

It is far too early to know the details of how Pope Leo will address these matters, but in these three areas he can do much to confront the nearly untrammeled powers of modern states which have done so much to destroy the freedoms and the dignity of families and individuals across the world.

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

The post What the World Needs Now From Pope Leo XIV appeared first on LewRockwell.

Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State (MES) is one of the two greatest books on free market economics of the twentieth century. The other, of course, is Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action. Rothbard at first intended his book to be an easier-to-understand guidebook to Human Action, but it soon turned into a major treatise in its own right. Rothbard was too much of a creative genius to be limited to summarizing someone else’s book. In this week’s article, I’ll explain some of the reasons why MES is great, and why you need to read it.

First, let’s look at what Mises said about MES. He said that it made an “epochal” contribution to economics and that it made many important theoretical innovations: “In every chapter of his treatise, Dr. Rothbard, adopting the best of the teachings of his predecessors, and adding to them highly important observations, not only develops the correct theory but is no less anxious to refute all objections ever raised against these doctrines. He exposes the fallacies and contradictions of the popular interpretation of economic affairs. Thus, for instance, in dealing with the problem of unemployment he points out: in the whole modern and Keynesian discussion of this subject the missing link is precisely the wage rate. It is meaningless to talk of unemployment or employment without reference to a wage rate. Whatever supply of labor service is brought to market can be sold, but only if wages are set at whatever rate will clear the market. If a man wishes to be employed, he will be, provided the wage rate is adjusted according to what Rothbard calls his discounted marginal value product, i.e., the present height of the value which the consumers — at the time of the final sale of the product — will ascribe to his contribution to its production. Whenever the job seeker insists on a higher wage, he will remain unemployed. If people refuse to be employed except at places, in occupations, or at wage rates they would like, then they are likely to be choosing unemployment for substantial periods. The full import of this state of affairs becomes manifest if one gives attention to the fact that, under present conditions, those offering their services on the labor market themselves represent the immense majority of the consumers whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines the height of wage rates. Rothbard’s work is an epochal contribution to the general science of human action, praxeology, and its practically most important and, up to now, best-elaborated part, economics. Henceforth all essential studies in these branches of knowledge will have to take full account of the theories and criticisms expounded by Dr. Rothbard.”

One of the greatest things in MES is that Rothbard classifies all the possible types of government interference with the free market and shows what is wrong with them. If you read the book, you will be equipped to refute any opponent of the free market that you get into an argument with. He brilliantly explains how he classifies types of intervention: “What types of intervention can an individual or group commit? Little or nothing has so far been done to construct a systematic typology of intervention, and economists have simply discussed such seemingly disparate actions as price control, licensing, inflation, etc. We can, however, classify interventions into three broad categories. In the first place, the intervener, or ‘invader,’ or ‘aggressor’—the individual or group that initiates violent intervention—may command an individual subject to do or not do certain things, when these actions directly involve the individual’s person or property alone. In short, the intervener may restrict the subject’s use of his property, where exchange with someone else is not involved. This may be called an autistic intervention, where the specific order or command involves only the subject himself. Secondly, the intervener may compel an exchange between the individual subject and himself or coerce a ‘gift’ from the subject. We may call this a binary intervention, since a hegemonic relation is here established between two people: the intervener and the subject. Thirdly, the invader may either compel or prohibit an exchange between a pair of subjects (exchanges always take place between two people). In this case, we have a triangular intervention, where a hegemonic relation is created between the invader and a pair of actual or potential exchangers. All these interventions are examples of the hegemonic relation—the relation of command and obedience—in contrast to the contractual, free-market relation of voluntary mutual benefit.”

Let’s look at an example of how Rothbard explodes arguments for intervention. Many people claim that the ordinary consumer lacks enough information to make purchases in his own interest, Consumers thus need to be guided by “experts.” Rothbard pulverizes this objection: “Consumers also take entrepreneurial risks on the market. Many critics of the market, while willing to concede the expertise of the capitalist-entrepreneurs, bewail the prevailing ignorance of consumers, which prevents them from gaining the utility ex post that they had expected ex ante. Typically, Wesley C. Mitchell entitled one of his famous essays: ‘The Backward Art of Spending Money.’ Professor Mises has keenly pointed out the paradox of interventionists who insist that consumers are too ignorant or incompetent to buy products intelligently, while at the same time proclaiming the virtues of democracy, where the same people vote for or against politicians whom they do not know and on policies which they scarcely understand. To put it another way, the partisans of intervention assume that individuals are not competent to run their own affairs or to hire experts to advise them, but they also assume that these same individuals are competent to vote for these experts at the ballot box. They are further assuming that the mass of supposedly incompetent consumers are competent to choose not only those who will rule over themselves, but also over the competent individuals in society. Yet such absurd and contradictory assumptions lie at the root of every program for ‘democratic’ intervention in the affairs of the people. In fact, the truth is precisely the reverse of this popular ideology. Consumers are surely not omniscient, but they have direct tests by which to acquire and check their knowledge. They buy a certain brand of breakfast food and they do not like it; and so they do not buy it again. They buy a certain type of automobile and like its performance; they buy another one. And in both cases, they tell their friends of this newly won knowledge. Other consumers patronize consumers’ research organizations, which can warn or advise them in advance. But, in all cases, the consumers have the direct test of results to guide them. And the firm which satisfied the consumers expands and prospers and thus gains ‘good will,’ while the firm failing to satisfy them goes out of business. On the other hand, voting for politicians and public policies is a completely different matter. Here there are no direct tests of success or failure whatever, neither profits and losses nor enjoyable or unsatisfying consumption. In order to grasp consequences, especially the indirect catallactic consequences of governmental decisions, it is necessary to comprehend complex chains of praxeological reasoning. Very few voters have the ability or the interest to follow such reasoning, particularly, as Schumpeter points out, in political situations. For the minute influence that any one person has on the results, as well as the seeming remoteness of the actions, keeps people from gaining interest in political problems or arguments. Lacking the direct test of success or failure, the voter tends to turn, not to those politicians whose policies have the best chance of success, but to those who can best sell their propaganda ability. Without grasping logical chains of deduction, the average voter will never be able to discover the errors that his ruler makes. George J. Schuller, in attempting to refute this argument, protested that: ‘complex chains of reasoning are required for consumers to select intelligently an automobile or television set.’ But such knowledge is not necessary; for the whole point is that the consumers have always at hand a simple and pragmatic test of success: does the product work and work well? In public economic affairs, there is no such test, for no one can know whether a particular policy has ‘worked’ or not without knowing the a priori reasoning of economics.”

Another vital point in MES is that the level of the income tax is much more important than whether the tax is “proportional” or “progressive’: While the progressive principle is certainly highly destructive of the market, most conservative, pro-free-market economists tend to overweigh its effects and to underweigh the destructive effects of proportional taxation. Proportional income taxation has many of the same consequences, and therefore the level of income taxation is generally more important for the market than the degree of progressivity. Thus, society A may have a proportional income tax requiring every man to pay 50 percent of his income; society B may have a very steeply progressive tax requiring a poor man to pay 1/4  percent and the richest man 10 percent of his income. The rich man will certainly prefer society B, even though the tax is progressive—demonstrating that it is not so much the progressivity as the height of his tax that burdens the rich man. 1/4 Incidentally, the poor producer, with a lower tax upon him, will also prefer society B. This demonstrates the fallacy in the common conservative complaint against progressive taxation that it is a means ‘for the poor to rob the rich.’ For both the poor man and the rich man have, in our example, chosen progression! The reason is that the ‘poor’ do not ‘rob the rich’ under progressive taxation. Instead, it is the State that ‘robs’ both through taxation, whether proportional or progressive.”

Let’s do everything we can to encourage people to read MES— a great masterpiece by one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century.

The post The Greatness of Man, Economy, and State appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes George Giles:

Not to mention the witches brew of toxic chemical pollution that the USSR spread on its workers. Then there are the thousands of ‘workers’ that died horrific if secret deaths from nuclear weapons production. Then there is capitalism where the US only killed three, two by there own mistakes.

Then there are the 16 identical Chernobyl style air cooled graphite nuclear reactors still in operation witnout containment vessels of any kind.

Socialism is horrific threat to the world.

The post Toxic Socialism appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

My Pillow CEO and leader of the nationwide election integrity movement Mike Lindell wants to get rid of all the electronic voting machines and meld them down to prison bars. 132 countries got rid of their machines and hand count their ballots. Why can’t the US?

See here.

The post Mike Lindell’s Jury Trial Started Today: Why It’s So Important appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

Back-to-Back Cannabis Murders Rock Back Country of NoCal

Why does anyone need a license to grow a plant? Growing and imbibing marijuana should be the same as with tomatoes.

The post Back to Back Murders in Pot Growing Country; Northern California appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

HAARETZ

The post What Every IDF Soldier Serving at Notorious Sde Teiman Knows Is Happening to Its Palestinian Detainees appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith

Middle East Eye

The post Israel destroys north Gaza’s sole kidney dialysis facility appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

AP News

The post China slams Hegseth for calling the country a threat appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Mondoweiss

The post Meet the Palestinian Bedouin community that no longer exists appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Reason

The post How Palantir is expanding the surveillance state appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Matt Taibbi

The post Ending the World to Own Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

 The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

The post Former CIA Analyst: ‘100 percent sure’ CIA had some involvement in massive Ukrainian drone strike on Russian airfields appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

The Gateway Pundit | by Cullen Linebarger

The post Trump Administration Launches Investigation into Biden Autopen Scandal appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Trump Slams ‘Crazy’ Rand Paul Over Opposition To Monster Debt Increase In ‘BBB’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/il-ritorno-dei-rendimenti-reali-negativi)

Sebbene i rendimenti reali negativi pare non siano più un problema per molti investitori, stanno tornando a essere un tema urgente, soprattutto per chi di noi è concentrato sulla costituzione e la conservazione dei risparmi. La causa principale di questo problema è l'inflazione.

Prima di continuare a discutere dell'inflazione futura e dell'emergere di rendimenti reali negativi, chiariamo innanzitutto cosa significa realmente il termine “inflazione”. Esso, infatti, è spesso utilizzato in modo poco chiaro e le persone ne danno interpretazioni diverse.

Nel linguaggio comune inflazione fa riferimento all'aumento dei prezzi dei beni di consumo: quando gli articoli acquistati nei negozi diventano più costosi mese dopo mese, anno dopo anno. In altre parole, si ottiene di meno in cambio dei propri soldi.

Tuttavia, per comprendere veramente il fenomeno, è importante distinguere tra il sintomo e la causa.

Dal punto di vista economico, la causa dell'inflazione è l'aumento dell'offerta di moneta: questo è ciò che chiamiamo “inflazione monetaria”. Il sintomo di questa causa è l'aumento dei prezzi dei beni, noto anche come “inflazione dei prezzi dei beni”.

Per dirla in parole povere, l'inflazione dei prezzi dei beni è sempre e comunque un fenomeno monetario, come affermò giustamente l'economista americano Milton Friedman.

Tuttavia, se vogliamo essere davvero precisi, dovremmo dire che l'inflazione dei prezzi dei beni è il risultato di un aumento dell'offerta di moneta rispetto alla relativa domanda.

L'inflazione è un problema economico, soprattutto per risparmiatori e investitori, e può essere decisamente distruttiva. Questo vale non solo quando l'inflazione raggiunge livelli così elevati che il denaro perde letteralmente valore, ma anche quando è relativamente bassa ma comunque superiore ai tassi d'interesse nominali.

Ecco un esempio: supponiamo che abbiate un rendimento del 2% sul vostro deposito bancario, ma l'inflazione è del 3%. In questo caso il vostro tasso d'interesse reale – quello aggiustato all'inflazione – diventa -1% (ovvero, il tasso d'interesse nominale del 2% meno il 3% di inflazione). Ciò significa che il potere d'acquisto del vostro deposito bancario diminuisce dell'1% all'anno. E non dimenticate le imposte sulle plusvalenze, le quali vengono applicate ai rendimenti nominali e aggravano ulteriormente le vostre perdite.

Ora, potreste chiedervi: “”Chi è responsabile dell'inflazione come fenomeno monetario”?

La risposta: le banche centrali. Hanno il monopolio sulla creazione del denaro e, su questa base, le banche commerciali sono autorizzate a piramidare le loro riserve.

E ora capite perché è assurdo quando la gente afferma che le banche centrali (o i loro organi di governo) “combattono l'inflazione”.

In realtà, le banche centrali non combattono mai l'inflazione: la creano. A volte creano più inflazione, a volte meno, ma non la combattono mai.

Se prendiamo in considerazione l'area Euro, si potrebbe sostenere che la massa monetaria è cresciuta solo del 4% a febbraio 2025 rispetto all'anno precedente.

Non sembra un numero eccessivamente alto e i prestiti bancari – attraverso i quali viene creato nuovo denaro – sono cresciuti solo del 2% circa. Quindi, com'è possibile che l'inflazione sia in aumento, soprattutto senza una significativa ripresa economica in vista?

Questa argomentazione ha un certo fondamento. Tuttavia, guardando al futuro, ci sono solide ragioni per aspettarsi un massiccio aumento del debito pubblico nei Paesi dell'area Euro. Questo debito non sarà utilizzato solo per acquistare nuove attrezzature militari, ma anche per sostenere uno “Stato sociale” sempre più insostenibile e strutture politiche in crisi.

Per raggiungere questo obiettivo, gli stati dell'area Euro, soprattutto quelli più grandi, emetteranno ingenti quantità di nuovi titoli di stato. Questi ultimi saranno acquistati dalla Banca Centrale Europea. Allo stesso tempo, la BCE abbasserà i tassi d'interesse e conterrà i rendimenti obbligazionari a livelli artificialmente bassi.

Il denaro appena creato verrà speso per trasferimenti sociali, appalti governativi e altre attività politiche.

È noto che i politici tendono a spendere soldi per progetti che non comportano alcun aumento di produttività o ne comportano pochi. Di conseguenza l'aumento della massa monetaria, combinato con la spesa pubblica, farà inevitabilmente aumentare i prezzi dei beni, causando un aumento dell'inflazione.

Proviamo a mettere le cose in prospettiva con qualche numero.

Se i disavanzi pubblici nell'area Euro si attestassero intorno al 5% del PIL e la BCE acquistasse nuove obbligazioni, l'offerta di moneta potrebbe aumentare di circa €800 miliardi. Ciò rappresenterebbe un ritmo di crescita annuo di M3 di circa il 5%. Inoltre l'offerta di moneta aumenterebbe a seguito dell'indebitamento bancario del settore privato.

Nel complesso questo potrebbe spingere l'inflazione nell'area Euro a circa il 4% o più. Se la BCE mantenesse i tassi d'interesse a lungo termine intorno al 3%, il tasso d'interesse reale scenderebbe a -1% (3% del tasso di interesse nominale meno il 4% di inflazione). Ciò significa che gli stati europei ridurrebbero il loro debito reale a spese dei creditori, ovvero risparmiatori e investitori.

Per le obbligazioni a breve termine e i depositi bancari, che solitamente offrono tassi d'interesse più bassi, l'espropriazione attraverso tassi d'interesse reali negativi sarebbe ancora più grave.

In sintesi, questa situazione equivale a quella che viene definita “repressione finanziaria”.

Ma potreste pensare: “Non abbiamo già sperimentato di recente tassi d'interesse negativi”?

Esatto. Dalla fine del 2018 alla fine del 2020, ad esempio, il rendimento nominale del titolo di stato tedesco a 10 anni è stato negativo.

All'epoca l'inflazione rimase relativamente contenuta fino a metà del 2021, quindi non fu l'aumento dell'inflazione a causare il calo del tasso d'interesse reale, bensì il calo dei tassi d'interesse nominali. Successivamente l'inflazione aumentò vertiginosamente, in gran parte a causa dell'aumento del 25% di M3 e l'aumento dell'inflazione spinse ulteriormente i tassi d'interesse reali in territorio negativo.

Guardando al futuro, la situazione sarà probabilmente diversa. L'inflazione sarà la forza trainante dei tassi d'interesse reali negativi.

Nel contesto attuale la BCE avrà difficoltà a riportare i tassi d'interesse nominali allo zero o al di sotto dello zero. I rendimenti obbligazionari in tutto il mondo sono aumentati significativamente e le obbligazioni denominate in euro devono offrire tassi d'interesse sufficientemente interessanti per mantenere vivo l'interesse degli investitori.

Pertanto è probabile che la BCE manipoli il tasso d'interesse nel mercato dei capitali affinché risulti basso ma positivo, garantendo al contempo un'inflazione più elevata. Ciò spingerebbe i tassi d'interesse nominali al di sotto del tasso d'inflazione, facendo sì che i tassi d'interesse reali diventino negativi, con i debitori che ne trarrebbero beneficio a scapito di risparmiatori e obbligazionisti.

La repressione finanziaria derivante dall'aumento dell'inflazione avrà conseguenze economiche e sociali di vasta portata.

I tassi d'interesse reali negativi continueranno a trasformare le economie dell'area Euro in sistemi sempre più di comando e controllo, in cui gli stati dettano legge su produzione, consumi e ogni aspetto della vita economica. Ciò erode le libertà residue di cittadini e imprenditori, rendendo il sistema statale sempre più onnipotente.

I segnali di questo cambiamento sono già visibili. Si pensi, ad esempio, alla palese decisione dell'Unione Europea di sequestrare i risparmi dei cittadini per finanziare spese dettate dalla politica.

L'area Euro sta scivolando in una situazione estremamente precaria: gli stati non riescono più a finanziare la loro insaziabile fame di denaro con le sole entrate fiscali. Di conseguenza i politici faranno sempre più affidamento sul finanziamento tramite debito.

Gli investitori privati ​​acquistano titoli di stato europei perché sanno che la BCE non permetterà ai Paesi dell'area Euro di dichiarare default. La BCE continuerà a sostenerli con denaro di nuova emissione quando necessario. Per mantenere il debito accessibile agli stati in difficoltà finanziarie, la BCE abbasserà artificialmente i tassi d'interesse.

Ciò ci porta alla situazione attuale: la BCE sta espandendo l'offerta di moneta acquistando debito pubblico, l'inflazione sta aumentando e i rendimenti nominali delle obbligazioni rimangono artificialmente bassi, con tassi d'interesse reali negativi per risparmiatori e investitori.

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

Supporta Francesco Simoncelli's Freedonia lasciando una “mancia” in satoshi di bitcoin scannerizzando il QR seguente.

The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America, By Janet Levy
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/07/the_forgotten_history_of_britains_white_slaves_in_america.html#ixzz6PAFUvo00

White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America, by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh
https://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963

https://dn790007.ca.archive.org/0/items/WhiteCargoTheForgottenHistoryOfBritainsWhiteSlavesInAmerica/White%20Cargo%20-%20The%20Forgotten%20History%20of%20Britain%27s%20White%20Slaves%20In%20America%20.pdf

“In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than 300,000 white people were shipped to America as slaves. Urchins were swept up from London’s streets to labor in the tobacco fields, where life expectancy was no more than two years. Brothels were raided to provide “breeders” for Virginia. Hopeful migrants were duped into signing as indentured servants, unaware they would become personal property who could be bought, sold, and even gambled away. Transported convicts were paraded for sale like livestock.

“Drawing on letters crying for help, diaries, and court and government archives, Don Jordan and Michael Walsh demonstrate that the brutalities usually associated with black slavery alone were perpetrated on whites throughout British rule. The trade ended with American independence, but the British still tried to sell convicts in their former colonies, which prompted one of the most audacious plots in Anglo-American history.

“This is a saga of exploration and cruelty spanning 170 years that has been submerged under the overwhelming memory of black slavery. White Cargo brings the brutal, uncomfortable story to the surface.”

They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America, by Michael Hoffman

https://dn721603.ca.archive.org/0/items/they-were-white-and-they-were-slaves-the-untold-history-of-the-enslavement-of-wh/They%20Were%20White%20and%20They%20Were%20Slaves_The%20Untold%20History%20of%20the%20Enslavement%20of%20Whites%20in%20Early%20America_Michael%20A.%20Hoffman%20II.pdf

“They Were White and They Were Slaves is a thoroughly researched challenge to the conventional historiography of colonial and industrial labor, a stunning journey into a hidden epoch, the slave trade of Whites, hundreds of thousands of whom were kidnapped, chained, whipped and worked to death in the American colonies and during the Industrial Revolution. This is a chronicle that has never been fully told, part of a vital heritage that has until now comprised the dustiest shelf in the darkest corner of suppressed history.”

Black Slaveowners, By Larry Koger (article)
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/black-slaveowners/

Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860, by Larry Koger (book)
https://www.amazon.com/Black-Slaveowners-Masters-Carolina-1790-1860/dp/0786469315/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452177778&sr=8-1&keywords=larry+koger

“Drawing on the federal census, wills, mortgage bills of sale, tax returns, and newspaper advertisements, this authoritative study describes the nature of African-American slaveholding, its complexity, and its rationales. It reveals how some African-American slave masters had earned their freedom and how some free Blacks purchased slaves for their own use. The book provides a fresh perspective on slavery in the antebellum South and underscores the importance of African Americans in the history of American slavery.

“The book also paints a picture of the complex social dynamics between free and enslaved Blacks, and between Black and white slaveowners. It illuminates the motivations behind African-American slaveholding–including attempts to create or maintain independence, to accumulate wealth, and to protect family members–and sheds light on the harsh realities of slavery for both Black masters and Black slaves.

• BLACK SLAVEOWNERS–Shows how some African Americans became slave masters

• MOTIVATIONS FOR SLAVEHOLDING–Highlights the motivations behind African-American slaveholding

• SOCIAL DYNAMICS–Sheds light on the complex social dynamics between free and enslaved Blacks

• ANEBELLUM SOUTH–Provides a perspective on slavery in the antebellum South”

Whites Were Slaves In North Africa Before Blacks Were Slaves In The New World, By Paul Craig Roberts
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/03/paul-craig-roberts/whites-were-slaves-in-north-africa-before-blacks-were-slaves-in-the-new-world/

America’s First Slaves: Whites : NPR

White slavery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_slavery

American Pravda: Amazon Book Censorship, by Ron Unz
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-amazon-book-censorship

The post Detailed Facts Concerning Slavery, Reparations And Other Inconvenient Authoritative Information Concerning This Barbaric Institution appeared first on LewRockwell.

Given Marco Rubio’s long history of subservience to the State of Israel — which has earned him a mountain of campaign cash from the country’s US-based collaborators — many Americans were understandably wary that his ascension from senator to secretary of State portended disturbing moves to advance Israel’s interests. However, few foresaw Rubio orchestrating the abduction, imprisonment and deportation of foreign students for using their universal human right of free speech to criticize the Israeli government and advocate for Palestinians.

With President Trump’s blessing, Rubio has targeted many foreign students in this fashion — students who’ve been charged with no crimes. However, no case better illustrates the campaign’s casual cruelty than that of 30-year-old Tufts University PhD candidate Rumeysa Ozturk. Ozturk, who’s been studying child development, was arrested in March and whisked away to a far-off prison merely because — an entire year earlier — she co-authored a Tufts Daily op-ed urging the university to formally characterize Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide, and to sell the school’s Israel-associated investments.

Rubio would like you to assume her essay must have been an unhinged, antisemitic, violence-inciting screed. To the contrary, harkening back to Tufts’ 1989 decision to divest from apartheid South Africa, its tone is decidedly calm and measured. Read this excerpt of the essay’s most pointed language about Israel and judge for yourself:

These [student senate] resolutions were the product of meaningful debate…and represent a sincere effort to hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law. Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.

…the student body is calling for … the University to end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination — a right that is guaranteed by international law. These strong lobbying tools are all the more urgent now given the order by the International Court of Justice confirming that the Palestinian people of Gaza’s rights under the Genocide Convention are under a “plausible” risk of being breached.

Ozturk’s persecution represents a major escalation of an aggravating dynamic in which people in the United States are vilified as dangerous, volatile antisemites for saying things about Israel that are frequently said by respected people and institutions in Israel. For example, in an op-ed of his own, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week wrote, “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians … Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”

In March of this year, the State Department revoked Ozturk’s student visa without notifying her — she had no idea that her presence in the country was now illegal. Four days later, in an incident captured on video, she was grabbed off a Somerville, Massachusetts street by masked, plain-clothed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, before being shackled in chains and airlifted 1,400 miles to a federal detention center in Louisiana.

For the next month and a half, she was stuffed with 23 others in a cell meant for 14. Ozturk says constant exposure to dust and inadequate ventilation sparked more than a dozen asthma attacks — after having previously had only about 13 in her entire life. Sleep was hard to come by, as motion-detecting fluorescent lights repeatedly triggered throughout the night.

Trying to justify the unjustifiable, the Trump administration has gone to slanderous extremes to vilify Ozturk. In a since-deleted social media post following her arrest, Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said “DHS + ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” (As an aside, note that, while some 43 Americans — including dual nationals — died in the Oct 7 attacks, there’s no history of Hamas ever setting out to target Americans.)

When protests of Israel’s tactics in Gaza erupted in 2022, Israel supporters across government, major media and social media branded all pro-Palestine protesters as Hamas supporters and antisemites. With the ascendency of the second Trump administration, that tactic has evolved from a malicious PR smear to a government-weaponized allegation that’s putting nonviolent foreign students in prisons and derailing their lives — all in service to a foreign country.

In a partial reversal of her appalling treatment, Ozturk was released from confinement on May 9 on the orders of a federal judge, who also denied the government’s wish to make her wear an ankle monitor. However, her troubles are far from over: In addition to the enduring harm of a six-week interruption of her academic pursuits, she is still targeted for deportation.

When DHS initially leveled the “activities in support of Hamas” accusation against Ozturk, many people assumed the government must have something on her other than an essay in a student newspaper. However, as the weeks ground on, the government never pointed to anything else, something US District Judge William Sessions noted when he ordered her to be released from her cage in Louisiana :

“I suggested to the government that they produce any additional information which would suggest that she posed a substantial risk. And that was three weeks ago, and there has been no evidence introduced by the government other than the op-ed. That literally is the case. There is no evidence here...The court finds that Ms. Öztürk has raised a substantial claim of a constitutional violation.”

Judge Sessions called Ozturk’s seizure “a traumatic incident” and said “her continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.” That is most certainly the Trump administration’s goal.

Falling for Rubio’s dishonest portrayal of his prey and failing to scrutinize the facts, many so-called “conservatives” have enthused over his drive to deport anti-Israel activists and rushed to defend it. In their flimsiest argument, you’ll find them claiming Ozturk and others have no right of free speech because they’re not US citizens. That hollow attack rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of rights — one that wrongly views rights as government-granted privileges, rather than something that springs from one’s humanity. As I’ve explained elsewhere at Stark Realities, the Constitution’s Bill of Rights isn’t a granting of rights, it’s a prohibition against government interference with pre-existing rights shared by everyone on Earth.

Employing a quintessential straw man argument, Rubio and others also say “nobody has a right to a visa.” The controversy has never been about any mythical entitlement to visas — it’s about the morality and constitutionality of using visa revocations as a means of punishing and suppressing expression of certain political beliefs.

To mete out that punishment, Rubio and the Trump administration are exploiting the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which recklessly empowers the secretary of State — a single individual — to deport foreigners the secretary deems “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” of the United States. The law provides no elaboration on that standard, much less any provision for its application with any semblance of due process for the affected individual.

Invoking that provision, the administration told a court that DHS and ICE determined Ozturk “had been involved in associations that ‘may undermine U.S foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization’ including co-authoring an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.”

First, note how tangential and tenuous the opening and concluding allegations are. The government says Ozturk is being targeted for unspecified “associations,” and because her stance on Israel merely overlaps with the stance of a campus group that was only temporarily banned.

Next, we see the Trump administration dishonestly saying Ozturk “indicat[ed] support for Hamas” by writing an op-ed calling for Tufts to say Israel is committing war crimes, and to divest from the country. The op-ed never mentions Hamas or Oct. 7 or even implicitly endorses the group or its tactics, and there’s been no allegation of any other form of her supposed “support for Hamas.”

The administration also employs the Israeli-propagandist idea that criticism of the State of Israel — a political entity — creates a “hostile environment” for Jewish students. That notion is itself a form of bigotry — as it presumes all Jews endorse Israel’s actions. Of course, that presumption is belied by the significant presence of Jewish students in many protests of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Meanwhile, the notion that pro-Israel Jews should be protected from hearing contrary views is wildly hypocritical from an administration that — in regard to other topics — has rightly targeted censorship meant to prevent so-called “snowflakes” from having their feelings hurt.

Defenders of the administration’s conduct are compelled to do more than point to its supposed legality under a 1952 law. From FDR putting Japanese-Americans in concentration camps to Woodrow Wilson jailing opponents of the draft, there’s a difference between legality and morality and bona fide constitutionality. Meanwhile, Ozturk’s ongoing challenge of her arrest and pending deportation may well reset the bounds of what’s legal under the Immigration and Nationality Act, with the courts potentially ruling it’s unconstitutional to revoke a visa over the expression of an opinion.

Finally, even the most ardent backers of the Israeli government should recognize that the use of the Immigration Act to round up and deport people whose views are inconsistent with the current administration’s foreign policy threatens to set a dangerous precedent — one that could see a future, Israel-hostile White House seizing, jailing and deporting foreign students who advocate US aid to Israel.

Read the Whole Article

The post Putting Israel First, Rubio Victimizes Harmless Student Over Op-Ed appeared first on LewRockwell.

It is correct, analytically and logically, to distinguish secession from war. Many states secede peacefully, and it does not logically follow that secession must occasion war. The Southern states of America seceded peacefully, and Lincoln’s subsequent war which followed four months after secession was entirely unnecessary. Hence, Murray Rothbard wrote in his memo to the Volker Fund in 1961 that,

The road to Civil War must be divided into two parts:

• • the causes of the controversy over slavery leading to secession, and
  • the immediate causes of the war itself.

The reason for such split is that secession need not have led to Civil War, despite the assumption to the contrary by most historians.

Nevertheless, in understanding the Southern Cause it would be historically misleading to isolate secession entirely from the war, or to treat the two events as hermetically sealed off from each other. It is important to split them for the purpose Rothbard stated, namely, to debunk the assumption that secession must involve war, because many people wrongly view calls for secession as calls for war. But it does not follow that in understanding American history, the two events must be treated, for all purposes, as if they were not in any way historically, causally, or morally connected.

The Southern Cause found its expression in both secession and war, and it would be quite wrong to pretend that secession and war had nothing to do with each other as many libertarians attempt to do. They leap from one assumption—that secession and war need always be bound together—to the opposite assumption, that secession and war had nothing to do with each other. Their reason for clinging to this second assumption is that they wish to depict the Southern Cause as having two morally-distinct elements, one of which was just while the other was unjust.

Secession is seen as having been motivated primarily by a wicked cause, namely slavery, while the war itself is seen as motivated by a just cause, namely self-defense. In essence, they view the Southern Cause as containing two distinct moral elements: the morality of secession and the morality of war. They presume that the wickedness of the first would in no way taint the justice of the second, since they view the two as morally distinct. For libertarians who agree with Rothbard that the war of defense against Northern aggression was just, the morality of secession still remains contested.

In his article, “A Moral Accounting of the Union and the Confederacy,” Donald Livingston argues that secession was morally sound. He begins by establishing the foundations of his moral premise, namely, the right to secede:

Libertarians are and must be sympathetic to secession, for secession is nothing other than an exit right, a right internal to the very idea of liberty. Secession is not always justified, but, for libertarians, it is presumed morally justified unless compelling reasons to the contrary exist.

The question that must then arise is how secession could be morally sound if the aim of secession was to defend slavery. In Livingston’s view, the claim that secession was motivated by a desire to defend slavery is not based on historical analysis but on the mythology surrounding the righteousness of Lincoln’s War. He calls this the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” myth:

First, the founding myth of American nationalism is that the South seceded to protect slavery while the North invaded to abolish it. The vast resources available to the central government and its cultural elites have been used to drum this “Battle Hymn of the Republic” myth into the public consciousness for over a century. This myth, however, is false.

As we are here concerned with a moral defense of secession, it is significant to note that Livingston’s defense of the morality of secession does not depend on denying the immorality of slavery. It is often supposed that those who insist that the South seceded for liberty and independence must necessarily hold the view that slavery is moral. The perennial retort of those who insist that secession was about slavery is: “Liberty to do what? Independence to do what?” Their argument is that any claim to value liberty must be rejected if the person who seeks to defend his liberty is wicked and immoral, or seeks to use his liberty for wicked and immoral purposes. Livingston observes that the same accusation was made against the American revolutionaries, as slavery was legal in all colonies at the time:

One is reminded of Dr. Johnson’s irritation at the American colonists who threatened secession from Britain: he wondered why he had to hear constant yelps about liberty from the drivers of slaves. It is impossible not to feel the force of this argument, and we must acknowledge that slavery was a moral stain on the seceding American colonies, all of which allowed slavery in 1776, as well as on the seceding Southern states, all of which allowed slavery in 1861.

Livingston is highlighting the tendency to forget that slavery was legal in the American colonies when they seceded from the British Crown. Moreover, since there was an abolitionist movement well underway in the British Empire at the time—with slavery in the English common law having been ruled to be illegal by the Somerset case in 1772—it is noteworthy that rarely, if ever, do abolitionists argue that the American Revolution was “about slavery” or caused by a desire “to defend slavery.” Be that as it may, Livingston’s main point is not merely to highlight this hypocrisy, but to make the moral case for secession. Addressing the “yelps about liberty from the drivers of slaves” leveled against the American revolutionaries, he argues that “slavery is not the only moral wrong in the world, and its presence does not make other actions automatically immoral, nor opposing actions automatically moral.” People have no trouble understanding this point in the context of the American Revolution—the presence of slavery in the American colonies does not make the American Declaration of Independence immoral, as some activists peddling the “original sin” theory of American Independence have tried to claim. Indeed, this is the very parallel Murray Rothbard draws in his comment on secession in his “Just War” article.

Livingston, therefore, argues that the desire for liberty and independence does not become “immoral” merely because slavery was legal at the time. However, a further point still remains to be addressed, namely, whether the aim of secession was specifically to defend slavery. Those who run this argument claim that Southerners themselves said they were seceding to defend slavery. They rely on the mention of slavery in the secession declarations of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas. They also rely on remarks made by Alexander Stephens, the Confederate Vice President, at an event in Georgia after secession but before the war, where he outlined the reasons why the Southern states had seceded and formed the Confederate Government. It is striking that the entire case for declaring that secession was “about slavery” relies almost entirely on these sources and often treats them as conclusive regarding the cause of secession. As they see it, there is no need to study any further historical context, because the secession declarations of these four states have settled the issue once and for all. As Rod Barr observes:

Often I hear that the primary sources I quote in defense of Southern secession are “cherry picked” or “out of context.” Those making these charges will then point to the four Declarations of Causes or The Cornerstone Speech as proof of my lack of context.

Curiously, the secession declarations of the states that did not mention slavery are deemed to be irrelevant. Nor is Alexander Stephens’s full speech deemed to be of any interest—except for the passage where he mentions that racial inequality is the “cornerstone” of the constitution. Yet, as Livingstone points out, Stephens’s views on racial inequality were no more significant than anything else he said in his speech. Livingston explains that these views on racial inequality were widespread at the time:

Nearly all Americans, North and South, saw America as a white European polity, and held that neither Indian nor African populations would ever participate as social and political equals…. As long as it was humane, slavery was considered a reasonable and productive arrangement for both blacks and whites. Thus, the tolerance of slavery can be viewed as the practical outcome of a white Euro-centric mindset.

This being the widespread view, which was also expressed on several occasions by Abraham Lincoln, it would make little sense for the South to secede specifically to defend that view. Livingston further points out that there was no threat to slavery in the Union, as Abraham Lincoln had repeatedly said that he did not intend to abolish slavery and indeed had no legal power to do so. Those who insist that secession was “obviously” about defending slavery rely on an alleged hypothetical threat that the South is said to have feared—the suggestion being that even though there was no threat to slavery yet, they may have been afraid that such a threat might hypothetically arise in future and may therefore have decided to quit while they were ahead. As David Gordon writes, such fears would have been fanciful at the time given Lincoln’s distinct lack of interest in threatening slavery:

The evidence that Lincoln did not invade the South to end slavery is well known, and I shall not rehearse it here. Suffice it to say that he sponsored the 1861 Corwin Amendment, which would have permanently guaranteed slavery in the states where it existed. Consider this alongside his first inaugural address, which above all emphasized the collection of duties and imposts.

The slave states and free states were certainly embroiled in political controversy over the legality of slavery in the Western territories. In his Volker Fund memo, Rothbard observes that, “The basic root of the controversy over slavery to secession, in my opinion, was the aggressive, expansionist aims of the Southern ‘slavocracy’” in an attempt “to foist the immoral system of slavery on Western territories.” But there is a significant difference between political machinations aimed at “foisting” slavery onto the Western territories, and the subsequent decision to secede. Logically, if the South had decided to secede in a fit of pique because they did not get their way in attempting to “foist” slavery on the West, how would seceding assist the “slavocracy” in achieving this goal they are said to have cherished? Seceding could not be a way of “foisting” slavery on the free territories. Seceding would accomplish the very opposite, because they had exited from the Union—slavery would be gone from all American territories. Rothbard indeed, echoing the abolitionists at the time, remarks that the Southern states should have been left to secede in peace as that would have been the end of slavery in the United States.

It is obvious that while the “slavocracy” may perhaps have dreamed of “foisting” slavery on the Western territories, seceding from the United States would in no way help them achieve this goal. The “slavocracy” did not even have a numerical majority in the conventions held to decide the question of secession. They would easily have been outvoted by citizens of the South who did not own slaves nor have any business or any other interests in the Western territories. The majority of Southerners, many of whom had fought to defend the Union in previous wars, would not leave the Union simply because the “slavocrats” had business interests out West that depended on slavery—not least being that it would help to maintain the political balance of power between the free states and slave states. Their political controversies over control of the Western territories, which Rothbard describes as “slavery-in-the-territories struggles of the 1850s,” were not controversies over whether to secede, and they do not supply the explanation for why they seceded in 1860-1861. Indeed, in his subsequent robust defense of the Southern Cause, Rothbard makes no mention of the political “slavery-in-the-territories struggles of the 1850s” when he explains why the South seceded:

In 1861, the Southern states, believing correctly that their cherished institutions were under grave threat and assault from the federal government, decided to exercise their natural, contractual, and constitutional right to withdraw, to “secede” from that Union. The separate Southern states then exercised their contractual right as sovereign republics to come together in another confederation, the Confederate States of America.

It is also worth noting that there was a vibrant abolitionist movement underway in the South, especially in Virginia where attempts had already twice been made to abolish slavery. Seceding could not reasonably have been seen by the “slavocracy” as a way of defending slavery given these conditions. They would be just as vulnerable to the growing abolitionist movement after secession as they were before, if not more so. Thomas Jefferson was known to have been sympathetic to abolition. Robert E. Lee had declared slavery to be a political and moral evil. Like John C. Calhoun—who was also a slave owner—the Confederate leaders who expressed opposition to abolition were concerned more with the practical challenges posed by the abolitionists trying to foment violent revolution, than with a defense of slavery as an institution. The “slavocracy” could have had no reason to suppose that they would be able to cling onto slavery forever. Livingston explains:

Calhoun [in 1837] carefully separated the question of slavery “in the abstract,” as Southerners called it, from slavery as a practical question. He tried to make clear that his point was only about the latter, and that under the institution, the African population had made remarkable progress and was capable of further improvements. He called the institution an “experiment,” which should be given a period of time, and he put no limit on the improvements of which Africans were capable.

As James Rutledge Roesch explains, far from seeing the dispute over slavery as a reason for secession, Calhoun tried to highlight that if the dispute was not resolved the hatred raised against the South would lead to disunion:

“However sound the great body of the non-slaveholding States are at present, in the course of a few years they will be succeeded by those who will have been taught to hate the people and institutions of nearly one half of the Union, with a hatred more deadly than one hostile nation ever entertained toward another,” warned Calhoun. “It is easy to see the end. By the necessary course of events…we must become, finally, two peoples.”

Rather than theorize about the hypothetical pre-emptive action the “slavocrats” may have wished to take, the historian Charles Adams has taken a different approach. In his review of Adams’s book When in the Course of Human Events, David Gordon highlights the role played by “financial affairs” in Adams’s account of the causes of both secession and war:

The Southern states favored a regime of free trade: this would enable them to benefit to the greatest extent possible from their cotton exports. By contrast, many in the North favored high tariffs to help local industries.

Because of high tariffs, the South was burdened to benefit the North, a situation hardly likely to promote amicable relations.

The significance of Adams’s emphasis on the financial causes of secession is that it opens up avenues for fresh insights into this important historical era, and a clear view that is not submerged in moralizing about slavery. Gordon quotes the explanation given by Adams as to why the stakes concerning tariffs were so high as to lead the South to secede and the North to attack:

Lincoln was determined, come what may, to collect tariffs from the ports of the seceding states. “Lincoln’s inaugural address on 4 March 1861, certainly set the stage for war, and most of the South saw it that way. It sounded conciliatory . . . [but] he would, however, use federal power to hold federal property (the forts) and ‘to collect the duties and impost; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion.’ Southerners immediately saw the meaning behind Lincoln’s words”… The arguments in favor of the “tariff war” thesis were well-known to contemporaries, both in America and abroad.

Adams casts much-needed light on the fuller picture that risks being lost when the history police insist that secession must obviously have been “about slavery.” Livingston points out that this insistence that the South seceded to defend slavery was certainly not the prevailing view at the time. For example, before secession Lincoln did not see the concerns of the South as being “about slavery”:

Unlike contemporary Americans who have inherited the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” view of a demonic South and virtuous North, Lincoln understood slavery as a national evil inherited from British colonial practice… Lincoln acknowledged the common moral understanding of Northerners and Southerners on the question of slavery. On August 21, 1858, he said, “Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses of the north and south. . . . When southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact.”

Finally, the best people to ask why they seceded are those who seceded. Jefferson Davis, in his book, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, answers that question by explaining the Southern Cause as Southerners saw it:

When the cause was lost, what cause was it? Not that of the South only, but the cause of constitutional government, of the supremacy of law, of the natural rights of man.

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