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Since 2016, I have been composing and posting articles at LRC concerning “the strategy of tension” used by the deep state in fomenting chaos and disruption in American cities. Cyber-analyst Mike Benz has finally tracked down and pin-pointed the source of the subversion – the US Institute of Peace.

On January 6 at the Nation’s Capitol we saw a dramatic escalation of the Strategy of Tension to further divide and polarize America. It promptly provided the pretext for increased draconian police state terror and invasive surveillance against our citizens. As I have been again and again warning for a long time, what we have been seeing played out on the streets of America, particularly in large Blue State metropolitan areas and dense urban cities is classic planned chaos and the “Strategy of Tension.”

Unable to dislodge Donald Trump by the Russiagate hoax or the malicious soft coup impeachment process, his sworn enemies, using COVID-19 as their pretext, have turned to the destruction of the economy by repressive lockdowns, creating mass unemployment and annihilation of small businesses, thus fracturing civil society. Elite elements within the Democrats, Big Tech, the deep state, and their complacent, compliant regime media pawns, then turned to an age-old psy/war strategy to be wielded as an ax against the president, insidiously using the weaponized corpse of the slain George Floyd as the initial rationale for these riots and insurrections. You can be sure they will now utilize the slain military veteran Ashli Babbit as their new prop.

Historically there has been a symbiotic correlation relationship between agent provocateur groups, infiltration by police informers, and the counter-terrorism forces of the deep state. The repressive security state has molded and used such witting (or unwitting) terrorist pawns or drones in covert activities to create a “strategy of tension” to instill fear and consolidate repressive power and control which would enhance strident calls for more intense police repression and clandestine surveillance of its subject general population. With countless decades of real-world experience and clinical research, masters of psychological warfare and mind control, expert manipulators and programmers of cult-like behavior, recruit those alienated arrested development post-adolescents and anti-social disillusioned vicarious thrill seekers who fit a susceptible psychological profile matrix and who relish vandalism, violence and destruction as a means of striking out at a world beyond the control of their misshapened lives. An ideological construct of direct action “anarchism” or “propaganda by the deed” is put forth as a purported justification for their aberrant thug-like terrorist behavior.

Here are additional resources on state-manufactured repression, terrorism and mind control to peruse: The Battle against Anarchist Terrorism: An International History, 1878-1934, by Richard Bach Jensen; “The United States, International Policing and the War against Anarchist Terrorism, 1900–1914,” by Richard Bach Jensen; “The International Anti-Anarchist Conference of 1898 and the Origins of Interpol,” by Richard Bach Jensen; Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, by James H. Billington; The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control, by John Marks; Operation Mind Control, by Walter Bowart; “Lessons on Mind Control From the 1950s,” article by Sarah Marks and Daniel Pick; “The Wonderful American World of Informers and Agents Provocateurs, by Todd Gitlin; “The Origins of American Counterterrorism,” By Michael Newell; Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960, by Christopher Simpson; Mind Control: America’s Secret War — Documentary, Bad Trip to Edgewood – Documentary; Mission: Mind  and “Pussy hats, Black Lives Matter and Black Bloc: How to build power to counter Trump — America’s Dictator in the Making,” by Arun Gupta.

The above documentaries are an excellent historical retrospective on the topic, particularly as the US moved closer to the imposition of martial law and implementation of further draconian deep state counter-intelligence psywar and surveillance operations under the usurper Biden regime.

Actually the deep roots of these neo-fascist seditious policies go back even further, as do their explicit key linkages to American military and counter-intelligence entities, which may in fact have played a crucial role in the November 22, 1963 coup d’état and brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy. Both the European personnel and their American counterparts actively discussed the implementation of domestic coup strategies in their respective countries. These were the Europeans directly responsible for later implementation of the Strategy of Tension violence/terror campaign of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and horrific murders of innocent civilians throughout that continent.

Please check out pages 138 to 152, “Del Valle, Giannettini, and the Strategy of Tension,” in Peter Dale Scott’s seminal book on the JFK assassination, Dallas ’63: The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House.

In his distinctive military uniform, Charles de Gaulle towered above the other heads of state attending the November 25, 1963 funeral of the murdered president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The 6’ 5” French leader, himself the subject of numerous assassination and coup attempts, later told key aides who he believed was responsible for the death of JFK. It was the American deep state.

Charles de Gaulle’s information minister Alain Peyrefitte, wrote a 2002 book which was never translated into English entitled C’etait de Gaulle (About de Gaulle). In it the French president, just home from JFK’s funeral, confides to Peyrefitte that he knew that the CIA was behind the assassination.

What happened to Kennedy is what nearly happened to me. His story is the same as mine. . . The security forces were in cahoots with the extremists. . . But you’ll see. All of them together will observe the law of silence. They will close ranks. They’ll do everything to stifle any scandal. They will throw Noah’s cloak over these shameful deeds. In order not to lose face in front of the whole world. In order to not risk unleashing riots in the United States. In order to preserve the union and to avoid a new civil war. In order to not ask themselves questions. They don’t want to know. They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.

In his powerful and definitive biography, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of the American Secret Government, David Talbot details this searing assertion. See this three part summary of this statement: here, here, and here.

To many French citizens, Charles de Gaulle, was the greatest embodiment of France since Napoleon. Upon his November 9, 1970 death President Georges Pompidou simply said: “Le général de Gaulle est mort; la France est veuve.” (“General de Gaulle is dead. France is a widow.”)

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Thanks, Jesse Trentadue.

Gateway Pundit

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According to the internet where everything written is God’s Truth, Trump and Putin have cut a deal before their meeting in Alaska.

Putin:  “OK, you can have Ukraine.”

Trump:  “We’ll take it if you take California.”

Putin:    “Deal.”

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As readers here must know, the Archbishop of Detroit, Edward Weisenburger, has fired three longtime professors of philosophy and theology at the archdiocese’s seminary, Sacred Heart. The firing took the professors by surprise. He has given no reason for it, except to say that he disagrees with their theology. I do not know what that means, nor does the archbishop seem to intend to tell us what it means.

Let us come to cases. If I say to William of Ockham, “I disagree with your theology,” and William, justly and as a loyal son of the Church, desires to know exactly where this disagreement lies, I must reply. I might say that to subordinate God’s knowledge to His will must result in a conception of God that is like what Muslims believe about Allah, unfettered from reason and, therefore, not approachable by reason. Punishment for sin would then also be arbitrary and extrinsic, not inherent to the sin itself. Then William might point out some error in my drawing conclusions from his premises, or he might say that he does not actually hold the premises I attribute to him; or he might rethink matters and change his mind.

Likewise, if I say to Cardinal Reinhard Marx, “I disagree with your moral philosophy,” and the cardinal agrees to have a conversation rather than pulling rank, he might say, “Tell me what the problem is.”

I might then say, “Your willingness to normalize and even to celebrate unnatural sexual relations, denying that they are unnatural no matter how they may feel to those who engage in them, leaves the Church with no logical reason to oppose a man’s taking two wives, if such an arrangement pleases them, and with no credible witness against fornication. You cannot tell John and Mary to wait for marriage while Will and Rich cannot possibly have any such intention, since their sodomy consummates nothing, has no biological meaning, and, because it is not natural, must be learned as a habit long before they decide they will continue in it for life. You have also detached sexual morality from nature, drained the masculine and feminine of meaning, reduced sexual being to tools of hedonism, and given the go-ahead for pseudo-monogamous couples to adopt children and thus deliberately to deprive those children of either a mother or a father. All kinds of harm and confusion are already implied by your failure to enter more deeply into a truth available to reason and developed by the Church: that man is for woman and woman is for man.”

I do not know what the cardinal would say in reply, but I hope he would see that a real reply is needed.

Such a reply cannot be, “The doctrines are developing,” no more than William of Ockham could say so legitimately. That is not to answer the objection but to evade it. When a living thing develops, it becomes more powerful than before, not less; its latent faculties come to the fore; its observed relations to other creatures are more numerous, more intricate, more dynamic. If the doctrine in question is that sexual relations are licit only within marriage and marriage is what it is by nature, then a true development of that doctrine might show its powerful relations to doctrines on the nature of the human body, or what it means to be an incarnate creature, or why the account of the creation of mankind in Scripture makes explicit what for the other creatures is left implicit, that “male and female [God] created them,” or even Jesus’ saying that you cannot enter the kingdom of God unless you enter it as a little child.

We know that a thing is decaying or dying when it loses such interrelations, or when its scope of application is narrowed. The fraternal club that once attracted many young men and was at the heart of town life is in decay; we know it when it becomes for us just one odd choice among others, of passing an evening or two every couple of months, without building anything. People ignore it not because they hold it in contempt but because there is no real life in it anymore.

The philosophy department at New Directions University is in decay because the courses have all been subordinated to political aims; they have lost their connections to linguistics, mathematics, art, cosmology, history, literature, and the patient study of man. It is no longer a leader but an appendage. And it is well on its way to becoming an appendix, to be ignored or gotten rid of.

Read the Whole Article

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That this extreme inequality is itself the primary threat to both democracy and social stability is poorly understood.

Scraped of pleasantries, the ultimate purpose of any status quo is to 1) distribute most of the economy’s gains to the top tier and 2) offload the sacrifices this requires to the bottom tiers but in stealthy ways that aren’t noticeable enough to spark political revolt.

The basic stealth mechanisms deployed over the past 50 years to offload the sacrifices on the bottom 90% are:

1) Reduce the share of the national income going to wages so the share going to corporate profits and finance could soar.

2) Place the tax burden for entitlements (Social Security and Medicare) on the wage earners while reducing the taxes levied on unearned income from the ownership of assets / capital.

3) Understate official inflation.

4) Inflate credit-asset bubbles that enriched the owners of assets at rates far above inflation.

The first dollar of every wage is taxed at 15.3% for entitlements (both the employee and employer pay 7.65%), while numerous forms of capital gains are exempt from tax. Capital is lightly taxed, earned income is heavily taxed. Wage earners lose ground, asset owners get richer. That’s the net result of the taxation system.

Inflation is of course the hidden tax, but the status quo has relieved the wealthiest 10% who own most of the assets from the ravages of inflation by inflating asset bubbles which enrich the already rich at rates far above inflation. Those who own few assets absorb the losses of inflation via a slow-drip reduction in the purchasing power of their wages.

Borrowing money has always been the lowest-friction way to keep everyone happy–or at least onboard. The status quo needs enough money to fund both the gains from monopoly, tax havens, fraud and graft collected by the top few and the entitlements that keep everyone else onboard.

Alas, all good things come to an end. Interest rates fell for 40+ years, enabling more debt to be piled up without increasing the cost of servicing the debt enough to be noticeable. Now rates are rising, and despite the many claims that the Fed and other central banks can easily shove rates back to zero, the recent rise in Japanese sovereign bonds undercuts this breezy assumption that debt can be piled up indefinitely.

Japan’s central bank printed money to buy the government’s bonds to keep yields near zero for 30 years, but that apparently permanent solution has been revealed as impermanent.

Demographics–people living longer and the global Baby Boom retiring en masse–is pushing government spending higher as the workforce of wage earners paying most of the taxes stagnates or shrinks. Now that interest rates are in a long-term up-cycle, it’s no longer possible to just borrow another few trillion dollars every year without increasing the cost of servicing all that debt to the point where the debt service starts squeezing out the spending needed to keep everyone happy.

The net result of all this is: now comes the hard part, distributing the sacrifices in ways that are finally noticeable.

The problem facing the status quo is not easily resolvable: the top few percent (corporations and the wealthiest households) who own most of the wealth have aggregated political power with their wealth, so politicians are under tremendous pressure to keep the immense river of profits, tax breaks, giveaways, graft, etc. flowing to corporations and the wealthiest few lest they throw a temper tantrum and fund a competing politico in the next election.

But the predations of the top few have already shifted most of the losses, costs and risks onto the bottom 2/3 of the populace, and so the buffers of cash, assets and credit this class has to absorb more sacrifices has already been worn thin.

The class that’s doing well due to the current Everything Bubble–those in the 80% to 99% bracket–can afford to absorb some of the sacrifices, but should the bubble pop–and sadly, all bubbles pop despite herculean efforts to keep them inflated–the phantom wealth this class expected to be permanent will dissipate into thin air, leaving them less willing to absorb the scale of sacrifices needed to satisfy everyone: the politically influential top few, the technocratic class that keeps the status quo bureaucracies / institutions functioning and the bottom 2/3 who do the scutwork.

This chart below (from WSJ.com) shows that wages are still the dominant generator of income even in high-income households. Only the top 1% derive substantial shares of their income from business ownership and ownership of other assets.

In summary: the most politically influential class–those able to buy political protection from sacrifices–is the only class with the means to absorb financial sacrifices.

Politicians are caught in a bind. They need to cut spending and raise taxes lest the Good Ship Status Quo founder, but the class that is most able to absorb sacrifices also funds their campaigns.

The usual tricks that worked for the past 50 years to offload the sacrifices onto the bottom 90% wage-earner class now carry the risk of arousing political revolt.

The conventional “solution” many expect is to reduce the debt load by increasing inflation. But this only works if the bottom 90% wage-earner class receives wage increases sufficient to keep up with inflation. There is little to no evidence to support the assumption that this is likely, or even possible.

Once the Everything Bubble pops, the financial buffers of the bottom 90% wage-earner classes will thin or disappear entirely. Once this happens, their stake in the status quo changes, and they become dry kindling awaiting a spark to erupt in a political firestorm that burns down the status quo’s current distribution of gains, losses, costs and risks.

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In my recent YouTube documentary titled “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries, Revisited,” I featured the story of a Bethesda nurse (a Navy Ensign, or O-1) who witnessed “a simple casket offloaded from a helicopter by men in trench coats” at or near Bethesda Naval Hospital the night of JFK’s autopsy; she had been informed that the helicopter would be delivering the body of President Kennedy to Bethesda NNMC that night.  (The story of the Bethesda nurse had been written about in 1992 by New England journalist Robert “Woody” Woodland.)  Here is a link to that documentary, for those who may not have seen it yet.

The “Bethesda Nurse” as depicted in “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries”

Thanks to an obituary published in 2023 by the nurse’s family, the name of the former Navy nurse interviewed by Woody Woodland in 1992 was revealed as Patricia Krueger.  Here is the link to the obituary.

As you can see, Patricia Krueger led a varied, interesting, and impressive life.

But Patricia Krueger was not her name in 1963—rather, this was her name by her third marriage.  Patricia Krueger’s maiden name was Patricia Pepe; in 1963 she graduated from Georgetown University with a B.S. in Nursing, and was accepted into a Navy nursing program at the Bethesda National Naval Medical Center.  In September of 1963, Patricia married John DeSando, so on the night of President Kennedy’s autopsy her name would have been Patricia DeSando.

With the help of Dr. Mike Chesser, I was able to locate and contact Patricia’s ex-husband John DeSando, and he sent me this snapshot taken in 1963 or 1964 of Patricia DeSando in her Navy uniform, provided by her eldest daughter, Courtney.

Patricia DeSando in 1963, courtesy of her eldest daughter Courtney

The next day—on July 28, 2025—I had a captivating hour-and-a-half conversation with Patricia’s eldest daughter, Courtney, who was very gracious and willing to share with me what she could remember about her mother’s recounting about the events she witnessed at Bethesda on 11/22/63.  In short, Courtney told me that her mother publicly related her story about “two bodies” at Bethesda to numerous guests (up to as many as “60 or 70” people) at a New Hampshire wedding rehearsal on a Friday night in March of 1992.  In short, Courtney explained that the “two bodies” her mother discussed were JFK’s body entering the Bethesda Naval Hospital morgue at two different times the night of the autopsy, and apparently in a different condition later in the evening than he was in, earlier that evening.  In Courtney’s recollection of what her mother said that night at the wedding rehearsal (for the wedding the next day of Courtney’s sister, Jessica), she said her mother openly stated to the wedding rehearsal attendees that there was “an author” in the audience who was going to write about it; Patricia Krueger’s contact with the author had apparently emboldened her to publicly reveal key aspects of what she witnessed to her audience at the wedding rehearsal.  As Courtney recalled, the few times that her mother had spoken of the events at Bethesda, she had consistently mentioned (1) seeing a casket, and (2) “a long hallway” in which her mother recalled seeing some kind of transfer taking place later on, involving a casket.  Regretfully, the details of what Courtney could recall were not more precise than that, 33 years later.

Those who have watched my documentary “The Three Casket Entries at Bethesda, Revisited” will immediately recall many visuals (both photographs, and 3-D animation) of a very long hallway immediately outside the Bethesda morgue where President Kennedy’s autopsy was conducted the night of November 22, 1963.  It may be significant that Courtney recalled “the long hallway” (as a key aspect of her mom’s recounting of the events she witnessed) BEFORE she saw those images in my documentary; it was an independent recollection of Courtney’s part.

Courtney was under the very strong impression that her mother had seen JFK’s wounds at some point, probably early that evening—what Courtney understood to be JFK’s appearance “before” a second delivery to the morgue.  Courtney is not sure today whether her mother actually saw JFK’s wounds a second time that night, or whether her mother only became aware much later of differences to his wounds by seeing autopsy photographs in books, for example.  But Courtney made clear that her mother was quite disturbed by the changes in JFK’s condition that night.

Do I wish Courtney’s memories of what her mom recounted were more precise?   Sure I do.  The important thing here is that Woody Woodland wrote in his 1992 article only about the Bethesda nurse seeing “a simple casket arrive by helicopter, and offloaded by men in trench coats,” and being told it contained JFK’s body.  Courtney’s recollections of her mother’s story strongly suggest that there is much more to the matter than what Woody Woodland reported in 1992—namely, that after JFK’s body arrived by helicopter, her mother may have been inside bldg. 8, in the hallway right outside the morgue, and that her mother may actually have seen JFK’s head wounds herself, shortly following his initial arrival.   Courtney’s strongest impression of her mother’s story is that her mom was very disturbed by the fact that there were major differences between the “before” condition of JFK’s wounds (which her mother implied she had seen) and the “after” condition later that evening.  It is unclear today whether her mother, Patricia DeSando, learned of the changes in the condition of JFK’s wounds by discussing events at the autopsy with those who had been there and witnessed the post mortem examination after 8:00 PM, or whether her mother was aware of discrepancies between what she apparently saw early that night (the “before” condition) by later viewing the autopsy photos published in books.  In any case, her mother was experiencing a strong case of “cognitive dissonance,” which accounted for her agitation at the 1992 wedding rehearsal, and her public revelations that evening before a large audience.

When Patricia Krueger decided to recount her Bethesda experiences to the many attendees at the rehearsal for her own daughter Jessica’s wedding in March of 1992, it created a “disturbance” that evening that many family members found baffling, and hard to understand.  The reaction at the time, by many of her children and by her ex-husband John DeSando, was “why now?” and “why here?”  It created a breach within the family, and exacerbated doubts among some of her children about the veracity of Patricia’s recollections.  But after viewing “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries, Revisited,” Courtney now strongly believes that her mother’s truthfulness has been vindicated.  Her mom, she now understands, was a witness to important historical events, and Courtney is gratified to now understand that like many other witnesses to strange goings-on the night of JFK’s autopsy, her mother was an innocent bystander who saw crucial events unfolding, even if their meaning and context was not immediately clear at the time.  Patricia Krueger was so disturbed by the “cognitive dissonance” created in her mind by what she had witnessed, and by recounting her experiences to a New England journalist that very weekend, that she felt compelled to bring it all out in the open at her daughter’s wedding rehearsal. 

I contacted Woody Woodland the next day, on July 29th, and he did recall Patricia Krueger, and remembered talking to her about the events she witnessed at Bethesda Naval Hospital the night of JFK’s autopsy.  He also recalled that Patrica Krueger served as a driver for the Pat Buchanan presidential campaign in 1992, which is how he met her.  Woody stands by the accuracy of what he wrote in his 1992 article (titled “Bethesda Nurse,” in Network Publications), as recounted by author Vince Palamara on page 154 of his 2015 book, From Parkland to Bethesda.  Courtney spoke at length to Woody Woodland the next day, July 30th, and that conversation jogged both of their memories.  They both jointly recalled that Woody Woodland, who was then (as he still is now, at the age of 79) a minister, presided over her sister Jessica’s wedding the next day, on Saturday, which would explain why he was present at the wedding rehearsal on Friday night, when her mother spoke publicly about the events she witnessed at Bethesda Naval Hospital on 11/22/63.  Woody confirmed to me after talking to Courtney that he did indeed preside over the wedding of Patricia Krueger’s daughter, Jessica, that weekend.  Unfortunately, he does not today have a tape recording of his discussion with Patricia Krueger about what she witnessed at Bethesda, because he did not conduct a formal, sit-down interview with her in his office; he learned about the events she witnessed at Bethesda that weekend in the midst of his ministerial duties, and simply took detailed notes during their discussion.  He published his article that same month, in March of 1992.

My assessment at this writing is that there is much more to the “Bethesda nurse” story than was written about by Woody Woodland in 1992—Patricia DeSando may well have accompanied the shipping casket from the Officer’s Club parking lot where it was delivered by the helicopter (according to Navy corpsman Paul O’Connor) to the morgue itself, and she may even have seen JFK’s head wounds shortly after his body arrived and the shipping casket was opened; she may also have witnessed some kind of transfer of his body later that night, in the “long hallway.”  Yes, I can assure you that not knowing the full details now, in 2025, is indeed frustrating.  The fact that Patricia DeSando was told ahead of time that JFK’s body would be arriving by helicopter, and then witnessed it arrive and saw it offloaded by men in trench coats, SUGGESTS that someone may have been preparing her for some particular role that night.  I can’t forget the broken background chatter recorded on the Air Force One tapes—as revealed in my documentary “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries, Revisited”—specifically, the voice that twice directed “have a nurse” there, and that the nurse should be  “ready for everything,” during the repeated talk about a “black Cadillac.”   It’s a spooky thing to listen to, in view of the above, because we now know for a certainty THAT A NURSE WAS THERE.

Should any of Courtney’s many brothers and sisters recall more details about what their mother recounted about events at Bethesda, I will certainly update this article, if and when that information becomes available.

IN CONCLUSION, I am simply content today to report to you that we now know that the Bethesda nurse who witnessed “a simple casket delivered by helicopter, and offloaded by men in trench coats” was one Patricia DeSando, and that I have been able to provide you with a snapshot taken of her as a Navy Ensign, circa 1963.  The “Bethesda nurse” was a witness to history, and her identity has now been positively verified, as well as what she looked like in uniform in 1963, thanks to the cooperation of her ex-husband John DeSando, and her eldest daughter, Courtney.

This article was originally published on Insidethearrb.livejournal.com.

The post Bethesda ‘Mystery Nurse’ on 11/22/63 Now Positively Identified appeared first on LewRockwell.

Some topics are too easy, so I avoid them.

I like to discuss things that require me to exercise the ol’ melon.

But once in a while I have no choice.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has a new book called Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy.

So the president of a national teachers’ union characterizes her opponents as “fascists.” Terrific.

I think dismantling a national education bureaucracy and turning authority over to localities might be something like the opposite of fascism. I wonder what ol’ Randi has to say about that. Probably nothing.

According to the book description, “Attacks on teachers are part of a larger, darker agenda — to undermine democracy, opportunity, and public education as we know it. After the Trump administration declared its intention to dismantle the Department of Education, that alarm became undeniable.”

When the Department of Education — an institution we got by just fine without for over 80 percent of our history — was proposed in 1979, the American Federation of Teachers itself opposed it, as did Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), who said we would thereby “risk the politicization of education itself.” The New York Times and the Washington Post, those bastions of fascism, ran editorials against it.

You already know what Randi’s book says: fascists hate knowledge and opportunity, so they hate teachers.

If the public were educated, the argument goes, the people would never fall for demagogues (at least not the kind of demagogues Randi dislikes).

They would be informed!

That’s a laugh. American schoolchildren emerge from high school as propagandized zombies, with the official version of every historical event seared into their heads.

Actually, scratch that. The brightest ones emerge with the official narrative in their heads. The rest know nothing at all.

Bryan Caplan, in his provocatively titled The Case Against Education, goes into much detail about how little Americans know about the most basic things, even after thirteen years of daily instruction.

For example:

Here are a few of the questions that American adults were asked not long ago, along with the possible answers (the correct answer will be in bold). Then I’ll share two figures: the percentage who got the correct answer, and the percentage who really knew the answer (in other words, correcting to account for people who got the question right simply by guessing).

(1) Which of the following is not protected by the Bill of Rights?
Freedom of speech
Trial by jury
The right to bear arms
The right to vote

39% got the correct answer; 21% really knew the answer

(2) Which of the following events came before the Declaration of Independence?
Foundation of Jamestown, Virginia
The Civil War
The Emancipation Proclamation
The War of 1812

49%, 26%

(3) The Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits
Prayer in public school
Discrimination based on race, sex, or religion
The ownership of guns by private individuals
Establishing an official religion for the United States
The president from vetoing a line item in a spending bill

26%, 8%

The questions continue, but you get the idea.

The vast majority of American adults are not even entitled to an opinion on major issues in American life.

Note also that Randi thinks we “fascists” oppose “opportunity.” This from a woman whose system does zero to prepare students for the world in 2025.

We hear nonstop complaints about young people that the deck is stacked against them, everything is too expensive, they can’t get a break, etc.

What has Randi done, exactly, to help them navigate that?

Never pay for a book again: TomsFreeBooks.com

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Recently, I wrote an article about the adulterous Coldplay couple caught on the kiss-cam, and I concluded my piece with some thoughts about the very public General Judgement that will occur when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead:

Whatever happens to the couple from now on, the justice and mercy afforded them in their moment (or lifetime) of exposure is similar to—and yet nothing approaching—the mercy and justice we will all face, together, at the General Judgement at the end of time, when every one of our sins will be exposed, with perfect clarity, to all others.…

Now, I expected that lukewarm or poorly catechized Catholics would be learning something new about this final judgement that will take place at the consummation of the world, but I was surprised to find that even some faithful Catholics are unaware of how things will go down.

For example, one woman stated with worry on my Facebook page: “I thought the sacrament of reconciliation actually blots out our sins and they are remembered no more (Please Lord).” Another was stunned: “Hold up…wait…what? Our sins will be seen by all? How? Where is this taught?” And still another confused commenter: “I thought the ones we confessed were not seen? Or did I misunderstand?”

To clear up the confusion, let’s look more closely at Church teaching.

It is true that in the course of the final, public judgement, presided over by Christ the King, every one of our sins—in thought, word, and deed—will be revealed to every other person who has ever been created. Yes, this even includes the sins that have been confessed and forgiven in a sacramental confession. While we can rest assured that each of those absolved sins are completely forgiven and no longer offend God, they will be seen two more times: first, at our particular judgement, which takes place at the moment of our death; and, second, at the General (or Final) Judgement at the end of time, when the old Heaven and Earth pass away, the universe is renewed, and the Kingdom of God is fulfilled. The first judgement by Christ the King is private and individual; the second is public and universal.

If this is shocking news to you, please don’t freak out; keep reading to understand why—if you are among the saved—you will not feel despair, shame, or humiliation when the Lord reveals all to all.

First let’s go to some familiar Scripture verses on this. Jesus tells us plainly and repeatedly that everything secret will ultimately be exposed: “For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light” (Luke 8:17).

There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops. (Luke 12:2-3)

St. Paul echoes this truth when he writes to the faithful of Corinth, instructing them not to make judgements “until the appointed time, until the Lord comes [again], for he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will manifest the motives of our hearts” (1 Corinthians 4:5).

And, in St. John’s apocalypse (which translates to “a lifting of the veil”), he sees in the vision “the dead, the great and the lowly, standing before the throne, and scrolls were opened…. All the dead were judged according to their deeds” (Revelation 20:12-13).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church confirms all of the above when addressing the Last Day: “Then will the conduct of each one and the secrets of hearts be brought to light” (678).

In the presence of Christ, who is Truth itself, the truth of each man’s relationship with God will be laid bare. The Last Judgement will reveal even to its furthest consequences the good each person has done or failed to do during his earthly life. (1039)

The Baltimore Catechism teaches the same: “Every deliberate thought, word, deed, and omission of every person’s entire life will be manifested at the general judgement. The Lord Christ will be the judge” (No. 3, Lesson 14, 180).

In addition to Scripture and catechisms, the saints and theologians throughout the centuries have repeated the teaching on the General Judgement, including St. Bonaventure:

At the time of the judgement to come, when God is to weigh the secrets of hearts, fire will precede the arrival of the Judge; angels will be sent with trumpets to gather the elect from the four winds of heaven; all those who lie in their tombs will rise through the power of God’s command, and will stand before his judgement seat. Then the things hidden in darkness will be brought to light, and the counsels of hearts will be made manifest, and the scrolls of men’s consciences will be unrolled, and that scroll itself will be opened which is called the Book of Life. Thus, together and in a single flash, all the secrets of all men will be revealed to all with such clear certainty that, before the evidence of Truth testifying in the Person of Christ and corroborated by the testimony of every separate conscience, not a single path will be left open for denial or defense, for excuse or evasion, but every man will then receive according to his deeds…

Fr. Charles Arminjon, in his book The End of the Present World (the reading of which St. Thérèse called “one of the greatest graces of my life”), described it this way:

[This] judgement is called universal, because it will cover every crime and offense…. In the clarity of the light of God, all the crimes, public and secret, that have been committed in every latitude and in every age, will be seen clearly and in detail. The whole life of each human being will be laid bare. No circumstance will be omitted: no action, word, or desire will remain unknown. (p. 102)

And the Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that the final judgement “will embrace all works, good or bad, forgiven as well as unforgiven sins, every idle word, every secret thought.”

For those who have already died and been individually judged—whether that was days, years, centuries, or millennia before the Second Coming of Christ—the communal display of every thought, word, and deed, and the pronouncement of their sentence (saved or damned) will be identical to that of their previous particular judgement. The only difference is in the final judgement’s public nature. Because man is a social creature, the satisfaction of a social judgement conducted before all is fitting and just.

At that last divine tribunal, every awestruck and trembling soul, with all the choirs of angels and legions of demons on hand, will witness the unveiling and understand the final meaning of all that came before. This consummation of the world will be the Lord’s definitive word and will accomplish three main things.

Read the Whole Article

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This paper was written to give the reader a snap shot of money, real and imagined.

Our Constitution requires that we use real money, which is Gold and Silver. These have the required characteristics for real money: 1…medium of exchange,2…measure of value, and 3…store of value.

Our Fiat Dollars don’t comply with the Constitution  money” is decreed by authority, with no physical backing.) Which is why we have suffered inflation and the decline in relative value of fiat dollars for almost 100 years. It certainly is no store of value Congress just passed the Genius Act that authorized the issue of Fiat. Stablecoins which is another form of the Fiat dollar and redeemable on a one to one basis with the Fiat dollar. It is a plan to extend the life of the Fiat dollar. I think it will have an opposite effect and reduce value of Stablecoins and the Fiat Dollar.

To grow an economy, you must spend less than you produce, and new money can’t exceed production of goods and services. During my lifetime and for thousands of years, the value of gold has been relatively stable. But the price of gold in fiat dollars has increased from $35 to $3,400 an ounce in 90 years.

Our corrupt Congress refuses to use Constitutional real money, gold and silver, because they can’t print it to finance wars for profit and Foreign Aid, nor use it to impoverish the people with various schemes. The primary beneficiaries of corruption are the Parasitic Super-Rich Ruling Class and bureaucrats of the Administrative State functioning as a Criminal Enterprise within government.

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is in the planning stages by the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank, and, if enacted, is a valid reason for revolution. In simple terms, CBDC would exist in digital form only; there would be no pocket cash, government would know where you spent money, government could control how you spent money, and could cut off your ability to spend money at any time. It would control your every move. Freedom would be a memory and impossible. CBDC represents total tyranny with absolute control of the people. CBDC could only be terminated by revolution. So stop it now.

Crypto Currencies like Bitcoin, Cardano and countless others remind me of The Dutch Tulip Mania in 1657. Prices rose precipitously. The best Tulip Bulbs sold for up to $750,000 at today’s prices. The bottom shortly dropped out, and many people were ruined. Tulips, like  Crypto Currencies, don’t have the required characteristics  of money, and due to its format, are subject to all kinds of unknown problems.

President Trump has established a Strategic Reserve for Bitcoin. This is a dangerous move because it is not money, and the Constitution only recognizes gold and silver as money. As an economist, I can foresee some serious shenanigans on the part of players.

The Federal Reserve Bank is privately-owned and Unconstitutional for good reason. It is a scam on the people of the United States. The money it prints is Fiat. Without the Federal Reserve Bank printing money out of thin air, wars for profit would not be possible and we would not have a $37 Trillion deficit. The Bank causes booms and busts which would not occur as often, if at all, with Constitutional money, gold and silver.

Money is the lifeblood of an Economy, and those who control money control the country, regardless of who is elected. The Federal Reserve Bank is privately-owned  and responsible for ups and downs in the Economy. If gold and silver was used rather than fiat dollars, things would be more stable without inflation.

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International Man: Recently, we’ve seen the “Yellow Peril” escalate across media and politics. What’s your take on the sentiment towards China?

Doug Casey: There’s always been a fear of China, perhaps starting with the immigration of laborers to California in the 1860s, then Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu novels. It’s logical enough. China has always seemed alien to Americans—their language, their script, their clothing style, and their congregating together in Chinatowns. They were painted as inscrutable and devious. Mao’s Communist ideology and the Korean War, which was really a war between the U.S. and China, certainly didn’t help.

Now China’s newfound prosperity is seen as a threat. China, however, isn’t the problem; it’s the U.S. government’s attitude towards China, combined with visible U.S. decline, while China is advancing rapidly on every front. So, the U.S. Government is trying to suppress China and throw up roadblocks to its progress with sanctions and tariffs, while denying it imports and trying to pen it up militarily. As with Russia, the U.S. is provoking them on many fronts.

However, the current U.S. policy is not only doomed to failure, but is actively counterproductive.

International Man: Is China truly an existential threat to the U.S., economically, militarily, or ideologically, or is it just a manufactured enemy?

Doug Casey: China’s huge, with 1.3 billion people. And over the last 40 years, it has advanced from a poverty-stricken, even primitive, country to a very prosperous one. They’ve risen from nowhere to the top rung economically, scientifically, and militarily.

Why? Because Deng Xiaoping radically altered their economic system in 1980, by dumping communism for capitalism, while maintaining the charade that China was still Communist. Although it’s still called Communist China, the country is totally different from what it was in the days of Mao. It’s no longer communist. It’s simply an authoritarian country—not so different from most others in the world at this point. The Communist Party is nothing but a control mechanism, essentially a scam inuring to the sole benefit of its members.

Communism is an economic system where the State owns and controls everything. China is actually a model of state capitalism, also known as fascism, a marriage of the State and corporate interests. The fact is that (this will come as a shock to many) China is more free-market-oriented than most of the world’s countries. That’s certainly true of Europe these days. In fact, the Europeans are even talking about imitating China’s more regressive policies.

Will China keep growing at the rate they have been? It’s possible, but unlikely. For one thing, their government is retreating from the near laissez-faire policies that made them prosperous. For another, the huge savings of the average Chinese have been malinvested by their banks due to political pressures, with potentially catastrophic consequences. For another, their culture appears to have become less hard-working, softer, and more corrupt.

Are they a military threat? They’re approaching parity now, and at the rate they’re accelerating, they could be way ahead in a decade. But that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily a threat. That’s because the days of invading other nations to steal the gold, the artwork, and enslave the population are long gone. That’s apart from the fact that we don’t know what the nature of the next war will be. In other words, it’s foolish of Trump to bankrupt the U.S. on speculative military spending, while provoking the Chinese.

Do they want to start a nuclear war with the U.S.? No, they have nothing to gain from that. Can they invade the U.S.? No, that’s almost impossible to do. The U.S., not China, is the problem. It can see China rising rapidly while it’s declining, and may decide to strike while it still has the balance of power. The U.S. may use the internecine dispute between Beijing and Taipei, which is none of our business, as an excuse for starting a war.

The U.S. government is increasingly bankrupt. War power is built on economic power, and the U.S. government is not only bankrupt but becoming more so with Trump’s 20% increase in military spending. Meanwhile, it’s falling behind China in science and technology, which, like the military, depends on economic strength. I’m afraid the U.S. is like Wylie Coyote, who thinks he’s on firm ground chasing a Chinese Roadrunner, while he’s walking on air.

China is a non-threat. The problem is the U.S. itself; it’s collapsing from within and blaming China for its own problems.

International Man: During the previous Trump presidency, Democrats painted Russia as an omnipresent threat, almost cartoonishly so. Are Republicans now doing the same with China—and if so, why do both parties need an external boogeyman?

Doug Casey: Yes. After Russia, China is the Devil of the Month. Iran, Mexico, India, and maybe Turkey can join the party as needed. It’s starting to look like the U.S. against the rest of the world. It’s not just Trump, with his unpredictable whims and schizophrenic policy decisions. It’s the lack of any moral core in the U.S., which no longer stands for any principles. The U.S. Government is like a rickety, overly complex Rube Goldberg machine. The Deep Staters who control it want to cannibalize its parts as the thing comes unglued.

This is the nature of the State as an entity. The State, government, doesn’t create anything and never has. Its main activity throughout history has been war and conquest. It’s quite correct to say that war is the health of the State.

The kind of people who are drawn to government aren’t noble altruists. They’re mainly interested in building their personal wealth and power. And since the State is their playpen, they naturally want to make it a bigger playpen.

Both the Republican and the Democratic parties are equally guilty, and there’s no longer much difference between them.

What’s true of both parties is that, barring the senility of a Joe or dissipation on the scale of a Hunter, their leaders all become incredibly rich. The Clintons are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The Obamas are probably worth $100 million. And their minions get even richer on government spending, as do well-positioned foreigners like Zelensky, who’s gone from being a second-rate actor to being a billionaire. As he has his sycophants.

International Man: What’s really going on behind this aggressive posture toward China? Is it trade, currency, tech dominance, or perhaps something deeper—like fear of a multipolar world?

Doug Casey: You might recall that Japan was the bogeyman before China. In the 80s, it seemed like they were going to take over the world. Now, China is being promoted as a dangerous threat. The fact is that they produce loads of consumer goods cheaper and better than in the U.S. The solution is not to bash China, but to free American entrepreneurs the way Deng freed Chinese entrepreneurs.

I don’t see them as a threat. I’d like to see the whole world be as prosperous as China. Will the Chinese currency, the yuan, replace the U.S. dollar? Unlikely. What’s certain is that the dollar is dying. Again, the problem isn’t the Chinese. The dollar needs to be replaced because it’s being inflated out of existence. The dollar, not soybeans or aircraft, is our major export these days. Of course, everyone wants to dump it. Instead of solving the problem, Trump prefers to threaten anybody who wants to dump dollars.

International Man: You’ve spoken about the collapse of empires and the cycles of history. Where are we now, and what role does the China narrative play in the story of America’s decline?

Doug Casey: The best way to avoid what’s known as “the fate of empires” is simply not to become an empire. That’s the real problem. The U.S. has turned from a country whose population was cohesive because they shared principles and traditions, into a multicultural domestic empire. And it’s an international empire too, with approximately 800 military bases in over 100 countries around the world. The U.S. has changed from a loosely governed middle-class republic into an empire with an ever more powerful executive.

And despite what passes for military power, with its gold-plated weapons and 800 bases, the U.S. really doesn’t have any allies. It only has parasitic client states.

None of this is China’s fault. But since the U.S. has become a danger to the rest of the world, you can expect other countries to take advantage of its problems.

Other countries still fear the U.S., but they no longer respect it.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

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Of course it’s all about Alaska. Here’s what’s in play. But it’s the shadowplay that’s even more exciting.

Of course it’s all about Alaska. Here’s what’s in play. But it’s the shadowplay that’s even more exciting.

Across the world, for those who grew up in the Cold War Swingin’ Sixties, the temptation is irresistible to cast Donald Trump as Goldfinger  (but who would play Oddjob? Hegseth?)

Goldfinger, after all, is a powerful, ruthless gambler. His 21st century motto would be “Obliterate & Plunder”. In fact, sequentially, an orgy of obliteratin’ and plunderin’ if the occasions present themselves. Everything subjected to the search for the Golden Deal. My way. The only way.

Yet now it’s possible that Goldfinger may have met its appropriate – collective – match.

This is what happened the last time a summit took place in Alaska, in this particular case US-China in a shabby hotel in Anchorage. That shook the geopolitical chessboard to the core. Trump-Putin might – but only under quite specific conditions.

There’s only one realistic, optimal endgame for Alaska: a joint declaration of intent, pointing to a follow-up, as in the next meeting to be held in Russian territory. A sort of starter for the long and winding road towards a real reset of US-Russia relations, including a possible settlement in the proxy war in Ukraine.

Essentially, they may agree to keep talking. Yet what really matters is what may be implied by the promise: Goldfinger refrains from imposing secondary sanctions on Russia’s partners.

That will constitute a tremendous BRICS victory (Iran excluded. Actually, two strategic allies of Russia would be excluded: Iran and the DPRK).

BRICS are actively building a coalition to stare down Goldfinger. The key players are Bear, Dragon, Toucan and Elephant – all four original founders of BRIC. Nightingale should be added later, as it is linked via geopolitical/geoeconomic strategic partnerships with Bear, Dragon and Elephant.

When it comes to the Alaska nitty gritty, the top Bear needs to consider all the ramifications of what is an imperative for the Russian General Staff and the vast intel apparatus in Moscow: unless Goldfinger minions stop weaponizing and providing precious intel to Ukraine is all its forms, the mythic “ceasefire” that Goldfinger and the pack of toothless chihuahuas in Europe desperately want will be just an intermission to allow Ukraine to rearm to the hilt.

That’s a tough call for the top Bear: he has to placate his domestic, radical critics who blast him for sitting down with the enemy, and at the same time he must deliver the goods to his under-siege BRICS allies.

BRICS counteract Goldfinger’s Plunder tactics

Bear, Dragon, Toucan and Elephant are involved in breathless telephone diplomacy to articulate their collective response to Goldfinger’s Tariff/Plunder drive.

Examples. Modi on Brazil: “A strong, people-centric partnership between Global South nations benefits everyone.”

Lula on India: “Brazil and India are, so far, the two most affected countries. We reaffirmed the importance of defending multilateralism and the need to address the challenges of the current situation.”

Xi to Lula: China backs Brazil to defend its national sovereignty; BRICS is “a key platform for building consensus in the Global South.”

Goldfinger’s Tariff Plunder works in several ways.

On India: because New Delhi refuses to open its vast agricultural market to tariff-free Made in USA imports (45% of India’s population directly depends on agriculture); and because India buys Russian oil at much-needed discount prices.

On Brazil: because the ultimate target is regime change and free reign to plunder Brazil’s natural wealth.

So far, Goldfinger’s Plunder antics have been stellar when it comes to engineering their own blowback: from allienating even allies – see abject European submission – to de facto burying multilateral trade, not to mention international law.

Example: just a few hours before the tariff “pause” on Made in China products was about to expire, Goldfinger signed an executive order extending the deadline for another 90 days. Translation: TACO, all over again. If the tariff “pause” went through, the economy of the $37 trillion-indebted “indispensable nation” would be in even more dire straits.

Then there’s Goldfinger’s possible Arctic gameplay, already examined here. There’s virtually no evidence Russia would allow the US to participate in the development of the Arctic-wide Northern Sea Route (NSR), or Arctic Silk Road in Chinese terminology.

The role of Russia’s Atomflot – 11 nuclear icebreakers, 9 of them in action, 2 being built, including Project 10510 Rossiya, a behemoth capable of navigating anywhere in the Arctic anytime – in parallel with Russia’s astonishing arsenal of new weapons systems, these are absolutely key variables on any serious discussion on any possible US-Russia partnership post-Alaska.

Goldfinger’s obsession to cage Nightingale

Now let’s look at Nightingale – an immensely complex case. Goldfinger has totally embarked on a multi-track maximum pressure/tension remix against Iran: forcing Hezbollah to disarm; forcing the collapse of Lebanon into factional war; legitimizing the “al-Qaeda R Us” dismemberment of Syria; forcing snapback UN-backed sanctions on Tehran.

Then came the Goldfinger-hailed “historic peace summit” with Azerbaijan’s Aliyev and Armenia’s Pashinyan.

Well, what Baku and Yerevan really signed under Goldfinger’s watchful eye is not a peace deal: it’s a mere memorandum of understanding (MOU).

Their Joint Declaration is extremely vague – and non-binding. What is promised is a “let’s keep talking” set up: “We acknowledged the need to continue further actions to achieve the signing and ultimate ratification of the [Peace] Agreement.”

It remains to be seen what happens with the much-ballyhooed 99-year American grip on the Zangezur corridor – trimphally named Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) – complete with grabbing 40% of its revenues (Armenia would get only 30%) and placing 1,000 American mercenaries to patrol Armenian territory, right south of Nightingale’s borders.

The big story is of course Goldfinger eager to snatch at least one connectivity corridor in southern Eurasia – in the strategic south Caucasus, using a gangster-minded MI6 asset (Aliyev) and a national traitor (meek Pashinyan), which will be discarded and/or sweetened in due time. Crucially, NATO membership was offered to both Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Deep State’s game plan is total control: what really matters is the opening to establish a NATO corridor all the way to the Caspian.

There’s no way Nightingale will let that happen, not to mention Bear and Dragon: it would mean a direct NATO threat not only to the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), which unites three BRICS (Russia, Iran, India) and crosses the Caspian, but also the Chinese Silk Roads, whose corridors traverse Iran with possible branch outs to the Caucasus.

Nightingale has already made it quite clear it will not allow any kind of change of status for the Zangezur corridor. And it has the necessary missile arsenal to back it up. IRGC Deputy Commander Yadollah Javani: Iran “will not allow an American corridor on its border.”

Wherever it comes from, Goldinger or the Deep State, the pressure by the Empire of Chaos is relentless. There will be no respite in the Hybrid – and otherwise – Wars on BRICS, especially on the new Primakov triangle (“RIC” as in Russia, Iran, China).

Alaska in principle should be about a reset of all US-Russia security matters – geopolitical, commercial, military, with Ukraine being just a subset. That will be a major stretch. It’s hard to imagine Putin being able to impress on Trump, on the same table, the finer points of NATO/US ceaseless plots to undermine, harass and destabilize Russia.

The most probable outcome is that the proxy war – and the SMO – will keep rollin’ on, but with the Deep State making extra bundles of euros by selling tons of weapons for NATO to dispatch to Kiev. But even without the promise of a new, serious, US-Russia security architecture, BRICS may still stand a chance to snatch a victory out of Goldfinger’s latest photo op.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

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“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”—H.L. Mencken

Let’s not mince words: every American should be alarmed by President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tactics, theatrics and threats.

What is unfolding in the nation’s capital is a hostile takeover of our constitutional republic.

This is no longer about partisan politics, wag-the-dog distractions from the Epstein debacle, or even genuine national security concerns.

This is martial law disguised as law-and-order—the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook.

We have been traveling this slippery slope toward a police state for some time, but under Trump 2.0, the descent towards outright tyranny is accelerating.

Building on the expanded emergency powers he has claimed to wage war on immigration, wokeness and the economy, Trump is taking aim at yet another so-called “crisis”—this time, by waging war on crime in the nation’s capital, despite the fact that crime is at a 30-year low.

Under the guise of “restoring order” and “cleaning up” the streets, Trump has called in the National Guard, dispatched the FBI, and federalized the local police in order to take control of Washington, D.C.

This is how the Emergency State operates in the open.

A real but manageable problem—crime, homelessness, public disorder—is inflated into an existential threat.

Fear is manufactured, then exploited to seize more power. (In many cases, the “facts” fueling these crackdowns come directly from the president’s own disinformation machine—manufacturing the perception of danger to justify the expansion of control.)

Whether the trigger is terrorism, civil unrest, economic instability, or public health, the aim remains the same: expand the reach of federal authority, justify more militarized policing, and condition the public to accept the suspension of rights in the name of national security.

Once these powers are taken, they are never willingly relinquished.

Each time, Trump pushes the envelope a little, relying on military optics meant to intimidate.

For instance, on April 28, 2025, Trump signed an Executive Order authorizing mass round-ups of “violent criminals” and “gang members,” empowering federal agencies and military support for domestic law enforcement.

In June, Trump deployed the National Guard to California to quell protests over mass immigration arrests, treating political dissent as a security threat. A bench trial is currently underway to determine if Trump’s actions violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from being used as a domestic police force.

By midsummer, a mental health detention directive allowed involuntary commitments of the homeless under “public health” grounds.

By August, Trump was deploying FBI agents and the National Guard into the nation’s capital in order to clear homeless encampments because the president says the city is “dirty” and “dangerous.”

At each stage, the scope of who could be targeted by these executive orders and emergency power operations grows wider.

These are not isolated decisions; they are part of a coordinated playbook for bringing local jurisdictions under direct federal control, one crisis at a time.

This is mission creep in action—by breaking the police state’s hostile takeover of the country and our Constitution into a series off incremental moves, the administration sidesteps the broad public backlash that a single, sweeping declaration of martial law would provoke.

Once the federal government claims the authority to override local control, put boots on the ground, and target a designated “dangerous class,” that authority inevitably broadens to sweep in new targets. What begins by targeting violent criminals quickly expands to hardworking immigrants, then the homeless.

Tomorrow those targeted could be protesters, journalists, or anyone deemed undesirable.

These executive orders constitute a war on the American people without a formal declaration of war. Once the definitions of “criminal,” “threat,” and “danger” are used interchangeably to advance political needs, there is no limit to who can be targeted next.

What begins with a narrow claim of emergency power is quickly normalized and made permanent.

We have seen this pattern before.

After 9/11, the Patriot Act’s surveillance powers—initially aimed at foreign terrorists—expanded to include mass monitoring of American citizens. The Transportation Security Administration began as an airport screening agency and now conducts random searches at train stations and sporting events. Predictive policing was sold as a way to stop violent crime, but it is now used to flag political activists and monitor protests.

In each case, a temporary, targeted security measure grew into a permanent tool of control.

The difference today is that the slope has become steeper and the slide faster. What once took years to creep into everyday life now happens in a matter of months.

Four months is all it took for the police state to pivot from “rounding up violent criminals” to patrolling the streets of the capital and forcibly removing the unhoused.

Today, the slope runs from undocumented immigrant sweeps to homeless sweeps.

Tomorrow, it could run from “restoring order” to suppressing lawful dissent in the same span of time.

This is the logical outcome of a formula that has been refined over decades: identify or invent a threat, stoke public fear, expand executive power to “solve” it, normalize the new level of control, then repeat with a broader definition of “threat.”

Each time the public accepts an expansion of authority in the name of security, the next expansion comes faster and goes further.

The dictatorial hunger for power, as Harvard’s Laurence Tribe has observed, is insatiable.

Every crisis becomes a test: of our willingness to let the government sidestep the Constitution, of our tolerance for militarized “solutions” to social problems, of whether the public will resist or comply, of whether those in authority can get away with moving the line yet again.

For decades—from Pearl Harbor to the Red Scare, from 9/11 to the pandemic lockdowns—we have failed that test. Each time, the line moves a little further, the slope gets a little slicker, and the public grows more accustomed to life under occupation.

The players change—Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and now Trump again—but the game remains the same: permanent crisis management, permanent power grabs, permanent erosion of liberty.

This is how constitutional limits die—not in one dramatic coup, but in a series of incremental “emergencies” that accustom us to living under permanent federal occupation.

By that measure, the takeover of Washington, D.C., is a chilling case study.

The issue is not whether Trump can seize control of DC. Under section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, the president may do so for 48 hours without congressional approval and up to 30 days with notice to Congress.

It’s worth noting that this provision has never been invoked before, and certainly not for the purpose of cleaning up squalor. The law was envisioned for truly extraordinary crises—natural disasters, large-scale riots—not as a political tool for executive housecleaning.

So the question we must ask as the symbolic heart of the republic is transformed into a constitution-free zone is: Why? Why now—when crime is at its lowest level in three decades? And where do we go from here?

The federal takeover of Washington, D.C., is not the end of that slippery slope. It is merely the latest drop, and nothing in our present political climate suggests it will be the last.

The police state will always need another manufactured crisis.

Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters”: the government has been anticipating and preparing for such crises for years now.

As David C. Unger writes for the New York Times: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management: to policing the planet and fighting preventative wars of ideological containment, usually on terrain chosen by, and favorable to, our enemies. Limited government and constitutional accountability have been shouldered aside by the kind of imperial presidency our constitutional system was explicitly designed to prevent.”

Given the rate at which the government keeps devising new ways to establish itself as the “solution” to all of our worldly problems at taxpayer expense, each subsequent crisis ushers in ever larger expansions of government power and fewer individual liberties.

Once the government acquires authoritarian powers—to spy, surveil, militarize police, seize funds, wage endless wars, censor speech, detain without due process, etc.—it does not willingly relinquish them.

The lesson for the ages is this: once any government is allowed to overreach and expand its powers, it’s almost impossible to put the genie back in the bottle.

History bears this out: as government expands, liberty contracts.

If the president can federalize the policing of the capital, override local control, and treat entire populations as security threats without meaningful resistance from Congress, the courts, or the public, then there is nothing to stop that same template from being applied to any city in America in the name of “security.”

What is happening in Washington today will be the model for what happens nationwide tomorrow.

Case in point: at Trump’s direction, the Pentagon—the military branch of the government—is looking to establish a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force,” made up of National Guard troops kept on standby at all times, which could be rapidly deployed to American cities “facing protests or other unrest.”

Indeed, Trump has already hinted that he plans to target Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Oakland next.

This is straight out of the playbook used in that Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command.

According to “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” the U.S. military plans to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems. What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.

Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.

For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.

What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own making, and that “we the people” would become enemy #1.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” are already enemies of the state.

If we do not stop this dangerous trajectory now, the question will not be whether martial law comes to your city—it will be when, under what pretext, and whether we will have the courage and the wherewithal to resist.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

The post The Police State Has a New Playbook: Martial Law, One City at a Time appeared first on LewRockwell.

Lots of misinformation is being spread about President Donald Trump’s decision to federalize law enforcement in Washington, D.C.  Much of it is the usual Trump Derangement Syndrome: “fascist” tendencies toward “authoritarianism” at the expense of “black and brown” people because of DJT’s “racism” and desire to bury the Epstein scandal.  There’s no “emergency” justifying the takeover.  The “solution” is to do what Democrats failed to do for decades: Make DC the 51st state so it need not undergo such “humiliation.”

Where to start?

My point of departure is political.  Washington is the “federal city.”  The Constitution is explicit.  Congress has exclusive jurisdiction over “the district constituting the seat of government.”

Washington was a political compromise — neutral territory between North and South, chosen as an uninhabited swamp between Maryland and Virginia (and conveniently upriver from George Washington’s Mount Vernon).  It was supposed to be apolitical.  Democrats want to make it hyper-political.

The reaction to the Trump federalization of D.C. law enforcement is to claim that “this proves we should have made D.C. a state!”  Well, no it doesn’t.  All it proves is your naked political ambitions to guarantee the left two senators and a bunch of congressmen.

There’s a lot of jabber about “home rule.”  There are two largely unmentioned facts about “home rule.”  First, it is an historical anomaly.  Nobody talked about D.C. “home rule” until 1974.  For nearly 185 years of the Republic, D.C. functioned under its constitutional identity as the “federal district.”  And don’t tell me that the string of illustrious nobodies leading D.C. for the past 50 years — including such a distinguished figure as Mayor Marion Barry, convicted for possession and use of crack cocaine — proves the merits of “home rule.”  It arguably demonstrates the opposite.

Second, whatever “home rule” D.C. has is whatever Congress gives it.  Its government has the powers Congress delegates — no more, no less.  It exists at the sufferance of Congress — i.e., the collective decision of the people of the United States (as the Constitution intended).  So all these claims about “denying home rule” are so much political smoke.

Congressional Democrats have been trying to hike Washington’s political clout for decades.  Back in the days of “home rule,” the Democrat Congress even thought of giving D.C. congressional seats as if it were a state.  Such a constitutional amendment was even proposed in 1978.  It passed the Senate with the bare minimum of votes and died in ratification, having been approved by only 16 (mostly blue) of the required 38 states.

Democrats learned their lesson: A constitutional amendment to give D.C. congressional seats would never be ratified, because small (especially small red) states were not going to lose seats to the District.  They understood the difference between a state and a district.  That’s when liberals switched to their “statehood” tactic — it avoids needing approval from those pesky states!

I’d argue that Congress cannot constitutionally make D.C. a “state.”  What would be the “State of Columbia” is land given by Maryland to create “the district constituting the seat of government of the United States.”  That bequest was for a specific purpose.  If Congress does not want to administer all that land, it cannot invent a new state.  The proper response would be to return the land to Maryland.  There’s precedent for that: Congress in the 19th century gave back the land Virginia had ceded for the capital, which is today’s Arlington.

That does not amplify Democrat political power in Congress, while it introduces a new squabble into very blue Maryland’s Democrat politics: the boys of Baltimore and Annapolis would now have to share power with the Washington crowd.

I make these points because, despite all the rhetoric about “home rule,” the truth is that Americans think of Washington first and foremost as our capital.  It is the nation’s capital, not the next oppressed victim stifled by the norms of the U.S. Constitution.  And as long as Americans as a whole regard Washington in a qualitatively different way from other places — as “our capital” — that aligns with the constitutional vision of a congressionally governed district and not the next blue political machine.

That leads me to my second point: crime.  Liberal apologists have fomented all types of excuses to claim that the president had no authority to federalize D.C. law enforcement, that it was discriminatory and diversionary, etc., etc.  Crime is supposedly on the way down.  Let’s talk.

In 2023, there were 274 murders in Washington, D.C.  That means one human being killed every 31 hours.  Every day and a half.

Senate Democrat whip Dick Durbin of Illinois claimed there’s no “emergency” justifying Trump’s action.  Does one dead human being every 31 hours not constitute an “emergency”?  In whose cosseted world?

Perhaps a murder every day and a half is “normal” or “statistically to be expected” in some people’s minds — but I suspect few of those holding that opinion have ever stood in front of the business end of a knife or gun.

A murder every day and a half is an emergency.  Maybe it’s not an emergency in Chicago or New York, but Washington is at root “the district constituting the seat of government of the United States,” and most Americans would think a murder every day and a half is an “emergency.”

Because Washington stands in a unique relationship with congressional and executive power, it is also appropriate that the national capital be a showcase of law and order, not the morass of “restorative justice” and the latest liberal pipe dreams of “criminal justice reform” that exacerbate crime.  Therein lies the real liberal objection: If Donald Trump can make an example out of Washington, it calls into question the “policing reform” and “criminal justice” agendas of crime-ridden major cities, potentially auguring political realignments there that liberals do not want to see.

Yes, the talking heads attacking Trump cited other cities as being more crime-ridden.  You do have a better chance getting murdered in Detroit than D.C.  But national tourism to Detroit hardly mirrors D.C., and most Americans don’t want to die in either.  So let’s stop the “lies, damn lies, and statistics” and address the reality of what’s behind this opposition: pursuing political ambition and defending failed policies.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post What’s Really Behind Opposition to Trump’s Move in DC? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Yesterday President Trump in his public statements validated my conclusion that Trump does not know what the Russian position is and that he is going to the meeting to find out what the “parameters” are and that he sees the meeting as a “feel-out meeting” to see whether the conflict in Ukraine can be ended.  

In other words, no solution is expected from the meeting for which no preparatory work has been done.  So what are the high-blown expectations for the meeting based on?  Why build up such expectations when there is no proposal on the table?  Where is the “acceptable” offer that Yury Ushakov found in the non-proposal that convinced Putin to go to Alaska?

Is the answer that the purpose of the meeting is to put Putin on the spot by creating expectations of success that cannot be achieved?  French President Macron said that Trump told him that he intends to “obtain a ceasefire in Ukraine during the meeting with Putin.” When Putin doesn’t agree to halt Russia’s successful offensive, is the plan to blame Putin for wrecking the chance for peace? Will this help weaken BRICS by Putin being blamed for secondary tariffs imposed on India, China, Brazil, South Africa?   (From Bloomberg today: Raising the stakes. Donald Trump warned he would impose “very severe consequences” if Vladimir Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire agreement, following a call with European leaders ahead of his meeting with the Russian president. But Tass reported that the two will hold a joint press conference after the talks. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Europe it’s “put up or shut up time” when it comes to sanctions on nations that buy Russian energy.)

That is what it looks like.  The Ukrainian front is collapsing.  A ceasefire would halt the Russian advance and give the Ukrainian force time to stabilize and reinforce its positions.  This is important to the West, because once Russia completes the task of driving the Ukrainian forces out of all of the territory that has been reincorporated into the Russian Federation, there is no land in Ukrainian hands for Trump to swap with Putin.

As I have reported a number of times, a land-swap is not one of the conditions on Putin’s list. What Putin means by “the root cause of the conflict” is Russia’s sense of insecurity with NATO and US nuclear missiles on Russia’s border.  

When the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles in Cuba as an offset to the nuclear missiles Washington had put in Turkey on the Soviet Union’s border, Washington was intensely upset.  Today the US has missiles on Russia’s border and the opportunity to have missile bases on Russia’s borders ranging from Finland to the South Caucus, which is a large multiplication of the one Soviet missile base in Cuba.

So if one base in Cuba made the US uncomfortable, imagine how uncomfortable Russia is with the prospect of nuclear missiles along the border for thousands of kilometers. 

American and European politicians and policymakers have not acknowledged that the root cause of the conflict is NATO on Russia’s border.  The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO and being added to the territory hosting US missile bases was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  

Trump’s land swap and ceasefire do not address Russia’s security problem.  The root cause of the conflict is Russia’s sense of insecurity. That can only be solved by getting NATO off of Russia’s borders.

This is the purpose of the mutual security agreement that Putin has been trying to negotiate for a number of years only to be given the cold shoulder as by the Biden regime during December 2021-February 2022.  

Ask yourselves if you think Trump is in a sufficiently powerful position to override both the neoconservative doctrine of US hegemony and the interest of the American military/security complex.  

As long as the Wolfowitz Doctrine holds, and it has not been repudiated by President Trump, the Secretary of State, or Congress, the US is committed to “preventing the rise of any country that can serve as a constraint on American unilateralism.”  As this is the stated commitment, how can NATO be removed from Russia’s border?

President Eisenhower warned Americans in 1961 that the rise of the Cold War with the Soviet Union prevented the demobilization of the American war machine that normally followed the end of war.  Instead, a powerful military/industrial complex has risen with roots in nearly every state, which gives it enormous power in Congress and among state governors. 

That was 64 years ago.  Since that time the power of the military/security complex has multiplied.  Is this institutionalized power willing to take the hit to its budget and power from a mutual security agreement with its principal enemy?

The questions I am asking are the determining questions.  Nothing else that is said matters.  Yet, these essential questions are not a part of the discussion in Washington, in Europe, or in the Kremlin.  It is as if none of the participants in a growing conflict that could be terminable for life on Earth have any idea of the consequences of their decisions.

Why suddenly did Trump who a couple of days before yesterday said he didn’t want to meet with Putin demand a meeting within the week when Trump doesn’t even know what the “parameters” are?  How can a serious meeting be held when a principal participant doesn’t even know what the opponent’s position is?

Why did Putin agree to such a meeting with zero preparatory work that exposes him to tremendous pressure to capitulate?  This represents the total failure of Putin’s advisors.  It indicates to the West that Russia is a weak defender of its interest. Perhaps more pressure will be all it takes to bring Russia in line with US hegemony.

If Trump goes into the meeting with this attitude, Putin’s choice will be to capitulate or to bring down more demonization on him and Russia for blocking peace.

It does look like Kirill Demitriev and Steve Witcoff, both globalists, have succeeded in setting up Putin and Russia.

What is on test in Alaska is Putin’s mettle.

The post Can Putin Pass the Test? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Greek geographer and historian Strabo told the famous story of Cleopatra committing suicide by holding an “asp”—i.e., Egyptian cobra—to her breast.

The “Death of Cleopatra” has been the subject of dozens of paintings, including the one by Guido Cagnacci that hangs in the Met.

Cobra venom is composed of a fascinating cocktail of toxic proteins, including the following:

• Three-finger toxins (3FTx):This is a dominant family of proteins in cobra venom, especially in elapids. They are neurotoxins that bind to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors at neuromuscular junctions, disrupting nerve signals and causing paralysis.
• Phospholipase A2 (PLA2):These enzymes contribute to various effects, including neurotoxicity, myotoxicity, and inflammation. They can also disrupt cell membranes and cause tissue damage.
• Snake venom metalloproteinases (SVMP):SVMPs can cause hemorrhaging by damaging blood vessels and disrupting blood clotting.
• Cytotoxins:These proteins are responsible for cell damage and death, leading to tissue necrosis.
• Other proteins:Cobra venom also contains enzymes like L-amino acid oxidase, serine proteases, and C-type lectins, as well as other bioactive peptides and molecules according to a study published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

If you are wondering how on earth all of these toxic proteins came about in snake venom, you’re not alone. It’s one of many millions of things in nature that we humans don’t really understand.

Cobra venom acts quickly on living cells and its deleterious effects are spectacular. However, as we are discovering, other proteins may act slowly and insidiously, gradually diminishing the health of the organism in a way that may be perceived as something akin to accelerated aging.

Scarcely a day goes by that I don’t receive the news of someone in my extended social network of friends in their forties and fifties being struck with a disease that we would normally expect to hit us in our seventies or eighties. In the last month I have received texts or calls about the following cases.

1). An old American ex-pat friend in Paris (53) developed excruciating chest pain and was diagnosed with myocarditis.

2). An old friend in London (43) detected a strange and rapidly growing mass in her rectus abdominis (“six pack” abdominal muscle). The NHS doctors with whom she has consulted suspect a sarcoma but can’t seem to find time to schedule a biopsy.

3). An old friend in New York (48) was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

All of the above received the COVID-19 vaccine.

This morning I read a new manuscript by N. Nathaniel Mead, Peter A. McCullough, Paul Marik, Nic Hulscher, et al titled Compound Adverse Effects of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination and Coronavirus Infection: A Convergence of Extensive Spike Protein Harms to the Human Body

It’s an astonishing fact only a small handful of senior academic doctors—Peter McCullough and Paul Marik being perhaps the most notable—are seriously investigating what has been done to the entire human race since 2020.

In recent years I have spoken with some of the wealthiest people in the country about what we are doing at the McCullough Foundation, and I often get the impression that they can’t quite bring themselves to believe the story that I tell them.

A few of them have themselves experienced rapidly accelerating cancer, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s since around the year 2021. When it comes to contemplating etiology, their doctors never say a word about those experimental gene therapy shots they received in 2021.

The most amazing thing of all is that our public health authorities still don’t want to talk about detecting and analyzing the foreign, toxic protein that has contaminated all of us, either through COVID-19 infection, vaccination with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, or a combination of both.

Strangely enough, a long established standard method for protein detection—a test called ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay)—can be used to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in a given sample.

And yet, no one in the NIH is even talking about using this and other tests being developed to conduct large population studies on the presence of spike protein and its correlation with a host of syndromes and clinical diseases.

As a true crime author, I have seen this story again and again. The easiest way to conceal a crime is to avoid investigating it. As long as you don’t find any evidence, you will not be obliged to conceal what you have discovered—at least not actively.

Don’t lie about it; just avoid looking into it. When suspicions arise—even grave suspicions—the strategy is simply to refuse to investigate and hope that people grow weary of worrying about the problem.

The trouble for the concealers is that extremely damaging lies don’t go away. Like a suspected cancer that isn’t rapidly treated, such lies grow and become ever more malignant and metastatic.

We at the McCullough Foundation are weary with this catastrophe, but we’re not going to stop looking into.

Dr. McCullough frequently uses a test in his clinical practice to detect antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. He frequently detects very high spike protein antibody levels in patients, even in those who never received a vaccine and who have not had acute symptoms of COVID-19 for over a year. A high level of spike protein antibodies in the blood frequently correlates with the symptoms of so-called LONG COVID, which is often presents in individuals who have had multiple shots AND suffered multiple cases of COVID-19 illness.

One way or the other, all of us have been exposed to the toxic spike protein that Ralph Baric, Shi Zhengli, et al. developed in their laboratories. The only question is how long will it take our bodies to clear it.

Dr. McCullough pointed out that the spike protein is, like the pathogens that cause syphilis and Lyme Disease, able to resist being cleared from the body. Even if it does not cause obvious clinical diseases such as myocarditis, strokes, and blood clots, it is probably still affecting all of us to some degree in terms of diminished vitality.

We often think of poisons as substances that immediately result in spectacular distress and death—things like snake venom, ricin, botulinum, and cyanide. While the spike protein induced by the COVID-19 vaccines may indeed rapidly kill some people, for most of us, it is a “subtle thief of vitality” (to paraphrase Milton’s characterization of time as “a subtle thief of youth”).

Milton’s metaphor is useful because it appears that the spike protein is a poison that accelerates senescence, or aging.

For most of us, the symptoms range from ringing ears and sleep disturbances to a general diminishment of vitality. We are more inclined to feel fatigue and lethargy. We suffer brain fog, indecisiveness, and a depression of spirits. We don’t move as quickly, and we seem to experience aches and pains associated with inflammation.

In other words, the whole world has been poisoned.

Currently the greatest obstacle to finding a solution to this gigantic problem is that our entire medical establishment—with the exception of prominent dissidents like Paul Marik and Peter McCullough—advocated the shots and recommended them to their patients.

The situation reminds me of the essay “On Stupidity” by the German dissident, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who penned it in 1943 while incarcerated in the Tegel prison on suspicion of being involved in anti-Nazi activities. As he noted:

But it is also quite clear here that it is not an act of instruction, but only an act of liberation that can overcome stupidity. In doing so, one will have to accept the fact that, in most cases, real inner liberation is only possible after outer liberation has taken place.

In other words, it’s unlikely we’ll get any support from the official medical establishment until the current crop of institutional leaders is all gone. Only after they have retired will we be liberated from their stranglehold on inquiry and discourse about this catastrophe.

At this risk of sounding arrogant, I believe that our team at the McCullough Foundation—working together with other creative dissident researchers all over the world—could find a solution if we had even a millionth of the taxpayer resources given to the Vaccine Cartel.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post The Whole World Has Been Poisoned appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Tim McGraw:

This song is 13 years old, but it’s more true now than back then.

The post “We Can’t Make It Here”: James McMurtry appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

Eric Zuesse

The post Why Orban’s “The Ukrainians have lost the war. Russia has won this war.” is True appeared first on LewRockwell.

Washington D.C. is spending America into oblivion — and you’re paying the price. In this episode of Ask Ron Paul, Dr. Paul takes your questions on the ever-growing national debt, the federal government’s crackdowns on liberty, the destructive effects of tariffs, and the hidden inflation tax eroding your savings.

From runaway spending to political overreach, Ron Paul breaks down what’s really driving these crises—and what a truly free society would do instead.

The post AskRonPaul: National Debt, D.C. Crackdowns, Tariffs & Inflation appeared first on LewRockwell.

From ancient Sumer to the present, all governments have been composed of elites. All states originate in conquest and exploitation, and as elite oligarchies, exercise a monopoly of crime over their subjects through war and taxation, indoctrination and propaganda, and the conscription of resources and persons.

The subject matter of “Establishment Studies” or “Power Elite Analysis” is understanding this struggle for power in its diverse open and covert forms between the rulers and the ruled, between the elite and the non-elite, between “the ins” and “the outs.”

The primary object of every ruling elite is to maintain its own power and privilege. The rule of the elite is based on force or fraud. This force may be hidden or threatened, and the fraud sustained by a political formula, usually expressed as a generally accepted state religion, ideology, or series of myths. But it is the physical force of the gun that lay behind it all. And it is at your mind that every government gun is ultimately aimed.

Respected observers such as Robert Barnes, Murray N. Rothbard, Ferdinand Lundberg, John McConaughy, Phillip H. Burch, Jr., Thomas R. Dye, Matthew Josephson, Kevin Phillips, Thomas Ferguson, and Carroll Quigley have detailed and cataloged the specific elite criminal elements behind previous presidential administrations.

After 50 years of intense study I believe the biggest critical issue confronting the American people is the elite’s New World Order of a corporatist Social Credit economy (based upon the Chinese model) with centralized political control in a totalitarian technocratic entity, with all pervasive mass surveillance by facial recognition databases and coercive regimentation. These invasive actions are running parallel with the transition to a cashless society with all financial transactions monitored through digitalized biometric identification using such technologies as fingerprints, hand geometry and retina scanning — ultimately a microchip electronic device implanted subcutaneously (subdermally). This is the global governance of the Great Reset.

An understanding of Power Elite Analysis is the “litmus test” separating real libertarians and populists from alternative lifestyle dilettantes dabbling in free market theory.

Sometimes labeled “Power Elite Analysis” or “Establishment Studies,” this examination of causal relationships regarding the nature and scope of political power, who has it and how it is exercised, is crucial to understanding the nexus of the State as organized crime.

Note the similarity between this analysis and what researcher Peter Dale Scott calls “Deep Politics,” the critical examination of the sub-rosa reality behind surface events, an attempt to unmask the true face of power, exposing the elite social, economic, and financial groups and individuals who benefit from the exercise of State coercion.

Contemporary events and the persons involved in them are not isolated random or static occurrences. There is a crucial backstory or history to them, the actual story behind the spurious or propagandist accounts put forth by the establishment “fake news” regime media or court academia.

Understanding the dynamics and interplay of power relationships is often not easy for it requires diligence and tenacious research in order to seek authoritative and definitive answers to what is going on in these events.

Fortunately, there are dedicated scholarly researchers who trace the often arcane and internecine networks and interlocking relationships of these actors – their backgrounds, conspiratorial action, mentors and criminal associates, who flesh out these events.

Let us examine the important question of American intervention in war over the past century.

As I pointed out above, history is not static but a dynamic course of study. Events, particularly surrounding savage wars and their origins, are not frozen in time but are constantly being reinterpreted, analyzed, and reassessed by new knowledge and archival revelations.

The question for someone in the present is not whether the US should have intervened in these conflicts but what have we learned from this previous century of war, destruction, and the needless death of millions?

What we now know concerning the horrific wars of the previous century, as well as 21st century conflicts such as Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, and Syria, provides us with a historical template to guide us in making future principled decisions concerning intervention or non-intervention.

Briefly, working backwards, how has the exposed linkage of the insidious relationship behind the creation, recruiting, funding and enabling of the Taliban by Pakistani ISI intelligence (which in turn was funded and enabled by the US government), impact upon the willfully ignorant inhabitants of the United States of Amnesia’s cognitive dissonance narcosis of unreality, that both sides of the disastrous 20 year Afghanistan narco-state proxy war was waged and financed by the US — and yet once again they have been played as naïve suckers and rubes?

What have revelations concerning non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, deliberately falsified intelligence from the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, and an elaborately coordinated media disinformation campaign done for the case for US intervention in Iraq in 2003? For falsified (and/or still classified) information concerning the September 11th attacks leading to intervention against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Afghanistan?

What has declassified revelations from the archives of the former Soviet Union and the Venona files in the United States done to totally reshape the narrative story of espionage and the Cold War?

What has archival revelations concerning the Pentagon Papers and the deliberately contrived Gulf of Tonkin Incident done to spurious justification for the massive intervention in the Vietnam conflict?

What has fifty years of revelations concerning the November 22, 1963 coup d’état and brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy by Lyndon Johnson and the highest echelons of the National Security State done to totally reassess the dynamic behind the change in US policy toward Vietnam within days of JFK’s assassination? How have the powerful behind-the-scenes revelations concerning the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 aided in seeing a more complete picture regarding Kennedy’s murder and the subsequent change of policy toward Vietnam?

How have incisive revelations concerning the birth of the National Security State in 1947 impacted the story of the Cold War? How have revelations concerning the use of former Nazi intelligence officers in the Reinhard Gehlen organization grafted upon US military intelligence and the CIA, been shown to have provided unreliable and provocative disinformation which fueled early Cold War tensions?

How have decisive revelations concerning the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor reshaped the narrative of US intervention into WWII?

How have revelations concerning the Hitler/Stalin Non-Aggression Pact and the joint German and Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939 affected our historical portrait of the larger story of how the Second World War began?

How have revelations concerning American and British financial, corporate, and political elites substantially aiding and building the Nazi war machine in the years prior to WWII as a bulwark against the Soviets change our view of the deep historical background?

How have revelations of the decades of joint military training and cooperation by intelligence services between Germany (during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich) and the Soviet Union impact upon the lead up to WWII?

How did the Treaty of Versailles and agreements such as Sykes-Picot affect the interwar course of events leading to the Second World War?

How did the internecine network of secret treaties, ententes cordiale, and clandestine military alliances drawn up prior to the First World War lead to this conflagration?

These are the type of interrogatives or pointed questions we must each ask and seek the answers to in order to understand the world at large.

Who Rules America: Power Elite Analysis, the Deep State, and American History — Article by Charles A. Burris
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/rules-america-power-elite-analysis-deep-state-american-history/

Hidden History: Where Organized Crime and Government Meet — Article by Charles A. Burris
https://archive.lewrockwell.com/burris/burris10.html

Our Establishment Church: Its Rules and Credo — Article by Charles A. Birris
https://archive.lewrockwell.com/burris/burris17.1.html

Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy — Book by Murray N. Rothbard
https://www.lewrockwell.com/assets/2015/08/Wall-Street-Banks-and-American-Foreign-Policy_2.pdf

A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II, Book by Murray N. Rothbard
https://cdn.mises.org/History%20of%20Money%20and%20Banking%20in%20the%20United%20States%20The%20Colonial%20Era%20to%20World%20War%20II_2.pdf

Robert Barnes on the Deep Background of the Deep State Up to the JFK Assassination and Beyond — Presentation
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/robert-barnes-on-the-deep-background-of-the-deep-state-up-to-the-jfk-assassination-and-beyond/

Elites in American History: The Federalist Years to the Civil War — Book by Phillip H. Burch
https://www.amazon.com/Elites-American-History-Federalist-Years/dp/0841905940

Elites in American History: From the Civil War to the New Deal — Book by Phillip H. Burch
https://www.amazon.com/Elites-American-History-Civil-Deal/dp/0841907056/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.UugC11WA-WURtal3cJMcVw.J6ONt9xEVQtmOV8EeVsZBf_h_R1Rcm0PqIM2cnc5iFQ&qid=1755172976&sr=8-1

Elites in American History: From the New Deal to the Carter Administration — Book by Phillip H. Burch
https://www.amazon.com/Elites-American-History-Carter-Administration/dp/0841905657

The Progressive Era — Book by Murray N. Rothbard
https://cdn.mises.org/The%20Progressive%20Era_0.pdf

The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden — Book by Carrol Quigley
http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/The_Anglo-American_Establishment.pdf

Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time — Book by Carrol Quigley
http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/Tragedy_and_Hope.pdf

The Rise of the House of Rothschild — Book by Count Egon Caesar Corti
the rise of the house of rothschild – count egon caesar corti.pdf

The Reign of the House of Rothschild — Book by Count Egon Caesar Corti
https://dn790003.ca.archive.org/0/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.89704/2015.89704.The-Reign-Of-The-House-Of-Rothschild-1830-1871.pdf

The House of the Rothschilds, Volume I — Book by Niall Ferguson
https://ia903409.us.archive.org/33/items/the-house-of-rothschild-ferguson-niall/The%20House%20of%20Rothschild%20-%20Ferguson%2C%20Niall.pdf

The House of Rothschild; The Worlds Banker 1849-1998, Volume II — Book by Niall Ferguson
https://ia903409.us.archive.org/33/items/the-house-of-rothschild-ferguson-niall/The%20House%20of%20Rothschild%20-%20Ferguson%2C%20Niall.pdf

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World — Book by Niall Ferguson
https://ia600104.us.archive.org/12/items/the-ascent-of-money-a-financial-history/THE_ASCENT_OF_MONEY_A_FINANCIAL_HISTORY.pdf

America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones — Book by Antony C. Sutton.
https://dn721909.ca.archive.org/0/items/americas-secret-establishment-an-introduction-to-skull-and-bones-antony-sutton-1-merged_202402/Americas%20Secret%20Establishment%20An%20Introduction%20to%20Skull%20and%20Bones%20Antony%20Sutton%20%281%29-merged.pdf

How Big Oil Conquered the World — Documentary.

Joe Rogan Experience #2237 – Mike Benz – YouTube

The post The Necessity of Power Elite Analysis in Understanding our World appeared first on LewRockwell.

Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato fuori controllo negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa 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 la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

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(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/come-ha-fatto-satoshi-a-pensare-a)

Bitcoin viene spesso paragonato a Internet negli anni '90, ma credo che l'analogia migliore sia con il telegrafo degli anni '40 dell'Ottocento.[1]

Il telegrafo è stata la prima tecnologia a trasmettere dati codificati a velocità prossime a quella della luce su lunghe distanze. Ha segnato la nascita dell'industria delle telecomunicazioni. Internet, sebbene sia più grande in termini di dimensioni, più ricco di contenuti e molti-a-molti anziché uno-a-uno, è fondamentalmente una tecnologia di telecomunicazione.

Sia il telegrafo che Internet si basano su modelli di business in cui le aziende investono capitali per costruire una rete fisica e poi addebitano agli utenti l'invio di messaggi attraverso questa rete. La rete di AT&T ha storicamente trasmesso telegrammi, telefonate, pacchetti TCP/IP, messaggi di testo e ora TikTok.

La trasformazione della società attraverso le telecomunicazioni ha portato a maggiori libertà, ma anche a una maggiore centralizzazione. Internet ha ampliato la portata di milioni di creatori di contenuti e piccole imprese, ma ha anche rafforzato la presa di aziende, stati e altre istituzioni sufficientemente ben posizionate per monitorare e manipolare l'attività online.

Ma Bitcoin non è la fine di alcuna trasformazione: ne è l'inizio. Come le telecomunicazioni, Bitcoin cambierà sia la società umana che la vita quotidiana. Prevedere l'intera portata di questo cambiamento oggi è come immaginare Internet vivendo nell'era del telegrafo.

Questo saggio cerca di immaginare un tale futuro partendo dal passato. Inizieremo ripercorrendo la storia delle valute digitali prima di Bitcoin. Solo comprendendo i fallimenti dei progetti precedenti possiamo comprendere cosa determinerà il successo di Bitcoin e suggerire una metodologia per costruire i sistemi decentralizzati del futuro.

Sintesi

I. I sistemi decentralizzati sono i mercati

II. I mercati decentralizzati richiedono beni decentralizzati

III. In che modo i sistemi decentralizzati possono calcolare i prezzi?

IV. Gli obiettivi della politica monetaria di Satoshi hanno portato a Bitcoin

V. Conclusione

Un'affermazione centrale di questo articolo è che Bitcoin può essere considerato un adattamento del progetto b-money di Dai, il quale eliminava la libertà di creare denaro. Poche settimane dopo la pubblicazione di questo saggio, sono emerse nuove email in cui Satoshi affermava di non avere familiarità con b-money, pur ammettendo che Bitcoin inizia “esattamente da quel punto”. Alla luce di queste nuove prove, crediamo che questa affermazione, sebbene non storicamente accurata, sia comunque un modo utile per riflettere sull'origine di Bitcoin.

Come ha fatto Satoshi a pensare a Bitcoin?

Satoshi era brillante, ma Bitcoin non è nato dal nulla.

Bitcoin ha reiterato lavori esistenti in crittografia, sistemi distribuiti, economia e filosofia politica. Il concetto di Proof-of-work esisteva molto prima del suo utilizzo nel campo monetario e cypherpunk dato che Nick Szabo, Wei Dai e Hal Finney hanno anticipato e influenzato la progettazione di Bitcoin con progetti come Bit Gold, B-Money e RPOW. Si consideri che, nel 2008, quando Satoshi scrisse il white paper di Bitcoin, molte delle idee importanti per Bitcoin erano già state proposte e/o implementate:

• Le valute digitali dovevano essere su reti P2P

• La Proof-of-work è la base della creazione del denaro

• Il denaro viene creato tramite un'asta

• La crittografia a chiave pubblica viene utilizzata per definire la proprietà e il trasferimento delle monete

• Le transazioni vengono raggruppate in blocchi

• I blocchi vengono concatenati tramite Proof-of-work

• Tutti i blocchi vengono archiviati da tutti i partecipanti alla rete

Bitcoin sfrutta tutti questi concetti, ma Satoshi non ne ha ideato nessuno. Per comprendere meglio il suo contributo, dovremmo determinare quali principi di Bitcoin mancano dall'elenco.

Alcuni candidati ovvi sono l'offerta limitata, il consenso di Nakamoto e l'algoritmo di aggiustamento della difficoltà. Ma cosa ha apportato Satoshi a queste idee in primo luogo?

Questo saggio esplora la storia delle valute digitali e sostiene che l'attenzione di Satoshi per una sana politica monetaria è ciò che ha portato Bitcoin a superare le sfide che hanno vanificato progetti precedenti come Bit Gold e B-money.

I. I sistemi decentralizzati sono i mercati

Bitcoin è spesso descritto come un sistema decentralizzato o distribuito. Sfortunatamente i termini “decentralizzato” e “distribuito” vengono spesso confusi. Quando applicati ai sistemi digitali, entrambi i termini si riferiscono a modi in cui un'applicazione monolitica può essere scomposta in una rete di elementi comunicanti.

Ai nostri fini, la principale differenza tra sistemi decentralizzati e distribuiti non è la topologia dei loro diagrammi di rete, ma il modo in cui applicano le regole. Nella sezione seguente ci prenderemo del tempo per confrontare i sistemi distribuiti e decentralizzati e per motivare l'idea che i sistemi decentralizzati robusti siano i mercati.

I sistemi distribuiti si basano su autorità centrali

In questo lavoro per “distribuito” intendiamo qualsiasi sistema suddiviso in più parti (spesso chiamate “nodi”) che devono comunicare, tipicamente tramite una rete.

Gli ingegneri del software sono diventati esperti nella creazione di sistemi distribuiti a livello globale. Internet è composto da sistemi distribuiti che contengono collettivamente miliardi di nodi. Ognuno di noi ha un nodo in tasca che partecipa e si affida a questi sistemi.

Ma quasi tutti i sistemi distribuiti che utilizziamo oggi sono governati da un'autorità centrale, in genere un amministratore di sistema, un'azienda o uno stato, che gode della fiducia reciproca di tutti i nodi del sistema.

Le autorità centrali garantiscono che tutti i nodi aderiscano alle regole del sistema e rimuovono, riparano, o puniscono i nodi che non lo fanno. Sono affidabili per fornire coordinamento, risolvere i conflitti e allocare risorse condivise. Nel tempo le autorità centrali gestiscono le modifiche al sistema, aggiornandolo o aggiungendo funzionalità e assicurandosi che i nodi partecipanti si conformino alle modifiche.

I vantaggi che un sistema distribuito ottiene affidandosi a un'autorità centrale hanno dei costi. Sebbene il sistema sia robusto contro i guasti dei suoi nodi, un guasto della sua autorità centrale può causare l'interruzione complessiva del funzionamento. La capacità dell'autorità centrale di prendere decisioni unilateralmente implica che sovvertirla o eliminarla sia sufficiente per controllare o distruggere l'intero sistema.

Nonostante questi compromessi, se esiste il requisito che un singolo partito o una coalizione debba mantenere l'autorità centrale, o se i partecipanti al sistema si accontentano di affidarsi a un'autorità centrale, allora un sistema distribuito tradizionale è la soluzione migliore. Non sono richieste blockchain, token o simili accorgimenti decentralizzati.

In particolare, il caso di una crittovaluta supportata da venture capitalist o dallo stato, con requisiti che impongono a un singolo partito di monitorare o limitare i pagamenti e congelare i conti, è il caso d'uso perfetto per un sistema distribuito tradizionale.

I sistemi decentralizzati non hanno autorità centrali

Consideriamo “decentralizzato” un significato più forte di “distribuito”: i sistemi decentralizzati sono un sottoinsieme dei sistemi distribuiti privi di autorità centrale. Un sinonimo stretto di “decentralizzato” è “peer-to-peer” (P2P).

L'eliminazione dell'autorità centrale conferisce diversi vantaggi. Sistemi decentralizzati:

• Crescono rapidamente perché non presentano barriere all'ingresso: chiunque può espandere il sistema eseguendo un nuovo nodo e non è richiesta alcuna registrazione o approvazione da parte dell'autorità centrale.

• Sono robusti perché non esiste un'autorità centrale il cui fallimento possa compromettere il funzionamento del sistema. Tutti i nodi sono uguali quindi i fallimenti sono locali e la rete evita i danni.

• Sono difficili da catturare, regolamentare, tassare, o sorvegliare perché mancano punti di controllo centralizzati che gli stati possano sovvertire.

Questi punti di forza sono il motivo per cui Satoshi ha scelto un design decentralizzato e peer-to-peer per Bitcoin:

Tuttavia questi punti di forza presentano anche delle debolezze. I sistemi decentralizzati possono essere meno efficienti, poiché ogni nodo deve inoltre assumersi responsabilità di coordinamento precedentemente assunte dall'autorità centrale.

Anche i sistemi decentralizzati sono afflitti da comportamenti fraudolenti e ostili. Nonostante il riferimento di Satoshi a Gnutella, chiunque abbia utilizzato un programma di condivisione file P2P per scaricare un file che poi si è rivelato essere qualcosa di disgustoso, o dannoso, comprende i motivi per cui la condivisione file P2P non è mai diventata il modello di riferimento principale per il trasferimento di dati online.

Satoshi non l'ha menzionato esplicitamente, ma la posta elettronica è un altro sistema decentralizzato che è sfuggito ai controlli statali. E la posta elettronica è altrettanto nota per lo spam.

I sistemi decentralizzati sono governati da incentivi

Il problema di fondo, in tutti questi casi, è che il comportamento ostile (seminare file dannosi, inviare email di spam) non viene punito, mentre il comportamento cooperativo (seminare file validi, inviare solo email utili) non viene premiato. I sistemi decentralizzati che fanno affidamento sui loro partecipanti affinché siano buoni attori non riescono a scalare, perché non possono impedire ai cattivi attori di partecipare.

Senza imporre un'autorità centrale, l'unico modo per risolvere questo problema è utilizzare incentivi economici. I buoni attori, per definizione, rispettano le regole perché sono intrinsecamente motivati a farlo. I cattivi attori sono, per definizione, egoisti e antagonisti, ma adeguati incentivi economici possono reindirizzare i loro comportamenti scorretti verso il bene comune. I sistemi decentralizzati scalabili lo fanno garantendo che il comportamento cooperativo sia redditizio e quello antagonistico sia costoso.

Il modo migliore per implementare servizi decentralizzati robusti è creare mercati in cui tutti gli attori, buoni e cattivi, siano pagati per fornire quel servizio. L'assenza di barriere all'ingresso per acquirenti e venditori in un mercato decentralizzato incoraggia la scalabilità e l'efficienza. Se i protocolli di mercato possono proteggere i partecipanti da frodi, furti e abusi, allora i cattivi attori troveranno più redditizio rispettare le regole o attaccare un sistema diverso.

II. Decentralizzazione

I mercati decentralizzati richiedono beni decentralizzati

Ma i mercati sono complessi. Devono offrire ad acquirenti e venditori la possibilità di pubblicare offerte e richieste, nonché di individuare, abbinare e regolare gli ordini. Devono essere equi, garantire una forte coerenza e mantenere la disponibilità nonostante i periodi di volatilità.

Oggi i mercati globali sono estremamente capaci e sofisticati, ma utilizzare beni tradizionali e reti di pagamento per implementare incentivi in un mercato decentralizzato è un'impresa impossibile. Qualsiasi associazione tra un sistema decentralizzato e moneta fiat, asset tradizionali, o beni fisici reintrodurrebbe la dipendenza dalle autorità centrali che controllano chi processa i pagamenti, ovvero le banche e gli exchange.

Ciò significa che i sistemi decentralizzati non possono eseguire pagamenti denominati in beni tradizionali. Non possono nemmeno determinare i saldi dei conti dominati da moneta fiat, o la proprietà di immobili o beni fisici. L'intera economia tradizionale è completamente illeggibile all'interno dei sistemi decentralizzati.

La creazione di mercati decentralizzati richiede lo scambio di nuovi tipi di beni decentralizzati, leggibili e trasferibili all'interno di sistemi decentralizzati.

Il calcolo è il primo bene decentralizzato

Il primo esempio di “bene decentralizzato” è una classe speciale di calcoli proposta per la prima volta nel 1993 da Cynthia Dwork e Moni Naor.

A causa delle profonde connessioni tra matematica, fisica e informatica questi calcoli richiedono energia e risorse hardware reali: non possono essere falsificati. Poiché le risorse reali sono scarse, anche questi calcoli sono scarsi.

L'input per questi calcoli può essere qualsiasi tipo di dato. L'output risultante è una “prova” digitale che i calcoli sono stati eseguiti sui dati di input forniti. Le prove contengono una data “difficoltà” che è la prova (statistica) di una certa quantità di lavoro computazionale. Ancora più importante, la relazione tra i dati di input, la prova e il lavoro computazionale originale eseguito può essere verificata in modo indipendente senza ricorrere ad alcuna autorità centrale.

L'idea di trasmettere dati di input insieme a una prova digitale come prova del lavoro computazionale svolto nel mondo reale su tale input è ora chiamata “Proof-of-work”.[2] Essa è, per usare l'espressione di Nick Szabo, “costosa e non falsificabile”. Poiché la Proof-of-work è verificabile da chiunque, rappresenta una risorsa economica accessibile a tutti i partecipanti a un sistema decentralizzato. La Proof-of-work trasforma i calcoli sui dati in beni decentralizzati. Dwork e Naor hanno proposto di utilizzare i calcoli per limitare l'abuso di una risorsa condivisa, costringendo i partecipanti a fornire Proof-of-work con una certa difficoltà minima prima di potervi accedere:

Nella proposta di Dwork & Naor un amministratore di sistema di posta elettronica avrebbe impostato una difficoltà minima di Proof-of-work per la consegna delle email. Gli utenti che desideravano inviare email avrebbero dovuto eseguire un numero corrispondente di calcoli utilizzando quell'email come dati di input. La prova risultante sarebbe stata inviata al server insieme a qualsiasi richiesta di consegna dell'email.

Dwork & Naor si riferivano alla difficoltà di una Proof-of-work come a una “funzione di prezzo” perché, regolando la difficoltà, una “autorità di prezzo” avrebbe potuto garantire che la risorsa condivisa rimanesse economica da utilizzare per gli utenti onesti e medi, ma costosa per gli utenti che cercavano di sfruttarla. Nel mercato della consegna delle email, gli amministratori dei server sono le autorità di prezzo; devono scegliere un “prezzo” per la consegna delle email che sia sufficientemente basso per l'utilizzo normale ma troppo alto per lo spam.

Sebbene Dwork e Naor abbiano inquadrato la Proof-of-work come un disincentivo economico per combattere l'abuso di risorse, la terminologia “funzione di prezzo” e “autorità di prezzo” supporta un'interpretazione diversa, basata sul mercato: gli utenti acquistano l'accesso a una risorsa in cambio di calcoli a un prezzo stabilito dal controllore della risorsa.

In questa interpretazione una rete di distribuzione di posta elettronica è in realtà un mercato decentralizzato che scambia la consegna di posta elettronica con i calcoli. La difficoltà minima di una Proof-of-work è il prezzo richiesto per la consegna di posta elettronica denominato nella valuta dei calcoli.

La valuta è il secondo bene decentralizzato

Ma i calcoli non sono una buona valuta.

La Proof-of-work utilizzata per “scambiare” calcoli è valida solo per l'input utilizzato in quei calcoli. Questo legame indissolubile tra una Proof-of-work specifica e un input specifico significa che la Proof-of-work per un determinato input non può essere riutilizzata per uno diverso.

Questo vincolo è utile: può essere utilizzato per impedire che il lavoro svolto da un acquirente sul mercato venga riutilizzato da un altro. Ad esempio, HashCash, la prima vera implementazione del mercato per la consegna di email, includeva metadati come timestamp corrente e indirizzo email del mittente nei dati di input per i calcoli della Proof-of-work. Le prove prodotte da un dato utente per una data email non possono essere riutilizzate per l'invio di un'email diversa.

Ma questo significa anche che i calcoli della Proof-of-work sono beni su misura. Non sono fungibili, non possono essere riutilizzati[3] e non risolvono il problema della coincidenza dei desideri. Queste proprietà monetarie mancanti impediscono ai calcoli di essere considerati valuta. Nonostante il nome, non vi è alcun incentivo per un fornitore di servizi di posta elettronica ad accumulare HashCash, come ci sarebbe invece per il denaro reale.

Adam Back, inventore di HashCash, ha compreso questi problemi:

Non vogliamo scambiare calcoli personalizzati per ogni singolo bene o servizio venduto in un'economia decentralizzata; vogliamo una valuta digitale di uso generale che possa essere utilizzata direttamente per coordinare gli scambi di valore in qualsiasi mercato.

Costruire una valuta digitale funzionante pur rimanendo decentralizzata è una sfida ardua. Una valuta richiede unità fungibili di pari valore che possano essere trasferite tra gli utenti. Ciò richiede modelli di emissione, definizioni crittografiche di proprietà e trasferimento, un processo di scoperta e regolamento delle transazioni e un registro storico. Nessuna di queste infrastrutture è necessaria se si considera la Proof-of-work come un mero “meccanismo di controllo degli accessi”.

Inoltre i sistemi decentralizzati sono i mercati, quindi tutte queste funzioni di base di una valuta devono in qualche modo essere fornite tramite fornitori di servizi a pagamento... nelle unità della valuta che viene creata!

Come la compilazione del primo compilatore, un black-start della rete elettrica, o l'evoluzione della vita stessa, i creatori di valute digitali si sono trovati di fronte a un problema di bootstrapping: come definire gli incentivi economici alla base di una valuta funzionante senza avere una valuta funzionante in cui denominare o pagare tali incentivi.

Il primo mercato decentralizzato deve scambiare calcoli in cambio di valuta

Il progresso su questo problema di bootstrapping deriva dalla corretta definizione dei suoi vincoli.

I sistemi decentralizzati devono essere i mercati; essi sono costituiti da acquirenti e venditori che si scambiano beni; il mercato decentralizzato di una valuta digitale ha solo due beni leggibili al suo interno:

• Calcoli tramite Proof-of-work

• Unità della valuta che stiamo cercando di costruire

L'unico scambio di mercato possibile deve quindi essere tra questi due beni. I calcoli devono essere venduti per unità di valuta o, in modo equivalente, unità di valuta devono essere vendute per calcoli. Affermare questo è facile: la parte difficile è strutturare questo mercato in modo che il semplice scambio di valuta per calcoli attivi tutte le capacità della valuta stessa!

L'intera storia delle valute digitali, culminata nel white paper di Satoshi del 2008, è stata una serie di tentativi sempre più sofisticati di strutturare questo mercato. La sezione seguente esaminerà progetti come bit-gold di Nick Szabo e b-money di Wei Dai. Comprendere come questi progetti abbiano strutturato i loro mercati e perché hanno fallito ci aiuterà a comprendere perché Satoshi e Bitcoin hanno avuto successo.

III. In che modo i sistemi decentralizzati possono prezzare i calcoli?

Una delle funzioni principali dei mercati è la determinazione del prezzo. Un mercato che scambia calcoli per valuta deve quindi determinare il prezzo del calcolo stesso, espresso in unità di quella valuta.

In genere non attribuiamo un valore monetario ai calcoli. In genere diamo valore alla capacità di eseguire calcoli perché diamo valore all'output dei calcoli, non ai calcoli stessi. Se lo stesso output può essere eseguito in modo più efficiente, con meno calcoli, questo viene solitamente definito “progresso”.

La Proof-of-Work rappresenta calcoli specifici il cui unico output è la prova che sono stati eseguiti. Produrre la stessa prova eseguendo meno calcoli e meno lavoro non sarebbe un progresso, ma un bug. I calcoli associati alla Proof-of-Work sono quindi un bene insolito e nuovo da valutare.

Quando la Proof-of-Work è considerata un disincentivo contro l'abuso di risorse, non è necessario valutarla in modo preciso o coerente. Ciò che conta è che il fornitore di servizi di posta elettronica imposti difficoltà sufficientemente basse da essere impercettibili per gli utenti legittimi, ma sufficientemente alte da essere proibitive per gli spammer. Esiste quindi un'ampia gamma di “prezzi” accettabili e ogni partecipante agisce come propria autorità di determinazione dei prezzi, applicando una funzione di prezzo locale.

Tuttavia le unità di una valuta sono concepite per essere fungibili, avendo ciascuna lo stesso valore. A causa dei cambiamenti tecnologici nel tempo, due unità di valuta create con la stessa difficoltà di Proof-of-work – misurata dal numero di calcoli corrispondenti – possono avere costi di produzione reali radicalmente diversi, misurati in termini di tempo, energia e/o capitale necessari per eseguire tali calcoli. Quando i calcoli vengono venduti in cambio di valuta e il costo di produzione sottostante è variabile, come può il mercato garantire un prezzo costante?

Nick Szabo ha identificato chiaramente questo problema di prezzo descrivendo bit gold:

Le prime valute digitali tentavano di prezzare i calcoli cercando di misurare collettivamente il “costo del calcolo”. Wei Dai, ad esempio, propose la seguente soluzione approssimativa con b-money:

Purtroppo Dai non spiegò come gli utenti di un sistema presumibilmente decentralizzato dovrebbero concordare sulla definizione di un “paniere standard”, su quale computer risolva un dato problema “nel modo più economico”, o sul costo di elaborazione sul “mercato aperto”. Raggiungere il consenso tra tutti gli utenti su un set di dati condiviso variabile nel tempo è il problema essenziale dei sistemi decentralizzati!

Per essere onesti con Dai, anche lui stesso lo capì:

Dai avrebbe poi proposto un meccanismo di determinazione dei prezzi basato su aste più sofisticato, che Satoshi avrebbe poi definito il punto di partenza delle sue idee. Torneremo su questo schema d'asta più avanti, ma prima passiamo a bit gold e consideriamo le intuizioni di Szabo sul problema.

Utilizzare i mercati esterni

Szabo sosteneva che la Proof-of-work doveva essere “datata in modo sicuro”:

Szabo rimandava a una pagina di risorse sui protocolli di marcatura temporale sicura, ma non descriveva alcun algoritmo specifico per la marcatura temporale sicura. Le espressioni “in modo sicuro” e “in modo distribuito” hanno un peso notevole in questo contesto, eludendo le complessità dell'affidarsi a uno (o più) servizi “esterni al sistema” per la marcatura temporale.[4]

A prescindere dalla vaghezza dell'implementazione, Szabo aveva ragione: il momento in cui viene creata una Proof-of-work è un fattore importante nella determinazione del prezzo, perché è correlato al costo di elaborazione:

“Dedurre” il costo di produzione era importante perché bit gold non aveva alcun meccanismo per limitarne la creazione. Chiunque poteva creare bit gold eseguendo i calcoli appropriati. Senza la possibilità di regolamentarne l'emissione, era simile a un oggetto da collezione:

Bit gold richiedeva un ulteriore processo esterno per creare unità di valuta fungibili:

Parafrasando Szabo: “Per valutare il valore di [...] bit gold, un commerciante controlla e verifica la difficoltà, l'input e il timestamp”. I commercianti che definiscono le “unità più grandi di valore approssimativamente uguale” forniscono una funzione di determinazione del prezzo simile al “paniere standard di materie prime” di Dai. Le unità fungibili non vengono create in bit gold quando vengono prodotte le Proof-of-work, ma solo in seguito, quando queste ultime vengono combinate in “unità più grandi di valore approssimativamente uguale” da commercianti in mercati esterni alla rete.

A suo merito, Szabo riconobbe questo difetto:

Ancora una volta, pur non essendo arrivato a quella che oggi conosciamo come la soluzione, Szabo ce la stava indicando: poiché il costo del calcolo cambia nel tempo, la rete deve rispondere alle variazioni dell'offerta di calcolo aggiustando il prezzo del denaro.

Utilizzare mercati interni

I commercianti di Szabo avrebbero costituito un mercato esterno che definiva il prezzo di (pacchetti di) bit gold dopo la sua creazione. Era possibile implementare questo mercato all'interno del sistema invece che al suo esterno?

Torniamo a Wei Dai e a b-money. Come accennato in precedenza, Dai propose un modello alternativo basato su aste per la creazione di b-money. Il progetto di Satoshi per Bitcoin migliora direttamente il modello d'asta di bmoney:

«Quindi propongo un sottoprotocollo alternativo per la creazione di moneta, in cui [gli utenti] [...] decidono e concordano la quantità di b-money da creare in ogni periodo, con il costo di creazione determinato da un'asta. Ogni periodo di creazione di moneta è suddiviso in quattro fasi, come segue.

Pianificazione. Gli [utenti] calcolano e negoziano tra loro per determinare un aumento ottimale dell'offerta di moneta per il periodo successivo. Indipendentemente dal fatto che la [rete] riesca o meno a raggiungere un consenso, ognuno di loro trasmette la propria quota di creazione di moneta e qualsiasi calcolo macroeconomico effettuato a supporto di tali cifre.

Offerta. Chiunque voglia creare b-money trasmette un'offerta nella forma in cui X è la quantità di b-money che desidera creare e Y è un problema irrisolto di una classe di problemi predeterminata. Ogni problema in questa classe dovrebbe avere un costo nominale (ad esempio, in MIPS-anni) che viene concordato pubblicamente.

Calcolo. Dopo aver visto le offerte, coloro che le hanno presentate possono risolvere i problemi a esse allegati e diffondere le soluzioni.

Creazione di denaro. Ogni [utente] accetta le offerte più alte (tra coloro che hanno diffuso le soluzioni) in termini di costo nominale per unità di denaro creato e le accredita sui conti degli offerenti.» ~ Dai, 1998

B-money compì passi significativi verso la corretta struttura di mercato per una valuta digitale. Cercò di eliminare i commercianti esterni di Szabo e consentì agli utenti di impegnarsi nella determinazione del prezzo facendo offerte dirette tra loro.

Ma implementare la proposta di Dai così come era stata formulata sarebbe stato impegnativo:

• Nella fase di “Pianificazione”, gli utenti avevano l'onere di negoziare “l'aumento ottimale dell'offerta di moneta per il periodo successivo”. Non viene descritto come debba essere definito “ottimale”, come gli utenti debbano negoziare tra loro e come vengano condivisi i risultati di tali negoziazioni.

• Indipendentemente da quanto pianificato, la fase di “Offerta” consentiva a chiunque di presentare un'offerta per creare b-money. Le offerte includevano sia una quantità di b-money da creare sia una quantità corrispondente di Proof-of-work, quindi ogni offerta rappresenta un prezzo, ovvero il numero di calcoli che un determinato offerente era disposto a eseguire per acquistare una determinata quantità di b-money.

• Una volta presentate le offerte, la fase di “Calcolo” consisteva negli offerenti che eseguivano la Proof-of-work per la quale presentavano la propria offerta e trasmettevano le soluzioni. Non era previsto alcun meccanismo per abbinare gli offerenti alle soluzioni. Ancora più problematico, non era chiaro come gli utenti potessero sapere che tutte le offerte erano state presentate: quando terminava la fase di “offerta” e iniziava la fase di “calcolo”?

• Questi problemi si ripresentavano nella fase “Creazione di denaro”. Data la natura della Proof-of-work, gli utenti potevano verificare che le prove ricevute nelle soluzioni fossero reali. Ma come potevano concordare collettivamente sull'insieme delle “offerte più alte”? Cosa succedeva se utenti diversi sceglievano insiemi diversi, per preferenza o per latenza di rete?

I sistemi decentralizzati faticano a tracciare i dati e a fare scelte coerenti, eppure b-money richiedeva il tracciamento delle offerte di molti utenti e la scelta consensuale tra di loro. Questa complessità ne impedì l'implementazione.

La radice di questa complessità era la convinzione di Dai che il tasso “ottimale” di creazione di b-money dovesse fluttuare nel tempo in base ai “calcoli macroeconomici” dei suoi utenti. Come Bit Gold, B-money non aveva alcun meccanismo per limitare la creazione di denaro. Chiunque poteva creare unità di B-money trasmettendo un'offerta e quindi eseguendo la corrispondente Proof-of-work.

Sia Szabo che Dai proposero di utilizzare un mercato per lo scambio di valuta digitale per i calcoli, ma né Bit Gold né B-money definirono una politica monetaria per regolare l'offerta di valuta all'interno di quel mercato.

IV. Gli obiettivi della politica monetaria di Satoshi hanno portato a Bitcoin

Al contrario, una solida politica monetaria era uno degli obiettivi principali di Satoshi per il progetto Bitcoin. Nel primissimo post della mailing list in cui fu annunciato Bitcoin, Satoshi scrisse:

Satoshi avrebbe poi descritto altri problemi delle valute fiat, come il rischioso sistema bancario a riserva frazionaria, la mancanza di privacy, i furti e le frodi dilaganti e l'impossibilità di effettuare micropagamenti; ma partì dal problema della svalutazione da parte delle banche centrali, con una preoccupazione per la politica monetaria.

Voleva che Bitcoin raggiungesse un'offerta circolante finita, non diluibile nel tempo. Il tasso “ottimale” di creazione di bitcoin, per Satoshi, avrebbe quindi dovuto essere pari a zero.

Questo obiettivo di politica monetaria, più di qualsiasi altra caratteristica che possedeva personalmente (o collettivamente!), fu la ragione per cui Satoshi “scoprì” Bitcoin, la blockchain, il consenso di Nakamoto, ecc., e non qualcun altro. È la risposta breve alla domanda posta nel titolo di questo articolo: Satoshi pensò a Bitcoin perché era concentrato sulla creazione di una valuta digitale con un'offerta finita.

Un'offerta finita di Bitcoin non è solo un obiettivo di politica monetaria, o un meme. È la semplificazione tecnica essenziale che ha permesso a Satoshi di creare una valuta digitale funzionale, mentre b-money di Dai è rimasto solo un affascinante post sul web.

Bitcoin è b-money con l'ulteriore requisito di una politica monetaria predeterminata. Come molte semplificazioni tecniche, vincolare la politica monetaria consente il progresso riducendo l'ambito. Vediamo come ciascuna delle fasi della creazione di b-money viene semplificata imponendo questo vincolo.

Tutti i 21 milioni di bitcoin esistono già

In b-money ogni “periodo di creazione di moneta” includeva una fase di “Pianificazione” in cui gli utenti dovevano condividere i loro “calcoli macroeconomici” giustificando la quantità che desideravano creare in quel momento. Gli obiettivi di politica monetaria di Satoshi, ovvero un'offerta finita e zero emissioni di coda, erano incompatibili con la libertà concessa da b-money ai singoli utenti. Il primo passo nel percorso da b-money a Bitcoin è stato quindi quello di eliminare questa libertà. I singoli utenti non possono creare bitcoin. Solo la rete può crearli e lo ha fatto esattamente una volta, nel 2009, quando Satoshi inaugurò il progetto Bitcoin.

Satoshi riuscì a sostituire le ricorrenti fasi di “Pianificazione” di b-money in un unico programma predeterminato in base al quale i 21 milioni di bitcoin creati nel 2009 sarebbero stati immessi in circolazione. Gli utenti sottoscrivono volontariamente la politica monetaria di Satoshi scaricando ed eseguendo il software Bitcoin Core, in cui tale politica monetaria è codificata.

Questo cambia la semantica del mercato per i calcoli: i bitcoin pagati ai miner non sono di nuova emissione, vengono invece emessi da una riserva esistente.

Questa inquadratura è radicalmente diversa dall'ingenua affermazione secondo cui “i miner creano bitcoin”. I miner non creano bitcoin, li acquistano. Bitcoin non ha valore perché “i bitcoin sono fatti di energia”: il valore è dimostrato dal fatto che viene venduto in cambio di energia.

Ripetiamolo ancora una volta: Bitcoin non viene creato tramite Proof-of-work, Bitcoin viene creato tramite consenso.

Il prezzo di Bitcoin viene determinato tramite consenso

La libertà concessa agli utenti di creare denaro si traduceva in un corrispondente onere per la rete b-money. Durante la fase di “Offerta", essa doveva raccogliere e condividere le “offerte” di creazione di denaro da molti utenti diversi.

Eliminare la libertà di creare denaro alleggerisce la rete Bitcoin da questo onere. Poiché tutti i 21 milioni di bitcoin esistono già, la rete non ha bisogno di raccogliere le offerte degli utenti per creare denaro, deve semplicemente venderli secondo il programma prestabilito da Satoshi.

La rete Bitcoin offre quindi un prezzo di richiesta consensuale per i bitcoin che vende in ogni blocco. Questo prezzo unico viene calcolato da ciascun nodo in modo indipendente utilizzando la propria copia della blockchain. Se i nodi hanno il consenso sulla stessa blockchain (un punto su cui torneremo più avanti), offriranno tutti un prezzo di richiesta identico a ogni blocco.[5]

La prima metà del calcolo del prezzo di consenso determina quanti bitcoin vendere ed è stabilito dal programma di rilascio prestabilito da Satoshi. Tutti i nodi Bitcoin nella rete calcolano lo stesso importo per un dato blocco:

La seconda metà del prezzo richiesto è il numero di calcoli per cui viene venduto il sussidio attuale. Anche in questo caso tutti i nodi Bitcoin nella rete calcolano lo stesso valore (riprenderemo questo calcolo della difficoltà nella prossima sezione):

Insieme il sussidio e la difficoltà della rete definiscono l'attuale richiesta di bitcoin denominata in calcoli. Poiché la blockchain è basata sul consenso, questo prezzo è un prezzo di consenso.

Si presumeva anche che gli utenti di b-money avessero una “blockchain” di consenso contenente la cronologia di tutte le transazioni, ma Dai non pensò mai alla semplice soluzione di un prezzo di richiesta univoco e consensuale per la creazione di nuovi b-money, determinato esclusivamente dai dati presenti in quella blockchain.

Dai diede invece per scontato che la creazione di moneta dovesse continuare all'infinito. I singoli utenti avrebbero quindi dovuto avere il potere di influenzare la politica monetaria, proprio come nelle valute fiat. Questa esigenza portò Dai a progettare un sistema di offerte che impedì l'implementazione stessa di b-money.

Questa ulteriore complessità è stata eliminata dal requisito di Satoshi di una politica monetaria predeterminata.

Il tempo chiude tutti gli spread

Nella fase di “Calcolo” di b-money, i singoli utenti avrebbero eseguito i calcoli che si erano impegnati a fare nelle loro offerte precedenti. In Bitcoin l'intera rete è il venditore, ma chi è l'acquirente?

Nel mercato dell'invio delle email, gli acquirenti erano individui che desideravano inviarne una. L'autorità di determinazione dei prezzi, il fornitore di servizi di posta elettronica, avrebbe fissato un prezzo considerato economico per gli individui ma costoso per gli spammer. Ma se il numero di utenti legittimi aumentasse, il prezzo potrebbe comunque rimanere invariato perché la potenza di calcolo dei singoli utenti rimarrebbe invariata.

Nel sistema b-money, ogni utente che contribuiva alla creazione di moneta avrebbe dovuto successivamente eseguire autonomamente il numero corrispondente di calcoli. Ogni utente agiva come autorità di determinazione dei prezzi in base alla propria conoscenza delle proprie capacità di calcolo.

La rete Bitcoin offre un unico prezzo richiesto in termini di calcoli per l'attuale sussidio. Tuttavia nessun singolo miner che trova un blocco ha eseguito questo numero di calcoli.[6] Il blocco vincente del singolo miner è la prova che tutti i miner hanno eseguito collettivamente il numero richiesto di calcoli. L'acquirente è quindi l'industria globale del mining.

Una volta raggiunto un prezzo richiesto consensuale, la rete Bitcoin non modificherà tale prezzo finché non verranno prodotti altri blocchi. Questi blocchi devono contenere Proof-of-work al prezzo richiesto corrente. L'industria del mining non ha quindi altra scelta se vuole “eseguire una transazione” se non pagare il prezzo richiesto corrente in calcoli.

L'unica variabile che l'industria del mining può controllare è quanto tempo ci vorrà per produrre il blocco successivo. Proprio come la rete Bitcoin offre un unico prezzo di richiesta, l'industria del mining offre quindi un'unica offerta: il tempo necessario per produrre il blocco successivo che soddisfi il prezzo di richiesta corrente della rete.

Satoshi sta descrivendo con modestia l'algoritmo di regolazione della difficoltà, spesso citato come una delle idee più originali nell'implementazione di Bitcoin. Questo è vero, ma invece di concentrarci sull'inventiva della soluzione, concentriamoci sul motivo per cui risolvere il problema era importante per Satoshi in primo luogo.

Progetti come Bit Gold e B-Money non avevano bisogno di limitare il ritmo di creazione di moneta, perché non avevano un'offerta fissa o una politica monetaria predeterminata. I periodi di creazione di moneta più rapida o più lenta potevano essere compensati con altri mezzi, ad esempio commercianti esterni che inserivano token di Bit Gold in bundler più o meno grandi o utenti di B-money che modificavano le loro offerte.

Ma gli obiettivi di politica monetaria di Satoshi richiedono che Bitcoin abbia una frequenza predeterminata con cui i token vengono immessi in circolazione. Limitare la frequenza (statistica) di produzione dei blocchi nel tempo è naturale in Bitcoin, perché la frequenza di produzione dei blocchi è la frequenza con cui la fornitura iniziale di bitcoin viene venduta. Venderne 21 milioni in 140 anni è una proposta diversa dal consentirne la vendita in 3 mesi.

Inoltre Bitcoin può implementare questa limitazione perché la blockchain è il “protocollo di marcatura temporale sicura” di Szabo. Satoshi descrive Bitcoin prima di tutto come un “server di marcatura temporale distribuito su base peer-to-peer” e le prime implementazioni del codice sorgente di Bitcoin utilizzano il termine “timechain” anziché “blockchain” per descrivere la struttura dati condivisa che implementa il mercato Proof-of-work di Bitcoin.

L'algoritmo di riaggiustamento della difficoltà di Bitcoin sfrutta questa capacità. La blockchain di consenso viene utilizzata dai partecipanti per enumerare le offerte storiche effettuate dall'industria del mining e riaggiustare la difficoltà per avvicinarsi al tempo di blocco target.

Un ordine permanente crea consenso

La catena di semplificazioni causata dalla richiesta di una politica monetaria forte si estende alla fase di “Creazione di moneta” di b-money.

Le offerte inviate dagli utenti in b-money soffrivano del problema del “nulla in gioco”. Non esisteva un meccanismo che impedisse agli utenti di inviare offerte con un'enorme quantità di b-money con pochissimo sforzo. Ciò richiedeva che la rete tenesse traccia delle offerte completate e accettasse solo le “offerte più alte [...] in termini di costo nominale per unità di b-money create” in modo da evitare le offerte indesiderate. Ogni partecipante a b-money doveva tenere traccia di un intero portafoglio di ordini di offerte, abbinarle ai propri calcoli successivi e liquidare solo gli ordini completati con i prezzi più alti.

Questo problema era un esempio del problema più generale del consenso nei sistemi decentralizzati, noto anche come “Generali bizantini”, o talvolta problema della “doppia spesa” nel contesto delle valute digitali. La condivisione di una sequenza identica di dati tra tutti i partecipanti è complessa all'interno di una rete decentralizzata e avversaria. Le soluzioni esistenti a questo problema, i cosiddetti “algoritmi di consenso Byzantine-fault tolerant” (BFT), richiedono un coordinamento preventivo tra i partecipanti o una maggioranza qualificata (>67%) dei partecipanti per evitare comportamenti avversari.

Bitcoin non deve gestire un ampio portafoglio ordini di offerte, perché la sua rete offre un unico prezzo di richiesta di consenso. Ciò significa che i nodi Bitcoin possono accettare il primo blocco (valido) che vedono che soddisfa il prezzo di richiesta corrente della rete: le offerte di disturbo possono essere facilmente ignorate e rappresentano uno spreco di risorse per un miner.

La determinazione del prezzo consensuale dei calcoli consente di abbinare rapidamente gli ordini di acquisto/vendita in Bitcoin, in base al principio “primo arrivato, primo servito”. A differenza di b-money, questo abbinamento di ordini significa che il mercato di Bitcoin non ha fasi: funziona ininterrottamente, con un nuovo prezzo di consenso calcolato dopo ogni singolo ordine abbinato (blocco trovato). Per evitare biforcazioni causate da latenza di rete, o comportamento avversario, i nodi devono anche seguire la regola della catena più pesante. Questa regola garantisce che solo le offerte più alte vengano accettate dalla rete.

Questo algoritmo, in cui i nodi accettano il primo blocco valido che vedono e seguono anche la catena più pesante, è un nuovo algoritmo BFT che converge rapidamente sul consenso sulla sequenza dei blocchi. Satoshi dedica il 25% del white paper di Bitcoin a dimostrare questa affermazione.[7]

Abbiamo stabilito nelle sezioni precedenti che il prezzo di richiesta di consenso di Bitcoin dipende dal fatto che la blockchain sia in consenso, ma a quanto pare l'esistenza di un singolo prezzo di richiesta di consenso è ciò che consente al mercato di abbinare prontamente gli ordini, che è ciò che porta al consenso in primo luogo!

Inoltre questo nuovo “consenso di Nakamoto” richiede solo che il 50% dei partecipanti non sia avversario, un miglioramento significativo rispetto allo stato dell'arte precedente. Un cypherpunk come Satoshi ha compiuto questa svolta teorica nell'informatica, al posto di un tradizionale ricercatore accademico o industriale, grazie alla sua focalizzazione sull'implementazione di una moneta sana/onesta piuttosto che su un generico algoritmo di consenso per il calcolo distribuito.

V. Conclusione

B-money era un framework potente per la creazione di una valuta digitale, ma era incompleto perché privo di una politica monetaria. Vincolare B-money a un programma di rilascio predeterminato ha ridotto la portata e semplificato l'implementazione, eliminando l'obbligo di tracciare e scegliere tra le offerte di creazione di moneta inviate dagli utenti. Preservare il ritmo temporale del programma di rilascio ha portato all'algoritmo di aggiustamento della difficoltà e ha reso possibile il consenso di Nakamoto, ampiamente riconosciuto come uno degli aspetti più innovativi dell'implementazione di Bitcoin.

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

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Note

[1] Il titolo di questo saggio è stato ispirato dal primo messaggio col telegrafo della storia, inviato da Samuel Morse nel 1844: “Cosa ha fatto Dio?”.

[2] Nonostante l'idea iniziale Dwork & Naor non inventarono la “proof-of-work”, termine che fu coniato più tardi, nel 1999, da Markus Jakobsson e Ari Juels.

[3] Il progetto RPOW di Hal Finney è stato un tentativo di creare una Proof-of-work trasferibile, ma Bitcoin non utilizza questo concetto perché non tratta i calcoli come valuta. Come vedremo più avanti, quando esamineremo bit-gold e b-money, i calcoli non possono essere valuta perché il valore dei calcoli cambia nel tempo, mentre le unità di valuta devono avere lo stesso valore. Bitcoin non è calcoli, è valuta venduta in cambio di calcoli.

[4] A questo punto alcuni lettori potrebbero credere che io disprezzi i contributi di Dai o Szabo perché sono stati poco articolati o vaghi su alcuni punti. La mia opinione è esattamente l'opposto: Dai e Szabo avevano sostanzialmente ragione e il fatto che non abbiano articolato ogni dettaglio come ha fatto successivamente Satoshi non sminuisce il loro contributo. Anzi dovrebbe accrescere il nostro apprezzamento nei loro confronti, poiché rivela quanto sia stato impegnativo l'avvento della valuta digitale, anche per i suoi migliori esperti.

[5] Qui vengono fatte due semplificazioni:

1. Il numero di bitcoin venduti in ogni blocco è influenzato anche dal mercato delle commissioni di transazione, il quale esula dall'ambito di questo saggio, ma si rimanda a lavori successivi.
2. La difficoltà segnalata da Bitcoin non è esattamente il numero di calcoli previsti; bisogna moltiplicarlo per un fattore di proporzionalità.

[6] Almeno non dai vecchi tempi in cui Satoshi era l'unico miner sulla rete.

[7] Satoshi ha commesso un errore sia nella sua analisi nel white paper, sia nella successiva implementazione iniziale di Bitcoin, utilizzando la regola della “catena più lunga” invece della “catena più pesante”.

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