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David Krall wrote:

And How They’re STILL Relevant Today.

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Eugyppius

 

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Ricordo a tutti i lettori che su Amazon potete acquistare il mio nuovo libro, “Il Grande Default”: https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0DJK1J4K9 

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.

____________________________________________________________________________________

di Jeffrey Tucker

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/il-problema-col-globalismo-forzato)

Per anni ho continuato a usare il termine globalismo con approvazione, perché la cooperazione internazionale è una cosa positiva. Viaggiare è meraviglioso, così come lo è la libertà di commerciare e migrare. Come ha fatto la pratica della libertà, che si estende oltre i confini giuridici nazionali, a essere così detestata e denigrata?

Dietro c'è una storia complessa che parla di intrecci tra stati, industria, finanza, strutture governative sovranazionali e del controllo di un gruppo di persone sopra i sistemi.

L'esperienza del Covid ha rivelato tutto. La risposta è stata globale: quasi tutte le nazioni hanno adottato misure di lockdown allo stesso modo, più o meno nello stesso periodo, applicando gli stessi protocolli e adottando le stesse misure (più o meno).

L'Organizzazione mondiale della sanità sembrava dettare legge, con le agenzie sanitarie pubbliche nazionali che si sono disinteressate di ogni questione. Il virus stesso sembrava essere emerso dall'interno di una struttura di ricerca multilaterale sui patogeni e sulle possibili contromisure farmaceutiche.

Inoltre le banche centrali di tutto il mondo hanno collaborato per finanziare la risposta politica, stampando moneta come mai prima per fermare il collasso economico dovuto alle chiusure forzate. Nazioni come Svezia e Nicaragua, che hanno seguito la propria strada, sono state demonizzate dai media di tutto il mondo esattamente allo stesso modo.

I legislatori nazionali non hanno avuto alcun ruolo nei lockdown iniziali; sono stati esclusi dal processo decisionale. Ciò significa che anche i cittadini che li avevano eletti sono stati privati ​​del loro diritto di voto. Nessuno ha votato per la distanza di sicurezza, la chiusura delle attività commerciali e gli obblighi di vaccinazione. Sono stati imposti da editti amministrativi e i sistemi giudiziari non li hanno fermati.

La democrazia come idea, così come lo stato di diritto, sono morti in quei mesi e anni, rimettendosi sempre alle istituzioni globali e ai sistemi finanziari che hanno assunto di fatto il controllo del pianeta. È stata la più sorprendente dimostrazione di potere universale nella storia.

Visti i risultati, non sorprende affatto vedere la reazione negativa, che si è concentrata sulla riaffermazione dei diritti delle nazioni e dei loro cittadini.

Molti difensori della libertà (di destra e di sinistra) sono spesso a disagio con l'ethos di questa reazione e si chiedono se e in quale misura esista un valido precedente storico per rivendicare la sovranità in nome della libertà.

Sono qui per affermare che un tale precedente esiste, un episodio storico quasi completamente dimenticato.

È noto che l'accordo di Bretton Woods del 1944 includeva parti che riguardavano il saldo monetario internazionale (il gold exchange standard) e il sistema bancario (Fondo monetario internazionale e Banca mondiale). Molti conoscono anche l'Accordo generale sulle tariffe doganali e il commercio (1948).

Quello che non è noto è che il GATT era una posizione di ripiego. La bozza originale di Bretton Woods includeva un'Organizzazione internazionale per il commercio (OIC) che avrebbe dovuto essere autorizzata a gestire tutti i flussi commerciali globali. Fu redatto nel 1944 e codificato nella Carta dell'Avana del 1948. All'epoca i principali governi e le grandi aziende si impegnarono a ratificare questo accordo come trattato.

L'Organizzazione internazionale per il commercio avrebbe dovuto governare il mondo, con gli oligarchi che ne avrebbero preso il controllo in nome della globalizzazione.

Fu messo da parte... perché? Non a causa dell'opposizione di protezionisti e mercantilisti. I principali oppositori dell'Organizzazione internazionale per il commercio erano infatti liberisti e libertari. La campagna per smantellare il trattato fu guidata dall'economista franco-americano Philip Cortney e dal suo libro di grande successo intitolato The Economic Munich (1949).

“La Carta dell'Organizzazione internazionale per il commercio è un monumento alle illusioni”, scrisse, “un sogno burocratico che ignora la dura realtà delle economie nazionali. Promette il libero scambio ma impone vincoli, costringendo le nazioni a regole che non possono piegarsi alle tempeste dell'inflazione o della scarsità”.

Lui e altri nella sua orbita potevano individuare in quella Carta non la mano della libertà, bensì la pianificazione centralizzata, il corporativismo, l'inflazionismo, la pianificazione fiscale, la politica industriale e il commercio controllato – in breve, quello che oggi viene chiamato globalismo. Era fermamente contrario, proprio perché credeva che avrebbe fatto arretrare la legittima causa del libero scambio e avrebbe sommerso la sovranità nazionale sotto una palude burocratica.

Le obiezioni che aveva erano molte, ma tra queste c'erano quelle incentrate su questioni di saldo monetario. Le nazioni sarebbero state vincolate a un sistema tariffario senza alcuna flessibilità per adeguare i valori delle valute in base ai flussi commerciali. Credeva che l'Organizzazione internazionale per il commercio comportasse un rischio reale, che le nazioni non avessero la capacità di adattarsi alle variazioni dei tassi di cambio o ad altre specificità di tempo e luogo. Sebbene la Carta sembrasse promuovere il libero scambio, Cortney credeva che alla fine lo avrebbe indebolito.

Riteneva inoltre che se le nazioni avessero aperto le loro economie alla concorrenza internazionale da ogni angolo del mondo, ciò avrebbe dovuto essere fatto in modo coerente con la governance democratica e i plebisciti nazionali. Un governo globale dal pugno di ferro che imponesse un tale regime avrebbe contraddetto l'intera storia delle posizioni contrarie al mercantilismo e probabilmente sarebbe stato sfruttato dalle grandi aziende e dalla finanza per manipolare il sistema a proprio vantaggio.

Ciò che colpisce di questa argomentazione è che proveniva da un punto di vista liberale/libertario che favoriva i metodi tradizionali per ottenere il libero scambio, opponendosi a quelli che oggi verrebbero definiti mezzi globalisti per ottenerlo.

Infatti Ludwig von Mises disse di quel libro: “La sua brillante critica espone spietatamente le fallacie delle dottrine e delle politiche economiche ufficiali contemporanee. Le tesi principali nel suo saggio sono inconfutabili. Sopravviverà a quest'epoca di futilità politica e sarà letto e riletto come un classico della libertà economica, al pari delle opere di Cobden e Bastiat”.

Fu Cortney, insieme ai suoi compatrioti ideologici nel mondo degli affari e della scrittura editoriale, a silurare la Carta dell'Avana e a gettare l'Organizzazione internazionale per il commercio nel dimenticatoio della storia.

Per essere chiari, il rifiuto nei confronti di tale organizzazione non fu il risultato dell'attivismo di reazionari, socialisti, protezionisti o persino nazionalisti economici. Fu respinta da convinti sostenitori del liberalismo economico, del libero scambio e degli interessi commerciali dominati dalle piccole e medie imprese che temevano di essere inghiottite dal pantano globalista.

Queste persone diffidavano della burocrazia in generale e della burocrazia globale in particolare. Quella era una generazione di principi, e all'epoca erano ben consapevoli di come qualcosa potesse sembrare fantastico a parole ma essere orribile nella realtà. Non si fidavano della banda al potere in quei giorni affinché elaborasse un accordo commerciale sostenibile per il mondo.

Il rifiuto dell'Organizzazione internazionale per il commercio è il motivo per cui siamo arrivati ​​all'Accordo Generale sulle Tariffe e il Commercio. Era generale, nel senso che non era una legge consolidata; era un accordo, il che significava che nessuna nazione sarebbe stata costretta a violare i propri interessi; riguardava i dazi, ma non tentava una grande strategia per livellare tutte le valutazioni monetarie; era informale e non formale, decentralizzato e non centralizzato.

Il GATT prevalse fino al 1995, quando l'Organizzazione mondiale del commercio fu imposta sotto un'enorme pressione da parte dei media e delle grandi aziende. Fu una rinascita della vecchia Organizzazione internazionale per il commercio. A quel punto i sostenitori del libero mercato avevano perso la loro sofisticatezza e si erano schierati a favore della nuova agenzia globale. Quasi a confermare la previsione di Cortney, l'Organizzazione mondiale del commercio è ormai diventata obsoleta, capro espiatorio per la stagnazione economica, la deindustrializzazione, gli squilibri monetari e i conti esteri instabili, coperti da riserve estere di asset denominati in dollari.

Ora ci troviamo di fronte a una reazione violenta, sotto forma di politiche mercantiliste grossolane che si stanno abbattendo con furia. L'America è stata la destinazione di enormi quantità di prodotti provenienti dalla Cina, ora bloccate da dazi elevati. Con straordinaria ironia, il New York Times avverte che un dirottamento delle merci dagli Stati Uniti all'Europa potrebbe “portare a uno scenario rischioso per i Paesi europei: il dumping di prodotti artificialmente a basso costo che potrebbe minare le industrie locali”.

Immaginate un po'!

L'equilibrio tra sovranità nazionale e libertà stessa è delicato. Generazioni di intellettuali lo sapevano e si sono guardati bene dal rovesciare l'una per sostenere l'altra. Separare definitivamente le strutture di governo dal controllo dei cittadini, anche solo attraverso un plebiscito periodico, rischia il disastro persino su temi come il commercio, per non parlare della ricerca sulle malattie infettive e sui virus.

Così è arrivata la rivolta, esattamente come aveva previsto Philip Cortney.

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

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

In an earlier column, I wrote about the greatness of Man, Economy, and State. I’d like to continue with a discussion of another great book of his, Power and Market. Actually, that book was intended to be part of MES, but owing to the insistence of one of the readers for the Volker Fund, which funded the publication of MES with Van Nostrand, it had to be removed from the book. Instead, only a truncated chapter was added to the manuscript of MES and the book was published in that form.

Power and Market contains many vital insights that Rothbard had to omit from the truncated chapter of MES. Some of his topics were to hot for Frank S. Meyer, an ex-Communist turned ardent supporter of the Cold War, and other readers who lacked Murray’s intransigence. By the way, the edition of MES published by the Mises Institute included Power and Market, so if you read that, you will have MES as Murray wrote it.

Let’s start with the hottest topic of them all. Most supporters of the free market when Murray wrote MES supported a limited state, but Murray wanted to get rid of the state altogether. This was too much for the Cold Warriors. How can defense be provided on the market? But this is exactly what he favored: “A supply of defense services on the free market would mean maintaining the axiom of the free society, namely, that there be no use of physical force except in defense against those using force to invade person or property. This would imply the complete absence of a State apparatus or government; for the State, unlike all other persons and institutions in society, acquires its revenue, not by exchanges freely contracted, but by a system of unilateral coercion called ‘taxation.’ Defense in the free society (including such defense services to person and property as police protection and judicial findings) would therefore have to be supplied by people or firms who (a) gained their revenue voluntarily rather than by coercion and (b) did not—as the State does—arrogate to themselves a compulsory monopoly of police or judicial protection. Only such libertarian provision of defense service would be consonant with a free market and a free society. Thus, defense firms would have to be as freely competitive and as noncoercive against noninvaders as are all other suppliers of goods and services on the free market. Defense services, like all other services, would be marketable and marketable only.”

One common objection to Murray’s position, which you can still find today, is that there can’t be a free market until property rights are defined, and only the state can define them, Murray brushed this aside. There is a correct theory of property rights, and people  who accept this theory can readily handle disputes through private agencies. “The laissez-faireists offer several objections to the idea of free-market defense. One objection holds that, since a free market of exchanges presupposes a system of property rights, therefore the State is needed to define and allocate the structure of such rights. But we have seen that the principles of a free society do imply a very definite theory of property rights, namely, self-ownership and the ownership of natural resources found and transformed by one’s labor. Therefore, no State or similar agency contrary to the market is needed to define or allocate property rights. This can and will be done by the use of reason and through market processes themselves; any other allocation or definition would be completely arbitrary and contrary to the principles of the free society.”

Probably the most common objection to anarcho-capitalism is that an outlaw agency could arise and turn the free market into rule by the mafia. Rothbard turns the table on this. He shows that it is the idea of a limited state that is a Utopian pipedream, because any constitutional limits on the government had to be interpreted by the Supreme Court, which was not an independent power but itself part of the government. The brilliant John C. Calhoun also made this point. It is precisely a system of private agencies that can best deal with outlaw agencies, just because the agencies are independent from one another. Murray’s analysis is here: “Another common objection to the workability of free-market defense wonders: May not one or more of the defense agencies turn its coercive power to criminal uses? In short, may not a private police agency use its force to aggress against others, or may not a private court collude to make fraudulent decisions and thus aggress against its subscribers and victims? It is very generally assumed that those who postulate a stateless society are also naive enough to believe that, in such a society, all men would be “good,” and no one would wish to aggress against his neighbor. There is no need to assume any such magical or miraculous change in human nature. Of course, some of the private defense agencies will become criminal, just as some people become criminal now. But the point is that in a stateless society there would be no regular, legalized channel for crime and aggression, no government apparatus the control of which provides a secure monopoly for invasion of person and property. When a State exists, there does exist such a built-in channel, namely, the coercive taxation power, and the compulsory monopoly of forcible protection. In the purely free-market society, a would-be criminal police or judiciary would find it very difficult to take power, since there would be no organized State apparatus to seize and use as the instrumentality of command. To create such an instrumentality de novo is very difficult, and, indeed, almost impossible; historically, it took State rulers centuries to establish a functioning State apparatus. Furthermore, the purely free-market, stateless society would contain within itself a system of built-in ‘checks and balances’ that would make it almost impossible for such organized crime to succeed. There has been much talk about ‘checks and balances’ in the American system, but these can scarcely be considered checks at all, since every one of these institutions is an agency of the central government and eventually of the ruling party of that government. The checks and balances in the stateless society consist precisely in the free market, i.e., the existence of freely competitive police and judicial agencies that could quickly be mobilized to put down any outlaw agency.”

This brings us to another insight that Rothbard found in Calhoun, namely that taxation divides people into classes or castes, the taxpayers and the tax-consumers. People who get more benefits from the state than they pay in taxes don’t really pay taxes at all. For example, if you work for the government, you get a salary. Any “taxes” that you pay are actually deductions from this salary: “It has become fashionable to assert that “Conservatives” like John C. Calhoun ‘anticipated’ the Marxian doctrine of class exploitation. But the Marxian doctrine holds, erroneously, that there are ‘classes’ on the free market whose interests clash and conflict. Calhoun’s insight was almost the reverse. Calhoun saw that it was the intervention of the State that in itself created the ‘classes”’ and the conflict. He particularly perceived this in the case of the binary intervention of taxes. For he saw that the proceeds of taxes are used and spent, and that some people in the community must be net payers of tax funds, while the others are net recipients. Calhoun defined the latter as the ‘ruling class’ of the exploiters, and the former as the ‘ruled’ or exploited, and the distinction is quite a cogent one. Calhoun set forth his analysis brilliantly: ‘Few, comparatively, as they are, the agents and employees of the government constitute that portion of the community who are the exclusive recipients of the proceeds of the taxes. Whatever amount is taken from the community in the form of taxes, if not lost, goes to them in the shape of expenditures or disbursements. The two—disbursement and taxation— constitute the fiscal action of the government. They are correlatives. What the one takes from the community under the name of taxes is transferred to the portion of the community who are the recipients under that of disbursements. But as the recipients constitute only a portion of the community, it follows, taking the two parts of the fiscal process together, that its action must be unequal between the payers of the taxes and the recipients of their proceeds. Nor can it be otherwise; unless what is collected from each individual in the shape of taxes shall be returned to him in that of disbursements, which would make the process nugatory and absurd. . . . Such being the case, it must necessarily follow that Such being the case, it must necessarily follow that some one portion of the community must pay in taxes more than it receives back in disbursements, while another receives in disbursements more than it pays in taxes. It is, then, manifest, taking the whole process together, that taxes must be, in effect, bounties to that portion of the community which receives more in disbursements than it pays in taxes, while to the other which pays in taxes more than it receives in disbursements they are taxes in reality—burdens instead of bounties. This consequence is unavoidable. It results from the nature of the process, be the taxes ever so equally laid. . . . The necessary result, then, of the unequal fiscal action of the government is to divide the community into two great classes: one consisting of those who, in reality, pay the taxes and, of course, bear exclusively the burden of supporting the government; and the other, of those who are the recipients of their proceeds through disbursements, and who are, in fact, supported by the government; or, in fewer words, to divide it into tax-payers and tax-consumers. But the effect of this is to place them in antagonistic relations in reference to the fiscal action of the government and the entire course of policy therewith connected. For the greater the taxes and disbursements, the greater the gain of the one and the loss of the other, and vice versa. . . .’ ‘Ruling’ and ‘ruled’ apply also to the forms of government intervention, but Calhoun was quite right in focusing on taxes and fiscal policy as the keystone, for it is taxes that supply the resources and payment for the State in performing its myriad other acts of intervention.”

Let’s do everything we can to encourage people to read Power and Market and to learn how Rothbard pulverizes all defenders of the State!

The post The Greatness of Power and Market appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gaza, Palestine, is the modern Warsaw, Poland.

The so-called modern civilized world is showing itself to be as uncivilized as any corrupt, authoritarian society in world history. And the United States of America and Israel are leading the pack. There are no nations on the planet today that are showing themselves more bloodthirsty, more calloused to the mass murder of innocents and more guilty of international war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity than these two countries.

I think it is more than coincidental that over 80% of Israelis support Benjamin Netanyahu’s genocidal mass murder and ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza and over 80% of evangelicals in America do the same.

Both Judaic Zionism and Christian Zionism are eaten up with the spirit of religious bigotry, racial supremacy, hatred, war and death.

And the people who keep defending and excusing Donald Trump’s refusal to stop the genocide in Gaza—which he could have done his first week in office by cutting off the supply of the instruments of war enabling Israel’s genocide—are showing themselves to be of the same evil, wicked heart as the people in Israel who are defending and excusing Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloodlust.

But Trump is doing much more than enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza; he is leading the effort to remove or silence all dissenting voices in America.

From Al Jazeera:

What is Project Esther, the playbook against pro-Palestine movement in US? 

Advocates say Trump administration appears to be following Project Esther’s recommendations to crackdown on activism.

When the Heritage Foundation, a prominent right-wing think tank in the United States, released a playbook last year for how to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement, it did not garner much attention.

But more than eight months later, the policy document – known as Project Esther – now faces heightened scrutiny from activists and media outlets, in part because President Donald Trump appears to be following its blueprint.

The authors of Project Esther have presented their report as a set of recommendations for combating anti-Semitism, but critics say the document’s ultimate aim is to “poison” groups critical of Israel by painting them as Hamas associates.

Project Esther was created as a response to growing protests against the US support for Israel’s war on Gaza, which United Nations experts and rights groups have described as a genocide.

So, what is Project Esther, and how is it being applied against activists? Here is a look at the document and its ongoing implications for the US.

What is the Heritage Foundation? 

The Heritage Foundation is an influential conservative think tank in Washington, DC, whose stated mission is to “formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense”.

Yet, critics argue that Project Esther calls for government interference to curb individual freedoms, including the rights to free speech and association when it comes to opposing Israeli government policies.

The Heritage Foundation is also behind Project 2025, which critics describe as an authoritarian playbook for the second Trump presidency.

What is the ‘Hamas Support Network’, according to Project Esther? 

The authors claim that groups engaged in advocacy for Palestinian rights are members of the Hamas Support Network (HSN).

In short, the document alleges that the “pro-Palestinian movement” is “effectively a terrorist support network”.

Does the ‘Hamas Support Network’ exist? 

No.

There is no such network in the US, which has stern laws against providing material support to groups designated as “terrorist organisations”, including Hamas.

Beth Miller – the political director at Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group that the Heritage Foundation names as part of the network – called Project Esther’s allegations “outlandish”.

“It exposes the length of lies and of absurdity that they are going through to try to tear down the Palestinian rights movement,” Miller told Al Jazeera.

How does Project Esther plan to take down the Palestinian rights movement? 

The document calls for a multi-faceted campaign against supporters of Palestinian rights, targeting them legally, politically and financially.

The initiative outlines 19 goals that it labels as “desired effects”.

They include denying Palestinian rights supporters who are not US citizens access to universities, ensuring that social media platforms do not allow “anti-Semitic content”, and presenting evidence of “criminal activity” by Palestine advocates to the executive branch.

It also calls for refusing to grant permits for protests organised in support of Palestinian rights.

“We must wage lawfare,” it reads, referring to the tactic of using litigation to pressure opponents.

Is the Trump administration turning Project Esther recommendations into policy? 

It appears to be the case.

“The phase we’re in now is starting to execute some of the lines of effort in terms of legislative, legal and financial penalties for what we consider to be material support for terrorism,” Coates told The New York Times.

Trump’s crackdown on college protests seems to align with what Project Esther is trying to achieve.

For example, the US administration has been revoking the visas of foreign students critical of Israel. This echoes a proposal in Project Esther, which calls for identifying students “in violation of student visa requirements.”

Why focus on universities? 

Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a US policy fellow at Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank, said Project Esther targets universities because Israel is bleeding support among young people in the US.

“That’s why there’s such an overwhelming focus on universities and college campuses,” he told Al Jazeera’s The Take podcast.

Kenney-Shawa explained that support for Israel’s war on Gaza has been trending downwards across US demographics. But on college campuses, the change is more pronounced.

A recent poll from the Pew Research Center showed that 53 percent of US respondents had negative views of Israel, a number that rises to 71 percent among Democrats below the age of 50.

Is Project Esther working? 

Advocates say that, in the immediate future, the crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement threatens the safety and wellbeing of activists, especially foreign students. But it has also sparked a backlash.

“The extreme nature of these attacks has also emboldened people to defiantly continue to speak out in the face of these attacks,” JVP’s Miller said.

“And it has actually, in many cases, awoken people – who weren’t paying attention before – to the hypocrisy that has so long existed in the willingness to silence and censor Palestinian rights activists.”

Earlier in May, several right-wing lawmakers and Trump allies came out in opposition of a bill that aimed to expand restrictions on boycotts of Israel, citing free speech concerns.

Trump’s anti-free speech tyranny is starting in America’s colleges and universities, but it won’t stop there. Tyrants like Trump are never content with partial tyranny; it’s total tyranny they want. And Trump has a large cadre of fellow travelers helping him.

The Mainstream Media 

All of America’s largest media outlets are persistent propagandists for Israel. They have censured access of the American people to the graphic realities and honest news reporting of Israel’s mass murders, rapes, torture and mass starvation of the Gazan people since the genocide began.

To be sure, graphic photos and videos, along with many detailed news reports, are available to the American people online, if they are willing to search for it. And, thankfully, many Americans are watching the daily horrors committed by the satanic Israeli government. That’s why now over 50% of the American people have negative views on Israel.

The Israel Lobby

There are scores of organizations in Washington, D.C., New York and other places in the U.S. shilling for Israel, most notable being The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

I list many of the Israeli lobby groups operating in Washington here.

These organizations spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually lobbying the president, congressmen, senators and governors. Only the willingly blind do not know that the U.S. government—with the exception of a precious few brave, honest souls such as Thomas Massie and Rand Paul—are literally in the pockets of the Israel lobby.

Evangelical Televangelists, Pastors and Churches

Support for Israel among the vast majority of evangelical churches borders on fanaticism. People write to me every week telling me of their experiences within these Zionist “churches.” The word fanaticism is not hyperbolic.

Christian Zionism has become a religious cult.

These very powerful and influential institutions are uber supportive of Trump’s anti-free speech tyranny. What has started on university campuses will spill over into the commercial and religious worlds in earnest during the rest of Trump’s administration.

In fact, it’s already happening.

My friend, USS Liberty survivor and the President of the USS Liberty Veterans Association Phil Tourney, reports that Stew Peters and others were banned from appearing at the hotel where the Liberty survivors are conducting their upcoming 58th reunion, because of their opinions regarding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And without the enthusiastic support for Israel by evangelical pastors, televangelists and churches, the Zionist stranglehold over Washington, D.C., would come crashing down.

Bradlee Dean nailed it when he wrote:

You look at any government that means to control the people and the very first thing that you see them do is to illegally censor free speech.

But the real goal of the Zionist regime is to end the preaching and teaching of the New Testament. I explain this reality in a two-part message series entitled: In Zionist America, You Are Antisemitic If . . . . 

Here is Part One of that message on YouTube.

Gaza, Palestine, is the modern Warsaw, Poland. And Christian Zionists in America are Trump’s enablers as he follows the Project Esther playbook to expunge all vestiges of resistance to this 21st-century holocaust.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post Donald Trump Following Project Esther Playbook appeared first on LewRockwell.

It is likely that nobody who will read this article has any idea that Mantes-la-Jolie is a town nestled into a curve of the Seine river about 50 km northwest of the center of Paris. The town, at the limit of the Paris region called Ile-de-France and the Normandie region, became significant to me recently because I was reading the works of Henry Adams. Henry Adams is one of the more interesting public intellectuals in American history. I wrote about him in a 2015 article about Gore Vidal’s novel Empire.

The key historical characters in the book are John Hay and Henry Adams. With their wives and Clarence King they made up The Five of Hearts; a circle of friends that created a literary and political salon across Lafayette Park from the White House.  Hay came from Illinois to Washington to be President Lincoln’s private secretary. During the period of the book he was the Secretary of State for President William McKinley; and after his assassination, he continued to serve in the same capacity for President Theodore Roosevelt. Adams, a member of the most prestigious American families, was the great-grandson and grandson of presidents. He was also known in his own right as a political thinker and writer; his memoir The Education of Henry Adams is considered one of the greatest American books ever written.

Adams frequently visited France and wrote a wonderful book about Gothic architecture, as described by Wikipedia:

In 1904, Adams privately published a copy of his “Mont Saint Michel and Chartres“, a pastiche of history, travel, and poetry that celebrated the unity of medieval society, especially as represented in the great cathedrals of France. Originally meant as a diversion for his nieces and “nieces-in-wish”, it was publicly released in 1913 at the request of Ralph Adams Cram, an important American architect, and published with support of the American Institute of Architects.

It was in this book that I came to read about Mantes (now called Mantes-la-Jolie – Wikipedia, Mantes-the-Pretty in English).

The last of Norman art is seen at Mantes, where there is a little church of Gassicourt that marks the farthest reach of the style. In arms as in architecture, Mantes barred the path of Norman conquest; William the Conqueror met his death here in 1087. Geographically Mantes is in the Ile de France, less than forty miles from Paris. Architecturally, it is Paris itself; while, forty miles to the southward, is Chartres, an independent or only feudally dependent country. No matter how hurried the architectural tourist may be, the boundary-line of the Ile de France is not to be crossed without stopping. If he came down from the north or east, he would have equally to stop,—either at Beauvais, or at Laon, or Noyon, or Soissons,—because there is an architectural douane to pass, and one’s architectural baggage must be opened. Neither Notre Dame de Paris nor Notre Dame de Chartres is quite intelligible unless one has first seen Notre Dame de Mantes, and studied it in the sacred sources of M. Viollet-le-Duc.[see note at the end of the post] Notre Dame de Mantes is a sister to the Cathedral of Paris, “built at the same time, perhaps by the same architect, and reproducing its general dispositions, its mode of structure, and some of its details”; but the Cathedral of Paris has been greatly altered, so that its original arrangement is quite changed, while the church at Mantes remains practically as it was, when both were new, about the year 1200.

As I have written for LewRockwell.com about the cathedrals Notre Dames de Chartres and Notre Dame de Paris, I felt compelled to visit this great church in Mantes-la-Jolie (officially not the seat of a bishop, and therefore, not a cathedral). Adams wrote “The church at Mantes is a very early fact in Gothic art; indeed, it is one of the earliest; for our purposes it will serve as the very earliest of pure Gothic churches.”

According to Adams, “The church towers at Mantes are very interesting, inside and out; they are evidently studied with love and labour by their designer; yet they have no fleches. How happens it that Notre Dame at Paris also has no fleches, although the towers, according to Viollet-le-Duc, are finished in full preparation for them? This double omission on the part of the French architect seems exceedingly strange, because his rival at Chartres finished his fleche just when the architect of Paris and Mantes was finishing his towers (1175-1200).”

Furthermore, Adams states that “this rose [window] of Mantes is the first Gothic rose of great dimensions, and that from which the others grew; in its simplicity, its honesty, its large liberality of plan, it is also one of the best, if M. Viollet-le-Duc is a true guide”

At the west portal most of the statues were decapitated in 1794 during the revolution.

The battles over Mantes continued for centuries after William was mortally wounded there in 1087, and during the Hundred Years’ War (Battle of Soindres). I imagine these battles were in the mind of General George Patton when he was the first of the allies to cross the Seine with the Third Army in August of 1944. The town was severely damaged many times over its history due to these battles. But there has been another form of destruction that has plagued the town since the war.

Social engineering through large scale public housing projects have been an affliction on the human and environmental condition wherever they have been implemented. I grew up in Chicago so I am familiar with the notorious Cabrini–Green Homes – Wikipedia project.

…Cabrini–Green was located at the boundary of two of Chicago’s wealthiest neighborhoods, Lincoln Park and the Gold Coast, and less than a mile from the Magnificent Mile. Despite its proximity to affluent areas, the complex was marked by high poverty rates. Gang activity was prominent, with individual gangs controlling specific buildings, and residents often felt compelled to affiliate with them for protection.

Unlike in the US where the projects were placed in the inner cities, in France the housing projects were placed outside of the cities in the banlieue (suburbs). Mantes-la-Jolie is at the end of the suburban train lines J and N serving Paris.

Suburban train lines between Mantes-la-Jolie and Paris.

I believe that Mantes-la-Jolie is better known today as being one of the hell holes of France than the site of a beautiful Medieval church. The Le Val Fourré — Wikipédia housing project was conceived in the 1950s and construction was largely completed in the 60s. It only took until the early 90s that it was realized that it was a failure and some buildings were demolished. Since then there have been continuing attempts to save the project, but the crime persists.

The district has been classified as a priority security zone since 2012, with increased numbers of national police officers. Indeed, the commune “suffers more than others from daily insecurity and deep-rooted delinquency”[14] and “has experienced a significant deterioration in its security conditions in recent years”[14], which was identified as such by the Ministry of the Interior of the Jean-Marc Ayrault government, thus allowing this area to benefit from additional police officers. (translated by Google from Wikipedia)

The Val Fourré district of Mantes-la-Jolie.

The Cabrini–Green Homes public housing project in Chicago.

According to a recent article (A Mantes-la-Jolie, le Val Fourré, l’un des quartiers les plus pauvres de France, poursuit sa mue | Les Echos) two more high rise buildings are scheduled to be demolished.

Published on April 18, 2025 at 10:43 AM Updated on April 21, 2025 at 3:29 PM

In a few weeks, Europe’s largest hydraulic crane, standing 70 meters high, will begin chipping away at two high-rise buildings still standing in the Val Fourré district of Mantes-la-Jolie (Yvelines). Built in the 1960s, these two Ader towers, each around twenty stories high, are a symbol of the urban planning then in vogue. Their demolition will mark the beginning of a broader renovation of the area.

It has now been 25 years since the rehabilitation of Val Fourré, which now has a population of 20,000. More than half of the 110-hectare neighborhood, one of the poorest in France, has already been transformed and around fifteen towers demolished… For an estimated cost of over €420 million. (translated by Google)

On my visit I did not see the crane taking down the buildings.

My conclusion, the building project that is the church has been a beautiful blessing for Mantes for over 800 years, while the socialist scheme of the Val Fourée has been a baleful blight for virtually all of its 80 years.

Notes

Adams relies heavily on the 19 century French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc for his descriptions and analysis of Medieval French architecture. Viollet-le-Duc was the architect of many renovations of Medieval buildings including Notre Dame de Paris that added the spire. It was shocking to see this spire collapse during the 2019 fire.

At the end of my 2015 article about Vidal’s Empire I compared Trump to William Randolph Hearst as he was characterized in the novel.

There is the crux of the reason for Trump’s popularity; by approaching the politically incorrect immigration issue head on he gives the impression that because he is rich he cannot be bought.  However, in the end Hearst was denied the Democratic nomination through backroom deals at the party convention. For all his power and wealth, Hearst was usually denied in his several attempts at elective office (with the exception of a stint in the US House of Representatives).  We can be assured that in all the political back rooms in the country there are discussions and plots being hatched to block Trump. We might expect, as Rockwell has supposed, that “the regime might even roll out one of its lone-nut gunmen” to solve the problem.

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CCTV camera in downtown OKC. Image courtesy of CNN.

Diagram showing the area of the Murrah Federal Building’s North Face that was covered by the Regency Towers exterior security cameras

“All they showed us were a series of video still photographs showing the Ryder truck, but no one in or around the vehicle.”

“We were never allowed to see the photo evidence from the cameras on the Murrah Building that would have shown the truck being parked and the people who got out of the truck”

“That’s all on tape, and we were authorized to see all of that, but we weren’t allowed to see it…and in fact, nobody has been allowed to see it.” — Federal Grand Juror Hoppy Heidelberg

Today, closed circuit surveillance cameras are ubiquitous. You’ll find them everywhere: gas stations, at stoplights, on government property, on private property. At the time of the April 19th, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the situation was roughly the same. In downtown Oklahoma City, you could find surveillance cameras mounted at over a dozen properties: on the Regency Towers apartment building, the Journal Records Building, the Southwestern Bell building, the post office, and elsewhere. The properties surrounding the Alfred P. Murrah federal building were saturated with surveillance cameras, some of which, FBI records reveal, actually captured the April 19th, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing on film.

The first reports concerning surveillance camera footage were aired on CNN within days of the bombing. One early CNN report broadcast that “the FBI says that it has surveillance camera video of the bomb site” which was then followed by a clip of FBI on-scene-commander Weldon Kennedy urging all businesses in the area to come forward to provide their security camera recordings, which they did do. Summarily, later that same week, CNN further reported that “the FBI says that it has obtained videotapes from security cameras in the vicinity of the blast and may have tape of the Ryder rental truck used to house the enormous bomb.”

Note that in CNN’s second broadcast about the tapes, CNN reported that the FBI had “videotapes,” plural, and “security cameras,” plural, implying that more than one recording had been obtained. This is confirmed by FBI investigatory records, court transcripts, and even testimony under oath by an FBI agent assigned to the case. Indeed, just eight days after the bombing, a preliminary hearing held in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma shed considerable light on the FBI’s evidence in the case, to include both witnesses and surveillance recordings.

By the time of the April 27th, 1995 preliminary hearing, the primary suspect — Timothy McVeigh — was in custody. The purpose for the preliminary hearing was to show probable cause and a reasonable basis for proceeding in case no. CR-95–98, the United States of America vs. Timothy James McVeigh. Leading the charge in the government’s case at the preliminary hearing was principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Merrick Garland, a top aid to Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. Garland’s chief witness at the hearing was FBI Special Agent Jon Hersley, who would go on to give testimony that would serve to confirm that the FBI had in its possession multiple surveillance camera recordings.

Special Agent Hersley would recount during the hearing that he had seen both video and photographs (still-image video frames) taken from surveillance recordings seized by the FBI. Hersley testified that one of the photos he had seen depicted a Ryder truck moving east on 5th street. This photo was sourced from a surveillance camera identified as having come from the Regency Towers apartment complex. The Regency Towers was located less than a block from the Murrah Building and had an unobstructed view of the north face of the building.

Hersley’s testimony is worth citing here because it is so specific concerning footage that the FBI had seized during their investigation:

Q. So you say there is film available that shows the — a Ryder Truck in an easterly direction, that is traveling in an easterly direction on Fifth Street?

A. Yes.

Q. Is it past the street that we know as Harvey?

A. I am not — I have not studied that film in detail. It’s in that general vicinity right in there. It may be the video that I saw. I believe it is just before — well, I am not sure. I better not say that.

Q. Well, Harvey Street —

A. I don’t know.

Q. Harvey Street is the street that is immediately west of the Murrah Building?

A. That is correct.

Q. Are the photographs that you saw or, is it still photo or film?

A. What I saw was the still photos.

Q. Is it a still photo that has been removed from a film?

A. Yes.

Q. So it was a close-up more of the truck than it’s location?

A. It wasn’t a close-up photo, it was taken from a camera off one of the buildings in the vicinity.

Q. Did you make a determination of what building it came off of?

A. No, I did not myself.

Q. Okay, did anyone?

A. I believe one of the other agents was able to determine that it came from one — one of the films came from the Regency Tower Apartments.

Q. Was there a time indicated on the picture of the film that you saw?

A. Yeah.

Agent Hersley’s testimony clarifies that the FBI had in its possession multiple surveillance camera recordings from the area. When Hersley testified that “one of the films came from the Regency Tower Apartments,” his use of the word “films,” plural, indicates there was more than recording.

In addition to having seen photos taken from a surveillance video depicting a Ryder truck on 5th street, Hersley testified that he had seen photos depicting another location —a parking lot next to the Journal Records Building.

Hersley testified at length about a key witness (Gary Lewis) who had seen Timothy McVeigh — and another suspect — speeding away from an alley adjacent to the Journal Records Building and that this vicinity was covered by the seized surveillance footage.

Hersley’s testimony concerning the Journal Records building and associated surveillance footage recordings were covered during the preliminary hearing—to varying degrees of specificity—and these key portions are excerpted below:

Q. Where did this witness see the yellow Mercury speeding away?

A. Over in the direction — in the parking lot, in an area where the witness I had previously testified about said that the individual he identified as Mr. McVeigh was walking in a northerly direction towards.

Q. Where is that parking lot, sir?

A. Over on the north side of Fifth Street, close to the Journal Record Building.

Q. This particular male witness has indicated that he saw the — a yellow Mercury speeding away?

A. Yes.

Q. Did this particular witness indicate to agents of the FBI how many persons were in the speeding yellow Mercury?

A. Two.

Q. I assume speeding away on Fifth Street; is that correct?

A. Well, I think it is actually the alley area that would be immediately north of Fifth Street.

Q. Immediately north of Fifth Street is a parking lot there. Are you talking about the —

A. The north side of that parking lot.

Q. So the alley between the Journal Record Building and the parking lot? I’m sorry to interrupt you, I didn’t mean to.

Are you talking about that area, that alley?

A. I’m talking about the area on the north side of the parking lot that we have been speaking about.

Q. That’s where you are telling the Court that the yellow Mercury was speeding through that particular alley?

A. Yes.

Q. In your review of the surveillance photos, did you find any surveillance photos of that parking lot across the street from the Murrah Building?

A. Yes.

Q. Have you been shown a photograph of that particular parking lot, sir, across the street from the Murrah Building that includes the speeding Mercury in the photograph?

A. We don’t know for sure yet. Those photographs are not real clear. They are taken from a pretty good distance away. There appears to be a light-colored car in the very vicinity where this witness testifies — or provides the information was speeding away from. We are not able to determine yet if that is in fact the yellow Mercury.

Q. The pictures that you saw of that particular parking lot — now I’m talking about the parking lot across the street from the Murrah Building — in a northerly direction, that parking lot, there is a film of that parking lot prior to the time of the explosion?

A. Yes.

Q. Correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Is it time-stamped so that you can tell a particular time of day on the 19th of April that that camera is viewing, scanning that parking lot?

A. Yes.

In addition to confirming that the FBI had in its possession surveillance camera footage, the April 27th preliminary hearing also makes it very clear that the FBI had multiple eyewitnesses to Timothy McVeigh — with an accomplice — in downtown Oklahoma City that morning. Agent Hersley’s testimony reflects this, and he testifies no less than three times during the preliminary hearing words to the effect that “our primary focus right now is to try to determine the identity and the location of the other subjects.”

Agent Hersley testifies at length concerning the eyewitness accounts of Gary Lewis, Rodney Johnson, Dena Hunt, and Mike Moroz. All four of these witnesses saw McVeigh with another person in downtown Oklahoma City. One of them, mechanic Mike Moroz, picked McVeigh out of an FBI lineup in downtown Oklahoma City within days of the bombing. Moroz saw and spoke to McVeigh up-close, giving him directions from Johnny’s Tire about 20 minutes before the bombing. According to Moroz, there was a passenger in the Ryder truck with McVeigh when he spoke to him that morning. That passenger has come to be known as John Doe #2.

The other suspect— John Doe #2 — has never been captured and the FBI today denies that he exists. The man’s identity remains a controversial subject, the basis of much speculation.

What can be said with certainty is that many witnesses observed Timothy McVeigh with another person in downtown Oklahoma City and the surveillance footage of the bombing, described in the April 27th preliminary hearing, may depict that other suspect. Fueling speculation about this other suspect is the fact that Associate Deputy Attorney General Merrick Garland issued objections during the preliminary hearing whenever direct questions were asked concerning the surveillance camera footage or John Doe #2:

MR. COYLE: Who are those agents that are tasked with the responsibility of reviewing photographs and film footage?

MR. GARLAND: Objection, Your Honor. This is now purely speculative.

THE COURT: Overruled.

MR. HERSLEY: The agent that showed me the photographs was Walt Lamar.

MR COYLE: And is he the one that you inquired as to whether or not there were any photographs of the accused, Mr. Timothy McVeigh, in possession of the government, at or about the Ryder Truck? You asked him that question I assume; did you not?

MR. HERSLEY. I did not inquire of Agent Lamar about these photographs. He brought it to my attention because there is a possibility of a particular car being involved in one of those photographs that he was showing me. We are continuing investigation to try to determine the actual identity of that car.

MR HERSLEY: I know there was at least one male that observed the Ryder Truck and the occupants of the Ryder Truck. That person also advised that the individual in the truck closely resembled the individual depicted in composite one.

MR COYLE: Did you tell me he saw occupants of a Ryder Truck and there were more than one?

MR. GARLAND: Objection. The only person on trial at this hearing is Mr. McVeigh. It doesn’t matter whether there were two or a hundred people in that truck as long as there was somebody representing Mr. McVeigh there. It is discovery and totally outside the scope of this hearing.

MR. COYLE: May I respond? I think it is important to see if we distinguish it as the same truck or not. I think it is very important to the credibility of the witnesses and credibility of the evidence and what they saw as to whether or not the next person saw three or five or six or —

THE COURT: Objection overruled. Go ahead.

MR. HERSLEY: This witness advised that there were two individuals in the truck. The individual resembling Mr. McVeigh was the driver.

None of the surveillance videos mentioned in the CNN broadcasts or the April 27th preliminary hearing were shown at the McVeigh and Nichols federal trials in 1997 and 1998. It was as if they simply did not exist. This made little sense — if the FBI had videotape showing McVeigh in Oklahoma City that would constitute “best evidence” that could put McVeigh at the scene of the crime. The eyewitnesses who saw McVeigh in downtown Oklahoma City would also be damning evidence. Yet, none of those eyewitnesses were called to testify at trial. This could be because every one of these witnesses saw McVeigh with another person and that other person is still unaccounted for today.

It was four years after the bombing, after Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had both been convicted, that the full scope of the FBI’s surveillance footage of the bombing emerged. In 1999, during a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, it was revealed that the FBI had in fact taken into possession nearly two dozen recordings from surveillance cameras in the downtown Oklahoma City area.

FOIA Lawsuits Reveal Secret Footage

A 1999 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by investigative journalist David Hoffman produced documents that revealed the FBI had twenty two video surveillance recordings of the Murrah building and surrounding area stored at the FBI’s Oklahoma City field office. Curiously, a single surveillance tape was listed as housed under lock and key in Washington, D.C. at FBI headquarters.

The central issue of Hoffman’s lawsuit was that the FBI had conceded to the existence of the surveillance camera footage but refused to release it pursuant to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

During Hoffman’s FOIA suit, FBI lawyers filed multiple motions for summary judgment — essentially asking the judge to throw the case out in their favor. Each subsequent motion filed by the Department of Justice cited entirely different reasons for withholding the material, seemingly coming up with new excuses each time. These motions were summarily dismissed with increasing criticism from the judge presiding over the case, U.S. District Court Judge Wayne Alley.

Alley wrote that the FBI had put forward insufficient “justifications for withholding all materials in its investigative files concerning the Oklahoma City Bombing” and further stated that the FBI had exhibited “shoddy conduct” during the litigation.

Judge Alley wrote that “the court would be inclined” to compel the FBI the release the surveillance footage, however, ultimately, the Judge ruled that he was unable to do so. A previous order issued by Judge Richard P. Matsch, presiding judge in the McVeigh and Nichols Federal trials, deemed that the surveillance camera footage from the bombing investigation was under seal while the McVeigh and Nichols trial convictions were subject to appeal(s). As a result, Judge Alley ruled that “the Court is presently powerless to grant plaintiff relief under FOIA” in view of Judge Matsch’s ruling.

Judge Alley would add, however, that Hoffman “raises a legitimate point” that the federal criminal case against bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols was nearing end and thus Matsch’s order to seal the evidence would presumably expire as those cases and subsequent appeals ended. Judge Alley spells out this position by writing that the FBI’s “justification for its shroud of secrecy may likewise soon end.”

Hoffman’s suit wouldn’t be the last time the FBI would face legal challenges concerning the secret footage. The video recordings seized by the FBI during the OKC bombing investigation have once again become central to a legal battle. A FOIA lawsuit concerning the tapes is currently being litigated by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue. The FBI sent Trentadue a batch of 30 recordings following a Freedom of Information Act request that Trentadue filed. However, Trentadue noted that the footage the FBI produced was of little value — it shows absolutely nothing of interest. The recordings released by the FBI don’t show anything whatsoever prior to the 9:02 AM blast. Jesse Trentadue says the tapes are clearly incomplete. “Four cameras in four different locations going blank at basically the same time on the morning of April 19, 1995? There ain’t no such thing as a coincidence” Trentadue told the Associated Press after receipt of the incomplete footage.

The FBI claims that the security cameras failed to record the moments leading up to the blast because “they had run out of tape” or, improbably, because “the tape was being replaced” during the minutes and hours prior to the April 19th, 1995 bombing.

Trentadue noted that “the interesting thing is [the tapes] spring back on after 9:02 AM” and that “the absence of footage from these crucial time intervals is evidence that there is something there that the FBI doesn’t want anybody to see.”

The surveillance tapes released to Trentadue appear to be incomplete and this can be reasonably demonstrated based on what has previously been written about the surveillance recordings in FBI and Secret Service documents from the bombing investigation. These supporting documents were introduced as exhibits in Trentadue’s FOIA lawsuit currently being litigated in Salt Lake City. Additional insight as to what appears on the tapes can be gleaned from statements by FBI agents and law enforcement personnel who have seen the footage.

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I have been having the most interesting conversations with ChatGPT. While I have previously dismissed AI as never having true intelligence, after using ChatGPT 4.1 for a while, I have found that I was partly wrong. While AI still can’t tell truth from error very well, it nevertheless possesses a remarkable degree of intelligence in recognizing patterns and performing analysis. While still extremely constrained regarding certain topics to support much of the wicked policies of today’s Western society, it can still be remarkably unbiased – much more so than most people.

With this introduction and disclaimer regarding the use of ChatGPT, I would like to present an interesting and informative conversation regarding Trump’s endorsement and promotion of using Palantir and its technology for surveillance. I personally have grown weary of the fear-mongering and demagoguery that is so prevalent today, so this conversation was quite refreshing to me. I consider it to be a rather cool-headed and unbiased analysis of the threat posed by the combined forces of this company and the federal government.

I present it to you unedited. Judge for yourself the level of future risk and plan accordingly. I will add some of my own comments as well at the end.

Me:

Palatir: personal security threat? How significant is the risk of Trump’s promotion of Palatir resulting in a draconian police state much like exists today in Britain?

ChatGPT:

Let’s address the issue directly and insightfully:

1. What is Palantir?

Palantir Technologies is a U.S.-based data analytics company specializing in aggregating, analyzing, and visualizing large data sets—often for government agencies, law enforcement, intelligence, and the military. Its software (notably Palantir Gotham and Foundry) is used for surveillance, predictive policing, border security, and social network analysis.

2. Trump’s Promotion of Palantir

Trump has openly praised Palantir and considered it for national border and security roles, and his allies have touted Palantir as key to “restoring law and order.” Under both Trump and Biden, Palantir has won government contracts, but Trump’s rhetoric suggests an intent to more aggressively use technology for internal security and immigration enforcement.

3. The “British Model”

Britain is one of the most surveilled societies globally:

• Widespread CCTV coverage.
• Centralized police databases.
• Predictive policing tools.
• Aggressive monitoring of social media and internet usage, including police knock-on-door visits for “hate speech” or “wrongthink.”

In the UK, a combination of government contracts with tech firms, a lack of constitutional protections for free speech or privacy (compared to the US), and centralized policing makes the system efficient—and oppressive.

4. Is the US at Risk of the Same?

Key Points:

• Palantir does not create laws; it enables enforcement. The threat depends on the legal and political climate, not just the technology.
• US legal protections (Fourth Amendment, free speech) are more robust than Britain’s. But these have been eroding, especially since 9/11.
• Existing trends:
  • Expansion of surveillance (FISA, Patriot Act, “fusion centers”).
  • Increasing partnerships between tech firms and government.
  • Domestic extremism task forces that can blur the lines between legitimate dissent and “threats.”
• Trump’s history and rhetoric: Strong emphasis on law and order, sometimes at the expense of civil liberties. His administration has already ramped up ICE surveillance with Palantir.

5. What Would Be Different Under Trump + Palantir?

• Acceleration of current trends: Likely increase in data aggregation, cross-agency information sharing, and predictive policing.
• Targeting of political enemies: Based on past behavior, it is plausible Trump would use enhanced surveillance tools to monitor political opponents, protestors, or “unpatriotic” elements—if the legal framework permits.
• Chilling effect: Knowledge of pervasive surveillance, especially if coupled with publicized arrests or punishments for dissent, can deter opposition—similar to Britain’s “police knock” culture.

6. Obstacles to a Full British-Style Police State in the US

• Decentralized policing: US law enforcement is fragmented; not all states and municipalities will comply with federal initiatives.
• Armed citizenry: Widespread gun ownership and a political culture wary of government overreach.
• Constitutional litigation: Courts can (and sometimes do) strike down overreaches, though the judiciary’s reliability is not absolute.

7. Bottom Line: How Significant is the Threat?

• Moderate to High, given current trends and Trump’s rhetoric. The main constraint is the U.S. legal structure and political opposition—both of which have been weakening.
• If Palantir is given a central role in domestic security under an administration willing to push legal boundaries, the risk of a “soft” police state (constant monitoring, data-driven policing, and suppression of dissent) is real.
• Britain’s system is a warning: Technology, once embedded, is hard to dislodge, and the culture of “if you have nothing to hide…” can quickly become dominant.

Summary Judgment:
The promotion and centralization of Palantir in U.S. domestic security, especially under a Trump administration with a “law and order” mandate, materially increases the risk of a British-style surveillance state. The technical capability already exists—the only real constraint is the will and ability of Americans to resist its application.

If you want, I can break down specific scenarios or examine Palantir contracts, or discuss what practical resistance or mitigation might look like.

Me:

I suspect, but am not very firm in that suspicion, that current monitoring of US citizen activities is limited and broad database queries are not currently possible. What I mean is that despite ATFs database of gun ownership, credit card companies records of weapon related purchases, social media posts, minor in-state infractions, e.g. parking tickets, income and expense records submitted to the IRS – all these records exist in separate databases, and no entity can cross-search them. Those are just a few examples that come to mind.

That said, will this Palantir initiative bring all these database records into a common search engine, which then combined with AI will then allow target oppression for groups of people fitting a certain profile? And am I correct that such records are currently completely fragmented? One example of a combined database that comes to mind is IRS tax enforcement. Rather than simply look at submitted returns for red flags, this agency could compare them to credit card purchases as well.

ChatGPT:

Your suspicion about current database fragmentation is largely correct, but the direction of travel is unmistakably toward integration—and Palantir’s core business is accelerating that process.

Let’s break down the present reality and the risks posed by Palantir’s approach.

1. Current Reality: Fragmented but Increasingly Linked

a. Fragmentation

• Separate Agencies, Separate Databases:
  • ATF: Firearm sales/ownership, NICS background checks.
  • Credit Card Companies: Retail transaction records (flagged but not always shared).
  • Social Media: Monitored by DHS/FBI for “threats,” but not automatically cross-referenced with, say, IRS data.
  • Local Police: Traffic violations, warrants, arrest records—often not shared beyond the state or jurisdiction.
  • IRS: Income and tax filings, not linked directly to other government databases.
• Technical and Legal Barriers:
  • Privacy laws, incompatible formats, bureaucratic silos.
  • Agencies are not permitted (or currently able, in most cases) to just “query everything” in real time about a given citizen.

b. Existing Integration Attempts

• Fusion Centers:
  • Established post-9/11 to share terrorism-related data among federal, state, and local agencies.
  • Effectiveness is debated; much data is still siloed or poorly correlated.
• DHS, FBI, ICE:
  • Use tools like Palantir in limited ways, mainly for immigration and terrorism cases (e.g., cross-referencing visa applications with criminal records).
• Private Partnerships:
  • Some agencies purchase bulk data from brokers (e.g., location data from phone apps), but systematic, legal, and technical hurdles remain for true integration.

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A couple of months ago the following correspondence took place. I knew of course what sort of publication The New Yorker is, and based on the very first question I was certain that my name would be mentioned, no matter what. Hence, to forestall any possible misrepresentation, I decided to reply. But I refused to simply talk and insisted on doing things in writing so that I could later prove what was and wasn’t said.

Dear Professor Hoppe,

I’m a writer at The New Yorker who is working on a story about the political blogger Curtis Yarvin. Mr. Yarvin has described you to me as one of his biggest influences. I just finished reading Democracy: The God That Failed, and it is evident just how influential it has been on his work. I’d be grateful to speak with you for the story about your philosophy and its influence on the neoreactionary movement here in the United States. Are there some windows you might be free to speak this week?

With thanks,

Ava Kofman

Dear Mrs. Kofman,

I am aware that I had an influence on Yarvin and we also once briefly met several years ago. I have not followed his development closely since then. For my taste his writing has always been a bit too flowery and rambling.

As regards your request, I live in Europe, am a low-tech person and are currently ill in bed with some sort of flu. However I might be able to answer a couple of questions per email correspondence.

Sincerely

HHH

Dear Mr. Hoppe,

Thank you so much for you message. I hope you have recovered from your flu, and I’m sending here some questions for e-mail. Feel free to add or modify them as you see fit, of course!

1. I watched your recent lecturefrom March. Do you see any of your ideas about transforming the size and nature of the state playing out in contemporary initiatives like DOGE in the United States?
2. When did you first hear about Curtis Yarvin’s blog or read it? Where did you meet, and what was the meeting like?
3. Yarvin has called not just for an empowered sovereign, preferably a monarch, but a CEO-monarch. I was curious what you make of his use of Silicon Valley/start-up culture as a model for governance for a new reactionary libertarian regime: are there parts of that corporate model feel persuasive or unpersuasive to you?
4. I am curious if there’s anything else you’d like to add or reflect on vis-a-vis the rising influence of neo-reactionary thinkers like Yarvin here in the United States, and if there are factors to which you’d attribute their influence.

With many thanks, and all my best,

Ava

Dear Mrs Kofman,

I do not watch my own videos and don’t remember in detail what I said or didn’t say.

In any case, let me try to summarily answer your questions.

I do not see much progress in the direction that I would like to see. The greatest danger to freedom and prosperity in my view is the steadily increasing political centralization.  The possibility of decentralization, exit and secession are essential for the preservation of human liberty. Doge may eliminate a few silly, politically correct or woke excesses of an increasingly over-blown welfare state, but it does not even touch the core problem: total government expenditures and debt – the entire military-industrial complex – still continue to grow and rise without any interruption.

My ideal is a world made up of thousands upon thousands of Liechtensteins: small territories run by a monarch or member of the natural elite, with a long-run and established proprietary interest in his country (low time-preference), self-financed (not living himself of taxes), equipped with veto-power, difficult but not impossible to be removed from his position, and allowing subunits of his country to secede if they so desire. (google Liechtenstein constitution).

This is obviously something quite different from the idea of the Silicon valley crowd taking over the present government and running it like a business (which is something that some Trumpists seem to have in mind). But states, like the US, are stationary bandits, organizations founded and based on aggressive violence (taxes, expropriations and war). We would not want such types of organizations run efficiently, just as we would not want a concentration camp run efficiently. Rather, we would want them to disappear.

As I indicated before, I do not follow Yarvin’s writings closely – too much rambling for my taste. But whatever little I can gather, he does not make it sufficiently clear whether it is the Liechtenstein model or the Silicon valley crowd model that he advocates.

I was made aware of Yarvin and his mentioning me on his Unqualified Reservations blog by a friend, may be some 10 years ago or so, and I met him once at about that time. Peter Thiel had invited me to speak about the failure of democracy, the different incentive structures of owners versus renters or caretakers, time preference etc., (Thiel had obviously read my democracy book) and Yarvin was one of the participants of that small, exclusive gathering.

As for the “reactionary” part of your question: with that I essentially mean nothing more than a return to normality or normalcy: men are men, women are women, a normal family is father, mother and children, people and groups of people are different and have different abilities, you are responsible for your own life and actions, don’t blame others for your own failures and mistakes, be kind and polite, reward success and don’t or punish failure – yes, there are exceptions, but they are exceptions and not the rule. The absurdities, perversions and deviations from this normal state of affairs that we see all around us today are the result of the present, over-blown welfare state that allows all too many weirdos and crazies to lead a parasitic life at the expense of a steadily decreasing number of productive people. There would be no political correctness or woke-ism of the kind we see today in any small community. Its proponents would be shunned and ostracized, and relegated to some sort of hippie colonies. – Here, in this regard I see some progress. More and more people are fed up with the all-too-obvious nonsense propagated and promoted by the “progressive left.” Trump and the Silicon valley types – and Yarvin as one of their influencers – have certainly helped in this development, which is not nothing or to be belittled, but it is not much. And in any case, modesty, which is part of a decent person, a gentleman, is definitely not the world’s greatest “deal-maker’s” strength.

Hope this helps and with best wishes

HHH

Dear Mr. Hoppe,

Thank you for this thoughtful response. I agree that Yarvin’s work seems to toggle between the “patchwork” statelet vision you outline (of many Lichtensteins) and the Government as a Business. I fail to see how the all-powerful Sovereign Corporation he outlines would not simply raid other smaller “SovCorps.” I think I may have heard about the meeting or something along those lines. Was it after Trump’s election and at Thiel’s house in Los Angeles? Or at another time?

All my best, and thanks,

Ava

The meeting took place about a year before Trump’s first term at Thiel’s residence in San Francisco.

HHH

And here, then, is The New Yorker.

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The United States government says it has about 261 million troy ounces of gold in its gold reserves. That is rather impressive, if true.

The US government is not a great role model for honesty, though. So, it seems a good idea to put its gold claim to the test.

President Donald Trump talked on occasion in the first couple months of his second term about traveling to Fort Knox where much of the gold is supposed to be held to check if it is really there. But, more recently, he has largely gone silent about the matter.

Maybe an act of Congress is what is needed to double-check that all the gold is where the government says it is. That is just what Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced on Friday — the Gold Reserve Transparency Act (HR 3795).

Massie’s bill requires the Comptroller General to “contract with a qualified, independent, third-party, external auditor to conduct and complete … a full assay, inventory, and audit of all gold reserves” within nine months of the bill becoming law and every five years thereafter. The auditor would also report on other gold reserves related matters including the sufficiency of measures for the physical security of the gold reserves; all encumbrances on the gold at present or entered into over the last 50 years; all sales, purchases, disbursements, or receipts of gold over those 50 years along with identification of the terms and parties for those transactions; and a full accounting of all third parties held gold in which the US government – including the Federal Reserve — has a direct or indirect interest.

The Comptroller General is further required by the legislation to report every five years all results, findings, and determinations of the bill’s required investigations to Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury, as well as on the internet for the public. All relied on source material would need to be included with the reports. Redactions, the bill specifies, may be made only in regard to physical security for the gold reserves.

Massie is an advisory board member for the Ron Paul Institute.

Original cosponsors of the Gold Reserve Transparency Act are Reps. Warren Davidson (R-OH), Addison McDowell (R-NC), and Troy Nehls (R-TX).

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

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At some point a clarifying event occurs which confirms that you are at the end of the road. In this particular case we are talking again about the bothersome subject of fiscal sanity—and the exclamation point the Donald supplied recently when his was trolling the House GOP caucus in behalf of his Big Beautiful Bill.

In order to ensure the extension of his precious (but unpaid for) 2017 tax cut and provide budgetary sanction for a 13% increase in defense spending and 60% rise in outlays for border control, the Donald doesn’t want any “grandstanders” upsetting the works:

“Don’t f‑‑‑ around with Medicaid,” Trump told lawmakers in the private meeting. Trump had told reporters before the meeting that the bill is not cutting “anything meaningful (from Medicaid),” and instead was focused on “waste, fraud and abuse.”

Well, let’s see. Along with his defense and border control increases, Trump has ruled out cuts in Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits and presumably interest on the public debt. So those sacred cows alone account for fully $62 trillion or 66% of total Federal spending over the next 10-years, and today he was commanding the corporal’s guard of fiscal hawks left in the GOP caucus to stay away from another $8.2 trillion in Medicaid spending over the decade, too.

So that’s a no-fly zone amounting to more than $70 trillion or 77% of Federal spending during the 10-year budget window ahead. In turn, that means there’s only $24 trillion left to cut, representing the entirety of the rest of the Federal government from the Washington Monument to the Klondike National Park in Alaska.

Then again, what’s left outside of this $70 trillion ring-fence also happens to be less than the size of the out-of-control deficit that would result from the Donald’s Great Big Beautiful Bill over the next 10-years. The idea of painting yourself into a corner, therefore, hardly does justice to the sheer fiscal lunacy of where the Trumpified GOP has implanted itself.

And, no, you are not going to save more than nickels and dimes by attacking “fraud, waste and abuse”, which the Donald apparently claims to be his alternative. Indeed, we know from first hand experience that “waste, fraud and abuse”reduction is the go to hiding place for chicken shit politicians who don’t want to face the fact that there are only two levers to save real money when it comes to the major entitlements. To wit, you must change the statutory language to either reduce the number of people eligible or cut the level of benefits per person. And since these kinds of measures save real money, they also generate angry constituencies. The truth being, of course, that there is no politically antiseptic way to cut the budget.

In the case of Medicaid, there were about 80 million recipients in 2024 and average spending per capita was $11,400 overall, of which the Federal share was $7,300 per person. So if you just eliminated the ObamaCare expansion of Medicaid, which most Republicans have advocated ever since its 2010 enactment, the recipient rolls would total 40 million, not 80 million; and, all other things equal, you could save $325 billion per year or about $4 trillion over the budget window.

That’s real money, of course. It could pay for the $2 trillion cost of extending the most important part of the TCJA—the marginal rate reductions—and still provide another $2 trillion for reduction of the $22 trillion baseline deficit over 2026-2035.

Or, in the alternative, you could cut the rolls to the 70 million level that Trump inherited in 2017 before he also massively expanded Medicaid in 2020, and reduce real benefits/per recipient to about the $9,000 level (2024 $) that prevailed in the year 2000. Back then, even Bill Clinton thought Medicaid was doing its safety net job. Yet taken together pre-Trump recipient rolls and Bill Clinton levels of real benefits per recipient would reduce spending by about $200 billion in 2026 and $2.5 trillion over the next decade.

But, no, the GOP legislative draftsman didn’t even have the cajones to attempt either of these reasonable roll-backs. Instead, they marked-up barely $700 billion of savings, and even that much is sketchy in the extreme. That’s because the one measure that would actually reduce the beneficiary rolls—a work requirement for able-bodied beneficiaries—does not really kick-in until after 2028, and is so loophole ridden that it is sure to invite extensive work-arounds out in the blue states of New York and California were a high share of working-age Medicaid recipients reside.

So the truth is, the Trumpified GOP is apparently copacetic with de facto socialist health care. With Medicare off-limits, ObamaCare left in tact and now Medicaid consigned by the Donald himself to the “no f*ck around” zone, what we actually have is a combined Medicaid, Medicare and the ObamaCare insurance subsidy population that totals 141 million Americans after you eliminate the dual and triple eligibles.

That’s 41% of the entire US population! And yet the Donald had the audacity to attack Congressman Tom Massie and his small band of fiscal conservative stalwarts for insisting that the final Reconciliation bill include meaningful Medicaid and other cuts to at least begin to whittle down the $22 trillion of deficits built in over the next 10 years under the CBO baseline. And, as we showed yesterday, upwards of $30 trillion of cumulative deficits under the Trumpified GOP’s Great Big Ugly Debt Bomb as currently written.

Stated as succinctly as possible, if you think that Tom Massie is the problem and should be kicked out of the GOP, it’s a sign that you are so full of shit that your back teeth will soon be floating. Truly, the Donald’s attack below marks the end of the road for any hope that the GOP will ever rise to the occasion and take on the budgetary Doomsday Machine that is now careening rapidly toward Fiscal Armageddon.

“I don’t think Thomas Massie understands government,” Trump told reporters before the meeting. “I think he’s a grandstander, frankly. I think he should be voted out of office.”

After all, here again is the record of runaway Medicaid growth since the turn of the century. Constant dollar spending has tripled and the number of recipients has doubled. Yet if the Trumpified GOP is going to give this fiscal abomination a hall pass, pray tell what is left that they might actually have the courage to seriously cut?

After all, we dare say their are precious few Republican voters among the 80 million Medicaid recipients. And even among the estimated 800,000 resident of Medicaid nursing homes, we’d guess there are precious few GOP votes. Once the Dem vote harvesters sweep through the nursing homes, in fact, there are not normally many GOP votes in the absentee sheets they later stuff into the ballot boxes.

In short, we think the Donald’s demarche on Medicaid is a very big deal. It literally means that any serious attention to the nation’s soaring public debt is over and done—at least through 2028; and after that point the debt/bond yield/interest expense doom loop may be too powerful for any democratic government to stop.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post When Medicaid Is The Donald’s No Play Around Zone—It’s All Over Except The Shouting appeared first on LewRockwell.

It often pays, literally, to be perceived as a perpetual victim, a status that Israel and the Jewish institutional constituency have exploited relentlessly since 1945. It is now eighty years since the Second World War ended and the numbers of those receiving “holocaust” reparations from the German government hardly seems to diminish and may now include children of survivors who presumably were somehow damaged in the womb after the conflict ended and the camps in Europe were “liberated.” More than 20,000 Jews fled to Shanghai in China before and during the war, avoiding the prison camps in Europe, but they too are reported to be eligible for reparations. And then there are the still sprouting-everywhere taxpayer funded holocaust memorials and museums throughout the US even though the alleged events commemorated took place a long time ago and far away from America. Public schools and some state colleges in America are also increasingly being compelled to teach about the so-called holocaust as part of the required history syllabus, so the brainwashing will continue into the next generation.

Excuse me, but if all of the above cannot be perceived at least in part as special consideration granted to a tiny part of the US population which is admittedly hugely disproportionately wealthy and politically powerful, it begs one to provide a satisfactory explanation for the developments. The latest turn of the wheel comes in the wake of the killing of two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington DC. It is not widely known that the US Department of Homeland Security gives out discretionary grants of aid money to help provide security for nonprofit entities and groups that are perceived by the government as being threatened. The largest tranche of those grants, to the tune of more than $275 million in 2024 went to Jewish groups, monuments and buildings. A number of Jewish organizations and Israel-First congressmen are now calling for that money to be increased dramatically by an additional $1 billion. The money is justified by the much-touted claim that Jews are experiencing a surge in what is described as “antisemitism.” As many of the compilers of the statistics behind the surge are themselves Jewish groups that in some fashion benefit from the cash in hand, like the dreadful Anti-Defamation League (ADL) headed by the ghastly Jonathan Greenblatt, one might reasonably suspect that the numbers are cooked to include incidents so minor as to pass under normal circumstances. And there is also the issue of Israel itself, which is carrying out a genocide in Gaza and an occupation by Jewish settlers of what remains of historic Palestine on the West Bank. As the US government and groups like ADL define criticism of Israel as antisemitism any such commentary is rolled neatly into the statistics claiming the surge in anti-Jewish sentiment when it is really about the monstrous behavior of the Jewish state, which, in fact declares itself to be just that in law, that is, a Jewish state.

And it doesn’t all end there. There are numerous Jewish or neocon think tanks and foundations, all of which are well funded without any real need for a federal government handout to provide their security. Most of them claim to be “charitable” or “educational” to secure a tax exemption while they dig their talons deep into government in the United States at all levels down even to the state and local levels where many citizens cannot even write a letter to the editor to protest against Israel’s behavior without being denied benefits as an antisemite. Witness the recently passed antisemitism in education act in Arizona, which takes an extreme response to fear of antisemitism and makes it even more outrageous. The legislation bars public schools and public colleges from promoting what it describes as “antisemitic conduct” and creates disciplinary procedures for violations.

Worse than that, some states require applicants for jobs or benefits to sign a document confirming that they will not ever support the so-called BDS movement (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) which calls for pressuring the war criminals in Tel Aviv using economic measures. Indeed, the federal government is even worse with a national campaign against America’s universities being given alleged “credibility” by the depiction of college campuses as hotbeds of Jew-hatred even though in reality it is not about Jews per se and is rather Israel’s behavior that is arousing student anger as the mass starvation makes the piles of dead Palestinian babies continue to grow.

Israel’s perpetual victim status is part of the cover story that has been developed, most particularly in the United States, to explain away atrocities that have been carried out by the Israelis against their neighbors since and even before the founding of the state. As early as 1917 during the First World War, Britain, the colonial power in Palestine, responded to Jewish pressure from its major banking families with the Balfour Resolution, which promised a Jewish homeland. During the later post World War 2 period of the transition from British colonial rule which foresaw a division of Mandate Palestine into two separate states, Jewish terrorist groups brought pressure by assassinating British officials and soldiers and blowing up hotels and residences. They even went so far as to bomb and destroy the British Embassy in Rome!

Israel kills Americans whenever it believes there is some advantage to be gained from doing so and no presidents since John F Kennedy and George HW Bush have dared to push back to protect United States civilians and military even when major US interests are at stake. This reticence about confronting Israel has clearly been due to the widely recognized malignant power and wealth of the Israel Lobby. To cite only the most egregious killing of Americans by Israel, I would recall the June 8th, 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, which killed 34 crewmen and injured 171 more. The crew’s dwindling number of survivors are this very weekend having a reunion in Norfolk Virginia.

The attack was followed by a cover-up that demonstrated clearly that at least one president of the United States named Lyndon Johnson even back nearly sixty years ago valued his relationship with the state of Israel above his loyalty to his own country. The two-hour assault on the Liberty was, in truth, the worst attack ever carried out on a US Naval vessel in peace time. It was a surprise attack which was clearly intended to destroy the intelligence gathering vessel operating in international waters collecting information on the ongoing Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Israelis, whose planes had their Star of David markings covered up so Egypt could be blamed, attacked the ship repeatedly from the air and using gunboats from the sea. When the ship’s distress signal was received, the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga launched fighters to go to its assistance, but they were called back under orders from President Johnson. The incredible courage and determination of the surviving crew was the only thing that kept the Liberty from sinking.

The Israelis and their political and media supporters in the United States have always claimed the attack was a tragic mistake while many of the Liberty crew have indicated their firm belief that it was anything but, that the vessel was flying an oversized American flag and was clearly and easily identifiable as a US Navy vessel. The ship’s commanding officer Captain William McGonagle was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroic role in keeping the ship afloat, though President Lyndon Baines Johnson broke with tradition and refused to hold the medal ceremony in the White House, also declining to award it personally, delegating that task to the Secretary of the Navy in an unpublicized presentation made at the Washington Navy Yard. The additional medals given to other crew members in the aftermath of the attack made the USS Liberty the most decorated ship in the history of the United States Navy.

The Liberty crew was sworn to secrecy over the incident and a hastily convened and conducted court of inquiry headed by Admiral John McCain acted under orders from Washington to declare the attack a case of mistaken identity. The inquiry’s senior legal counsel Captain Ward Boston, who subsequently declared the attack to be a “deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew,” also described how “President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity’ despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” The court’s findings were rewritten and sections relating to Israeli war crimes, to include the machine gunning of life rafts, were excised. Following in his father’s footsteps, Senator John McCain of Arizona later used his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee to effectively block any reconvening of a board of inquiry to reexamine the evidence. The cover-up continues to this day. Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis is one of the most ardent Israel-firsters in national politics. He describes his state as the most “Pro-Israel” in the US. When he was a congressman representing a Florida district several retired Liberty survivors who were his constituents sought to meet with him. He turned them down. Most of the documents relating to the Liberty incident have never been released to the public in spite of the 58 years that have passed since the attack took place.

Israel famously has long sustained the doctrine that Jews are somehow chosen by God and can do no wrong when they are advancing their own interests. This belief has meant near constant warfare directed against neighbors like the Palestinians, as well as against Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Currently the Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is intent on destroying Iran’s military capabilities with the help of the United States of America. Netanyahu has argued repeatedly for over twenty years that Iran is on the verge of building a nuclear weapon, which would threaten both Israel and the region, but both the CIA and even Mossad agree that there is no such development being pursued on the part of the Iranian government. Ironically, Israel is the only country in the Middle East region that is “nuclear.” It has a substantial secret arsenal consisting of 200-300 nuclear bombs that was obtained illegally by theft from the United States. JFK may have paid a price for his temerity when he tried to expose Jewish groups that were acting as fronts for the Israeli government while also stopping the nuclear development and disarming them. I am not aware of any American politician having ever challenged Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal publicly and it is widely believed within the federal government that to do so would be “illegal.” That is what putting “Israel First” is all about!

I am sad to observe over this USS Liberty weekend how President Donald Trump is apparently crawling to Netanyahu and his murderous associates, just like his predecessor in office Genocide Joe Biden. The US has again in the UN Security Council vetoed an otherwise unanimous vote to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, supporting Israel but no conceivable US or even humanitarian interest. Instead of taking the relatively simple step to contact Netanyahu and tell him that he must end the slaughter of the Palestinians using weapons, money and political cover all provided in abundance by Uncle Sam or face the consequences immediately. No more money, weapons and visits from pathetic grifter Senators like Lindsey Graham. In fact it might be a good thing to suggest to Bibi that he-she Lindsey just might be tried for treason as he is interfering illegally with US foreign policy in both Gaza and Ukraine. But we will save that story for another time, maybe next week!

Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.

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The great Murray Rothbard was taken from us far too soon in 1995 at the age of 68.  His death left a void in the libertarian movement that could never be filled.  I often long for his unfiltered, contrarian, non-interventionist commentary on world events, never more so than today with the Israel-Palestine conflict.  What would Rothbard think about Israel’s invasion of Gaza in retaliation for the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 Israelis, 70% of them civilians?

In preview, I will begin by examining Rothbard’s framework on war and how he felt it should be conducted in order to conform to libertarian principles.  Next, I will apply his criteria to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, assuming they are acting in self-defense.  Finally, I will attempt to determine who is the historical aggressor in the Israel-Palestine conflict as seen through Rothbard’s eyes.  Thankfully, he left us a wealth of written material on the subject.

First some personal background: My introduction to Austrian economics began in 1989 with the discovery of the Mises Institute and while attending the week-long Mises University in the summer of 1990.  Mises U was the intellectual experience of a lifetime.  Lectures were given and classes taught by a Who’s Who of Austro-libertarianism: Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell, Joe Sobran, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Walter Block, Sheldon Richman, Yuri Maltsev, Jeffrey Herbener and Roger Garrison, among others.  Without question, Rothbard was the rock star of the group.  As students, we all had backstage passes which allowed us to rub shoulders with and pick the brains of “the talent.”  Rothbard was known to stay up late at night in conversation with students.  He relished in the experience and his laugh (more like a cackle) was as unforgettable as it was infectious.

The breadth of Rothbard’s knowledge on various subjects was breathtaking.  He was like five geniuses rolled into one.  I recently asked David Gordon, a close personal friend of Rothbard and leading scholar with a deep understanding of his work, “What was he most passionate about and dedicated the greatest amount of his writing attention to?”  He replied, “Avoiding war would probably be his greatest concern.”  I also asked, “In For a New Liberty (1973), Rothbard dedicated an entire chapter to ‘War and Foreign Policy.’  Did he ever deviate from this at all in his final 22 years?”  His answer: “No.”

Murray Rothbard is a joy to read in part because of his logical clarity and consistency.  If you truly want to understand his intellectual framework on war, I suggest reading the first nine pages of this chapter in For a New Liberty or his essay, “War, Peace and the State” (1963).

Rothbard’s war framework

How did Rothbard apply libertarian principles to war and foreign policy in a less-than-perfect world of nation-states?

Libertarians favor liberty as a natural human right, and advocate it not only for Americans but for all peoples.  In a purely libertarian world, therefore, there would be no “foreign policy” because there would be no States, no governments with a monopoly of coercion over particular territorial areas.  But since we live in a world of nation-states. And since this system is hardly likely to disappear in the near future, what is the attitude of libertarians toward foreign policy in the current State-ridden world?

Pending the dissolution of States, libertarians desire to limit, to whittle down, the area of governmental power in all directions and as much as possible…

Specifically, the entire land area of the world is now parcelled out among various States, and each land area is ruled by a central government with monopoly of violence over that area.  In relations between States, then, the libertarian goal is to keep each of those States from extending their violence to other countries, so that each State’s tyranny is at least confined to its own bailiwick…  In short, the objective of the libertarian is to confine any existing State to as small a degree of invasion of person and property as possible.  And this means the total avoidance of war.  The people under each State should pressure “their” respective States not to attack one another, or, if a conflict should break out, to withdraw from it as quickly as physically possible.1

He continues:

Let us assume for the moment, a world of two hypothetical countries: Graustark and Belgravia.  Each is ruled by its own State.  What happens if the government of Graustark invades the territory of Belgravia?  From the libertarian point of view two evils immediately occur.  First, the Graustark Army begins to slaughter innocent Belgravian civilians, persons who are not implicated in whatever crimes the Belgravian government might have committed.  War, then, is mass murder, and this massive invasion of the right to life, of self-ownership, of numbers of people is not only a crime but, for the libertarian, the ultimate crime.  Second, since all governments obtain their revenue from the thievery of coercive taxation, any mobilization and launching of troops inevitably involve an increase in tax-coercion in Graustark.  For both reasons – because inter-State wars inevitably involve both mass murder and an increase in tax-coercion, the libertarian opposes war.  Period.2

Rothbard then draws a distinction between modern wars and pre-modern wars:

It was not always thus. During the Middle Ages, the scope of wars was far more limited.  Before the rise of modern weapons, armaments were so limited that governments could – and often did – strictly confine their violence to the armies of the rival governments.  It is true that tax coercion increased, but at least there was no mass murder of the innocents.  Not only was firepower low enough to confine violence to the armies of the contending sides, but in the pre-modern era there was no central nation-state that spoke inevitably in the name of all inhabitants of a given land area.  If one set of kings or barons fought another, it was not felt that everyone in the area must be a dedicated partisan.  Moreover, instead of mass conscript armies enslaved to their respective rulers, armies were small bands of hired mercenaries.  Often, a favorite sport for the populace was to observe a battle from the safety of the town ramparts, and war was regarded as something of a sporting match.  But with the rise of the centralizing State and of modern weapons of mass destruction, the slaughter of civilians, as well as conscript armies, have become a vital part of inter-State warfare.3

He continues:

Suppose that despite possible libertarian opposition, war has broken out.  Clearly, the libertarian position should be that, so long as the war continues, the scope of assault upon innocent civilians must be diminished as much as possible.  Old-fashioned international law had two excellent devices to accomplish this goal: the “laws of war,” and the “laws of neutrality” or “neutral’s rights”…  In short, the libertarian tries to induce the warring States to observe fully the rights of neutral citizens.  The “laws of war,” for their part, were designed to limit as much as possible the invasion by warring States of the rights of civilians in their respective countries.  As the British jurist F.J.P. Veale put it:

“The fundamental principle of this code was that hostilities between civilized peoples must be limited to the armed forces…  It drew a distinction between combatants and non-combatants by laying down that the sole business of the combatants is to fight each other and, consequently, that non-combatants must be excluded from the scope of military operations.”4

When was the line crossed into modern warfare?

In the modified form of prohibiting the bombardment of all cities not in the front line, this rule held in Western European wars in recent centuries until Britain launched the strategic bombing of civilians in World War II.  Now, of course, the entire concept is scarcely remembered, since the very nature of modern nuclear warfare rests upon the annihilation of civilians.5

Even so, Rothbard did not rule out the unlikely possibility of a just, defensive war, listing three criteria:

(a) weapons limited so that no civilians were injured in their persons or property;

(b) volunteer rather than conscript armies; and also

(c) financing by voluntary methods instead of taxation6

He even gave a fairly recent example that came close, the Indo-Pakastani war of 1971.

Furthermore, Rothbard was opposed to other countries jumping in and escalating a conflict, even on the side of the country being attacked:

To return to our hypothetical Graustark and Belgravia, suppose that Graustark has invaded Belgravia, and that a third government, Walldavia, now leaps into the war in order to defend Belgravia against “Graustarkian aggression.”  Is this action justifiable?  Here, indeed, is the germ of the pernicious twentieth century theory of “collective security” – the idea that when one government “aggresses” against another, it is the moral obligation of the other governments of the world to band together to defend the “victimized” State.

There are several fatal flaws in this concept of collective security against “aggression.”  One is that when Walldavia, or any other States, leap into the fray they are themselves expanding and compounding the extent of the aggression, because they are (1) unjustly slaughtering masses of Graustarkian civilians, and (2) increasing tax-coercion over Walldavian citizens.  Furthermore, (3) in this age when States and subjects are closely identifiable, Walldavia is thereby leaving Walldavian citizens open to retaliation by Graustarkian bombers or missiles.  Thus, entry into the war by Walldavian government puts into jeopardy the very lives and properties of Walldavian citizens which the government is supposed to be protecting.  Finally, (4) conscription-enslavement of Walldavian citizens will usually intensify.

If this kind of “collective security” should really be applied on a worldwide scale, with all the “Walldavias” rushing into every local conflict and escalating them, every local skirmish would soon be raised into a global conflagration.7

On war, Murray Rothbard had two overarching concerns:

Many libertarians are uncomfortable with foreign policy and prefer to spend their energies either on fundamental questions of libertarian theory or on such “domestic” concerns as the free market or privatizing postal service or garbage disposal.  Yet an attack on war or a warlike foreign policy is of crucial importance to libertarians.  There are two important reasons.  One has become a cliché, but is all too true nevertheless: the overriding importance of preventing a nuclear holocaust.  To all the long-standing reasons, moral and economic, against an interventionist foreign policy has now been added the imminent, ever-present threat of world destruction…

The other reason is that, apart from the nuclear menace, war, in the words of the libertarian Randolph Bourne, “is the health of the State.”  War has always been the occasion of a great – and usually permanent – acceleration and intensification of State power over society.  War is the great excuse for mobilizing all the energies and resources of the nation, in the name of patriotic rhetoric, under the aegis and dictation of the State apparatus.  It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.  Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest.  Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morals – as the libertarian Albert Jay Nock once phrased it – of an “army on the march.”8

Applying Rothbard’s self-defense criteria to Israel’s invasion of Gaza

Let us assume that Israel has been acting in self-defense in its retaliation for the October 7th attacks (as well as previous attacks) and apply Rothbard’s criteria for just war conduct:

1. Protection of civilians – Just two months into Israel’s Gaza bombing campaign, researchers called it the most destructive of this century. As reported by Al Jazeera, “Over the past year, Israeli attacks have killed at least 41,165 Palestinians living in Gaza, equal to 1 out of every 55 people living there.  At least 16,756 children have been killed, the highest number of children recorded in a single year of conflict over the past two decades…  At least 97,303 people are injured in Gaza – equal to one in 23 people…  In the past year, three quarters of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been infected with contagious diseases due to a lack of sanitation, open sewage and inadequate access to hygiene…  At least 2.15 million people, or 96 percent of Gaza’s population, are facing severe lack of food.  One in five Palestinians, or about 495,000 people, are facing starvation…”
2. Conscription – As cited by Grok, “Israel’s conscription system is unique among developed countries due to its near-universal mandatory military service for both men and women, a policy rooted in its ongoing security challenges… Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israel has significantly expanded conscription by increasing the reserve force cap to 450,000, extending mandatory service to three years, raising reserve exemption ages, and advancing legislation to include Haredi Jews, though with limited scope.”
3. Taxation – As per Grok, “According to the OECD’s 2023 data, Israel’s tax-to-GDP ratio was 31.2% in 2022, slightly below the OECD average of 34.0%… Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israel has increased taxes, notably raising VAT to 18% and implementing a 15% global minimum corporate tax, driven by war-related defense spending and a growing budget deficit.  These changes have slightly elevated the tax burden, but debt financing has absorbed much of the fiscal strain.”

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It has become obvious over the past few years that more and more Americans are questioning not only the wisdom behind our unwavering support of Israel, but Jewish power and influence itself. The artist formerly known as Kanye West played a large role here, as did other prominent Blacks like Jason Whitlock and Candace Owens.

White conservatives, which in the past were more likely to criticize Israel, have been completely coopted by the Rapture bunch, the ones who enable the Jews’ elitist notion that they are God’s “chosen people.” Every politician who hopes to hold elected office visits the Wailing Wall in Israel, and dons a yarmulke. I’d call it just another humiliation ritual, but I’m sure that would be labeled “anti-Semitic.” Consider how Nancy Pelosi proclaimed that “if the Capitol crumbles to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to Israel…that’s fundamental.” One member of our Congress has worn his IDF uniform to work. Lindsay Graham isn’t the only U.S. “representative” that has stated Israel should nuke Iran. Whether or not he really did have some kind of verbal altercation with Bibi Netanyahu, Donald Trump’s support of Israel is such that they have streets named after him there.

Because Black people are generally untouchable in terms of public criticism, their anti-Zionist or blunt anti-Jewish comments were ignored at first. Ignored by a state controlled media which consists of a wildly disproportionate number of Jews in prominent positions. But something happened when Ben Shapiro- who fits every historical stereotype of an obnoxious, parasitic figure who profits from a society he considers himself outside of- fired Candace Owens from the Daily Wire. Prior to that, Owens was a pretty innocuous Black conservative- the kind the Stupid Party salivates over. However, Owens was triggered enough by her dismissal to apparently start researching some forbidden topics. Pretty much anything to do with Jews collectively, the religion or the race, is “forbidden.” Ask the Anti-Defamation League, which serves as an unregistered agent for the foreign state of Israel.

To a large extent, the ADL controls public discourse in this country. If I was well known enough, they would be all over my Substack, and this article in particular. They police speech in America, even though they are not an American outfit. Now, because this same media promoted and enabled Black entertainers, creating monstrous egos in the process, someone like Kanye West felt comfortable in going where no White man in show business had gone before. And even though they retaliated by largely depleting his fortune, West hasn’t really backed down. He’s taken to wearing what looks like a Black version of a KKK outfit, and his latest song is provocatively titled “Heil Hitler.” And Owens has all but “denied” the Holocaust, pointing out all the Christian genocide and questioning why that ethnic cleansing isn’t constantly referenced. Where are the films about the Catholics slaughtered by the Bolsheviks?

Ben Shapiro went apoplectic after Owens challenged him to a public debate. Her main point of contention was the proper definition of “anti-Semitism.” She wanted Shapiro to explain just what “anti-Semitism” is. Not surprisingly, Shapiro never accepted that challenge. Since the term is bandied about so often, it would be helpful to all of us to know exactly what is meant by it. Does it mean defamation of the entire Jewish people? The religion- if it is a religion? The race- if it is a race? Many of us have wondered how so many members of a particular religion can have identifiable physical traits. Does anyone look like a Methodist? As a Catholic, I can’t recognize other members of my faith by their looks. And then there is the polling which suggests that a large number, perhaps a majority, of Jews are actually atheists. That’s pretty odd. I mean, if you’re an atheist, then you’d no longer be a Jew, right?

Shapiro has commented that he is only loyal to America because the state of Israel exists. He called the Jewish state a “backstop in case anything should go wrong” here in America 2.0. What exactly could “go wrong,” one wonders? Perhaps if millions of Americans suddenly realize how much power a tiny group comprising just two percent of the population wields in this country? And questioned it? Shapiro must cringe every time Whitlock refers to “the tribe” with a knowing smile on his face, or the Black Hoge twins chuckle over Jewish power, and respectfully interview the likes of David Duke. More of the alt media is indeed starting to question Jewish influence in America. Or really the world. How is the president of Mexico a Jewish woman? Are there any other Jews in Mexico? There are too many questions that dare not be asked, and some of us are tired of that. We ought to be able to question everything.

The intense anger that Shapiro has been known for was matched recently by Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports. Now I don’t really know what the significance of Barstool Sports is, or how Portnoy could possibly make $200 million or whatever from it. Portnoy is not one of those rare Irish success stories. A viral video of a near maniacal Portnoy, lashing out at a gentile talking head who works for him, revealed how these prominent Jews wear their religion/race/whatever it is on their sleeves. He called the guy juvenile names, and disparaged him for telling “Jew jokes” when “all these Jews are dying.” This has been a common refrain from the ADL types for seemingly forever. “Anti-Semitism” is always said to be “on the rise.” “Hate crimes” against Jews are always said to be increasing. The fact that pretty much every one of these incidents is proven to be a hoax doesn’t quiet the refrain. Just stop with the Jew jokes! Portnoy fancies himself a “player,” and has been accused of sexual misconduct.

The foundation of all the Orwellian “hate speech” nonsense is what has indelicately been referred to as “the Jewish Question.” It is “hate” to question anything about this one special group. Even though Jewish comedians have long joked themselves about the “goyim,” it is “hate” to claim that Jews refer in this demeaning manner (“goyim” supposedly means “cattle”) to gentiles. If you watched Portnoy’s recent rant, you saw someone who clearly believes he’s superior, lashing out at a person he obviously considers beneath him. I would call this “arrogance,” but to claim any Jew is arrogant is one of the estimated billion examples of “anti-Semitism.” Other verboten questions would be how did Jews become so involved in moneylending? Why are names associated with earthly wealth, like gold, silver, diamond, ruby, etc., invariably Jewish? Did Jews invent the concept of charging interest? What Catholics decried as usury?

As readers of my work know, so much of history has been suppressed that it is very difficult to ascertain the truth about anything. It must always be remembered that history is written by the victors. I’ve seen the March 24, 1933 newspaper headline from the London Daily Express, which declared, “Judea Declares War on Germany: Jews of all the World Unite in Action.” It certainly looks legitimate. Maybe they had AI in 1933. This trumpeted a boycott of Hitler’s government, and the American Jewish Congress held a massive rally in Madison Square Garden, advocating the same thing. This was years before any concentration camps. More disturbingly, the figure of 6 million was apparently used multiple times before World War II. A 1906 article in the New York Times worried about “the condition and future of Russia’s 6 million Jews.” It also claimed that the Czar’s government had a “studied policy for the ‘solution’ of the Jewish question is systematic and murderous extermination.”

The World Zionist Organization warned in 1911 about the “annihilation of 6 million people.” In 1914, the New York Times again talked about the American Jewish Relief Committee, which had convened a conference to “consider the plight of more than 6 million Jews who live within the war zone.” New York Governor Martin H. Glynn wrote an article titled “The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop!” which was published in the American Hebrew magazine on October 31, 1919. In it, Glynn revealed, “Six million men and women are dying from lack of the necessaries of life…” In 1921, the Chicago Tribune featured an article which claimed that “Russia’s 6 million Jews are facing extermination by massacre…” On December 29, 1931 a Montreal newspaper quoted Rabbi Stephen Wise that 6 million Jews faced starvation in southeastern Europe. In 1936, the New York Times asked England to “…throw open the gates of Palestine and let in the victimized and persecuted Jews escaping from the European holocaust.”

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Thanks,  Tim McGraw. 

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Click Here:

John Leake

 

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Writes Brian Dunaway:

This column by Daniel Morena Vitonvia of The Mises Institute, posted on ZeroHedge, is among the most succinct, elegant writing I’ve seen on how inflation degrades the spiritual self. I was especially taken by these two passages:

“Saving, which is linked to sacrifice, also benefits the economy of giving, and deflation supports it – because falling prices discourage leverage, especially in households. As capital use becomes less profitable, the opportunity cost of making donations drops, which increases charitable giving both in absolute and relative terms. Inflation, by contrast, is harmful because it reduces the value of inheritances, and one of the strongest incentives to save before death is the desire to leave something to one’s loved ones. From this, it follows that one of the most powerful motivations for preserving wealth is the ability to make donations.”

And this distillation of Hülsmann, “Inflation is a hidden tax with devastating economic and moral consequences; it encourages the population to go into debt by making credit cheaper, and it penalizes saving, increasing the length of time preference. Not only that, but it is also a spiritual burden. It drives people to seek ways to protect their savings, making society more materialistic, causing people to prioritize money over happiness, and often forcing them to migrate, thereby breaking family and patriotic ties.” (Emphasis mine.)

I was really struck by the truth, “causing people to prioritize money over happiness.” When I was a young man, I used all the imagination I could muster to understand what it would be like to have great wealth. Aside from lustful adventures, what I imagined was awful. I thought to myself that I would be perpetually considering how best to protect my fortune. (I also considered that even if one creates new wealth, almost anything is psychologically normalized rather quickly, and that the greatest joys, physical and spiritual, require little to no money at all.) I recently read that William Kissam Vanderbilt (grandson of Cornelius), shortly before his death in 1920 (as reported in The New York Times), shared that “My life was never destined to be quite happy. … Inherited wealth is a real handicap to happiness. It is as certain a death to ambition as cocaine is to morality.”

I’ve often felt that unhappiness is not just fathered by evil, but a synonym for it, even more so for the perpetrator than the victim. If the love of money is the root of all evil, so it is misery even more.

 

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Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

Smithsonian Magazine

 

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Thanks, Thomas Jefferson.

See here.

 

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