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The base and those top influencers who channel their interests (and at times add their own insight) arguably define MAGA, but Trump is the only one with the power to implement it at scale, and he now believes that he knows better than them.

Trump recently told The Atlantic that “considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that. For those people who say they want peace—you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon—that’s not peace.” This was in response to vehement opposition within MAGA over a possible hot war with Iran.

His remarks preceded Tucker Carlson telling Steve Bannon, both of whom have enormous influence over MAGA, that such a war would “see the end of the American Empire” and Trump’s presidency. That prompted Trump to respond as follows on social media: “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that, ‘IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!’” Quite clearly, MAGA is now divided over who exactly decides what “America First” means: Trump or top influencers who channel his base’s interests.

Trump’s most zealous supporters believe that every MAGA member should “trust the plan”, as QAnon infamously urged, and insist that their political hero knows better than they do due to his access to the world’s most classified information. By contrast, their critics – who also deeply respect Trump and are grateful that he’s back in the White House – believe that he was manipulated by anti-MAGA forces during his first term, thus explaining their worries about him possibly being manipulated yet again.

Regardless of whether or not the US gets involved in a possible hot war with Iran, which is what Netanyahu is very clearly lobbying for and might have expected given reports that Israel can’t destroy Iran’s nuclear program without American bunker-buster bombs, MAGA is now divided from within. Each faction believes that the other is disloyal to the movement in their own way by correspondingly doubting its figurehead and blindly going along with everything that he says.

While Trump formally leads MAGA, he only coined the movement’s name and popularized its platforms that far predated his first campaign, which is why the Tucker-Bannon camp of “dissidents” and “purists” have no qualms about challenging and even condemning him for deviating from these positions. At the same time, his most zealous supporters argue that current realities sometimes require “pragmatism”, “flexibility”, and even “compromises” on these same positions in pursuit of the “greater MAGA good”.

Trump is convinced (whether rightly per Israeli intelligence’s assessment or wrongly per US intelligence’s own) that Iran really is secretly trying to build nukes, which if true could greatly limit the US’ freedom of action in West Asia and thus – as he sees it – undermine his envisaged MAGA goals. The Tucker-Bannon camp disagrees and is concerned not only about the costs of a hot war with Iran, but also that this is what would undermine MAGA’s true (understood as domestic-centric) goals, not a possibly nuclear Iran.

The real divide within MAGA isn’t over Iran, but over who decides what “America First” means, with Iran being the catalyst for bringing this long-simmering debate to the forefront. The base and those top influencers who channel their interests (and at times add their own insight) arguably define MAGA, but Trump is the only one with the power to implement it at scale, and he now believes that he knows better than them. This zero-sum divide risks irreconcilably splitting the movement if one of them doesn’t relent.

This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

The post Who Really Decides What “America First” Means? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The United States continues moving war machines to the Middle East as Israel continues its military bombardment on Iran.

Meanwhile, recent reports claim Iran is crying uncle and wants to negotiate a ceasefire with President Donald Trump, who can’t seem to decide if he wants to deal or not.

A U.S. defense official told the military newspaper Stars and Stripes on Monday that the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group is on its way to the Middle East “amid ongoing strikes between Israel and Iran.” The group includes four destroyers — the USS Curtis Wilbur, USS Gridley, USS Wayne E. Meyer, and USS Lenah Sutcliffe Higbee — and an air squadron comprising Growler and Super Hornet fighter jets and combat helicopters.

Reports also say the Air Force has sent 30 U.S. air-refueling tankers across the Atlantic. “Officials have described some of these movements as routine or related to NATO exercises in Europe,” Newsweek noted.

These recent moves are in addition to the USS Thomas Hudner destroyer that was ordered closer to Israel the day after it commenced its surprise attack The U.S. military has also been helping Israel shoot down missiles Iran has been volleying at the homeland, where several people have been killed.

Another Forever War?

The mobilization of these war assets has prompted some of Trump’s most recognizable and influential supporters to raise alarms about what many Americans fear is about to turn into another U.S. interventionist quagmire. Podcasters Steve Bannon, who worked for Trump as an advisor, and Tucker Carlson, who went on a live pro-Trump tour in 2024, have been using their platforms to hammer against the idea of further military involvement. Both men spoke Monday about the eerily similar narratives we’re hearing about Iran today that we heard about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. In response to the criticism, Trump has lashed out at Carlson, calling him “kooky.”

Following Israel’s strike Thursday evening (U.S. time), Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement denying U.S. involvement. The Iranians contested that story from the beginning. Interestingly, initial accusations included a claim that American refueling tankers were operating near Iran 24 hours before Israel struck.

On Monday, reporters asked the president about full-on kinetic involvement in the Middle East. He declines to answer directly, saying, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

The Iranians allege that the United States is already heavily involved. They claim the two longtime allies coordinated the attack. The fact that the United States knew of Israel’s coming attack is indisputable, as the U.S. government ordered non-essential personnel out of the region within 48 hours of the attack.

U.S. Involvement

Trump’s first public comments after Israel’s attack didn’t help quell suspicions of U.S. involvement. Instead of bolstering Rubio’s statement of American nonparticipation, the president bragged about the lethal efficiency of Israel’s American-made weapons and issued another call for a nuclear deal. But the following day, he did post a message on his Truth Social account that aligned with the official Washington narrative. He said:

The U.S. had nothing to do with the attack on Iran, tonight. If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the U.S. Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before. However, we can easily get a deal done between Iran and Israel, and end this bloody conflict!!!

The U.S. had nothing to do with the attack on Iran, tonight. If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the U.S. Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before. However, we can easily get a deal done between Iran and…

— Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) June 15, 2025

Also, an Axios report claims to have spoken to Israeli officials who said the two countries had used nuclear negotiations as a ruse intended to keep Iranian targets from moving to new locations.

It’s also unknown whether Israel’s attack was contrary to the wishes of the Trump administration. Some commentators have pointed to Rubio’s initial statement on the matter, which did not include a declaration of support for Israel, as a sign that Israel did what it did without the blessing of the United States. Trump also told reporters days prior that he asked Israeli leadership not to hit Iran while negotiations were underway.

Ready to Talk

As expected, after Israel attacked, Iran called off the weekend’s upcoming nuclear deal talks and said the idea was off the table so long as they were taking incoming fire. But fresh reports from the Wall Street Journal and Reuters claim that Iran has had enough punishment and is sending messages through Arab liaisons that it wants a ceasefire and is ready to head back to the negotiating table. The Journal reported Monday:

In the midst of a ferocious Israeli air campaign, Tehran has told Arab officials it would be open to returning to the negotiating table as long as the U.S. doesn’t join the attack, the officials said. Iran also passed messages to Israel saying it is in the interest of both sides to keep the violence contained.

Reuters reported that Tehran has asked Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman to push Trump into influencing Israel into agreeing to a ceasefire. In return, Iran will head back to the negotiating table in a more flexible posture. Reuters reported:

Gulf leaders and their top diplomats worked the phones all weekend, speaking to each other, to Tehran, Washington and beyond in an effort to prevent a widening of the biggest ever confrontation between longstanding enemies Israel and Iran.… Iran made clear to Oman and Qatar that it would not negotiate while it is under attack and will only begin serious negotiations once it has finished responding to Israeli strikes, the official said.

Since Thursday, Israel has killed up to 20 high-ranking Iranian military officials and up to 10 nuclear scientists. It has bombed multiple nuclear and military sites (although it hasn’t achieved its official mission of completely destroying Iran’s nuclear program). Israel has also had free reign over Iranian airspace, and despite receiving waves of missile and drone attacks on the homeland, Israel has been in undeniable command.

Trump confirmed Monday while attending the G7 Summit that Iran would indeed “like to talk.” “I’d say Iran is not winning this war and they should talk. And they should talk immediately before it’s too late,” Trump said. But later in the day, he told reporters on Air Force One that he wasn’t “too much in the mood to negotiate.” Whether Trump is deploying misdirection or displaying indecisiveness is anyone’s guess, perhaps even Trump’s.

Israel indicates that the time for negotiations has passed:

When asked if a diplomatic mechanism was being worked out to end the campaign, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told Army Radio on Monday: “It is a little early for that. You don’t go to war and look to end it three days later.”

Read the Whole Article

The post U.S. Sends More War Machines to the Middle East To Counter Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

Former CIA officer Larry Johnson opines:

I believe that Israel’s attack was part of a planned international intelligence and military operation, which included the participation and support of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. We got the first clue on May 31, when a UN watchdog issued two reports designed to create a narrative that Iran is a rogue nuclear state:
…
This tactic was employed in 2002/2003 to gin up a justification to attack Iraq, who the US insisted had weapons of mass destruction. We now know it was a lie, but the propaganda was effective in producing support in the US and Europe to invade Iraq. We’re seeing a similar effort today, only this time Iran is being falsely accused of enriching uranium to build a bomb. The Iraq WMD lie, like the current calumny against Iran, only has one purpose… justify military action in order to achieve regime change.

I have previously detailed the current IAEA operation to blame Iran over some alleged nuclear contamination which were found more than two decades ago.

During the build-up to the 2003 war on Iraq there was another lie that famously used to ‘justify’ the attack.

It was alleged that Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with al-Qaeda, a terrorist group that had been created by the U.S. in Pakistan to fight against the Soviet supported government of Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda was alleged to have committed attacks in the U.S. on 9/11 2001. Associating Iraq, which had fought against al-Qaeda inspired groups, with al-Qaeda itself was the second most cited lie used to justify the U.S. war on Iraq.

It is no wonder than that a similar narrative is now suddenly being build with regards to Iran.

David Ignatius, the unofficial CIA spokesman at the Washington Post, was told to publish this nonsense (archived):

But Iran has other means to hit back. One that has received little attention is its relationship with al-Qaeda affiliates. According to former U.S. counterterrorism officials, Tehran has built good relations with the new “de facto” al-Qaeda “emir,” Saif al-Adel, who took over in 2023 after Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed. These former officials say Adel helped manage WMD planning for Osama bin Laden.

The al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen may pose a special danger. It’s headed by Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki, who posted a chilling video this month threatening U.S. officials. “Go after the scum of the earth and its greatest criminals,” he urged his followers, naming Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and former DOGE chief Elon Musk. “There are no red lines after all that has been happening to our people in Gaza,” he said. According to the Jerusalem Post, Awlaki urged Muslims in Europe and America to make sure there is “not a single safe place” for Jews.

Who would be those “former U.S. counterterrorism officials”? Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, or some other notorious liars?

Saif al-Adel, the “de facto” never declared leader of Al-Qaeda has since 2001 been rumored to be in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt and Iran where he allegedly was once under house arrest and later exchanged against Iranian hostages held by al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Over more than two decades the Shia Iran has fought the Sunni al-Qaeda wherever it could. Its operations against Sunni extremist in Iraq and Syria were largely wars against al-Qaeda affiliated forces. In Yemen Iran is allied with the Houthi who are fighting against U.S. supported al-Qaeda aligned groups in the south of the country. A similar situation exists in Lebanon where Iran supported Hizbullah forces have for years feuded against al-Qaeda aligned radicals.

To claim that Iran is now somehow in cahoots with Saif al-Adel, an alleged but never declared leader of a more or less extinct al-Qaeda, is blatant nonsense.

David Ignatius is a much read ‘opinion leader’. That he was told to trot out those nonsensical claims is a signal for others to pick up on them.

We can now expect lots of other second rated opinion writers to come up with similar tales.

It is, like the attempt to associated Iran with weapons of mass destruction, a narrative that will be used to further escalate the current regime change war on Iran.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Lies Used To Justify War on Iraq Get Reused To Wage War on Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Antiwar.com

The post Netanyahu Claims Killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Would ‘End the Conflict’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

The Libertarian Institute

The post Trump Attacks Tucker Carlson Over Opposition to Iran War, Says He Decides What ‘America First’ Means appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Responsible Statecraft 

The post US lawmakers blast Israel, urge against war with Iran​ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

TheBlaze posted:

Reporter: “Do you have any response to Tucker Carlson criticizing you and saying you that were complicit in the war?”

Trump: “I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.” 

https://x.com/theblaze/status/1934721600907301190

>Trump also ordered Tehran a city of around 10 million people to evacuate indicating that he’s preparing to order military action against them. He also called Carlson “kooky” because he doesn’t want to go to war against Iran for Israel over unproven claims about nuclear weapons.

https://x.com/NickJFuentes/status/1934756100613480643

They’re already trying to spin all of this activity in the Middle East as “America First” when it is obviously not. Pete Hegseth was on Fox News comically claiming that Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran was “self defense.” He was also trying to sell the idea that all this stupid stuff we are doing in the Middle East is somehow good for America when it is obviously not. It’s all for the benefit of Israel.

https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1934772275741434199

The post Post from TheBlaze appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Martin. 

The Peoples Voice

The post Why the Urgency behind Israel’s Attack? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

https://x.com/Bannons_WarRoom/status/1934633614915879318

The American Alcibiades

The post The American Alcibiades appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Trump Throws Tulsi Under The Bus For ‘Regime Change’ War On Iran appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Gateway Pundit

The post Trump Fires Back at Tucker Carlson Again: ‘Let Him Get a TV Network So People Actually Listen’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

CNN Politics

The post Israel says Iran was racing toward a nuclear weapon. US intel says it was years away appeared first on LewRockwell.

Murray Sabrin wrote:

Is there any war these warmongers don’t support?

The post Insufferable Mark Levin 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.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/mentre-il-mondo-cerca-la-pace-lue)

Possiamo percepire i venti di guerra che soffiano sull'Europa, mentre il continente agita lo spettro di un conflitto contro la Russia. Di recente la Commissione europea ha presentato una serie di misure per rafforzare la difesa degli stati membri dell'UE, in particolare attraverso il piano ReArm Europe. Il piano, approvato dal Consiglio europeo in seduta straordinaria il 6 marzo 2025, mira a mobilitare €800 miliardi per le capacità di difesa dell'UE. Include un riorientamento dei fondi pubblici, ma non solo: prevede anche l'utilizzo del risparmio pubblico. Come annunciato il 17 marzo 2025, questa strategia mira a ottenere circa €10.000 miliardi di depositi bancari europei e a reindirizzarli verso l'industria bellica e le politiche di difesa pubblica.

Un altro esempio europeo: Valérie Hayer, eurodeputata francese e leader del gruppo Renew Europe al Parlamento europeo, ha di recente dichiarato che il vecchio continente sta vivendo “un momento di gravità” probabilmente mai visto sin dalla Seconda guerra mondiale. Il colpevole? La guerra in Ucraina e la minaccia esistenziale rappresentata dalla Russia per la democrazia e l'ordine europeo. Per far fronte a questa minaccia, lei e altri politici europei vogliono mobilitare i risparmi degli europei per finanziare questo sforzo collettivo nell'industria bellica.

In Francia e Germania

A metà marzo diverse personalità politiche francesi si sono espresse a favore della mobilitazione del risparmio privato per riarmare il Paese di fronte alla minaccia russa. Il 13 marzo il Ministro dell'economia francese, Éric Lombard, si è espresso a favore di questa misura davanti ai senatori francesi. In quel momento non si parlava di creare un conto di risparmio dedicato, ma piuttosto di destinare tutto il capitale risparmiato dalla popolazione.

Tuttavia, di fronte alle diffuse critiche, Éric Lombard ha fatto marcia indietro giovedì 20 marzo e ha annunciato la creazione di un fondo da €450 milioni, gestito da Bpifrance e aperto a investitori individuali che desiderino contribuire allo sforzo di riarmo nazionale diventandone azionisti indiretti. L'importo minimo da investire in questo fondo sarà di €500, con un investimento iniziale massimo che potrebbe essere di “diverse migliaia di euro”. Una volta investiti, questi fondi “sicuri” saranno congelati per almeno cinque anni.

La stessa retorica guerrafondaia si respira anche in Germania. Prima di lasciare l'incarico, Olaf Scholz ha parlato al Bundestag della “Zeitenwende”, la svolta storica che la Germania sta attualmente affrontando. Ha promesso di affrontarla investendo nel riarmo dell'esercito tedesco, la Bundeswehr. Il nuovo cancelliere tedesco, Friedrich Merz, ha ottenuto dal parlamento tedesco la possibilità di spendere €1.000 miliardi per il riarmo del Paese. Una spesa senza precedenti in un Paese che ha a lungo delegato la propria difesa nazionale alla NATO e agli Stati Uniti.

Tutti questi investimenti europei vengono presentati come “investimenti sicuri e redditizi” (secondo Valérie Hayer), tuttavia, come la storia ci insegna, questi investimenti sono esattamente l'opposto.

Cosa ci insegna la storia 

Storicamente investire in obbligazioni e fondi di guerra ha sempre significato correre il rischio di scommettere sul cavallo sbagliato. Questa scommessa avrebbe potuto benissimo portare alla rovina dei creditori dello stato sconfitto. Questo accadde in Germania con l'impossibilità di rimborsare le obbligazioni di guerra dopo il 1918. Queste ultime erano diventate prive di valore perché le riparazioni richieste dal Trattato di Versailles e l'iperinflazione della Repubblica di Weimar ne avevano reso impossibile il rimborso.

Al contrario, se lo stato fosse risultato vittorioso, il rimborso di questi prestiti, spesso ingenti, avrebbe potuto richiedere anni, mandando in rovina il creditore a causa dell'inflazione monetaria e della repressione finanziaria attuata dopo il conflitto per cancellare i debiti dello stato. Questo è ciò che accadde negli Stati Uniti dopo il 1945, quando i Victory Bond furono rimborsati. La politica di repressione finanziaria del dopoguerra mantenne bassi i tassi d'interesse e alta l'inflazione del dollaro, causando un graduale deprezzamento della valuta. Con il rimborso dei prestiti, il potere d'acquisto dei creditori diminuì negli anni successivi alla fine della guerra.

Più grave della rovina dei creditori è la rovina della società. Questi investimenti deviano capitali da alternative realmente produttive che migliorano effettivamente le condizioni di vita delle persone; ritardano il progresso dirottando capitali (risorse, lavoro e denaro) verso le industrie della difesa. Non capiscono che la prosperità a breve termine offerta dall'“industria della distruzione” è solo un'illusione e va a scapito della prosperità a lungo termine per la società nel suo complesso.

Qualsiasi società militarizzata, sciovinista e guerrafondaia non farà altro che arretrare ulteriormente lungo la strada del progresso e del miglioramento delle condizioni di vita, reso possibile dalla migliore allocazione possibile del capitale nella struttura produttiva della società. Come scrisse l'economista Frédéric Bastiat, la guerra è un'illusione di ricchezza: crea un'attività economica che si vede (l'industria bellica), ma sempre a scapito di quello che “non si vede” (ovvero opportunità perse e costi differiti). La guerra non è mai una via d'uscita da una crisi, ma la crisi definitiva che una società possa affrontare.

In breve, i guerrafondai di ogni tipo – eccitati dall'idea di trarre profitto finanziario da una possibile guerra – non capiscono nulla di economia o di storia. Peggio ancora, non capiscono nulla di guerra.

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

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A few weeks ago the media office of the Gaza government issued a statement declaring that the Israeli Defense Forces now control over 77 percent of the territory in the Gaza Strip, much of it in ruins from the continuing Israeli Air Force attacks on suspected Hamas sites. Many of the known Hamas leadership at the time of its October 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel have been killed or have fled Gaza. But the organization has survived and now there are as many as 20,000 Hamas members. Young recruits today try to control the delivery of relief food and other goods to Gaza along with the black market that dominates what is left of its economy.

Israel has not won its war against Hamas—a war that at one time was promised to be ended within a span of four or five months. The Israeli leadership responded to that failure by taking the war to the people of Gaza, though Israelis were assured that the terrifying and around-the-clock Israeli air force bombing attacks in Gaza would stop when Hamas was driven from its fortified tunnels.

A few weeks ago the Associated Press reported from Tel Aviv that the areas in Gaza bordering Israel have been razed by the IDF to “the point of uninhabitability.” Jean-Pierre Filiu, a professor of Middle East studies at the Sciences Po in Paris, recently published an account of a trip to Gaza. A revised and updated version of his book Un Historien à Gaza was recently reviewed in Arab Digest:

“Driving along the Salaheden road [in Gaza], he explains why they have to drive slowly: people on foot are so traumatized by pain and the constant bombings that they don’t even hear cars. Along the lunar landscape he meets an old man who tells him that his fate is that of sheep, who are fed just enough to be sacrificed for the annual Eid feast. Among his old acquaintances, the average ‘displaced’ person has one and a half square meters to live—the Palestinians are ‘shipwrecked.’

“The stench from tons of rubbish, smashed sewage treatment plants and lack of water is overwhelming. He reminds us how Pope Francis summed up the situation: ‘It is cruelty, it is not war.’ Hospitals are systematically bombed, babies dying of hypothermia, dehydration and disease, doctors and nurses targeted, schools and universities destroyed, books and academic documents willfully destroyed by Israeli soldiers. The Palestinians are suffering ‘a violence worthy of the Last Judgment.’ So many buildings, so many landmarks have been destroyed that Filiu loses track of where he is. Nothing he has witnessed in Afghanistan, Syria, or Ukraine prepared him for Gaza. This explains why ‘Israel does not allow the international press access to such a shocking scene.’ . . . Filiu is staggered at the lack of empathy in the West for the civilian victims of these killing fields.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing criminal charges, threw in with the far right religious zealots in Israel. They are still the controlling political coalition, and they talk openly of turning parts of Gaza into abodes for Israeli settlers. Bibi, as he is known, has defied the West and remains the major supporter and spokesman for the continuing IDF war in Gaza, which has involved continuing Israel air force attacks in the effort to defeat Hamas. Netanyahu still talks about winning the war but there is no longer any talk from the Israeli leadership about reconstructing Gaza. Netanyahu recently announced a new plan to move the two million surviving Palestinians of Gaza into three large settlements—each would contain hundreds of thousands of refugees—under IDF control. The IDF would be responsible for the supply of food and humanitarian necessities.

It did not take long for some Israelis and Americans I spoke to think of the Warsaw ghetto.

The immediate goal, Netanyahu said, would be to eliminate the influence of Hamas over the delivery of food and other relief necessities to the Palestinians. In Gaza since October 7 there are said to be more than 55,000 dead and 127,000 wounded, most of them women and children. Those numbers have been repeatedly challenged as being minimal; a true count of casualties cannot be made until the debris from the constant Israeli bombing attacks throughout Gaza is cleared away.

The change in Israeli policy has attracted little media attention in the West, although it came with the announcement that there would be a massive call-up of IDF reservists. The renewed end-the-war campaign will involve no less than six Israeli combat divisions against Hamas.

Netanyahu’s right-wing cabinet, led by religious extremists, unanimously approved the aggressive new campaign. A United Nations spokesman said that Secretary General António Guterres was “alarmed” by the Netanyahu plan. It would “inevitably lead to countless more civilians killed and the further destruction of Gaza.” The spokesman said that “Gaza is and must remain an integral part of a future Palestinian state.”

Scant notice has been paid to the fact that the new Israeli plan will put the survivors of the war in the hands of those who have been bombing and killing them. I asked one friend who has been involved in peace-keeping efforts in the Middle East for the past decade what he thought of the coming escalation of the war and the relocation of the surviving Palestinians. His reply was stunning in its cynicism: “Everyone knows the plot. Gaza is done and half of Lebanon is done. Unfortunately, Israel seems fine for now.”

I got a slightly less cynical answer when I asked a retired senior IDF general whether Israel would ever get the debacle of Gaza behind it. His answer: “Not as long as Bibi is our supreme leader. He has more authority than Trump and [Iranian Ayatollah] Khamenei together. The answer is cutting our losses, leaving Gaza in exchange for the [remaining] hostages, agreeing with Trump [about] what we can do to Hamas once we withdraw if they breach the agreement, and doing exactly what we are now doing in Beirut”—continuing to bomb suspected Hezbollah sites.

Even more cynicism came from a highly decorated Israeli combat veteran who served in the same secret Israeli special forces unit as Netanyahu did decades ago. He told me that “Bibi and his evil non-functioning government that is trying hard to turn Israeli’s vibrant democracy into a messianic fascist political system have no plan for the day after the war” with Hamas. Some like [Finance Minister] Bezalel Smotrich use the slogan “Eternal War” while Bibi talks about Total Victory, an old Goebbels slogan. They are motivated by hatred, ignorance, and disrespect for anything not Jewish. Future plans? “You must be kidding. God and Torah learning will save us. Camps? Food supplies? Just a PR show. Who cares about other human beings?

“We won the war with Hezbollah that we planned for ten years. We are losing on all other fronts because the IDF is not a fighting force but a colonial police force. We lost the war with Hamas on October 7, 2023. What we have done since is a campaign of revenge.”

The last act of revenge may be the Israeli government’s implementation of its program for a final place to live in safety for the surviving Palestinians. I have been given a confidential report by an international humanitarian agency about the three new camps that are now under construction in central and southern Gaza. The migration of the surviving Palestinians from five separate areas was expected to begin in early June, and the report makes clear that the trips will be fraught with danger. Some of the warnings are ominous:

—“Expect . . . increased military presence along corridors.”

—“Humanitarian organizations should prepare for emergent needs from newly uprooted populations.”

—“clearance [of bomb damage] could take several weeks and slow progress due to booby traps, sniper ambushes, and complex tunnel re-emergence.”

—“Expect recurring ground incursions and wide-area demolitions.”

—“Humanitarian corridors will be increasingly militarized. Civilian oversight mechanisms may be minimal.”

Readers of this column will remember earlier migrations: the Gazans were moved from north to south, carrying their possession on carts or on their backs. Even the aged were walking under the watch of the IDF, who showed little empathy, even for the struggles of the old and infirm.

There is less reason today to expect any more concern as the coming march to a new form of imprisonment awaits the battered Gazan, who do not and never will view the IDF as their guardians.

With the migration complete, Gaza will be open for the religious zealots who now run Israel to claim as their religious heritage. What, then, will be the fate of the millions of Gazans huddled in their new ghettos?

This article was originally published on SeymourHersh.substack.com.

The post ‘To the Point of Uninhabitability’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

One of the major conservative criticisms of the communism of the Soviet Union was its centrally-planned economy that eschewed the free market, entrepreneurship, and private property and destroyed the work ethic, misallocated resources, and resulted in chronic shortages.

Since the advent of Donald Trump in 2016, and especially in 2024, many conservative individuals and organizations have begun denouncing free trade and advocating protectionism. And not just protectionism, but Trumpism: a unilateral, incoherent, arbitrary, destructive, nationalistic, mercantilist trade policy.

It used to be that conservative opponents of free trade would claim that they were merely making a distinction between free trade and government-managed trade agreements or the “free trade agenda.” Many of them are now “out of the closet,” full throttle, protectionists who cheer every percentage increase in tariff rates on every country that is decreed by President Trump.

But when conservatives are applauding import quotas, anti-dumping laws, trade barriers, increased trade regulations, and higher tariff rates, they are really just applauding Soviet-style central planning.

An army of government bureaucrats must determine what trade barriers should be erected, what the trade deficit is with every country, which industries need to be protected, which industries are “infant industries,” how long industry protection should last, which countries goods should be subject to tariffs, which particular items should be subject to tariffs, what the optimal tariff rates on each item should be, which particular items should be subject to quotas, what quantity the quota should be set at, the price at which dumping occurs, which countries should be given preferential treatment, and what exemptions should be given to which countries for which goods.

All of these things presuppose that government bureaucrats (or worse, Trump himself) are capable of calculating the “right” or “best” or “just” or “fair” price of tens of thousands of imported goods.

To see how ridiculous and centrally planned U.S. trade policy is, just look at the sugar quota import program. According to a U.S. Custom and Border Protection “Fact Sheet”:

Sugar is the largest imported agricultural commodity subject to quota. Sugar, in the Sucrose form (Fructose and Glucose- a disaccharide) is the only sugar subject to quota. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) establishes the annual Eligibility and quota limits; The United States Trade Representative (USTR) allocates the country quantitative limits; and U. S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), through the Office of Trade’s Quota Branch, implements the sugar quotas.

For raw sugar, “the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) numbers are 1701.13.1000, 1701.14.1020 and 1701.14.1040, and require a Certificate of Quota Eligibility (CQE) for the in-quota tariff rate.”

For refined sugar, “the HTSUS numbers are 1701.12.1000, 1701.91.1000, 1701.99.1015, 1701.99.1017, 1701.99.1025, 1701.99.1050, 1702.90.1000 and 2106.90.4400. When refined sugar is classified as Global Refined Sugar (HTSUS 9903.17.01), it does not require a CQE for the in-quota rate. When refined sugar is classified as Canadian Refined Sugar (HTSUS 9903.18.01), it does require a CQE for the in-quota rate.”

For specialty Sugar, “the HTSUS numbers are 1701.12.1000, 1701.91.1000, 1701.99.1015, 1701.99.1017, 1702.90.1000 and 2106.90.4400, and require a USDA Specialty Certificate to qualify for the in-quota rate. There are multiple Specialty Sugar openings annually called Tranches.”

And all of this was in place before Trump launched his trade war.

President Trump’s trade policy is not just guided by horrifically bad theory; it is rarely guided by any coherent theory at all. His attempt to institute a centrally planned trade policy is made even worse because it is so arbitrary. Conservatives who actually believe their mantra about the Constitution, the free market, individual freedom, private property, free enterprise, and limited government should call Trump’s trade policy what it is: incoherent, arbitrary, Soviet-style central planning.

The post Conservatives for Central Planning appeared first on LewRockwell.

Recently, the United States House of Representatives passed the ridiculously titled “Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia’s Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence Act (MEGOBARI Act) by a vote of 349 to 42. The latter “nay” vote consisted of 34 stalwart America First, non-interventionist Republicans and but 8 Dems from the AOC/Squad wing. The rest of the bipartisan UniParty mob voted “yea” in behalf of the stupidest piece of neocon busybody meddling in what is absolutely none of America’s business to yet come down the legislative pike.

The “Georgia” in question, of course, is a small country located in an obscure corner of the South Caucasus. What the act does is mobilize the whole of government in Washington—including sanctions, foreign aid and even military might—to punish its leading political party called Georgian Dream for not being sufficiently anti-Russian and pro-Atlanticist.

Let’s see. In so far as we can tell the little yellow spec on the map above could not be located by one in a hundred Congress persons without a color-coded pointer arrow. Self-evidently, Georgia is massively surrounded by the Russian Bear and, in fact, was an integral constituent republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for more than 70 years, having notoriously even given birth to Joseph Stalin himself. And 120 years before that it had been an integral party of Czarist Russia after a predecessor kingdom was annexed in 1801.

At the same time, its capital of Tbilisi lies 3,500 kilometers as the crow flies from the nearest thing to the Atlantic, otherwise known as the English Channel. Never in all of history prior to neocon agitation in the last two decade did anyone on the planet associate Georgia with the Atlantic world.

So why in hell do these geniuses on the Potomac think this no-count spec of a country doesn’t have the right—in its wisdom or otherwise—to ignore entreaties to join NATO. And, instead, to make nice to its great big next door neighbor and historic kinsman, which has been the policy of the Georgian Dream party since it came to power in 2012.

Still, we do mean “spec” of a nation. Georgia’s 3.8 million population is barely that of Los Angeles; it’s $34 billion GDP is equal to about 8 hours of USA output; and it anemic national income per capita of $9,150 is roughly equal to that of the Dominican Republic.

So what in the hell does this have to do with US homeland security? And why in the world does Congress insist that Georgia join NATO, which itself should have been disbanded 34 years ago when the Soviet Empire disappeared into the dustbin of history? Besides, Georgia’s tiny armed force of 20,000 is not even half the 53,000 employee headcount of the New York City police department.

Yet, the MEGOBARI Act insists that Georgia is crucial to America’s national interest and that it become an ally in the battle against alleged Russian aggression:

“[T}he consolidation of democracy in Georgia is critical for regional stability and United States national interests….(so it is) the policy of the United States to support the constitutionally stated aspirations of Georgia to become a member of the European Union and NATO,” to “continue supporting the capacity of the Government of Georgia to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity…..(and) to combat Russian aggression, including through sanctions on trade with Russia and the implementation and enforcement of worldwide sanctions on Russia.”

Well, after the calamity of an endless sequence of Forever Wars and the catastrophic $160 billion waste of American treasure on the utterly pointless proxy war against Russia next door in Ukraine, it is damn near impossible to imagine what these fools on Capitol Hill are thinking.

The truth is, the homeland security of America doesn’t give a rat’s ass about who governs Georgia and whether its foreign policy is pro-Russian, anti-Russian or punctiliously Swiss-like neutral. And the very last thing Washington should do is attempt to put another NATO stalking horse on Russia’s very doorstep, when the fact of the matter is that Russia is no threat whatsoever to America’s homeland security.

To remind: Russia’s $2 trillion GDP is just 7% of America’s $29 trillion economy; it’s ordinary defense budget of $70 billion is also only 7% of the $1.0 trillion monster at the Pentagon; its nuclear force is geared to deterrence just like ours, with nothing even remotely close to a first strike capacity; and its conventional air and sealift capacity is so meager that it couldn’t even get a single battalion on its 1980s era rust bucket aircraft carrier as far as Nantucket before it would be consigned to Davy Jones’ Locker by America’s formidable coastal defenses.

In other words, this whole legislative brouhaha on behalf of an “ally” we don’t need, and which doesn’t wish to be one in any event, is aimed at further weakening Russia, which is not a threat to America’s Homeland Security in any way, shape or form. Yet these war-besotted UniParty legislators mean to pull out all the stops in their utterly misguided efforts to push the US Empire deep into the very heartland of Eurasia.

Right after declaring it is US policy to impose its will on Georgia and degrade Russia, in fact, the bill mandates the delivery to congressional committees of a specially prepared classified report “examining the penetration of Russian intelligence elements and their assets in Georgia, that includes an annex examining Chinese influence and the potential intersection of Russian-Chinese cooperation in Georgia.”

What the f*ck?! It’s none of Washington’s business if the elected Georgian Dream government of a remote micro-country irrelevant to America’s Homeland Security chooses to invite, tolerate or ignore the presence in its country of alleged foreign intelligence operatives. For crying out loud, on that standard the US would have to close half of its 200 embassies around the world because they are crawling with CIA agents operating under diplomatic cover and regime change agents from NED, USAID, the International Broadcasting Agency and others.

Indeed, the sheer imperial arrogance of this portion of the bill in particular cannot be gainsaid. The implication of the related sanctions section of the MEGOBARI Act is that Washington would wage economic warfare on a country that has never done America a bit of harm, and has no capacity to do so now, because some ideological dipshits and career politician busybodies in Washington say so.

And, yes, we do mean unprovoked Washington warfare against a tiny statelet in the Caucasus. The bill also actually empowers the President to start slinging the go-to interventionist weapon of sanctions against Georgian Parliament members and political party officials who “knowingly engaged in significant acts of corruption, or acts of violence or intimidation in relation to the blocking of Euro-Atlantic integration in Georgia.”

There you have it: The US Congress claims to have jurisdiction over the foreign policy of damn near every nation on the planet. And if there were any doubt about this intention, additional statutory language makes that clear that if need be Georgia would drafted for Washington-directed military duty against Russia:

“…….in consultation with the Secretary of Defense……to expand military co-operation with Georgia, including by providing further security and defense equipment ideally suited for territorial defense against Russian aggression and related training, maintenance, and operations support elements.”

If this passage sounds like another Ukraine in the making, the resemblance is actually even more striking. That’s because what we have here is another territorial and ethnic adjustment problem that emanated from the break-up of the Soviet Union. And like in the case of Ukraine, the Washington neocons and arms merchants have gussied it up into a “rule of law” and sovereign border issue, which, also like the case of Ukraine, is not that at all.

In fact, like the Washington sponsored coup in Kiev in February 2014, Georgia’s 2003 Rose Revolution, which overthrew Soviet era and Russian friendly President Eduard Shevardnadze, had no small amount of help from the usual Washington suspects—NED, USAID, State and the CIA. Widespread protests, led by Mikheil Saakashvili, a provocateur who had been trained by Washington sponsored NGOs, culminated in demonstrators storming parliament with red roses, demanding Shevardnadze’s resignation. The latter occurred in November 2003 followed by new elections.

Backed by by U.S. and European support, including millions from USAID for voter mobilization and George Soros’ Open Society Institute, Saakashvili won the January 2004 presidential election. In turn, this ushered in a pro-Western agenda, seeking NATO and EU integration and aiming to restore Georgia’s territorial integrity over the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Accordingly, his government then massively increased military spending (from 0.8% of GDP in 2003 to 8% by 2008) and conducted operations to reassert control over these separatist regions, resulting in the 2004 clashes in South Ossetia and the 2006 Kodori Gorge operation in Abkhazia.

These breakaway regions depicted in the map below were distinct ethnic enclaves that spoke an Iranian dialect different from the main population of Georgia. During Soviet times, in fact, these two provinces had been administrated independently from the Georgian Republic because even the communists could see that the populations weren’t compatible. So when the Soviet Union fell, both provinces declared their independence and operated thereafter on a de facto separatist basis.

However, escalating tensions in South Ossetia between the large Ossetian majority and minority Georgian villages led Saakashvili to launch a military offensive on August 2008, targeting Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital. A latter EU report on the conflict condemned Georgia’s “indiscriminate artillery barrage” as the cause of the war’s inception.

As it happened, there was also a significant Ossetian population in North Ossetia, which had remained within Russia after the 1991 dissolution of the USSR. Consequently, Russia responded to the Georgian offensive with a massive counterattack that repelled the Georgian army from South Ossetia and led to a France-brokered truce that left South Ossetia and Abkhazia occupied by Russian forces.

Subsequently, these two breakaway regions were recognized by Moscow as independent states and have remained outside Georgian control ever since. Even then, however, Saakashvili’s miscalculation in launching the 2008 war on South Ossetia and on-going economic failures in Georgia led to his own downfall in 2012. In October of that year the pro-Russian Georgian Dream (GD), led by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, came to power through a democratic victory in parliamentary elections, winning 55% of the vote and defeating Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM).

Still, the purely local ethnic dispute of 2008, in areas so tiny that they would barely amount to a pinprick in the black box depicting the location of Georgia in the upper right hand corner of the map, has become the basis for the neocon claim that Russia is a dangerous expansionist power that must be stopped at all hazards.

And that’s just crazy. In the global scheme of recent history, the 2008 South Ossetia conflict in this obscure corner of the planet that led to but 228 civilian casualties and 169 military deaths was a nothingburger. It as among the dozen of broken “nationalities” omelettes that were scattered around the Russian borderlands when the Soviet Union fell and centuries of Czarist and Communist territorial expansion came suddenly, and often, violently undone.

Stated differently, there were no universal principles at stake in the manner in which the bits and pieces of the Soviet Empire were sorted out after 1991. That was just a one-time accident of history that had no bearing whatsoever on the Homeland Security of America.

Accordingly, it was simply the ideological aggression of the Washington War Party and its MIC (military-industrial complex) paymasters which made it so. And that occurred especially through obsolete institutions like NATO and the so-called Helsinki Commission of the US Congress—the later being the actual instigator of this absurd piece of busy-body legislation.

Yet and yet. Washington has not stopped its efforts to provoke an anti-Russian posture in Tbilisi even when its own government since 2012 has elected to remain friendly with its Russian neighbor and historic suzerain and to eschew any effort to join NATO.

This is all clear enough. The MEGOBARI Act is blistering idiocy. Nothing that has transpired over the last three decades on the map above pertains to the homeland security of America 10,000 kilometers away on the far side of the Atlantic moat.

Yet the fact that an overwhelming majority of the US House this week saw fit to enact this foolishness tells you that Washington has indeed become the War Capital of the World. Instead of getting down to the true business at hand—stanching the nation’s vast flow of budgetary red ink via sweeping entitlement reform and slashing American hideously bloated $1.0 trillion military budget by 50%—the UniParty majority clings to the delusional business of a failing Empire.

Moreover, there is no mystery as to why. After decades of Warfare State and MIC (military-industrial complex) domination of Capitol Hill there are few elected officials left who even experienced the real Cold War before 1991. So they cling to its now wholly vestigial institutions like NATO and globe-spanning alliances when none are needed in today’s multi-polar world.

Indeed, examination of the careers of the four main UniParty sponsors of this utterly absurd piece of legislation tell you all you need to know. They are careerist politicians who have collectively served in Congress for 65 years, and have spent 128 years between them on the public teat.

Naturally, careerist time-servers are ever on the look-out for missions and projects to justify their existence and for occasion to throw their weight around. But attempting to enlist the no-count state of Georgia against the will of its own electorate in Washington’s absurd crusade against Putin and Russia surely sinks to a level of mendacity that is just downright embarrassing.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post Out of Their Minds on Georgia appeared first on LewRockwell.

On March 20, President Trump signed an executive order “Eliminating Information Silos.” The order directed heads of federal agencies to make sure officials designated by the president “have full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, data, software systems, and information technology systems.” The executive order did not attract much attention until it was more recently revealed that the administration was working with tech company Palantir to create a database containing all information collected by all federal agencies on all US citizens.

A database consisting of all the information of American citizens collected by the various federal agencies such as the Social Security Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Pentagon would be a major step in creating a total surveillance state. This database could come in handy to future Dr. Faucis seeking to enforce mask and vaccine mandates. Those with access to this database could see personal health records, education records, and tax returns. They may even be able to see how many firearms individuals have purchased and if they were associated with any organizations the government had labeled “extremist.”

Despite the obvious threat to liberty the “big ugly database” poses, some commentators and “influencers” who would normally oppose, or at least be skeptical of, expansion of the surveillance state are supporting it because they believe it will be used to locate illegal immigrants. Some conservatives are supporting this proposal because it will help identify students who have publicly opposed the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s actions in Gaza. Ironically, many of those supporting government cracking down on “anti-Israel” students came to fame (and in some cases fortune) as critics of “wokeness” and cancel culture.

The abandonment of liberty because fear drives people to trust government promises of safety is a phenomenon we have witnessed several times this century. An obvious example is the way many former friends of freedom supported the PATRIOT Act and other infringements on liberty following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. We also saw it during the covid hysteria when many embraced mask and vaccine mandates. Following the 2008 market meltdown, normally rather staunch opponents of government intervention supported the bailouts because they agreed with then-President George W. Bush who said he had “abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”

Palantir, founded in 2003, has worked on helping government become more efficient at collecting and storing information about US citizens. The company, which was named after the seeing stones from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, is one of the first companies to see the potential in the surveillance-industrial complex that developed following 9-11 and the PATRIOT Act. Palantir is literally the creation of the surveillance state since one of its early investors was In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm controlled by the CIA.

Those discouraged by the surveillance state’s continued expansion under President Trump should be encouraged that more Americans than ever, including many who voted for President Trump, are seeing through the lie that the only way we can be safe is to surrender our liberty to politicians, bureaucrats, and crony capitalism. This should inspire us to redouble our efforts to spread the message of liberty.

The post Great Big Ugly Surveillance State appeared first on LewRockwell.

My mind often overlaps the past present and future onto themselves. Because of this, I will frequently recall events that happened in the past which perfectly mirror what is unfolding before us, and in turn, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve witnessed humanity repeat its same mistakes or can see a slow motion train-wreck ahead on the horizon. During COVID, I realized we were again reenacting the same tragedy humanity had ever experienced since the smallpox vaccine was brought to the market and I had a thought. If people became aware of what had happened before and ended our collective amnesia, perhaps this could at last stop.

As fate would have it, my wish came true, and without knowing me, Steve Kirsch gave me the opportunity to begin introducing that forgotten history to the world. This happened after he chose to publish an article I wrote illustrating how the trucker protests were identical to smallpox protests that had happened more than a century before and then for reasons I still do not understand, encouraged his readers to subscribe to me so I would start writing here.
Note: At the time I chose the username “A Midwestern Doctor” (for the smallpox article), I did not put much thought into it as I was never expecting to use it again.

Over the years, I’ve noticed again and again that a vaccine disaster happens which injuries many in a very similar way, it gets swept under the rug (often by officials who are quite conflicted in their decision to do so), and then the same thing happens again a few decades later.

Given that we give dozens of vaccines to each member of society, this raises an obvious question—what is that doing to society?

A Brief History of Vaccine Disasters

In 1798, the smallpox vaccine hit the market. Once it hit the market, it was observed to frequently cause smallpox outbreaks (rather than prevent them) and to cause a wide range of debilitating and complex injuries that many of the doctors had never seen before (and many of which I believe were examples of “blood stasis”). Curiously, rather than recognizing this was a mistake, most of the medical profession endorsed the smallpox vaccine, and governments around the world mandated it as cases kept on increasing, leading to a downward spiral that was eventually broken by mass public protest against those mandates. Having looked at it extensively, I am of the opinion the smallpox vaccine reshaped the trajectory of humanity’s health and was an inflection point in the era of chronic illness.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, a variety of early vaccines (e.g., rabies, typhoid, diphtheria, tuberculosis) and horse-generated antiserums (for most of the common infections at the time) entered the market. Since many of these vaccines were produced in small independent labs, there were a variety of quality control issues with these products, which frequently led to hot lots being released that severely injured or killing a group of people. Additionally, many of those vaccines had a high degree of toxicity. Because of this, a variety of new and severe medical conditions emerged, many of which were deemed to be due to brain inflammation (encephalitis) or brain damage (encephalopathy) and observed to occur in conjunction with cranial nerve damage. Most of these conditions (which I discussed in detail here) in turn mirrored the myriad of injuries we now too see from modern vaccinations. In addition to the injuries, two major issues stood out during this period:

• First, in addition to sometimes being directly contaminated with the disease causing organism (e.g., yellow fever or tuberculosis) and causing the illness, vaccines would often cause a temporary immune suppression which lead to disease outbreaks in those vaccinated (discussed here). However, each time this happened, rather than it being seen as a sign we needed to dial back vaccination, it was interpreted as not enough people being vaccinated and harsher and harsher vaccine mandates being instituted to enact that policy or new vaccines being created to address the existing damage of vaccination (e.g., the DPT vaccine frequently caused polio outbreaks).

• Second, public health officials and vaccine designers were well aware of the injuries vaccines were causing, but since no other treatments existed for the disease, regrettably deemed this to be a necessary sacrifice for the greater good and hence covered the injuries up so the public would continue to vaccinate. However, while I understand their perspective, it rested on a faulty premise—effective treatments did exist for the illnesses (e.g., in 1920 it was known IV hydrogen peroxide could treat severe infections and in 1928 it was known that ultraviolet blood irradiation could treat many otherwise incurable infections).
Note: as you might have noticed, everything I just described also applies to the COVID-19 vaccines, hence illustrating how these dysfunctional cycles frequently perpetuate indefinitely.

In the 1940s-1950s, the original pertussis vaccine (DPT) entered the market. This vaccine excelled at causing brain inflammation and a variety of concerning differences were seen in the generations born after its mass adoption in America.
Note: The rabies vaccine also excelled at causing encephalitis (around 1 in 750 injections, of which 20% were fatal), but it did not have as large an impact on society because far fewer people received it.

Between the 1950s to 1970s, numerous instances happened where a rushed and poorly produced experimental vaccine (e.g., polio or the swine flu) was brought to market to address a non-existent “emergency,” and the government chose to ignore warnings from its scientists that it was not safe to give to America. Since the press was honest at this time, they reported the disaster, it became a national scandal and the government provided compensation to the victims.
Note: I compiled those media reports here, the last of which happened in 2002 with Bush’s smallpox vaccine.

In 1986, enough public awareness existed of the dangers of the DPT vaccine that lawsuits were regularly being filed for the brain damage and sudden infant deaths it caused (discussed here). This in turn led to the 1986 vaccine injury act being passed (discussed further here), an act that both shielded vaccine manufacturers from product liability and was intended to help parents of vaccine injured children (even though it didn’t due to selective enforcement of its provisions and the Supreme Court exempting manufacturers from injuries caused by defective vaccines). This act being passed led to an industry gold rush to bring experimental and liability free vaccines to the market, and before long the childhood vaccination schedule ballooned in parallel to chronic illnesses increasing as well.

Note: since this time other vaccines (e.g., RSV and annual COVID vaccinations) were also added to the childhood schedule (but fortunately MAHA managed to recently do the impossible and remove COVID from it).

In 1990, an experimental anthrax vaccine was deployed upon the military to prepare them for invading Iraq. While the war was non-eventful (Saddam did not use anthrax and it was likely the most one-sided conflict in history), the anthrax vaccine severely injured over 100,000 servicemen (leading to what was known as Gulf War Syndrome). Despite these issues, individuals within the Department of Defense who were committed to funding their bioweapons defense program mandated it—leading to severe injuries throughout the military and widespread rebellion against this edict.

After this, new biotechnologies began emerging which made it possible to genetically engineer a plethora of new vaccines that then began to flood the market as ACIP endorses virtually every vaccine given to them regardless of its merits (in fact, throughout their dozens of endorsements I could only identify one case where ACIP did not [boosters for teachers and healthcare workers], and in that instance the CDC simply overrode ACIP). In tandem, direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising was legalized by a 1997 FDA decision, making it possible for the pharmaceutical industry to buy the mass media’s silence, and hence end all future coverage of vaccine injury.

In 2010, Merck convinced America’s women they were at a high risk of dying from cervical cancer (which in reality only kills about 1/38,000 American women each year) so that everyone would buy their highly lucrative vaccine (which was never proven to reduce cervical cancer deaths). This vaccine had an extraordinarily high rate of injuries (e.g., severe autoimmune disorders), but nonetheless, despite a deluge of complaints, the CDC and FDA did everything they could to protect it, and to this day it is still mandated for children.

In 2021, the COVID vaccine hit the market and caused an unprecedented amount of injury (e.g., many noticed healthy adults dying “suddenly” and large polls showed 34% of vaccine recipients reported minor side effects while 7% reported major ones severely impacting their quality of life). Fortunately or unfortunately, the rate of injuries from it was so high that unlike the past disasters, the mass media could no longer sweep it under the rug, which eventually culminated in MAHA ascending as a political force and RFK Jr. being put in charge of the agency which has orchestrated the vaccine disaster for decades.

In my eyes, one of the most important points to take from this history is that at the time each of these happened, the medical profession and public were struck by the explosion of these new diseases (and their immense social cost) but before long, became acclimated to them and forgot they had ever emerged in the first place.

The Harms of Vaccination

There is a large body of evidence suggesting vaccines are either solely responsible for, or one of the primary things responsible for the tsunami of chronic illness which has followed their ever-increasing adoption.

Unfortunately, while there is a great deal of evidence suggesting a problem exists, the effects of the vaccine schedule have never been formally studied and instead concerns are simply dismissed by a chorus that echoes “vaccines are safe and effective.”

This has naturally led to calls for the vaccines to be formally tested, but this is always rejected under the argument that vaccines are “so safe and effective” it would be ‘unethical’ to withhold them from trial participants who need to receive a placebo and expose them to the severe harm vaccine preventable diseases could cause (despite the fact very few of the vaccines on the market are for life-threatening diseases which still exist within the United States).

As such, to get around this embargo, a variety of independent studies (which all faced stiff opposition) have been completed that compared unvaccinated populations to vaccinated ones, all of which show profound harm results from vaccination. However, rather than be listened to, these studies are all dismissed because they “have no placebo” (despite placebo trials being impossible to conduct).
Note: this highlights why the vaccine industry was so shaken up by RFK exposing this grift by now requiring proper placebo testing for new vaccines.

In lieu of placebo trials, we are instead told large databases can be relied upon to monitor for vaccine injuries. However, with the exception of VAERS (which is continually discredited by the media, government and medical profession), all of those databases are secret to the point the government has fought for years in court to protect their release (e.g., “to protect patient privacy”) and told us to trust their assessments of them.

Note: through a series of lawsuits, we were able to get access to some of the CDC’s V-Safe data on the COVID vaccines. In addition to this showing massive harm from the COVID vaccines, access to the raw data also showed that the Lancet summary of V-Safe’s data had distorted it to provide an illusion of safety not shown by the data.

Access to the CDC’s vaccine injury database (the VSD) hence has been a longstanding goal of the vaccine safety community and one of the things RFK pledged to do if he ever assumed office. Remarkably however, right before he got access to it “rouge” H.H.S. employees decided to delete it to prevent this from happening.

All of this hence suggests that either:

•No evidence exists of the harms of vaccination and it has simply not been a priority to formally publish that data (which is odd given how much effort blocking all the lawsuits and petitions requesting it takes).

•There is some evidence vaccines are harmful, and there are concerns this data could be misinterpreted to suggest vaccines are much more harmful than they are.

•The existing evidence shows that vaccines are incredibly dangerous to the point it is an existential threat to the vaccine program and hence all measures possible have been taken to prevent it from being disclosed.

As you might guess, I believe the latter is the most probable, particularly since:

1. There have been documented instances of the CDC altering studies to cover up evidence of vaccine harm (e.g., autism).

2. Numerous clinical trials of individual vaccines show that vaccines cause many of the same disorders that have risen in parallel with increased vaccination (e.g., the HPV vaccine caused at least 2.3% of trial participants to develop an autoimmune disorder.
Note: there are numerous cases reports of children becoming permanently disabled after receiving a higher than normal number of vaccines simultaneously (e.g., at a visit where they also get caught up on missing doses), and conversely, many have observed spacing vaccines out rather than giving them all together lowers the likelihood of a severe reactions (e.g., autism) from vaccination.

3. Despite relentless attempts to keep them from emerging, there are numerous retrospective studies of large medical datasets which each show vaccination results in a significantly increased incidence of chronic disease results from vaccination. For example, a recent study of 99 million people showed the COVID vaccines were 2-7 times more likely than a typical vaccine to cause a variety of life-threatening illnesses and we now have large datasets linking to the COVID vaccines to many conditions like myocarditis, cognitive impairment, along with many autoimmune, musculoskeletal and psychiatric disorders.

4. Established mechanisms exist to explain how many different vaccines could all cause similar injuries to their recipients (each of which are discussed here).

5. I periodically learn of medical practices that have low rates of vaccination and also have much lower rates of chronic illness in their patients.

6. Many colleagues and I frequently observe what we believe to be the harms of vaccination in our patients.
Note: I personally know many trained observers who can have a high degree of accuracy in identifying unvaccinated children. The approaches they use are discussed at the end of this article.

Vaccine Injury Datasets

Despite the embargo on conducting or publishing studies demonstrating evidence of vaccine harm, a few still have been done. They are as follows:

Paul Thomas

Paul Thomas MD, an Oregon pediatrician had a practice with a large number of unvaccinated or under-vaccinated children, and (like many of the other practices with similar patient populations) noticed that the unvaccinated children had dramatically better health. He thus decided to compare their medical records to those of variably vaccinated children and published the data in a study (which, as you are not supposed to violate that embargo, cost him his medical license and resulted in the study being retracted for spurious reasons).

Note: Paul Thomas (now retired and offering coaching services to parents) was also the author of The Vaccine Friendly Plan, an approach to vaccinating that encouraged spacing out vaccinations and resulted in a dramatically lower rate of vaccine injuries. Since his plan implied the current vaccination schedule promoted by the CDC was not safe, his plan was not popular with the medical authorities (which again illustrates the harm of the “safe and effective” dogma, as if dangers were to be acknowledged, far fewer people would be injured).

In his study, to compare the health of 2763 vaccinated children and the 561 unvaccinated children born into his practice, he plotted how many total visits each group had for a variety of issues as their age increased (e.g., how many visits for asthma in total had occurred in vaccinated children who were 1000 days old or younger) and then compared the two (with the unvaccinated group’s visits being equalized by multiplying them by 4.9 [2763/561]). This data in turn suggested vaccinations were the primary agent responsible for the epidemic of chronic diseases in our society.

Likewise, when Thomas compared how likely a child was to come in for an office visit for a variety of health concerns, he found the greater the number of total vaccines a child received (which varied widely in his practice), the more likely they were to require an office visit for a variety of conditions.

Note: the full size version of this chart can be viewed here. In this chart, pay special attention to the fact these charts include ADHD (which was not found in any of the unvaccinated patients), behavioral issues, speech issues, social issues, learning delay and developmental autism.

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The hollowness of the status quo’s self-correcting mechanisms is being revealed, and it’s discomforting.

And so it begins. Call it whatever you want–how about the Great Unraveling for starters–and perhaps it’s appropriate to discuss it on Friday the 13th, as old tales and superstitions are part of the mix.

Let’s start with two superstitions that are not yet recognized as superstitions.

1. There are very smart people who will work very hard to keep the status quo glued together. It’s unwise to bet against them.

2. Technology is Progress and Progress is inevitable.

These seem valid until the tide turns. As the sand castles erode and collapse, these are revealed as belief structures, not facts. We like to think smart people, technology and Progress will solve all difficulties without causing us any pain. When the tide is receding, this seems to be the case. See, problems are getting resolved, technologies are making life better, and Progress is advancing everywhere.

But beneath this veneer of confidence, buffers have thinned and long-smoldering conflicts are catching fire. Nuclear ambitions, nuclear threats–these never went away, and now the buffers containing them have eroded.

The buffers of financialization and globalization have thinned to the point that crisis management has been normalized. Rather than rebalance a corrupted economy and ship of state when the second of two credit-assets bubbles burst in 2008, the very smart people who work very hard shoved the throttle to maximum and ran the speedboat right over the reef.

Rather than accept the limits of a system geared to increase inequality and waste regardless of PR policy tweaks, to maintain the illusion of stability they gunned the engines of financialization and globalization into hyper-financialization and hyper-globalization.

The reef shredded the hull, but momentum and the mighty engines of cheap oil and money creation kept the doomed craft afloat for 16 long years. The PR machinery duped the passengers into believing this unstable hyper-state of spiraling inequality and squandering resources in the name of “growth” was not just permanent, it was inevitable.

The PR has now reached the pathetic stage of self-parody. The soil we all depend on for food has been depleted, but no worries, a robot will wander over the lifeless fields zapping weeds, so problem solved! The faith that simplistic technologies will painlessly solve complex human and ecological problems was always child-like, but grandiose egos and greed were more than enough to push this childish faith to self-parodying absurdity.

So 19 American families have the same net worth ($2. 6 trillion) as 110 million Americans–no problem, there’s an app that resolves that.

Conflicts traverse a familiar landscape. Those dissatisfied with the status quo seek change, and those content with the status quo seek to distract, placate or bribe the discontented without relinquishing any of their power and perquisites.

The greater the concentration of wealth and power in a ruling elite, the greater the opportunities for delusion and catastrophic misjudgment. The concentration of power and wealth have reached extremes throughout the world, and so the stage has been set for miscalculations, clashes of ego, delusional confidences and beliefs and desperate gambles by those who can’t afford to lose.

Nobody noticed–or admitted–that the buffers protecting all these forces from breaking out have been thinned by decades of destruction, fraud, corruption, waste, inequality and propaganda that everything was going just fine because it was going just fine for those at the wheel of power and wealth.

The hollowness of the status quo’s self-correcting mechanisms is being revealed, and it’s discomforting. All is not as it seems, and so it begins. Call it whatever you want, but hyper-normalizing it with fine-sounding cover stories won’t repair the shredded hull.

This article was originally published on OfTwoMinds.com.

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