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Two Indirectly Related Personal Experiences

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 27/06/2025 - 05:01

The following are two indirectly related personal experiences I have had, the first sometime in mid-2012, the second, an as-yet-to-be-resolved experience in media res.

Following the passing of my father in 2012, I shipped numerous items (including some furniture) from Los Angeles to Vienna, Austria. Among the items shipped were ca. ten large cans of freeze-dried food purchased from major disaster-preparedness food supplier, Mountain House.

The shipment went from the port of Los Angeles to a port in the UK, where it was to have been unloaded andimmediately transferred to a truck that would bring my shipment though the UK – Europe tunnel and over land to Austria.

Upon arrival of my shipment in the UK, I received an e-mail requesting some information regarding the contents of the cans of freeze dried food. I found this odd, as the contents of each can were clearly written on the outside of the cans. (And all the cans were sealed.)

Not satisfied with information provided right there on the food products, the Brits were requesting “more details” (???) After I informed them that “I had no more ‘details,” they then requested that I contact Mountain Farms so that they provide more documentation regarding the contents of the cans of freeze-dried food.

I spoke with a representative at Mountain Farms on the phone, who thought the request beyond absurd, as it was indeedso absured as to be “surreal.” But, “okay” he said, he would provide some additional (ridiculous and nonsensical) information which I promptly forwarded on to the British officials.

After which I was informed by a British customs official that the information was “not enough.” And as there was nothing left to be done to “honor” (??) their ridiculous request for still more information, I told them this in the hope that this would put an end to their antics and that the cans of freeze-dried food would be forwarded on to me in Austria with the rest of my shipment.

And then what?

Now here is where it goes beyond the absurd, descending into something along the lines of “sado-masochistic.”

I was then informed that all ten cans of freeze-dried food were to be confiscated by the British officials, but, but, . . . in order to carry out their confiscation, they would need considerable time to go through my entire shipment (which was somewhat considerable, as I was moving a portion of my American household to Austria). The cost for their efforts? 2,000 British pounds!!

Should I not submit to their “extortion,” I was informed that they would hold on to (not release) my entire shipment. And because the shipment contained important contents of my American household, I had no choice but to submit to their quite clear “extortion.”

What are the chances that the British officials tossed into the garbage ten large “new” cans of high-quality freeze-dried food in SEALED cans? And what are the chances that one or more officials took the items home?

Despite my love of many things in the UK, I vowed at once to never again set foot inside the country. And I adhere to that to this day.

Now on to my current as yet un-resolved experience which though quite different has a similar “smell” to my British experience of 2012.

Towards the end of March this years (2025), I shipped one non-valuable (only “sentimental” value) earring to a Jewelry repair ship outside New York City. Earlier in the year, I lost one of the earrings; then in mid-March typed into the Google search box, “replacement of lost earring,” which brought me to this very nice and interesting shop outside of New York City. I sent them a photo of the one remaining earring and they then informed me that it would be possible for them to reconstruct a second near-identical earring.

And so, I shipped the one earring to the shop express mail.

While in the middle of completing my order, someone in the shop informed me that they could make, if I would like, two instead of just one duplicate. I gave them the go-ahead on that.

Soon after that I was informed that the package had been shipped express mail (UPS) and that I should be receiving it shortly.

On June 16, I received a request on my mobile phone from UPS to pay (on-line) customs’ duty for my shipment which I promptly did.

But then, . . . enter in the ridiculous and absurd.

When I went on-line (the UPS website) to track my package from its arrival in Vienna to my home in the Austrian Alps, I discovered that the package was being held up pending the need for “missing information.”

Despite the above, however, I had not received any request from UPS regarding this “missing information.” What information was being requested? And where should it be sent?

I then proceeded to contact someone at UPS, first in Austria (no success), next in Germany (no success) and then in the USA. When I finally reached someone in the USA, I was informed that they could not help me and that I must contact someone “local.” So back to square one, or shall we say, “square zero.”

I then tried the chat box on the UPS website where I was informed that they would be “happy” to help me with “any” problem/issue that I have.

But when I typed in my problem in the most simple and succinct way possible, what did I get? A “cookie cutter” reply that had zero to do with my problem. I reframed my question every which way, but nada.

Then somehow, either via another phone call or some info on the internet, I got an e-mail address ([email protected]) to which I wrote a request that they inform me as to what “information” they were “missing,” and to provide an e-mail address to which I could send this info.

I received the following e-mail reply:

Dear Madam,

In order to clear the shipment we need the original Export documents when you sent the shipment for repair.

If the package was shipped with ups please provide us with the tracking number and we will take care of it.

Thank you.

With no one signing off on this e-mail (no specified person to whom I can reply, . . . how nice!) Might I be dealing here with “AI”? Could be. Maybe I am part of some widespread “AI” testing program to help them determine where they are in its application.

So then, I was able to locate the shipping documents from when I shipped the one earring from Vienna, Austria to Long Island City, USA.

I sent them this document and explained to them that I only shipped one earring to the USA, but received three earrings back because the Jewelry shop outside of New York City had fabricated for me two new earrings as replacement for my one lost earring. I also informed them that I had already paid customs duty on my shipment (for the cost of the production of the two new earrings).

I sent them this information yesterday and as of today, I am still informed on the UPS website that my shipment is still being held in some warehouse pending the receipt of “missing information.”

We are not talking here about some expensive earrings made of gold and with precious stones or anything of that nature. We are talking about earrings of silver (with minimal silver) and a small moonstone for each earring. For which I paid ca. $30 in the late-1990s.

The shop charged me $470 for procuring all the earring components + the hand-fabrication of two new earrings, not exactly an amount to garner much attention (one would think) in connection with the crossing of borders.

So what is this all about then?

Could be that at one level here, we are dealing with “AI,” and if that be the case then I am part of a “test” as I believe that we are in an important stage of their AI rollout where they are testing it from and in many different perspectives.

But in the case of the earrings, it is surely not about the “money” (i.e., any charges that can be accrued from any additional customs’ fee add ons, which at this point would be insignificant). Nor is it about attempted violation of any law on my part, or of me simply being up-to-something-not-good via this shipment from the USA to Austria (i.e., trying to secure some illegal type item, like, for instance “Ivermectin”!!)

To understand what is going on here, we have to return to my earlier British experience of 2012. Okay, in the case of Brits, yes, they were extorting me for the handsome sum of 2,000 pounds, something that does not enter into the current situation.

The British incident was about the untold pleasures of extortion, it was a gleeful shout out that “we can do whatever we want.” It is to put it more precisely about “harassment.” Yes, it is the “harassment” that lies at the heart of both the British and the current experience.

When it comes to the rules and the bureaucratic details that are in play in Austria today, it is most surely not Austria that is speaking here. It is the EU. And 2012 in the UK was pre-Brexit, so EU operating there too. Leaving outside “the Great Reset,” “build back better” and all that, the EU is all about creating maximum suffering for EU citizens, particularly the middle class from top to bottom. It is about destruction for the sake of destruction.

I think that most would agree that in addition to a culling of the global population, it was the intention of the “Covid” operation (Psy-Op) to weaken a large sector of those not killed by the bio-weapon masquerading as a “vaccine.”

One way that large swaths of the global population have been “weakened” is through ruined health, but there has alsobeen financial/economic devastation and countless other forms of human devastation.

I am completely convinced that the “harassment” fits right in with this. It is just another way in which human beings across the globe are being significantly “weakened.” As this kind of “harassment” becomes more and more widespread, as it is becoming, it begins to effect people’s health. People weaken.

The only reason I have chosen to publicly present the above experiences is to call attention to the kinds of experiencesthat many are having today (across the globe, but more and more in the West) and which may seem at best anecdotally interesting (and annoying) but of no great significance.

But when taken cumulatively in the lives of each and every one of us and then again taken cumulatively on a global scale, it may be that such “anecdotal” individual experiences are playing perhaps a more important role than we think when it comes to our health and well-being.

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Donald Trump Has Joined Joe Biden in the Ranks of War Criminals

Lew Rockwell Institute - Ven, 27/06/2025 - 05:01

Iran is the kid on the playground that isn’t intimidated by the bully and is willing—and able—to fight back.

President Donald Trump not only attacked a sovereign foreign state (Iran) without provocation, without congressional approval and without constitutional or moral justification, he has also joined the likes of Joe Biden and G.W. Bush in the ranks of war criminals.

I doubt that anyone in America is more qualified to speak to constitutional and legal (and unconstitutional and illegal) acts than legal scholar Judge Andrew Napolitano. In a recent interview with USMC Major/UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, Judge Nap said the following:

What the president of the United States did was profoundly unconstitutional, absolutely unlawful, was an impeachable offense and was a war crime. Under our Constitution only the Congress can declare war, not the president. And Congress can only declare war on a country that poses an immediate and grave military threat to the United States of America. President Trump has started a war with Iran, which poses no threat—let alone immediate or grave—whatsoever to the national security of the United States of America. Under an unconstitutional statute, but still the law, the War Powers Resolution, the president is required to give notice to Congress and give Congress an opportunity to respond before he attacks a foreign country. He can carry out the response, but he has to tell Congress and give Congress an opportunity to respond. He not only ignored the Constitution, he ignored that law. As unconstitutional as it is—it hasn’t been tested by the courts—it is still the law. The president ignored it. Killing people and destroying property in another country without a just cause is a war crime. It is the moral and legal equivalent of a high crime and misdemeanor. It is an impeachable offense. And it is time for the American public and the Congress to do something about it.

There you have it: What Trump did in attacking Iran was not only unconstitutional, but it was also a war crime, “the moral and legal equivalent of a high crime and misdemeanor,” which is an impeachable offense.

Military scholar Scott Ritter followed the judge’s statement with his own analysis. Ritter said:

What they [the U.S. military] did is carry out an illegal war of aggression. It’s a war crime. It’s not just a war crime, Judge Jackson from the Nuremberg trial period, lead prosecutor of the Nazi war criminals, asserted that the war of aggression is the ultimate war crime, because from this war of aggression all other crimes emanate. This is what we did. I don’t know why Americans are proud of this. This is an act of perfidy, a surprise attack, an undeclared act of aggression that had no foundation in justification. Again, to justify something like this, which is the equivalent of what we would say a preemptive act of self-defense, so there needs to be an imminent threat, an imminent threat, that can only be dealt with through this act of aggression.

Iran was in the process of negotiations that would resolve all of the issues that could be perceived as a threat. So, there is no imminent threat.

Moreover, we know that the sites that had been targeted—three nuclear sites: Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow—were empty, that these strikes would have zero impact on an Iranian nuclear program that had long since been evacuated from these sites and sent to other locations. It’s come out that this strike plan, which was done in cooperation with Israel, was something that had been planned more than a year ago and actually been practiced by the United States and Israel. So, this was a pre-planned strike against three designated sites that had no military value. So, this is purely an act of theater, and any military commander that puts American lives at risk to carry out an act of political theater should literally have their commissions revoked and be drummed out of the service. There was no justification for this.

As I have documented in past columns, Donald Trump likes to portray himself as an emperor, and now he is acting like one.

Here is my four-minute statement on Trump’s unlawful attack against Iran from last Sunday.

Trump has now proven to the world that 1) He was a bald-faced liar when he told the American people he wanted to be a peace president, 2) He remains a bald-faced liar by attacking a country while his administration was in the process of negotiating a peace settlement with that nation, and 3) He is nothing more than a paid lackey of the Zionist government in Tel Aviv and the Israel lobby.

Virtually everything America does in the Middle East is at the behest of Israel. This U.S. attack against Iran was no different. As former CIA analyst Larry Johnson said, “Netanyahu calls the shots.”

The idea that Israel wants peace is ludicrous! Israel has been the world’s greatest destabilizing force since its inception in 1948. And it has also been the most belligerent military aggressor in the world since its inception.

Netanyahu himself will NEVER agree to peace, because keeping Israel at war is the only way that he can stay out of prison. If peace were to ensue in the Middle East, Netanyahu and his wife would immediately be tried and convicted of mass corruption and bribery charges and would spend the rest of their lives in prison. The only way Netanyahu stays out of jail is to keep his country at war.

And by keeping Israel at war, Netanyahu keeps America at war, because 1) Israel has zero military superiority in the Middle East without the backing of the United States, and 2) Netanyahu knows that the Israel lobby controls the politicians in Washington, D.C., including Donald Trump.

The nations of the world know that the Zionist government in Tel Aviv is a rogue government. It always has been and always will be. Its actions are constantly outside the rule of law: judicial, Natural, moral, civil and international. And it does so with impunity because the United States constantly runs interference and provides cover for it.

And now the combined administrations of Joe Biden and Donald Trump have turned the government in Washington, D.C., into a rogue state of its own. These two presidents—and the Congress that turns a blind eye to their unlawful conduct—have turned America’s foundational principles upside down.

Biden and Trump have taken the nation that was called the “City upon a Hill” by Puritan preacher John Winthrop—who penned this moniker to his sermon in 1630 to describe America as a bastion of hope, faith and freedom to the world, the nation whose birth certificate (the Declaration of Independence) announces its parents as being “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”—and turned that nation into a lawless, murderous lapdog of the rogue iniquitous State of Israel.

And what Netanyahu and his Zionist extremists in Israel want is to turn Iran into another Libya. They have said this openly and often. In other words, their goal is the total destruction of Iran. Why? Because Israel cannot control Iran, and this is unacceptable. Israel’s goal is total regional hegemony.

Israel is the elementary school bully that wants every kid on the playground in total submission to his will. Iran is the kid on the playground that isn’t intimidated by the bully and is willing—and able—to fight back.

In fact, by committing these war crimes against Iran, Israel and the U.S. are making it more likely that Iran will pursue a nuclear weapon, as this might be the only way Iran is assured of its own survival.

A case for a nuclear Iran 

Kenneth Waltz, one of the most influential realist thinkers in international relations, argued in a controversial 2012 Foreign Affairs article titled Why Iran Should Get the Bomb that a nuclear-armed Iran might actually stabilize the Middle East, rather than destabilize it.

Waltz’s theory is rooted in neorealism (or structural realism), which sees the international system as anarchic, and posits that states act primarily to ensure their own survival. From this perspective, nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent, and their spread, under specific conditions, can actually lead to greater stability. Consider North Korea: since developing nuclear weapons and delivery systems, its behavior has arguably become more calculated and status-quo-oriented. It also encouraged Trump to extend an olive branch to Kim Jong-un.

Israel remains the sole nuclear power in the Middle East, a monopoly fostering strategic imbalance and absolute impunity. The emergence of a rival nuclear-armed state, even with minimal second-strike capability, would force belligerent sides to act with greater caution. Conflicts would likely be reduced to face-saving precision strikes, as seen with nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. Despite hosting radical militant groups, Pakistan has behaved as a rational actor within the nuclear matrix.

Similarly, a nuclear Iran could reduce its reliance on asymmetric proxy strategies – such as its support for Hamas or Hezbollah – because its security would primarily rest on deterrence.

Some critics however warn that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia may rapidly follow suit. A moot point, except that Riyadh bankrolled Islamabad’s nuclear weapons program under America’s watch during the 1980s Soviet-Afghan War which featured beloved anti-Soviet warriors like Osama bin Laden!

There are also persistent reports which suggest that some Pakistani nuclear assets may already be stationed in Saudi Arabia, under the command of senior Pakistani officers. In the event of a regional nuclear escalation, Riyadh can simply request transfer at will.

Historical precedents also do not support alarmist non-proliferation fears. When North Korea acquired nuclear weapons, neither South Korea nor Japan followed suit. Deterrence, once established, tends to cool ambitions, especially when the cost of escalation becomes too high.

            (Source)

The discussion that is NEVER broached publicly is: Why can a belligerent/aggressor state such as Israel have nuclear weapons (which technology it stole from the United States) but a mostly passive state such as Iran cannot?

Remember that the only reason Iran has not tried to build a nuclear weapon to date (confirmed by National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard only weeks ago) is due to the fact that such a weapon is seen as a violation of Shia Islamic law by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

However, the flagrant acts of international aggression demonstrated by Israel and the U.S. of late may indeed persuade Khamenei that the only way Iran can survive is that it has the deterrence of a nuclear weapon at its disposal. Notice that the U.S. is not using South Korea as a proxy for war with North Korea. Why not? Because North Korea has nuclear weapons.

Plus, Iran might not need to build a nuclear weapon in order to obtain one.

I have read reports that say several countries including Russia and Pakistan have already said they could provide Iran with some of their nuclear arsenal (as apparently Pakistan has already provided nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia). This kind of military support between Sunni and Shia Muslims has the potential of putting the belligerent bully of the Middle East (Israel) permanently in its place.

The old saying still holds true: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” If Iran believes it is necessary to obtain a nuclear weapon for its survival, then obtaining one would be seen as its only option.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the criminal conduct of Netanyahu and Trump to pound Iran into submission turns out to be the catalyst for Iran obtaining the ability to permanently maintain its sovereignty?

In the meantime, don’t expect Israel to abide by any ceasefire agreement brokered by Trump for very long. Again, Netanyahu needs war to stay out of prison. And Netanyahu also knows that no matter what Trump says, he is still in Israel’s pocket.

Israel’s (and thus America’s) war with Iran has just begun. Remember that Iran still has thousands of hypersonic ballistic missiles (which neither U.S. nor Israeli defenses can stop) that it can launch on Israel.

Furthermore, Iran has already inflicted so much damage in Israel that thousands of Israelis—including members of the Knesset—are fleeing the country. The truly paradoxical part of this story is that Iran has so crippled Israel economically, militarily, emotionally and financially that the Zionist state may actually be standing on its last legs.

But for America’s part, Donald Trump has allowed Israel to drag us into another “stupid” (Trump’s word) foreign war.

And, as did his predecessors, Donald J. Trump has now joined the ranks of war criminals.

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

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Mencken’s Forgotten Wisdom on War: James Bovard

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 19:54

Tim McGraw wrote:

“Wars are not made by common folks, scratching for livings in the heat of the day, they are made by demagogues infesting palaces…The very unpopularity of war makes people ready to believe, when they suddenly confront it, that it has been thrust upon them…because their own demagogues have been pretending, all the while, to be trying to prevent it.”

See here.

 

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Israel planned false flag operation on US soil

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 19:21

Wriites Saleh Abdullah. 

We do have to consider the source, but it is safe to assume that this would be a logical play the Zionists would resort to when you consider their history. They did the 9/11 attacks to drag America into decades of wars for Israel. These Zionists will mass murder women and children so no crime or act of terrorism is beyond them.

They also have no chance to take on Iran militarily without American help as we saw over the past couple of weeks. They will absolutely try to start shit with Iran again in the future. I don’t think there is really any doubting this. So the false flag play is something to be looking out for. If something happens in America that is blamed on Iran, we should assume Israel did it.

Tehran Times

 

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The Forgotten NATO Summit

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 17:25

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Our Brave Warriors

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 16:53

Trump has suggested changing the title of Secretary of Defense back to Secretary of War.  “We all feel like warriors” after the unprovoked bombing of Iran, he said.  Yes, let’s celebrate the “bravery” of those pilots who dropped 30,000 pound bombs on Iran from ten miles up in the sky while facing no air defense.  And don’t leave out those gallant and brave sailors who pushed buttons to launch missiles at Iran from ships anchored 400 miles away.

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Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism – a new website

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 16:44

Jo Ann Cavallo wrote:

Dear Lew, 

I hope this message finds you well. I’m writing because I have just created a website titled Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism.

Advancing Austrian Economics and Libertarianism in the Humanities

The homepage currently has buttons to access webpages for the Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism volume in memory of Paul Cantor and a few other items, including my bibliography of books, articles, and journals that may be of interest to libertarian and classical liberal humanists. 

The site can also host blogs and announcements related to Austrian Economics and libertarianism in the Humanities.

I welcome suggestions and content for the website as well as recommended titles to add to the online bibliography to keep it current.

Would you be able to alert LRC readers to this new website by mentioning it in the LRC Blog?

Thanks so much and best wishes, 

 

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Sebag e il denaro naturale

Freedonia - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 10:02

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

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

____________________________________________________________________________________


di Joakim Book

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/sebag-e-il-denaro-naturale)

Gli ordini naturali sono cose che emergono spontaneamente, o riflettono la vera natura di come qualcosa è o dovrebbe essere. Due dei miei libri preferiti, entrambi capaci di cambiare radicalmente la mia visione del mondo, sono A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century (dei biologi Heather Heying e Bret Weinstein) e Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life (del professore di economia Paul Seabright). Sebbene trattino argomenti diversi, ciò che li accomuna è l'enfasi sul reale e sul naturale: la ricerca di modi veri, consolidati e coerenti nelle cose in cui le specie, gli esseri umani, le economie, il commercio e ogni altra cosa importante prosperano.

Non è vero che il mondo possa essere come vogliono i suoi abitanti – o come noi moderni ci illudiamo di pensare che dovrebbe essere. Esistono regole ferree e linee luminose che ci conducono verso prosperità, benessere, armonia e riduzione al minimo dei conflitti. Regole, morale, comportamenti e, soprattutto, gli accordi economici non sono arbitrari.

Nel suo libro, The Natural Order of Money, Roy Sebag, appassionato di oro ed ex-amministratore delegato e fondatore di una società di mining di Bitcoin, cerca di convincerci che esiste un ordine non arbitrario simile anche per il denaro stesso. In questo elegante manoscritto, sottolinea la responsabilità ecologica e il necessario legame con il reale e il sottostante.

Il denaro è l'estensione dell'ordine naturale che governa le industrie primarie – quelle con un feedback diretto dall'ecologia, come l'agricoltura, la pesca o l'estrazione mineraria – fino al settore dei servizi. È ciò che mantiene quest'ultimo vincolato ai limiti naturali. Per quanto complesse o intricate diventino le società umane, esse “rimangono responsabili delle regolarità e dei capricci del mondo naturale”, come afferma Sebag in apertura del suo libro.

“Non possiamo mietere un raccolto al momento sbagliato, trascurare un gregge di pecore o estrarre sostanze rare dove non esistono senza subire una qualche perdita”. Il mondo reale ha un riscontro tangibile ai comportamenti falsi; è la natura a decidere. “Lo standard naturale significa che esiste un giudizio primario e oggettivo della natura sulle azioni dell'economia reale. Le nozioni di lavoro buono e cattivo, di successo e fallimento, derivano dall'inevitabile responsabilità dell'agricoltore nei confronti di questo standard naturale”.

In una recensione del famoso libro Money di Jacob Goldstein di qualche anno fa, ho commentato:

I pianificatori dall'alto verso il basso hanno sempre avuto difficoltà con l'ordine spontaneo e i sistemi dinamici. Senza un commissario riconoscibile, le istituzioni diventano “strane”, arbitrarie o casuali. Il denaro può essere qualsiasi cosa desideriamo, conclude Goldstein; ogni accordo monetario è una scelta, il che significa che possiamo scegliere ciò che vogliamo.

Natural Order è un'obiezione potente e veemente a quell'idea attuale, molto comune e diffusa: denaro, istituzioni e ricchezza possono essere qualsiasi cosa vogliamo che siano, operare come vogliamo, essere organizzati e riorganizzati come preferiamo. Il modo in cui Sebag vede il denaro, e quindi l'oro, è che deve prima essere raccolto dalla natura: è una “incarnazione energetica” che deve essere resistente all'entropia. Conclude quindi che “l'unica opzione rimanente è che il denaro sia di natura elementale”.

È interessante notare che Knut Svanholm, un prolifico bitcoiner con un profondo interesse per l'economia Austriaca, ha già fornito questo collegamento con Bitcoin. Nel suo libro, Bitcoin: Everything Divided by 21 Millions, scrive che Bitcoin è l'elemento essenziale, l'elemento zero, il pezzo mancante in alto a sinistra della tavola periodica – un oggetto puro e inconfondibile di pura energia (economica) senza massa.

Sebag non la vede così, ma è ossessionato dai pesi, come se la quantità fisica di qualcosa – l'oro, il raccolto – fosse ciò che conta dal punto di vista economico. Ma non è mai stato l'aspetto di conservazione della quantità dell'oro a renderlo una moneta funzionale e fiorente nel diciannovesimo secolo, bensì la sua stabilità dei prezzi a lungo termine. Il costo di produzione crescente dell'oro (ovvero il suo “aggiustamento della difficoltà”) e i prezzi fissati in oro hanno creato una regressione verso la media dei prezzi al consumo che, ad esempio, ha reso praticabili i contratti a lungo termine.

A un certo punto Sebag arriva al premio monetario e conclude con sicurezza che “in una società che ha superato la sussistenza, una moneta superiore non sarà né cibo né combustibile”. Pur essendo accurata e persuasiva, la cosa strana di questa osservazione è che non coglie il premio monetario insito nell'oro stesso quando viene utilizzato come moneta. Qualunque oggetto fisico utilizziamo come moneta gli conferisce un premio monetario. Se ha un uso nel mondo reale, il suo uso monetario lo “sostituisce” e ci rende più poveri: il prezzo a cui l'oggetto monetario viene scambiato è superiore a quello a cui lo stesso oggetto sarebbe stato scambiato senza il suo ruolo monetario, il che significa che gli usi non monetari di quell'oggetto diventano troppo costosi da perseguire.

Bitcoin ha un premio monetario al 100% ed è proprio questo il punto: non esclude l'uso naturale e reale dei materiali, nemmeno i metalli preziosi che Sebag vorrebbe farci sprecare nelle nostre tasche e nei caveau delle nostre banche. In questo modo ristretto e specifico, la critica al costo delle risorse riguardo al denaro reale ha un senso: usare oggetti del mondo reale come moneta quando essi hanno usi alternativi esclude proprio quell'uso nel mondo reale.

Il mio amico Mark Maraia, autore del libro di gestione aziendale Rainmaking Made Simple, si è imbattuto nel concetto di “denaro naturale” a un evento Bitcoin in Costa Rica di recente. Il concetto è semplice, ma potente: denaro, vincolato e connesso all'ordine naturale.

Iniziate con qualcosa di naturale e finite con Bitcoin […]. Si inizia con l'acqua corrente o il gas metano, o gli idrocarburi, o il vento o il sole. Tutti questi elementi provengono dalla natura e vengono poi convertiti in elettricità che consente ai miner di Bitcoin (ASIC) di iniziare il processo di hashing. [Il concetto di] denaro naturale crea silenziosamente, pacificamente e delicatamente curiosità intorno all'idea che esista al mondo una cosa come il denaro naturale.

A parte i cavilli semantici, Bitcoin è piuttosto legato e connesso alla natura. Eppure Natural Order è un caso curioso, decisamente troppo breve per il suo bene. All'inizio del libro l'autore menziona un manoscritto dieci volte più grande che ha scelto di non portare avanti. Forse avrebbe dovuto pubblicare quello.


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


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


We Sure Seem Bound and Determined…

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 05:01

Are you loving the Ride of Fate roller coaster yet? If you are an American, or one of its friends or (especially) one of its designated enemies, you better start paying more attention and find a way off this ride before it picks up too much speed.

Let’s review for a second. The United States, as a signatory to the UN charter, the Geneva Conventions, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, all of which it either wrote or had great input in developing, has used its great post-WW2 power and influence to urge/compel other countries to sign and uphold all of the above agreements. Under these sets of documents, waging war on a country that is not an “immediate and existential threat” is an act of egregious “aggression,” which is a defined war crime.  Just ask US Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson, who was chief prosecutorial counsel at the Nuremberg Tribunal after WW2.  He, as the principal writer of the charter governing the Nuremberg Tribunals, specified that unprovoked aggression against a country not at war and not threatening such is the most execrable war crime, for all other war crimes stem from it. In our most recent expedition into self-unaware double standards, the US has (yet again) managed to violate all of its commitments and self-righteous preening regarding standards of conduct in its use of Israel as a cat’s paw to “once and for all) level Iran.

Iran attacked no one, indeed, it was engaged in negotiations in which it signaled a clear intent to throttle back its nuclear enrichment program to the 3.67% uranium enrichment levels *every* country in the world is entitled to develop under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which (unlike Israel, by the way) it is a signatory.

It is not necessary to like or approve of Iran’s internal policies or theological preferences to find them innocent of precipitating recent events. I certainly have no use for their Islam-based policies, but, objectively speaking, they are not the aggressors here.

Neither does one need to fawn over or give mindless approval to every action of the UN; I certainly don’t. It regularly meddles in or wanders into areas of international relations for which it has no competence, but in certain areas, its charter, signed by nearly all nations, does provide it legitimacy, and, for the moment, its codifications regarding war, and ancillary codifications like the Geneva Conventions and the NPT under its effective custodianship, are all we have to keep minor skirmishes from becoming major, potentially world-ending wars.  At least four times since the end of WW2, the UN apparatus has served, however clumsily, to avert wars that could have escalated to nuclear exchanges.  Under the terms of the UN charter, President Trump, the State Department and the US armed forces have facilitated and escalated an act of clear, unauthorized, unjust aggression against Iran, at the eager behest of its equally guilty unsinkable aircraft carrier: Israel.

President Trump, has no basis of authority to do what he has done regarding Iran on the domestic front, as well. He is in massive, clear-cut violation of Constitutional procedure in his exercise of war powers.  To be fair, every president in our lifetime has ignored the constitutional protocols; he’s hardly alone there.  But knowingly aiding a country with both nukes and a touchy trigger finger to use them without going to Congress is flatly unconstitutional *and* grossly irresponsible, considering possible escalation scenarios that are obvious.  It is Congress’ sole prerogative to declare war.  This current situation is not Grenada 2 or something, this could potentially impact the whole world.  The least that could be done is to make Congress debate the merits and make the decision to formally declare war, or not.

As a dodge to that, and a convenient way for Congress to avoid its responsibilities, there is the War Powers Act of 1973, which itself is flatly unconstitutional, but this has never been challenged or tested in a court case (mostly because neither Congress nor the courts want to handle that hot potato).  Anyway, unconstitutional though it may be in itself, the Act purportedly grants a president authority to unilaterally act for up to 60 days under a clear and present danger to *the United States* without direct Congressional authorization, but he still *must* formally notify Congress about his intentions and their scope within 48 hours.  This was not done.

Trump is acting in the precise way a tyrannical king might do, which was expressly understood to be objectionable and avoided by the Founding Fathers, hence their intent to hand declarations of war to Congress in the Constitution.  He’s mercurial and erratic, changing his mind and his “strategies” on a dime over and over, while issuing childish, ALL CAPS threats and edicts on Truth Social to all potential parties and the whole world.  His erratic behavior is undermining his legitimacy , and making other countries conclude that the US is unpredictable and incapable of forming lasting agreements (or, especially, potential treaties) under his administration.

The Russians don’t trust him, those countries  currently forced to engage him in his unilaterally imposed tariff wars don’t trust him, BRICS doesn’t trust him, and you can be darned sure Iran doesn’t trust him, in both his threats or his attempts to mediate or negotiate anything.  He has unilaterally destroyed, or at least severely damaged, the good offices and reputation for fairness that the United States formerly (sort of) enjoyed.  On that basis, watch countries start backing out of the NPT and consider their own nuclear programs.  Why not?  If a country can be attacked for not having nukes, in an area of the world where another country that *does* have them threatens it constantly *with* them, well, they “might as well” develop them too, as at least some form of balance-of-power hedge.  This is by no means an endorsement of that mindset on my part, but one has to see it as a now-likely “thought process “ throughout the Middle East.

Reckless, unilateral actions that are half-baked and have no long-term vision or strategy motivating them are becoming a trademark of an administration that is too egocentric to act rationally.  The situation is even worse when incompetent people with no training or background in foreign policy are routinely put in cabinet-level positions to be yes-men for erratic “visionary leadership.” But such doings have been mandated by a political apparatus that puts people in prominent positions of authority as the result of semi-mindless political “beauty contests” instead of competence and training. The increasingly politically unsavvy electorate, with its minute attention span focusing on the NFL or The Voice, cannot fathom anything more nuanced than that, and must be mollified. Behold the vehicle of our own doom!

As someone who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 (holding my nose a bit the second time) and who stood with him as a matter of principle to protest election fraud by being present in DC during *both* 1-6-21 and 12-12-2020, I take no delight in writing any of the foregoing.  Argue on the basis of the deficiencies in my points if you like, but blindly following a clear egomaniacal megalomaniac just because we “had to stop Harris” is weak sauce, and will no longer pass muster. This guy put us on a path that may, even now, escalate to get us all killed. Twice. In only 8 days!

As Trump himself often puts it: “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

The post We Sure Seem Bound and Determined… appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ted Cruz, Dispensationalism, and the State of Israel

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 05:01

Tucker Carlson and Senator Ted Cruz clashed over Israel, Iran, and US foreign policy. The whole interview (more like an informal debate) was entertaining, but the most intriguing part for me was when Cruz talked about the alleged biblical foundation of his support for Israel.

While I usually write about economic topics, I’m wading into some theological waters here because I, like Senator Cruz, am an evangelical protestant. He didn’t refer to it by name, but the view he was espousing in his interview reflects dispensational theology. My purpose in writing this is merely to show that not all evangelical protestants espouse dispensationalism and that there is a more coherent interpretation of scripture through the lens of covenant theology that does not lead to dangerous US foreign policy.

Here is a bit of the heated conversation between Senator Cruz and Tucker Carlson:

Cruz: “When I came into the Senate I resolved that I was going to be the leading defender of Israel and what you didn’t ask is why, so let me tell you why. […] The reason is twofold: Number one, as a Christian growing up in Sunday school I was taught from the Bible those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed, and from my perspective I want to be on the blessing side of things.”

Carlson: “Where is that?”

Cruz: “I can find it for you. I don’t have the scripture off the tip of my [tongue]. You pull out the phone and…”

Carlson: “It’s in Genesis.”

They are referring to one of the most important passages of scripture, Genesis 12:1-3, in which God makes a covenant with Abram, whose name would later be changed to Abraham:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Similar pronouncements from God were given to Abraham’s descendants. God told Abraham’s grandson, Jacob (whose name would later be changed to Israel), “in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 28:14b).

This, then, is the basis for Senator Cruz’s resolve to be “the leading defender of Israel,” guiding his foreign policy views in the 20th and 21st centuries. This view (an element of dispensationalism) is not unique to Senator Cruz—it’s espoused by many politicians and their constituents in the US, which helps explain why the US maintains such an entangling alliance with the current government of Israel.

Dispensational theology is relatively new, originating in the 19th century. It’s adoption by many in the US can be attributed to the Scofield Reference Bible, published in 1909. It teaches that God “dispenses” grace and reveals himself in distinct ways for distinct people over distinct periods in distinct places. For example, the Abrahamic covenant applied to certain people (Jews) in a certain place (Canaan) starting with Abraham and lasting until Moses. It leads to the conclusion that God has separate plans for Israel and the church.

Covenant theology explains that after the fall of Adam and Eve, God made an overarching covenant of grace, “wherein He freely offered unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ” (see chapters 7 and 8 of the Westminster Confession of Faith). You might be thinking, “But Jesus was born thousands of years later. How was this covenant offered to all the people we read about in the Old Testament?” Answer: “This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all fore-signifying Christ to come” (emphasis added). Thus, Jesus was the perfect fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, but even for Abraham, his faith in God is what mattered, not his works under the law. In short, God does not have separate plans for Israel and the church. God has one plan for his people, and “his people” includes all who have faith in the God who saves them, Jews and Gentiles.

Evangelical protestants believe in the sainthood of all believers and that each believer must interpret scripture under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Where difficulties arise, believers should use clearer passages to help make sense of less clear passages. I invite those Christians who agree with Senator Cruz to consider the whole of scripture and what passages like Genesis 12:1-3 mean in that light.

Who or what is “Israel”?

“Israel” could refer to a single person: Jacob/Israel. It could refer to the land that was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It could refer to the genetic offspring of Abraham throughout generations.

Senator Cruz’s dispensationalism leads him to view the promise to Abraham about blessings and curses as one that belongs to ethnic Jews and the land on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Covenant theology, on the other hand, holds that the entirety of scripture shows that this covenant with Abraham was for the spiritual offspring of Abraham.

The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, makes this very clear: “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith” (emphasis added). This is exactly what covenant theology teaches.

While it was clear for Paul, a former religious authority who persecuted the early Christian church, he indicates that this is a part of the “mystery of Christ” that was unveiled by Jesus Christ (this implies that Old Testament passages ought to be interpreted in light of the person, work, and ministry of Jesus as revealed in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament). In his letter to the Ephesians, he says, “This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”

This view is not unique to Paul, nor are they cherry-picked from Paul’s writing. He goes into more detail in his letter to the Romans and he discusses this mystery in theological discussions throughout his letters. Peter, one of Jesus’s disciples, also confirms this view in a letter to “born again” (1 Peter 1:3 and 23) Christians in various regions in modern-day Turkey (i.e., not Jews in Israel):

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Jesus himself taught in line with this view. Shortly after his famous pronouncement, “I am the way , and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” Jesus provided an analogy of a vine: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” Thus, being born Jewish (or born of Christian parents, for that matter) is no guarantee of God’s blessing or salvation. Those who trust and obey Jesus are a part of his “true vine.”

What constitutes the blessing in Genesis 12:1-3?

Senator Cruz believes that God’s promise to Abraham circa 2000 B.C. means that money from US taxpayers should be used to bolster Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s military actions in 2025 A.D. Once again, a full view of scripture casts doubt on Cruz’s perspective, this time on what constitutes “blessing.” We need look no further than Jesus’s Beatitudes, the preamble of sorts to his Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Nowhere in Jesus’s teaching is “blessed” or “blessing” used to refer to taxpayer-funded military defense of Israel or offensive wars against other nations.

Should Christians in the US feel obligated to defend the land promised to Abraham? Jesus dismissed the idea that the land of Israel is especially reserved for worshipping God. In his conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, she pointed out that a common view among Jews at the time was that “Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said that “the hour is coming when neither on this mountain or in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.” He said that “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Jesus’s Gospel is an open door to Jews and non-Jews in the land promised to Abraham and around the world. What matters is that believers worship in spirit and in truth, not that they are located in a particular region on the Mediterranean Sea.

Covenant theology holds that the blessing from God described in Genesis 12:1-3 is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and a great summary of the blessings of Christ is found in Ephesians 1:3-14. God’s “plan for the fullness of time [is] to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” There is no special designation for a particular plot of land. Our “inheritance” is not a plot of land but Christ himself and, through him, adoption into his family, reconciliation with God, grace and forgiveness, etc.

Conclusion

God promised Abraham that through Abraham, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Jesus Christ, whose family lineage goes back to Abraham, is the fulfillment of that promise. The entirety of scripture points to Jesus as the focal point of human history because Jesus revealed that God saves his people by grace through faith—not through works, family lineage, or geographic location.

Senator Cruz is trapped in dispensationalism, which leads him and others into a dangerous relationship with the modern-day government of Israel. The US government has committed terrible atrocities in the Middle East because of the sway of dispensationalism over too many US politicians. If we can judge an -ism by its works, dispensationalism should be dispensed with.

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

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The Unspoken Truth About Iran’s Nuclear Program

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 05:01

The stakes of Iran’s nuclear program are not what one might think. Tehran renounced the atomic bomb in 1988, but is attempting, with Russia’s cooperation, to discover the secrets of nuclear fusion. If it succeeds, it would help the states of the South decolonize by freeing themselves from oil.
As for the stakes of the bombing of certain Iranian nuclear sites by the United States, they may also not be what one might think.
This affair is all the more opaque because it is not possible today to establish a clear distinction between research on civilian nuclear fusion and military fusion.

Since the fall of Iraq, under the blows of the British and the United States, London and Washington have popularized the myth of Iranian military nuclear power, in line with that of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. This myth has been taken up by Israeli “revisionist Zionists” (not to be confused with “Zionists” tout court) and their leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. For twenty years, Westerners have been inundated with this propaganda and have ended up believing it, although announcing for such a long period that Tehran will have “the” bomb “next year” makes no sense.

However, even though Russia, China, and the United States all agree that Iran currently has no military program, everyone can see that Iran is doing something at its power plants. But what?

In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of the Islamic Republic, replacing Sayyed Mohammad Khatami. He is a scientist whose vision is to free colonized peoples. He believes that by mastering the atom, he will enable all peoples to free themselves from Western oil transnationals.

Iran then developed training programs for nuclear scientists in numerous universities. The goal was not to create a small elite of a few hundred specialists, but to train battalions of engineers. Today, there are tens of thousands of them.

Iran intends to discover how to achieve nuclear fusion, whereas Westerners are content with fission. Fission is the splitting of an atom; while fusion is the joining of atoms, which releases an immeasurable amount of energy. Fission is used for our power plants, while, for the moment, fusion is only used for thermonuclear bombs. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s plan is to use it to generate electricity and share it with developing countries.

This knowledge is revolutionary, in the Khomeinist sense of the term, that is, it allows for an end to the dependence of the Southern states and their economic development. It clashes head-on with the British vision of colonialism, according to which His Majesty had to divide and rule and prevent the development of the colonized. We recall, for example, that London forbade Indians from spinning the cotton they grew themselves so that it could be spun by its Manchester mills. In response, Mahatma Gandhi set an example for his people and spun his own cotton, defying the British monarchy. Identical to this, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s project defies the power of the West and the Anglo-Saxon oil transnationals.

It is perfectly understandable to be concerned about Iranian investment in nuclear power because these technologies are, by definition, dual-use, both civilian and military. It is clear that this is not the usual civilian use, and the detailed discovery of fusion processes could also be used for military purposes. In any case, Iran is seeking an inexhaustible source of energy.

China and Russia have repeatedly stated that Iran has not had a military nuclear program since 1988. Unlike us, Russia knows what it is talking about: it is involved in Iran’s research. There are Russians in many Iranian nuclear facilities. It goes without saying that Moscow fears proliferation as much as we do. But, unlike us, not civilian nuclear power. Building on the work of Andrei Sakharov, Rosatom and the Russian Academy of Sciences are continuing research, particularly for the Tokamak project. China, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and France have their own research in this area.

It should also be remembered that Iran is a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It is for this reason that it is subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Since 1988, the IAEA has never found any evidence suggesting that Iran still has a military nuclear program. However, the Agency has asked numerous questions to clarify certain aspects of its civilian program and has not received any answers, which is perfectly understandable given the investment in Iranian-Russian fusion research. In practice, the documents released by the Iranian press two days before the Israeli attack attest that the director of the IAEA, the Argentinian Rafael Grossi, behaves like a spy in the service of Israel, to which he transmits all the information from its inspectors; this is even though Israel is not a signatory to the NPT and therefore not a member of the IAEA.

On 4 May 2010, Tehran submitted a proposal to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations NPT for the “Establishment of a Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone in the Middle East”  [ 1 ] . This proposal was welcomed by all the states in the region, with the exception of Israel. Indeed, Tel Aviv, which benefited from transfers of French technology from senior officials of the Fourth Republic, possesses the atomic bomb  [ 2 ] .

Finally, if Washington does not intervene alongside Tel Aviv and use its penetrating bomb to try to destroy the Fordo plant, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could resort to the “Samson option”  [ 3 ] , that is, the atomic destruction of Iran, even if they were to suffer a nuclear response.  [ 4 ]

General Mohsen Rezaee, a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guard Corps and a member of Iran’s National Security Council, said in an interview on June 14 that “Pakistan has assured us that if Israel uses a nuclear bomb against Iran, it will also attack Israel with a nuclear bomb.” However, Pakistani Defense Minister Khwaja Asif did not confirm these statements. Without denying them, he simply said: “Israel has targeted Iran, Yemen, and Palestine. If Muslim countries do not unite now, everyone will suffer the same fate. We support Iran and will defend it in all international forums to protect its interests.”

It is not at all certain that the GBU-57 penetrator bombs would have been able to penetrate the underground base at Fordo. The base was dug under 80 meters of granite. To destroy it, several GBU-57s would have to be fired successively into the same hole.

Ultimately, the Trump administration believed, as White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said: “Let’s be very clear, Iran has everything it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon. All they need is a decision from the Supreme Leader to that effect, and it would take them about two weeks to complete the production of that weapon.”

So, since the beginning of June, it has been secretly preparing “Operation Midnight Hammer  ” at the instigation of General Michael Kurilla, commander of the United States forces in the Middle East (CentCom). To do this, the general met his Israeli counterparts on April 25 and gathered the most precise information on his targets. On June 10, he presented to the House of Representatives his strategic analysis of the opportunities that the upheavals in the Middle East offered to the United States. In passing, he revealed that he had presented President Trump with a wide range of options for exploiting them  [ 5 ] .

On June 11, the State Department ordered all non-essential personnel and their families to withdraw from Bahrain, Qatar, and Iraq.

On June 16, President Donald Trump rushed out of the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Canada. On his plane back to Washington, he posted an angry post about his allies: “Because he’s looking for publicity, President Emmanuel Macron of France falsely stated that I left the G7 summit in Canada to return to Washington to work on a ‘ceasefire’ between Israel and Iran. This is false. He doesn’t know why I’m now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a ceasefire. Much bigger than that. Whether deliberately or not, Emmanuel is always wrong. Stay tuned.”  [ 6 ]

On the night of June 21-22, President Trump, in violation of the UN Charter, launched an attack on Iran’s main nuclear sites, but not on the Bushehr nuclear power plant, due to the presence of Russian personnel. However, it appears that Washington had warned Tehran in advance that it was going to strike: a column of trucks was seen by satellite evacuating equipment from the Fordo base.

This surprise attack can be interpreted in two ways: either President Trump saved Israel from massive destruction by Fatah-1 hypersonic missiles, or, conversely, he saved Iran from an Israeli nuclear bombardment. The fact that the Pentagon did not attack the Fatah-1 launchers, which are less well protected than civilian nuclear power plants, suggests the latter interpretation.

In any case, by destroying Iran’s nuclear research program, President Trump has deprived Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the argument he has been using for twenty years to wage his “war on seven fronts.”

We must remember that President Donald Trump, during his first term, ordered the assassination of ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (October 27, 2019), followed by that of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani (January 3, 2020). In his mind, this was about striking the main Sunni military leader and the main Shiite military leader in order to bring their two groups into line. Which worked.

It is therefore possible that bad news awaits an Israeli leader in the coming months. The arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu by the Israeli justice system, for example.

1 ]  “  Creation of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East  ”, Voltaire Network , May 4, 2010.

2 ]  Israel and the Bomb. Secret History of Israeli Nuclear Power , by Avner Cohen, Demi-Lune (2020).

3 ]  The Culture of War , Martin van Creveld, Presido Press (2008).

4 ]  “  Is the possibility of a World War real?  ”, by Serge Marchand & Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , April 9, 2024.

5 ]  “  Full Committee Hearing: “US Military Posture and National Security Challenges AFRICOM + CENTCOM”  ”, US House Armed Services Committee, YouTube , June 10, 2025.

6 ]  “  Donald Trump  ”, Truth Social , June 17, 2025.

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America’s Most Lawless Agency: ICE Is the Prototype for Tyranny

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 05:01

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”—Justice Louis D. Brandeis

While the U.S. wages war abroad—bombing Iran, escalating conflict, and staging a spectacle of power for political gain—a different kind of war is being waged here at home.

This war at home is quieter but no less destructive. The casualties are not in distant deserts or foreign cities. They are our freedoms, our communities, and the Constitution itself.

And the agents of this domestic war? Masked thugs. Unmarked vans. Raids. Roundups.

Detentions without due process. Retaliation against those who dare to question or challenge government authority. People made to disappear into bureaucratic black holes. Fear campaigns targeting immigrant communities and political dissenters alike. Surveillance weaponized to monitor and suppress lawful activity.

Packaged under the guise of national security—as all power grabs tend to be—this government-sanctioned thuggery masquerading as law-and-order is the face of the Trump Administration’s so-called war on illegal immigration.

Don’t fall for the propaganda that claims we’re being overrun by criminals or driven into the poorhouse by undocumented immigrants living off welfare.

The real threat to our way of life comes not from outside invaders, but from within: an unelected, unaccountable enforcement agency operating above the law.

President Trump insists that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is focused on violent criminals, but the facts tell a different story (non-criminal ICE arrests have surged 800% in six months)—and that myth is precisely what enables the erosion of rights for everyone.

By painting enforcement as narrowly targeted, the administration obscures a far broader dragnet that sweeps up legal residents, naturalized citizens, and native-born Americans alike.

What begins with immigrants rarely ends there.

According to the Cato Institute, 65 percent of people taken by ICE had no convictions, and 93 percent had no violent convictions at all.

This isn’t targeted enforcement—it’s indiscriminate purging.

What ICE—an agency that increasingly resembles a modern-day Gestapo—is doing to immigrants today, it can and will do to citizens tomorrow: these are the early warning signs of a system already in motion.

The machinery is in place. The abuses are ongoing. And the constitutional safeguards we rely on are being ignored, dismantled, or bypassed entirely.

When legal residents, naturalized citizens, and native-born Americans are swept up in ICE’s raids, detained without cause, and subjected to treatment that defies every constitutional protection against government overreach, this isn’t about immigration.

It’s not about danger. It’s about power—unchecked and absolute.

This is authoritarianism by design.

Here are just a few examples of how ICE’s reach now extends far beyond a criminal class of undocumented immigrants:

This pattern of abuse is not accidental.

It reflects a deliberate strategy of fear and domination by ICE agents acting like an occupying army, intent on intimidating the population into submission while the Trump Administration redraws the boundaries of the Constitution for all within America’s borders, citizen and immigrant alike.

This is how you dismantle a constitutional republic: not in one dramatic moment, but through the steady erosion of rights, accountability, and rule of law—first for the marginalized, then for everyone.

When constitutional guarantees become conditional and oversight is systematically evaded, all Americans—regardless of status—stand vulnerable to a regime that governs by fear rather than freedom.

We’ve seen this playbook before.

It’s the same strategy used by fascist regimes to consolidate power—using fear, force, and propaganda to turn public institutions into instruments of oppression.

ICE raids often occur without warrants. Agents frequently detain individuals not charged with any crime. Homes, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and courthouses have all become targets. Agents in plain clothes swarm unsuspecting individuals, arrest them without explanation, and separate families under the pretense of national security. In many cases, masked agents refuse to identify themselves at all—creating a climate of terror where the public cannot distinguish lawful enforcement from lawless abduction.

This is not justice. It is intimidation. And it has become business as usual.

ICE has even begun deputizing local police departments to carry out these raids.

Through an expanded network of partnerships, ICE has turned routine traffic stops into pipelines for deportation. According to The Washington Post, immigrants stopped on the way to volleyball practice, picking up baby formula, or heading to job sites have been detained and, in some cases, sent to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.

This is what politicizing and weaponizing local police looks like.

Even members of Congress attempting to exercise constitutional oversight have been turned away from ICE facilities. As The New York Times reported, ICE now claims the authority to “deny a request or otherwise cancel” congressional visits based on vague “operational concerns”—effectively placing its operations beyond democratic scrutiny.

Beyond the high-profile arrests, the abuse runs deeper.

Julio Noriega, a 54-year-old American citizen, was snatched up off the street and detained in Chicago for 10 hours without explanation. Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a U.S.-born citizen, was detained because ICE dismissed his REAL ID as fake. Cary López Alvarado, a pregnant U.S. citizen, was handcuffed and arrested for challenging ICE agents who had followed her fiancé to work. Children, veterans, and immunocompromised individuals have all suffered under ICE’s dragnet.

These are not outliers. They are the product of a system that operates without meaningful checks.

ICE agents are rarely held accountable. Internal investigations are ineffective. Congress has abdicated oversight. Directives from the Trump administration—including those authored by Stephen Miller—have turbocharged deportations and loosened any remaining restraints.

From boots on the ground to bytes in the cloud, ICE’s unchecked power reflects a broader shift toward authoritarianism, fueled by high-tech surveillance, public indifference and minimal judicial oversight. The agency operates a sprawling digital dragnet: facial recognition, license plate readers, cellphone tracking, and partnerships with tech giants like Amazon and Palantir feed massive databases—often without warrants or oversight.

These same tools—hallmarks of a growing surveillance state—are now being quietly repurposed across other federal agencies, setting the stage for an integrated surveillance-policing regime that threatens the constitutional rights of every American.

This isn’t about safety. It’s about control.

These tools aren’t just targeting undocumented immigrants—they’re laying the digital scaffolding for a future in which everyone is watched, scored, and subject to state suspicion.

Quotas over justice. Algorithms over rights.

ICE’s operations have little to do with individualized threat assessments. What drives these raids is not public safety but bureaucratic performance. Field offices are under pressure to meet arrest quotas, creating a system that incentivizes indiscriminate sweeps over focused investigations.

As Jennie Taer writes for the NY Post:

“The Trump administration’s mandate to arrest 3,000 illegal migrants per day is forcing ICE agents to deprioritize going after dangerous criminals and targets with deportation orders, insiders warn. Instead, federal immigration officers are spending more time rounding up people off the streets… Agents are desperate to meet the White House’s high expectations, leading them to leave some dangerous criminal illegal migrants on the streets, and instead look for anyone they can get their hands on at the local Home Depot or bus stop.”

Predictive algorithms and flawed databases replace constitutional suspicion with digital hunches, turning enforcement into a numbers game and transforming communities into statistical targets.

Constitutional safeguards are being replaced by digital suspicion.

We now live in a nation where lawful dissent—especially from immigrants or those perceived as outsiders—can place someone under state suspicion. The line between investigation and persecution has been erased.

Fear needs fuel.

And ICE finds it in propaganda: just as the Gestapo used propaganda to justify its cruelty, ICE relies on the language of fear and division. When the government labels people “invaders,” “animals,” or “thugs,” it strips them of humanity—and strips us of our conscience.

This rhetoric serves to distract and divide. It normalizes abuse. And it ensures that, once targeted, no one is safe.

The construction of a new ICE mega-prison in Florida—nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz” for its proposed moat and remote location—serves as a grotesque symbol of the Trump Administration’s mass deportation agenda: out of sight, beyond accountability, and surrounded by literal and bureaucratic barriers to due process.

And Trump’s shifting stance on industries that rely on migrant labor—one moment threatening crackdowns, the next signaling exemptions for hotels, farms, and construction—reveals what this campaign is really about: not security, but political theater.

It’s not about danger; it’s about dominance.

But the crisis isn’t just rhetorical. It’s systemic. Agents are trained to obey, not to question. Immunity shields misconduct. Whistleblowers are punished. Watchdogs are ignored. Courts too often defer to executive power.

This is not law enforcement—it is authoritarian enforcement.

And it’s not limited to immigrants. It’s creeping into every corner of American life.

When a government can detain its own citizens without due process, punish political dissent, and target individuals for what they believe or how they look, it is no longer governed by law. It is governed by fear.

The Constitution was designed to prevent this. But rights are meaningless when no one is held accountable for violating them.

That is why the solution must go beyond the ballot box.

We must dismantle the machinery of oppression that enables ICE to act as judge, jury, and jailer.

Congress must ban warrantless raids, end predictive profiling, and prohibit mass surveillance. It must enforce real oversight and revoke the legal shields that insulate abusive agents from consequences.

We must reassert the rule of law, not just through legislation, but through a cultural recommitment to constitutional values. That includes transparency, demilitarization, and equal protection for all—citizens and non-citizens alike.

This is not just a fight over immigration policy. It’s a battle for the soul of our nation.

ICE is not the exception. It is the prototype.

As I make clear in my books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the same blueprint is being applied across the federal landscape: to protest monitoring, dissent suppression, and data-mined predictive policing.

If we fail to dismantle the ICE model, we normalize it—and risk reproducing it everywhere else.

ICE has become the beta test—perfecting the merger of technology, policing, and executive power that could soon define American governance as a whole.

Make no mistake: when fear becomes law, freedom is the casualty.

If we don’t act soon, we may find that the Constitution is the next to be detained.

James Madison warned that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

When ICE acts as enforcer, jailer, and judge for the president, those fears are no longer theoretical—they are the daily reality for countless people within U.S. borders.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

The post America’s Most Lawless Agency: ICE Is the Prototype for Tyranny appeared first on LewRockwell.

Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran(q)

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 05:01

President Trump says it was necessary for him to order U.S. pilots to bomb Iran to prevent that nation’s government from building a nuclear bomb.

Wait a minute. Something is coming to me. Just give me a moment. It’s coming into my mind. Oh, yes, I remember:

“WMDs! WMDs, Jacob! We have to invade Iran, I mean Iraq, because Saddam Hussein is coming to get us with his WMDs! We have to invade now! Tomorrow will be too late. WMDs! WMDs!”

That was 2003, just before the U.S. government invaded Iraq, a country that had never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. That was another war of aggression, one that violated the principles set forth at Nuremberg and that also violated the U.S. Constitution’s declaration-of-war requirement, thereby making the war illegal under our form of government.

I remember National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. She knew what she was talking about. She said that mushroom clouds from Iraq’s WMDs could soon start appearing over American cities. Who can forget that?

Oh, and let’s not forget U.S. Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell. He was a military man. He’d never lie. He had charts proving that Saddam Hussein was about to unleash his WMDs on the American people. Who can forget the good general’s beautiful charts?

Oh, and what about that undercover CIA agent that U.S. officials illegally outed by publicly disclosing her identity to the world? That was in vicious retaliation for the audacity shown by her husband for challenging the truthfulness of some “yellow cake” uranium tale that U.S. officials were fraudulently using to “prove” that Saddam was coming to get us with his WMDs.

But where are those WMDs! Yes, I know that the U.S. national-security establishment ended up invading Iraq to protect us from those WMDS. I know that U.S. forces killed, tortured, and maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi people in the process. I know that the U.S. government destroyed the entire country — infrastructure, homes, and businesses. I know that they impoverished those who survived the onslaught. I also know that U.S. forces are still in Iraq.

Yes, I know all that. But that’s not what I’m asking about. I’m asking: Where are those WMDs? Are the U.S. troops that are there in Iraq today still looking for them?

I’ll answer the question. There aren’t any WMDs. There never were any WMDs. There was never going to be any mushroom clouds over American cities. It was all a lie from the get-go. It was always about regime change — that is, ousting their former partner and ally Saddam Hussein from power and replacing him with another loyal and brutal U.S. puppet dictator. The national-security state just needed a way to make U.S. soldiers feel good about killing innocent people as part of a regime-change operation. Otherwise, the troops might have felt a bit squeamish about engaging in the legalized murder of innocent people.

Of course, the same goes for the American people. They too might have suffered a crisis of conscience over the mass killing of innocent people, especially given that their government had already killed countless Iraqis, including children, with brutal U.S. sanctions throughout the 1990s as an indirect way to get regime change. They needed to be scared to death into supporting the invasion and the resulting U.S. killing/torture spree.

What are we supposed to do today? Believe them when they say that Iraq — I’m sorry, Iran — was now about to acquire WMDs?

Let me tell you what, in my opinion, is really going on here. U.S. national-security state officials and their imperialist-interventionist supporters in the private sector have a bloodlust that needs to be quenched. The invasion and multi-year occupation in Iraq, where U.S. forces killed, injured, maimed, and tortured hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis ended in 2011. It was in August 2021 that Taliban forces booted U.S. forces out of their country after a 20-year U.S. killing spree. Four years is a long time to go without killing people. Furnishing brand new state-of-the art weapons and bombs to the Israeli government to kill multitudes of people in Gaza, and also now in Iran, is just not sufficiently satisfying. Using NATO to provoke a war that kills and injures hundreds of thousands of foreign soldiers also just doesn’t cut it. To satisfy the bloodlust, it’s necessary for the U.S. government to participate directly, not indirectly, in killing. Killing multitudes of Iranians in a brand new foreign war could certainly help quench the thirst for more death and destruction.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

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Except for Nuclear Weapons the Digital Revolution Is Humanity’s Most Stupid Mistake

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 05:01

Billions of login credentials have been leaked and compiled into datasets online, giving criminals “unprecedented access” to accounts consumers use each day.

The Internet and digital systems are insecure and cannot be made secure.  To operate in the digital world becomes increasingly risky by the day and harder to use.  The inherent insecurity of all digital systems has led to the requirement for multi-factor authentication. If you forgot to charge your cell phone or your service is down, you can’t reach your accounts because you can’t access the code texted to you necessary for you to access your account. We are already into triple authentication–password, texted code, emailed code.  In addition to these authentications, there are occasions when you use also answer questions, such as your mother’s maiden name, the street you lived on, your best friend’s name.  Sometimes the questions you have to answer are not even your questions.  They are questions that the site when it decided to add another layer of authentication came up with on its own. You then have to have the ordeal of getting in touch with a human and explaining that these are not questions that you supplied and know the answers to.

There are already sites that you cannot reach unless Cloudflare verifies that you are human. The site has to “review the security of your connection before proceeding.” For some reason Cloudflare cannot identify Apple’s browser Safari.  Consequently, Internet security prevents my access to some sites.  

It is going to get worse. I have noticed that it is increasingly difficult to use the internet.  It doesn’t work as well as it did. My guess is that the scramble for better security has produced incompatible security systems that block one another.  

Text messages to my cell phone sometimes never arrive; other times they arrive 2 or 3 days after they are sent.  

The idiot corporations were sold a bill of goods that the digital revolution would lower their costs by shifting the cost of customer relations to their customers.  Certainly the cost to customers in time and stress has gone up exponentially with the digital revolution. What in analogue days could be settled in a three minute telephone call answered on the third ring can in the new digital age take days to resolve, if it can be resolved.  

As for the idiot corporations, banks, and financial institutions, the executives are finding that the cost of digital security has more than eaten up all the savings from shifting the costs of customer assistance to the customer.  

The latest headline:  “Billions of login credentials have been leaked online, Cybernews researchers say” should tell us something.  But it won’t.  People are too stupid.  They love scrolling their cell phones.  

The digital revolution is the ultimate tool for criminals.  They can use it to steal your bank account, your retirement account, your identity.  They can load your credit cards up with their debt. They can sell your home out from under you. They can put things on your computer and cell phone for which you can be arrested.  

None of these things could happen in the analog world.

So why do we use the digital revolution?  We have been coerced.

When I close down this website, I will end my digital existence. I will use homing pigeons or smoke signals, or dispatch a messenger. 

Addendum:  It is clear that in the soon-to-be-arrived-at-future, whoever controls the AI algorithm will control what is true and what we are allowed to say and read.  It is already happening.  Recently, a friend posted on his X account two quotes from my June 19 article, “Is Trump’s Constituency Netanyahu or MAGA-America?

Within less than 30 seconds his post was taken down and his X account cancelled.  This is X, the Twitter that Elon Musk purchased in order to restore free speech to social media.

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Proliferation, Retaliation, and Other Consequences of the War on Iran

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 05:01

There are several aspects of the U.S. and Israeli attacks on nuclear facilities that deserve further discussions:

  • Non-proliferation issues
  • Retaliation by Iran
  • Consequences of unlawful behavior

Before the U.S. and Israeli strikes on its nuclear facilities Iran was a long standing member of the Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The IAEA, tasked with verifying the adherence to the NPT, was able to inspect Iranian facilities. It knew, down to the milligram, how much enriched Uranian Iran had produced and where it was stored.

Western intelligence services as well as the IAEA did not only confirm that Iran had no nuclear weapons. They confirmed that Iran did not even have a nuclear weapon program. There were no plans to produce any weapons.

All that is now in doubt.

The NPT’s objective was to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology and to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The second part was the reason why non-nuclear nations have joined the treaty.

The U.S. demand that Iran should stop all enrichment of Uranium, as needed for civilian nuclear reactors, and the attack on Iran’s peaceful nuclear facilities make it obvious that Iran is getting deprived of all the positive elements the NPT had promised. There are also serious concerns that the IAEA has leaked the names of Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel which in the end led to their assassinations.

From Iran’s side a continuation of its membership in the NPT and any cooperation with the IAEA have lost their purpose. There is no longer any reason to stay within the agreement. Iran is likely to leave the NPT.

That does mean, and does not make it more likely, that Iran will start to produce nuclear weapons. There are principal, religiously bound reasons why it has so far refrained from doing so. Those have not changed.

Iran has said that it had moved all enriched Uranium from its Fordow enrichment site shortly before the U.S. strike on the installation:

A senior Iranian source claimed to Reuters that before the U.S. attack on the Fordow nuclear facility last night (Sunday), all of the stock of enriched uranium at the site was transferred to another location.

At the same time, satellite images captured a large convoy moving near the underground nuclear facility two days before the attack. It is believed that this may be documentation of the transfer of the enriched material.

Some 400 kilogram of Uranium, enriched to 60% of U-235 isotopes needed for fission chain reactions, were squirreled away. The IAEA does not know where they are. Iran also still has a sufficient numbers of its most modern centrifuges needed for further enrichment. It can produced more if it needs those. Iran also has several other bunkers, similar to the Fordow and Natanz sites, which were build and equipped to eventually house additional enrichment facilities. Those sites are not (yet) known to the IAEA and have never been inspected.

I do expect that Iran will leave the NPT. It will ‘go dark’ about its nuclear program. It will not announce where it will do what with the nuclear material it has. The IAEA will no longer be allowed to have knowledge of it. This will make Iran a ‘latent’ nuclear weapon state even while it refrains from having a nuclear weapon.

Some might argue that Iran will not do that as it would make further U.S. attacks on it more likely.

Hello? The U.S. has just attacked Iran without ANY cause. It is likely to do so again, independent of whether Iran stays with the NPT rules or not.

Being a ‘latent’ nuclear weapon state constitutes an additional deterrence. The longer Iran stays in that state, the higher the risk for any attacker to be countered by nuclear means.

The attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities were not done to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons. The attacks are to provoke a violent response which can then be used to launch an all out war with the end-purpose of regime change in Iran.

[The Israeli government launched its attacks on Iran under the operation name ‘Rising Lion’.

The flag on the left is the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The flag on the right, depicting a lion in front of the rising sun, is the flag of Iran under the former dictatorship of the Shah. The U.S. and Israel are currently promoting the son of the deposed Shah of Iran as the future leader of the country. ‘Rising Lion’ was and is thus an obvious reference to a regime change operation in Iran.]

There is however no easy way to regime change Iran. The Iranian society is largely standing behind its government. That government is well established and seen as legitimate. It does not depend on one person. Even the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is easily replaceable. The regular military is counterbalanced with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. This makes a military coup plot untenable.

Unless there is a large scale foreign land invasion, supported by this or that minority in Iran, there is no chance to topple the Islamic Republic. The U.S. no longer has the Cold-War army that would potentially be able to do such.

Iran is likely to take additional measures in revenge for the attack on its nuclear facilities. It may well launch a symbolic strike against one U.S. base in the Gulf. But it is unlikely to do an all out attack on all U.S. assets in the Gulf region. That is still an option but it will be reserved for later.

Any measures taken now in response to the attacks on its nuclear facilities will likely by designed to NOT give the U.S. a pretext for additional attacks on Iran.

The main enemy of Iran is still Israel. Iran has established an attritional war against it. Daily attacks by drones and medium range missiles against Israel are designed to deplete its air defenses. Only after that is done will the strikes get more serious. Israel depends on air defenses manufactured and provided by the U.S. Their production is limited and it depends on the availability of rare materials. China is currently withholding rare earth licenses from U.S. weapon producers. This will further decrease the availability of air defense items.

Israel knows that it can not sustain an attritional war with Iran:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that Israel aims to avoid a “war of attrition” with Iran, the Times of Israel reported.

“We won’t pursue our actions beyond what is needed to achieve [the goals], but we also won’t finish too soon,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying.

It is not for Netanyahoo to decide when the current war ends. (Just like it is not for Zelenski to decide when there will be a ceasefire in Ukraine.) Israel is already in a war of attrition. Iran will continue to wage it.

Iran will, as said, avoid a direct war with the U.S. military as long as it can. But it will implement measures that will squeeze the U.S. as best as it can. It is likely to close the Strait of Hormuz for all energy transports that are destined to reach countries which support its enemies. Transports to China, India and global south countries will continue. U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, and the U.S. itself, will suffer. Oil prices will increase – at least for those who oppose Iran.

To implement that does not even require openly hostile measures. Loud announcements, plus a few explosions next to tankers going from the Gulf towards Rotterdam, is all that is needed to deprive any such transports of insurance. The global ‘free’ markets create the consequences.

When the price of oil reaches above $100 per barrel the U.S. economy will move into a recession. During the midterm election the Republican party will lose the majority in the House and Senate. Trump will become a lame duck.

Trump attacked Iran without even an attempt to provide a sound reasoning. There was no false flag incident or any serious argument of weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. attacked Iran simply because it could do so.

Trump is thereby not only in breach of the U.S. constitution, which requires Congress to declare a war. The U.S. war of aggression against Iran is also a breach of the U.S. Charter. Its attacks on civil nuclear installations is a breach of the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Convention which prohibits these.

We are now in a new world disorder:

The first major consequence, in broader terms, is that this strike dealt a final, irreparable blow to what little remained of the post-war international legal and institutional framework. That order was already in tatters — shredded by a year and a half of Western-backed genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. But this latest attack makes it official: Western powers no longer feel the need to cloak their actions in legality, morality or even the façade of diplomatic legitimacy.

Today, even that pretense is gone. In Gaza, and now with the strikes on Iran, the gloves are fully off. What we’re witnessing is a regression to a kind of global lawlessness — a “might makes right” free-for-all where nothing is off limits: not the mass slaughter of civilians, not the bombing of nuclear sites, not even the complete sidelining of international institutions.

That the U.S. is doing this, with open support of its European proxies, is not only a danger for the international system but also for the domestic population of these countries:

This isn’t only a threat to international security. It’s also a profound threat to what little freedoms we still have left within the West itself. Make no mistake: the Western ruling classes’ open embrace of Mafia-style gangsterism abroad also means that they will have no qualms about brushing aside whatever ethical, legal, constitutional and democratic constrains that still stand in the way of their desperate, hallucinatory bid to preserve the crumbling order.

We have already seen this in the illegitimate suppression of protests against the genocide in Gaza. It will proliferate from there. The West is, slowly but accelerating, sliding from a ‘rule of law’ status into the darkness of unbound fascism. It is on us to prevent that.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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The Potent Charm of Weapons & Vaccines

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 05:01

The second stanza of the Iliad lets the reader know that this is going to be a story about humans fighting each other. Surprisingly, the primary conflict isn’t the war between the Greeks and the Trojans, but between Agamemnon and Achilles. On top of this destructive conflict, the Greek army is further punished by the plague.

Begin with the clash between Agamemnon—
The Greek warlord, and the godlike Achilles.

Which of the immortals set these two
At each other’s throats?
Apollo … offended by the warlord.

Agamemnon had dishonored
Chryses, Apollo’s priest, so the god
Struck the Greek camp with plague,
And the soldiers were dying of it.

And so, we see that the first great story of western literature is about humans fighting each other while at the same time being struck with an infectious disease.

In our new book, Vaccines: Mythology, Ideology, and Realitywe show that, from the beginning of the vaccine enterprise in the 18th century, vaccines have been conceptualized as weapons for fighting infectious diseases, while infectious diseases have been conceptualized as akin to an invading army.

To understand the mesmerizing fascination of weapons for the human mind, consider that the United States now spends almost a trillion dollars per year on armaments. Waging war and developing weapons has forever been one of man’s chief occupations and motivations.

The most conspicuous and astonishing feature of the human condition is that—despite all of our advances in developing civilizations that protect us from the hostile elements of nature—we have made zero advances in overcoming our nature to fight each other instead of developing more sophisticated ways for resolving conflicts.

The pointless pissing contests that we see in Eastern Europe and the Middle East are identical to the destructive enmity between Achilles and Agamemnon. When it comes to conflict resolution, mankind has learned nothing since the 8th century BC.

On the contrary, our technological advances in weapons development—especially aircraft, missiles, and drones—have enabled us to depersonalize the enemy far more than the men of the past who struggled hand-to-hand with each other.

I remember my grandfather telling me around the year 1985 that he was still haunted by the sight of the extremely young German soldiers that he killed while he served as an infantry soldier in northern Italy in 1945.

“Some of them were still completely beardless,” he said.

Because they were fighting with rifles and grenades instead of with bombs dropped out of planes, they actually saw each other.

Instead of developing more sophisticated ways to cooperate and resolve conflict, humans prefer to develop ever more destructive weapons to intimidate, destroy, and subdue each other.

The story of man’s war against infectious disease is more complex and paradoxical because, while the medical profession has been completely fixated on vaccine development, the true vanquishers of infectious diseases have been the following major advances that occurred in the West between approximately 1870 and 1943:

1) Nutrition (significant increases in food availability and nutrient content) greatly improved public health and disease resistance. Vitamin D fortification of milk in the 1930s further strengthened children’s immune health. The severity of malnutrition in the past—catastrophic for immune health—is evidenced by the fact that scurvy and rickets were still common among the poor until the 20th century.

2) Public sanitation, with modern sewer systems installed to channel effluent away from cities and their drinking water, largely eradicated cholera and typhoid fever by the year 1900. Public sanitation campaigns in the U.S. against breeding mosquito grounds largely eliminated yellow fever by the year 1906. In the American South, an aggressive public sanitation campaign to build outhouses largely eradicated hookworm by the year 1955.

3) Secure water supply and treatment (filtration and chlorination) infrastructure.

4) Pasteurization, refrigeration, and other hygienic measures for producing, transporting, and storing milk and other food products.

5) Improved housing (better heating, ventilation, and plumbing) for the urban working poor. Water closets, soap, warm water, and detergent for washing bed linens and clothing became standard household amenities.

6) Labor laws reduced hazardous and stressful working conditions, including excessively long hours.

7) Introduction of sulfa antibiotics in the 1930s, penicillin in 1943, and erythromycin in 1952, reduced mortality from bacterial infections including diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus.

As we note in our book:

In his 1988 book, The Origins of Human Disease, the British physician, epidemiologist, and medical historian, Thomas McKeown, made a persuasive case that of all factors, nutritional improvements made the single greatest contribution to the reduction of infectious disease mortality. A well-nourished body with no vitamin deficiencies is very hardy, but it becomes highly susceptible when it is malnourished. In our era of calorie abundance, it is easy to forget that, even in Europe and North America, famine and vital nutrient deficiencies were a common feature of the human condition until well into the 20th century.

McKeown’s thesis seems artistically expressed in Albrecht Dürer’s painting “The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse,” in which Famine (wielding a grain scale) is the central horseman in the charge that tramples man underfoot, and is riding the biggest steed.

HHS Secretary Kennedy is thus on the right track with his endeavor to improve American nutrition by replacing sugary processed foods with wholesome foods with a vastly superior nutrient profile.

In the long story of vaccines, we have arrived at the moment of realizing that they are—like the weapons of war—relatively primitive instruments for improving the human condition.

Just as more human ingenuity should be applied to conflict resolution instead of developing more destructive weapons, medical science should seek more sophisticated ways of bolstering the immune system and treating infectious diseases instead of injecting infants with ever larger batteries of vaccines.

The obsessive fascination with vaccines is an intellectual artifact of the 18th century, when humans were still living in extremely primitive conditions.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse – Focal Points.

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Is President Trump a War Criminal? If Iran Falls, What Is Next?

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 05:01

For the world at large, President Trump may be a war criminal.

He campaigned as a Peace President – but knowingly lied, because with all evidence coming to the fore now, he knew what he was going to do… everything that the Deep Warrior State wants him to do, what the Zionist financial oligarchy around the world prescribes him to do, what the war industry needs him to do.

He has betrayed people not only in the United States but in the world.

President Trump has sided with Israel in ethnic cleansing of Gaza, in an illegal attack on a sovereign country that posed no nuclear risk to anyone – many times confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), least to the US.

Mr. Trump has unilaterally on his own –on advice of his criminal advisers– taken illegal actions according to the US’s own Constitution, bombing a sovereign country without approval of Congress. By doing so, targeting Iranian nuclear research sites, Trump puts the entire region, possibly beyond, at risk of contamination by radiation. And this, although the IAEA has said there was no risk. Wind does not know borders, as Chernobyl and Fukushima have proven.

The IAEA had no choice in discarding the radiation dangers. The agency’s directors were all chosen for their western stance.

The US and Israeli bombing of Iran’s three principal nuclear sites, Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, have killed targeted nuclear scientists and high-ranking military officers, plus thousands of civilians, the majority women, and children. Trump has clearly teamed up with another war criminal, his buddy, Benjamin Netanyahu. But they do not care.

They are sick, dreaming of a Las Vegas-type Gaza beach resort, with casinos and high-life.

They know western “rules-based orders” cover all their criminal actions – besides, the rules are now made to suit their purpose.

Judge Napolitano says it clearly here:

If the US Constitution and International Laws, the UN Charter still have some meaning, Mr. Trump should be impeached immediately.

That is the world we have become. Nobody seems to care. That is how our minds have been manipulated. We do not care for each other anymore. We care about the little smart-phone screen and the stupidities and lies it emits. We are glued to these gadgets, day-in and day-out.

Unless a drastic awakening happens, our next generations are totally addicted to these enslaving machines. They are like our closest companions, without which we cannot imagine life. This, of course is no coincidence. Remember, coincidences do not exist. All and everything is planned and has a purpose. And the purpose becomes ever more obvious. Is it already too late to stop it?

*

People in the west have become self-centered materialists. They could hardly care about the future of our planet. What must come, comes. No efforts for real Peace, for lasting Peace, are made. Because in our absurd world, War is Peace and Peace is War.

It is a material world, where even spirituality is explained with Darwinian-type material reasoning. High-ranking politicians and strategists in Russia, China, the US, Europe, instead of seeking ways to Peace, they debate what is next. What if Iran falls?

Washington calls for regime change, as Trump may call it, “Make Iran Great Again” – of course, a US puppet. Anybody in his clear mind will know this is not going to happen. Iran is not Iraq, and is not Syria, and is nobody’s puppet.

Before “falling,” Iran has a myriad of options on the table, not least closing the Strait of Hormuz, where more than 20% of the world’s energy in the form of oil and gas passes through, and attacking the US bases in the Gulf States, from where the devastating Iran bombing took place.

To forego such steps, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the “regime change” champion, and Vice President J.D. Vance, warned Iran already against making the “big mistake” of closing the Strait of Hormuz.

Similarly on earlier occasion, Trump in one of his pompous talks, said something to the extent, if Iran dares attacking US bases in the region – they would be bombed to ashes, so that the earlier US bombing of the three nuclear sites looks like a walk in the park.

Earlier this evening, the Financial Times reported (see this), Iran fired missiles at the  sprawling Al Udeid American military base, just outside of Doha, Qatar. This is in retaliation of the massive US bombing of the three nuclear sites in Iran over the weekend. Usually, some 10,000 US troops are stationed at the base, but Trump evacuated most of them before his attack on Iran.

Al Udeid, also serves the Royal Air Force as regional headquarters, risking dragging also the UK into the conflict. On Monday UK foreign secretary David Lammy said the UK was ready to defend its personnel and assets in the region and that “of its allies and partners.”

Details as to Iranian missile damage are not yet known.

Does this indicate a further escalation? Maybe already as of tomorrow?

What’s next? West Asia is rapidly converting into a major war zone, as hostilities escalate in warp speed. Will Trump make good on his promise to “wipe out” Iran?

Could he?

Did Russia and China finally warn Trump – not crossing a “red line”?

Russia is not likely. Putin has too often shifted his own red lines. And President Putin has too often been seen and photographed shaking hands with Netanyahu. A strange, very strange, brotherly relationship.

But China?

China has been deploying naval ships to the Gulf of Aden since December 2008 as part of an anti-piracy mission authorized by the UN. These deployments are within a larger effort to protect Chinese shipping interests and extend China’s naval presence in the region. Their presence now cannot be ignored. Iran, together with China and Russia, is a key BRICS member, and since 2023 Iran is also an adherent to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

It looks like Iran is not totally alone, even though none of the BRICS states have so far raised their fist in protest. But maybe in their pockets they did, for now invisible to the western world. After all, Iran is a key player in the Global South.

And looking closer, isn’t this unfolding war theatre perhaps not so much an attack on Iran as a military target, but having a dual purpose: an attempt at breaking up the BRICS and the associated Global South, which is becoming fast an economic danger for the west? And on the other hand, Iran is one of the few countries whose central bank is not privatized as a member of the Bank for International Settlement (BIS – in Basel, Switzerland) which is controlled by the Rothschild clan – and has oversight over more than 90% of all central banks and about 97% of all the world’s tradable currencies.

Iran escapes the BIS supremacy, as well as the dollar-sanction SWIFT banking and transfer system and trades her hydrocarbons in local currencies with Russia, China, the BRICS, and their associates.

This monetary independence is dangerous for the Zionists control over world finances which is almost perfect and complete. An outcast like Iran could pull along others, influence other BRICS countries, their associates, and the Global South at large.

The Global South accounts for 85% of the world population and for about 40% of world GDP, exceeding the G7 – which have become nothing more than a group of un-funny gnomes.

This should be remembered when the talk is about strategic actions, bombing and sub-doing Iran’s military danger to the region and the world – beware of Iran becoming a nuclear power in no time.

The major reason for the assault on Iran, may be monetary, because that is and has been for centuries the Zionist’s bread and butter and the instrument to control and starve the rest of the world. They will not give it up.

The rogue state Israel is right there, with hundreds of nuclear warheads, outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) – never mentioned as the real military and nuclear danger in the region. What a strange surprise!

Iran shall not fall. God forbid!

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Is President Trump a War Criminal? If Iran Falls, What Is Next? appeared first on LewRockwell.

4 Cities of the Future Might Be Your New Home

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 05:01

The ultra-wealthy are planning your future right now. They’ll call it ‘utopia’ and sell it to you as such, but it’s actually the opposite. Welcome to the first of a two-part series.

Utopia is a place of “ideal perfection, especially in laws, government, and social conditions.” At least, that’s the dictionary definition.

The thing is, despite humans having tried for thousands of years to attain Eden-esque perfection, it’s impossible. Worse, the irony of such efforts is literally baked into the word ‘utopia:’

From Merriam Webster (emphasis added):

In 1516, English humanist Sir Thomas More published a book titled Utopia, which compared social and economic conditions in Europe with those of an ideal society on an imaginary island located off the coast of the Americas. More wanted to imply that the perfect conditions on his fictional island could never really exist, so he called it “Utopia,” a name he created by combining the Greek words ou (“not, no”) and topos (“place”).

Still, that doesn’t stop people from trying to create fictional paradise. The latest attempts are — unsurprisingly — conceived of, funded by, and built by our billionaire overlords, who aim to own everything and define how our lives will be lived in the future.

At the same time, a paradox is unfolding. While several attempts at billionaire-initiated paradises are currently in the works, some efforts are failing, some are falling apart, and some are simply struggling to get off the ground.

What we know about Silicon Valley elites, bitcoin bros, and AI billionaires is that they dream big and have virtually limitless finances. So even failed attempts at utopia — or whatever their version of it is — gets the entire cohort a step closer to decoding a formula that might stick. It’s like unlimited funding to indulge a God complex.

In part one of this series, we’re looking at four concepts for creating paradise on earth crafted by the freedom loving, libertarian, optimized-living-through-technology crowd. What exactly do these communities promise? Who’s behind them? And most importantly, could they just be 15-minute dystopian wolves in utopian sheep’s clothing? Let’s dive in.

1. Próspera (Honduras)

Próspera began as a bold libertarian experiment on the tropical island of Roatán, off the northern coast of Honduras. It’s the brainchild of Erick Brimen, a Venezuelan-born wealth fund manager who imagined a city run not by politicians, but by market forces and blockchain logic. He’s aiming to create a low-tax, deregulated tech haven where businesses can make their own laws, or choose to implement existing national laws from a menu of 36 countries. Residents pay low taxes (payable in Bitcoin), and biotech startups push the limits of radical life extension with experimental, as yet unproven treatments disallowed in other countries.

With venture capital backing from Coinbase and Sam Altman–linked projects, plus support from figures like Peter Thiel, Próspera has quickly become a magnet for crypto evangelists, longevity obsessives, and deregulation devotees. It hosts conferences with themes like: “Make death optional.” It’s creating a walled city with private arbitration courts, judges who adjudicate online from Arizona (no idea why Arizona — our research was not explicit), and QR-code entry checkpoints.

But like all utopias, this charter city dream has clashed with reality. One critic called it a “libertarian fantasy… that’s not going to turn out well.” The Honduran government that initially supported the project and allowed for the zoning laws making it possible has since collapsed in scandal — with the former president serving time in US prison for conspiring to import and distribute over 400 tons of cocaine. That’s a lot of blow.

Locals in the nearby village of Crawfish Rock have not taken kindly to the idea of the gated city and have accused Próspera of land grabs, environmental damage, and trying to push them out. When the current democratic socialist President, Xiomara Castro, declared the former administration’s zoning laws unconstitutional, Próspera fought back in international court, demanding nearly $11 billion USD in damages — about a third of the country’s GDP — an amount that would bankrupt the country if they lose the case.

Brimen is doubling down, lobbying American politicians to argue in his favor and launching a spin-off project aimed at Africa.

This all plays out as an ironic twist of history: a 21st-century version of the banana republic, complete with foreign investors, private courts, and corporate control over land, law, and labor. The term ‘banana republic’ was coined by author O. Henry to describe Honduras — a place where US fruit companies ran the economy. Now, crypto-capitalists and Silicon Valley VCs are picking up where the plantations left off, except this time, they’re promising immortality instead of bananas.

2. NEOM (Saudi Arabia)

NEOM was supposed to be Saudi Arabia’s leap into the future: a $500 billion high-tech oasis in the desert that would make even Silicon Valley blush. Conceived in 2017 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as the crown jewel of his Vision 2030 plan, NEOM promised flying taxis, robot dinosaurs, artificial moons, a desert ski resort with fake snow, and a 170-kilometer mirrored city called The Line.

This mirrored city was meant to stretch 170 kilometers across the desert with no cars, no roads, and no emissions — just smart infrastructure, biometric surveillance, and those previously mentioned flying taxis.

None of this matters; Saudi officials press on. Promotional videos still promise a gleaming future where “Neomians” live in harmony with nature, technology, and robot dinosaurs. But those on the ground tell a different story — of constant surveillance, sexual harassment allegations ignored by leadership, and Orwellian control over employee life. Promises of a liberalized social zone — with alcohol, gender mixing, freedom — have quietly been walked back by a government known for its public stonings and other extreme punishment for ‘immorality.’

NEOM may, in fact, never turn out to be the future of urban life. But it may just be the world’s most expensive monument to authoritarian delusion: a dystopian nightmare of a city built on sand, surveillance, and slogans.

Read the Whole Article

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Catholic Parents: Free the Hearts of Your Daughters

Lew Rockwell Institute - Gio, 26/06/2025 - 05:01

Catholic parents, do your daughters know that it’s okay—even good and holy—to desire a life as wife and mother, even above (and even forgoing) all other earthly considerations? Have you told them explicitly that they are free to pursue Holy Matrimony (a woman’s natural vowed state of life) as a goal in itself, bypassing the culture’s worldly expectations for young women today? If you have, praise God! This article is not for you.

For the rest, consider these personal stories:

After I graduated from my large, public, Arizona high school in 1985, I went on to a top private New England university, graduated summa cum laude, and then was off to a Southern graduate school where I had been awarded a coveted assistantship. Every marker for worldly success was on the table, and the world was my oyster!

However, not once did I actually consider having a career. I knew what my real goal was from the time I was a small girl—and it wasn’t to join the workforce, compete with men, climb the ladder, and make a lot of money (or “make history”). All my heart truly desired was to get married and have babies. I’d never even been around babies growing up, but I wanted to be a stay-at-home wife and mom, just like my own mother and most of the women in my 1970s neighborhood when I was in grade school. (Knowing there was a mother behind the door of each house was such a comfort and a gift to all the neighborhood kids walking to and from school or playing outside all day!)

But before I could live my dream, I had to get through college as expected. I’m not exactly sorry that I went to college—as that is how I eventually met my husband—but even that detail served my plan; as far as I was concerned, I was there to get my “MRS” degree, as they used to say. In that regard, I was not really an anomaly, as most students my age still expected to find a spouse in college and get married soon after; but a good percentage of the women expected to forge a career, too.

Meanwhile, one good friend of mine from high school didn’t go to college but instead married her high school sweetheart at age 19—a teen bride! I couldn’t attend her wedding in our hometown, as I was far away in Boston, finishing up my freshman year. I distinctly remember sitting on my bed in my tiny dorm room on the day of her nuptials. I was wistful, joyful, and envious, all at the same time. She was living my dream.

To be sure, being a young bride without a college degree was certainly “not for me” (skipping a bachelor’s degree was not an option in my world, or even in my own mind), but my longing for what she had was real and primal. I knew I had years to go before it was my turn, so I told myself to suck it up and deal with it. I watched from afar as my friend easily conceived and bore one baby, then another, in her prime fertile years.

Even though I was not supposed to feel it, I had such admiration for her. I looked up to her—and not down on her—because, in my mind, she was already living as an adult, unlike me. I envied her life as a grown-up wife and mommy with a home of her own while I plodded through my (often questionable) courses and lived in the artificial, debauched, and degrading arrested adolescence that is the college scene.

Thankfully, the Lord can work within a mess of darkness, and I did meet my future husband during those college years. We became engaged six weeks after graduation, and I felt like my adult life was finally about to start. I dropped out of grad school after the first two weeks because my life was not about that anymore. I could throw off the shackles of “gain another degree, get more accolades, go out and change the world!” and free my heart to get ready for my wedding and a perfectly natural future of housewifery and babies, just like my—and everyone else’s—ancestral line of hardworking, noble foremothers.

After an unnecessarily long engagement (short engagements like my parents’ and grandparents’ were irresponsible, you see), we were wed a year later. I worked at a small, women-only ad agency until just before our first child was born. I have been home ever since and have never looked back.

Money was tight, and we lived in apartments for those first years. My husband worked as a room-service attendant when employment was scarce. But my heart was overflowing. I loved everything about being a woman, wife, and mother; and I had a husband who understood that his manly task was to protect and provide.

Okay, so that’s all well and good. That was the late 1980s and early ’90s, when a holdover nostalgia for homemaking may have still captivated the hearts of young women at the time. But what about more modern women? Surely, after 30+ more years of nonstop feminist brainwashing and a push for a genderless, androgynous society, female hearts are finally free from those strange longings for a husband and babies and making a home; that interior pining was only a “social construct” after all, and young women today are not “limited” by the constraints of tradition, right? I am not so sure.

When I was writing my old Little Catholic Bubble blog, there was a regular reader and commenter who went by the username “college student.” She was not Catholic; she was a feminist, a vocal proponent of the hook-up culture, a Planned Parenthood and abortion supporter—basically, a liberal Democrat—who sparred with me often. But, although things were contentious in the comment boxes, we befriended each other privately.

She was about the age of my oldest child, and I had a maternal heart for her and grew to love her. This beautiful young lady graduated, joined the corporate world, had lots of boyfriends/dates, and became successful in all the ways the modern world expects of modern women.

But in private, she had a confession. The secret longing of her heart was to find a good man, get married, and have babies. She said that when she and her feminist friends spoke privately, they talked about “weddings and babies.” I told her that was perfectly normal and rightly ordered. This draw toward hearth and home is the natural desire of the feminine heart since the beginning of creation when God made Eve a wife and a mother. It is certainly nothing to be ashamed of!

I gave her a gentle challenge: Why not break the taboo? Why not put her true desire out on her social media and tell folks that her dream was to be a wife and mother? She said, “Leila, you know I can’t do that.” My heart felt sad for her—and for a nation of young, stressed-out, medicated, lonely women, many of them “boss babes” who cannot even identify why they ache so much and so deeply.

These stories are representative of millions, of course. And there are many reasons given, even by Catholic parents, as to why their daughter “should” do this and “must” do that long before she gets serious about finding a husband, getting married, and starting a family. After all, there is that degree to be earned, career to be launched, debts to be paid, fun to be had, serial dating to experience, “independence” to be established, and oh my, the travel! There are also extended family, friends, and a world of social media to impress with all her personal accomplishments first. We all know how things are today, and the pressure to “do all the things” is heavy on our girls.

Read the Whole Article

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