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David Martin wrote:

You either want to burn children alive, or you don’t. You either want to deliberately starve civilians, or you don’t. You either want to bomb hospitals, or you don’t. You either want to deliberately assassinate Palestinian journalists while forbidding foreign journalists entry into Gaza, or you don’t. You either want to deliberately massacre civilians and systematically destroy civilian infrastructure in order to force the removal of Palestinians from a Palestinian territory, or you don’t. And if you don’t, you must oppose the state of Israel.

This Is Israel – LewRockwell

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Thanks, John Smith. 

Responsible Statecraft

The post In twist, Europe appears to be deliberately undermining Iran talks appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Antiwar.com Blog

The post US Wields ‘Hand of Genocide’ by Vetoing Yet Another UN Gaza Cease-Fire Resolution appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

972 Magazine

The post How six months in the West Bank undid a lifetime of Zionist indoctrination appeared first on LewRockwell.

“George Clooney says today’s fear is more pervasive than McCarthy era.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviews actor George Clooney on the set of his Broadway play, “Good Night, and Good Luck” which is focused on Edward R. Murrow’s famous battle with Senator Joseph McCarthy. Watch CNN’s special presentation of George Clooney’s “Good Night, and Good Luck” on Saturday, June 7 at 7pm ET streaming live on CNN.com.”

Rather than viewing the actions of CBS News against Senator Joseph McCarthy (as portrayed in the 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck, which received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Director (Clooney), and Actor (Strathairn) as a heroic case of the mainstream news media working against state power, I believe it was precisely the opposite.

The destruction of McCarthy and his populist crusade against the elites governing America was a triumph of the most powerful forces of the deep state.

The “Roy Cohn” Speech

(This speech was written by Murray N. Rothbard, and delivered by his colleague George Reisman in the 1950s at a Roy Cohn event at which Joe McCarthy was present.)

George Clooney’s celebrated film does not delve into Joe McCarthy’s preliminary investigation of CIA covert activities and how CBS chairman William Paley, CBS News president Fred Friendly, and CBS Evening News anchor Edward R. Murrow were part of the Agency’s Operation Mockingbird to provide deflection and cover for the Agency’s ‘family jewels’ of the day. CBS News president Sig Mickelson (1954-61) was later liaison to the CIA. Because of his frequent communications, Mickelson even had a direct private phone line installed to the Agency.

I would suggest reading chapter ten, ‘Things Fall Apart: Journalists,’ in Hugh Wilford’s book, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How The CIA Played America, for background on these crucial events. It outlines how the Columbia Broadcasting Service was closely connected to the Central Intelligence Agency during this period.

CIA director Allen Dulles, CBS chairman William Paley, and CBS board director Senator Prescott Bush were intimate associates in various sociopolitical networks of the northeastern seaboard establishment found in Washington and New York during the days of the early Cold War.

Whether they would meet in their private clubs, at the Harold Pratt House of the Council on Foreign Relations, or in Wall Street corporate and bank board rooms, these old birds of a feather flocked, connived, schemed, and conspired together.

There is so much more to Senator Joe McCarthy, the CIA, and 1950’s America than found in a Hollywood film treatment or presented by ‘court historians’ anointed by the establishment regime media, particularly how the CIA mobilized its Operation Mockingbird media assets to engage in a counter-attack upon old “Tail Gunner Joe” when he was building up momentum in going after the Agency’s “family jewels” of the time after his highly-publicized campaigns against communist spies in the state department and the army.

For more on the mainstream news media and the CIA, see this article on Operation Mockingbird.

And see also the classic Rolling Stone article, ‘The CIA and the Media,’ by former Washington Post investigative journalist Carl Bernstein which is discussed in detail in The Mighty Wurlitzer.

Two interesting books of Establishment Studies (or power elite analysis) have outlined how CIA director Allen Dulles directed his counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton to find a means of destroying McCarthy. Angleton chose a veteran of the OSS, James McCargar, to undertake this covert espionage/disinformation action against McCarthy. These facts are discussed in Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA; and Gregg Herken, The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington.

In the fascinating and absolutely compelling book by David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, we find the following:

In March 1954, McCarthy’s subcommittee convened a hearing on “alleged threats against the chairman.” One witness — a military intelligence officer named William Morgan who had worked for C. D. Jackson in the White House — stunned the subcommittee by recounting a conversation that he had the previous year with a CIA employ named Horace Craig. As the two men were discussing how to solve the McCarthy problem, Craig flatly stated, “It may be necessary to liquidate Senator McCarthy as was [assassinated Louisiana senator] Huey Long. There is always some madman who will do it for a price.” (pages 223-224)

As with much other conventional establishment history, Americans have been lied to and bamboozled yet again. It’s time for yet more ‘revisionism’ on this topic.  And libertarians should lead the way.

The post Hollywood Leftist Actor/Director (and top tier elite Council on Foreign Relations member) George Clooney Still Crying Wolf Today Concerning “McCarthyism” During the New Donald Trump Administration appeared first on LewRockwell.

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

____________________________________________________________________________________

da CoinTelegraph

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/perche-tether-si-rifiuta-di-conformarsi)

Tether è conforme allo standard MiCA?

Il nuovo regolamento dell'UE sui mercati delle criptovalute, meglio noto come MiCA, è il primo grande tentativo da parte di una potenza economica mondiale di creare regole chiare e valide per tutta la regione e le stablecoin sono un elemento importante.

Il MiCA impone le migliori pratiche, se una stablecoin deve essere scambiata nell'UE, il suo emittente deve seguire alcune regole rigorose:

1. C'è bisogno di una licenza

Per emettere una stablecoin in Europa, è necessario diventare un istituto di moneta elettronica (IMEL) completamente autorizzato. Si tratta dello stesso tipo di licenza di cui hanno bisogno le aziende fintech per offrire portafogli elettronici o carte prepagate. Non è economico, né veloce.

2. La maggior parte delle riserve deve essere depositata presso banche europee

Questa è una delle parti più controverse del MiCA. Se si emette una stablecoin “importante” – e USDT di Tether rientra certamente nei requisiti – almeno il 60% delle riserve deve essere detenuto in banche con sede nell'UE. La logica è quella di garantire la sicurezza del sistema finanziario.

3. La piena trasparenza non è negoziabile

Il MiCA richiede informative dettagliate e regolari. Gli emittenti devono pubblicare un white paper e fornire aggiornamenti sulle proprie riserve, audit e modifiche operative. Questo livello di rendicontazione è una novità per alcune stablecoin, soprattutto quelle che storicamente hanno evitato il controllo pubblico.

4. Le monete non conformi vengono rimosse dalla lista

Se un token non è conforme, non sarà negoziabile sulle piattaforme regolamentate dell'UE. Binance, ad esempio, ha rimosso le coppie di trading USDT dagli utenti dello Spazio Economico Europeo (SEE). Altri exchange stanno seguendo l'esempio.

L'Autorità europea degli strumenti finanziari e dei mercati (ESMA) ha chiarito che in Europa le persone possono continuare a detenere o trasferire USDT, ma non possono offrirlo al pubblico o quotarlo in sedi ufficiali.

In altre parole, potreste ancora avere USDT nel vostro wallet, ma buona fortuna se volete provare a scambiarlo su una piattaforma regolamentata.

I motivi principali per cui Tether rifiuta le normative MiCA

Tether è unica in quanto ha spiegato il motivo per cui non vuole avere nulla a che fare con le normative MiCA. I vertici dell'azienda, in particolare l'amministratore delegato Paolo Ardoino, si sono espressi apertamente su quelle che considerano gravi lacune nella normativa, dai rischi finanziari alle preoccupazioni sulla privacy, fino al quadro più ampio di cosa sono realmente le stablecoin.

1. La regolamentazione bancaria potrebbe ritorcersi contro

Una delle regole più discusse del MiCA stabilisce che le stablecoin “importanti” – USDT di Tether – debbano detenere almeno il 60% delle loro riserve presso banche europee. L'idea è di rendere le stablecoin più sicure e trasparenti, ma Ardoino la vede diversamente.

USDt is the most successful tool for US Dollar hegemony and distribution across emerging markets.

Tether built, over the last decade, the widest physical and digital distribution network, spacing from thousands of kiosks in Africa and South America to digital remittances… https://t.co/KD2oUzemT8

Ha avvertito che ciò potrebbe creare nuovi problemi, costringendo chi emette stablecoin a fare troppo affidamento sulle banche tradizionali e l'intero sistema potrebbe diventare eccessivamente fragile. 

Dopotutto, se si verifica un'ondata di rimborsi e le banche non hanno abbastanza liquidità per tenere il passo, assisteremmo contemporaneamente a una banca in difficoltà e a una crisi delle stablecoin.

Tether preferisce invece conservare la maggior parte delle sue riserve in titoli del Tesoro USA, asset che afferma essere liquidi, a basso rischio e molto più facili da rimborsare rapidamente in caso di necessità.

2. Non si fidano dell'euro digitale

Tether ha anche un altro problema con la direzione che l'Europa sta prendendo, soprattutto per quanto riguarda l'euro digitale. Ardoino lo ha apertamente criticato, sollevando allarmi sulla privacy.

Egli sostiene che una valuta digitale controllata centralmente potrebbe essere utilizzata per monitorare come le persone spendono i loro soldi e persino per controllare o limitare le transazioni se qualcuno perde il favore del sistema.

I sostenitori della privacy hanno espresso preoccupazioni simili. Mentre la Banca Centrale Europea insiste sul fatto che la privacy sia una priorità assoluta (con funzionalità come i pagamenti offline), Tether non ne è convinta. Ai loro occhi, affidare così tanto potere finanziario nelle mani di un'unica istituzione equivale a cercare guai.

3. Gli utenti di Tether non sono a Bruxelles, bensì in Brasile, Turchia e Nigeria

In sostanza, Tether si vede come un'ancora di salvezza per le persone nei Paesi che devono affrontare problemi di inflazione, sistemi bancari instabili e accesso limitato al dollaro.

Si tratta di Paesi come la Turchia, l'Argentina e la Nigeria, dove USDT è spesso più utile della valuta locale.

Il MiCA, con tutti i suoi ostacoli in termini di licenze e obblighi di riserva, costringerebbe Tether a cambiare strategia e a investire per soddisfare gli standard specifici dell'UE. L'azienda afferma di non essere disposta a farlo, non a scapito dei mercati che ritiene più bisognosi di strumenti finanziari come USDT.

Lo sapevate? La Turchia è tra i Paesi con il più alto tasso di adozione delle criptovalute: il 16% della popolazione è impegnata in attività legate alle criptovalute. Questo elevato tasso di adozione è in gran parte dovuto alla svalutazione della lira turca e all'instabilità economica, le quali spingono i cittadini a cercare alternative come le stablecoin per preservare il proprio potere d'acquisto.

Cosa succede quando Tether non è conforme al MiCA

La decisione di Tether di saltare il MiCA non è passata inosservata. Sta già avendo conseguenze concrete, soprattutto per gli exchange e gli utenti in Europa.

1. Gli exchange stanno eliminando USDT

Grandi nomi come Binance e Kraken non hanno aspettato: per non incorrere nelle sanzioni imposte dalle autorità di regolamentazione dell'UE, hanno già rimosso le coppie di trading USDT per gli utenti dello Spazio Economico Europeo. Binance le aveva rimosse lo scorso marzo. Kraken ha seguito a ruota, rimuovendo non solo USDT, ma anche altre stablecoin non conformi come EURT e PYUSD di PayPal.

2. Gli utenti hanno meno opzioni

Se vi trovate in ​​Europa e possedete USDT, non siete completamente sfortunati: potete ancora prelevarli o scambiarli su alcune piattaforme. Ma non potrete più trattarlo sui principali exchange. Questo sta già spingendo gli utenti verso alternative come USDC ed EURC, pienamente conformi al MiCA e ampiamente supportati.

Anche i principali processatori di pagamenti in criptovalute stanno ritirando il supporto, lasciando agli utenti meno possibilità di spendere direttamente le proprie criptovalute.

3. Un colpo alla liquidità? Probabile

Il ritiro degli USDT dalle borse europee potrebbe rendere i mercati un po' più instabili. Meno liquidità, spread più ampi e maggiore volatilità durante i grandi movimenti di prezzo sono tutti fattori in gioco. Alcuni trader si adatteranno rapidamente. Altri? Non così tanto.

Lo sapevate? Tether (USDT) è la criptovaluta più scambiata a livello globale, superando persino Bitcoin in termini di volume giornaliero. Nel 2024, ha facilitato transazioni per oltre $20.600 miliardi e vanta una base utenti di oltre 400 milioni in tutto il mondo.

Tether & regolamentazione MiCA

Tether potrebbe non essere in sintonia con l'UE, ma è ben lungi dall'essere in ritirata. Anzi l'azienda sta raddoppiando gli sforzi altrove, alla ricerca di un terreno più amichevole e di orizzonti più ampi.

In primo luogo, Tether ha scelto El Salvador come sua nuova base, un Paese che ha pienamente abbracciato le criptovalute. Dopo aver ottenuto la licenza per la fornitura di servizi in asset digitali, l'azienda sta aprendo lì una vera e propria sede centrale. Anche Ardoino e altri dirigenti di alto livello si stanno muovendo lì.

Inoltre, dopo aver incassato oltre $5 miliardi di profitti all'inizio del 2024, Tether sta mettendo a frutto il suo capitale:

• IA: Attraverso la sua divisione venture capital, Tether Evo, l'azienda ha acquisito partecipazioni in aziende come Northern Data Group e Blackrock Neurotech. Tether ha anche lanciato Tether AI, una piattaforma di intelligenza artificiale open source e decentralizzata progettata per funzionare su qualsiasi dispositivo senza server centralizzati o chiavi API. L'obiettivo è utilizzare l'IA per potenziare le operazioni e, magari, sviluppare nuovi strumenti lungo il percorso.

• Infrastrutture e AgTech: Tether ha investito in Adecoagro, un'azienda focalizzata sull'agricoltura sostenibile e sulle energie rinnovabili. È una mossa sorprendente, ma si inserisce nella strategia più ampia di Tether, volta a supportare sistemi resilienti e concreti.

• Media e oltre: ci sono anche segnali che indicano che Tether vuole lasciare il segno nei contenuti e nelle comunicazioni, dimostrando che sta pensando ben oltre il solo settore delle criptovalute.

L'uscita di Tether dal MiCA evidenzia il caos normativo globale delle criptovalute

L'abbandono del MiCA è un'istantanea di un problema molto più grande nel settore delle criptovalute: quanto sia difficile avviare un'attività in un mondo in cui ogni giurisdizione segue le proprie regole.

Il gioco dell'arbitraggio normativo

Non è la prima volta che Tether si trova ad affrontare normative di questo tipo. Come molte aziende crypto, ha padroneggiato l'arte dell'arbitraggio normativo, trovando la giurisdizione più favorevole e aprendo lì la propria sede.

L'Europa introduce regole severe? Bene, Tether si stabilisce a El Salvador, dove le criptovalute sono accolte a braccia aperte.

Se i grandi operatori possono spostare le giurisdizioni per eludere le normative, quanto sono efficaci queste norme? E questo tutela gli utenti al dettaglio o li confonde ulteriormente?

Un ecosistema delle criptovalute che è ovunque sulla mappa della Terra

Il problema più grande è che il panorama normativo globale è incredibilmente frammentato. L'Europa vuole piena conformità, trasparenza e obblighi di riserva. Gli Stati Uniti continuano a inviare segnali contrastanti. L'Asia è divisa: Hong Kong è pro-crypto, mentre la Cina rimane indifferente.

Anche Hong Kong ha approvato la Legge sulle stablecoin per concedere licenze agli emittenti garantiti da valute fiat e rafforzare le sue ambizioni Web3. Nel frattempo l'America Latina sta abbracciando le criptovalute come strumento di accesso finanziario.

Per le aziende è un vero disastro. Non si può costruire per un solo mercato globale; bisogna costantemente adattarsi, ristrutturare o ritirarsi completamente. Per gli utenti ciò crea enormi barriere all'accesso. Una moneta disponibile in un Paese potrebbe essere inaccessibile in un altro solo a causa delle politiche locali.

Un'ultima riflessione: la resistenza di Tether al MiCA è più di una semplice protesta contro la burocrazia. Infatti sta scommettendo che il futuro delle criptovalute verrà plasmato fuori da Bruxelles, non al suo interno.

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

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The political legacy of Elon Musk, the moral costs of Keynesianism, and the absurdity of Harvard and NPR as public goods.

Welcome back to the Power & Market Podcast, a weekly news recap from the Mises Institute’s editorial team.

This week, Ryan McMaken, Tho Bishop, and Connor O’Keeffe discuss the Department of Government Efficiency letdown, dissect the ongoing degeneracy of Keynesian economics, and explore the rising movement to defund elite universities like Harvard. Has the establishment finally overplayed its hand? What’s next for higher education?

For more information and to subscribe, visit https://Mises.org/P&MPod.ryan

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

The post DOGE Disappointment, Keynesian Degeneracy, and Cutting Off Harvard appeared first on LewRockwell.

The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts (the Kennedy Center), located on the east bank of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., opened in 1971 but was actually authorized by the National Cultural Center Act of 1958. Its original name, the National Cultural Center, was changed in 1964, two months after President Kennedy’s assassination.

The Kennedy Center is dedicated to the performing arts and features operas, concerts, plays, musicals, ballets, movies, and dances. It is the home of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera. It also hosts dinners, galas, conferences, receptions, and special events.

The Kennedy Center is a public-private partnership. It receives an annual appropriation for capital repairs, operations, and maintenance. Back in 2021, the Center disclosed that it had received “$269.4 million in federal funding since 2016” and paid its president, Deborah Rutter, “pay and benefits amounting to $5.1 million.”

Now, since the Constitution nowhere authorizes the federal government to have a cultural center or support the arts, the Kennedy Center should be a strictly private venture. Republicans who claim to be fiscal conservatives, follow the Constitution, and believe in limited government should be saying that the Kennedy Center should be self-supporting or sold to the highest bidder.

After Donald Trump was elected president, he criticized the Kennedy Center for its drag and LGBTQ programming. He fired members of the board of trustees, including the president, Deborah Rutter, because they “do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” and named his own board members, who elected Trump as the new chairman.

Trump then backed a $257 million federal funding package for the Kennedy Center, which is more than six times its usual annual support. The funding is part of Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” that is supported by the vast majority of Republicans in Congress.

Republicans spent much of the Biden years castigating the president and congressional Democrats for their out-of-control spending. They promised in their 2024 party platform that they would “immediately stabilize the Economy by slashing wasteful Government spending.” So, how is that compatible with appropriating $257 million for the Kennedy Center?

This shows hard-working, tax-paying, middle-class Americans the true nature of Republicans.

Republicans are more interested in controlling government agencies and programs than in eliminating them. They have no problem with government subsidies and spending as long as their projects receive the funding.

This is why Trump and the Republicans’ “one big beautiful bill” includes a new savings account for children that comes with a $1,000 deposit from the federal government—courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

It is only when some government agency or program does something that Republicans disagree with that they ever talk about cutting its budget or eliminating it. The only limited government wanted by Republicans is a government limited to control by Republicans.

The post Republicans Reveal Their True Nature appeared first on LewRockwell.

When I was a kid, the postman semi-annually delivered a booklet-sized mail-order catalog with an odd mix of hundreds of household gadgets and cheap novelties: personalized pencils, cat toys, jumping beans and kitschy doorstops, et al.

The catalog also displayed the above-pictured LP cover of Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast mockudrama. As did the sensationalistic record cover, the catalog’s caption said that panicked Americans ran screaming into the streets or had heart attacks after hearing a radio report that Martians had invaded the US; specifically, my native New Jersey. Intrigued, I uncharacteristically asked my mother to buy the record. She declined.

Fortunately, a few years later, in the sixth grade, one of my classmates brought this record to school and convinced our diminutive, permed-black-haired, forty-something teacher, Mrs. Kasper, to play it. Mrs. Kasper was very nice and didn’t push her students or herself too hard. It was a fun year in school and sports. If the schools and the town sports leagues had been closed, there would be a void in my memory where many pleasing memories reside.

Perhaps Mrs. Kasper rationalized that hearing this record would provide a pop sociology or life lesson. Regardless, I was excited to hear this bucket list LP. As they said on the TV ad for a rock anthology album, “Put the needle in the first groove and let it wail!”

It turned out that my mother had shown good judgment by not ordering that record. The radio show was, as were Coronamania Era videos of morgue trucks or Chinese guys falling onto sidewalks, hokey and unconvincing. Less than halfway through, I couldn’t wait for the record to end. Sometimes life is like that: the thing that you had to have or the place you had to go to can become that thing you’re eager to get rid of or the place you’re itching to leave.

Be that as it may, after the program ended, Mrs. Kasper reminded us, as had the mail order catalog and urban legend tellers, that, despite the show’s implausibility, many people believed that Martians were invading and consequently, freaked out.

Those who’ve studied the War of the Worlds reaction have concluded that the extent of the purported panic was exaggerated, especially by newspapers seeking to discredit the medium of radio, with which they were competing for audience and thus, advertising revenue. One historian reported that only 6 million Americans heard the program. Of those, only 20% believed the scam. Of these, only a fraction bugged out. While many called the police to see if Martians had really invaded, most correctly perceived the program as theater of the mind. They looked out their windows, saw neither UFOs nor incendiary death rays and went on with their nights.

But as during Coronamania, why let the truth get in the way of a good myth?

Having recently reached Piaget’s formal-operational stage of cognitive development, and thinking ourselves worldly-wise, we sixth graders laughed at what gullible bumpkins our Martin-fearing predecessors had been. We derisively asserted that we’d never fall for such silliness. We smugly concluded that humans had gotten much smarter as a species in the 32 years between the original War of the Worlds broadcast and when we heard it played back in 1970.

—

Fast forward fifty years to 2020. Some of the same classmates who mocked those who freaked out in 1938 about a phony alien invasion—and who had four-year, and even graduate, degrees from “good” colleges—fervently bought the 2020 Corona scam. On Twitter and FaceBook, these schoolmates spread “spiking-case” warnings, hurled “superspreader,” “grandpa killer” and “MAGA” epithets and displayed photos of themselves wearing masks. Later, they proudly posted virtue-signaling images of their vaxx cards, saying they couldn’t wait to resume normal activities 14 magic days later. They declined to respond to my emails that called the whole thing an extreme overreaction.

In 2020, I applied the same logic to Covid as I did in 1970 to a purported 1938 Martian invasion. Humans have been around for a long time. If supersmart aliens wanted to invade us, why hadn’t they done so before 1938? Analogously, after millennia, why would a super-killer respiratory virus suddenly emerge in 2020? Both scenarios seemed so far-fetched that they had to be hoaxes.

The chief difference between War of the Worlds panic and Coronamania is that, in the latter instance, believing government and media lies, hundreds of millions—not hundreds of thousands, as in 1938—did buy the viral Scam and demanded that everyone else do so. Both in public spaces and on social media, I saw widespread, persistent Covid panic and aggression with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears. So did you.

—

Most contemporary people share a delusional conceit about how sophisticated they are compared to those in prior generations. They look back at popular acceptance of an earth-centric universe, alchemy, witchcraft and witch trials, bloodletting, phrenology and other discredited scientific paradigms and say, “Ha! We’d never fall for anything so stupid!”

Many humans still delusionally think that, as time marches on, the species is continuously getting smarter and improving the human experience. But intensive human interventions can be net negatives. For example, the CDC requires 72 serious-injury-causing vaccines between birth and age 18 for diseases that either aren’t lethal or were functionally eradicated a century ago as people lived in less squalid settings and consumed cleaner water and more protein. Pharma hawks pills and shots for an ever-growing array of conditions, while ignoring these products’ serious side effects and disregarding self-care via diet, exercise and sunlight. Similarly, “scientists” have relentlessly bred much more potent marijuana and politicians have legalized it to widen access. Farmers sow genetically uniform, hybridized seeds and use boatloads of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers to unsustainably grow nutritionally dubious monocrops. In the name of reproductive freedom, many who delayed attempts to conceive use IVF, freeze eggs, shop for sperm and eugenically select embryos and edit genes. Many live in solitude while focused on their phones or other screens. Artificial intelligence is ramping up, displacing human labor and thought and enabling deepfakes and other forms of deception.

All of the above, modern practices have caused and will continue to cause major economic, social and psychological dislocation. As time passes, more will belatedly question the wisdom of these Pandoran interventions.

—

In 2025, those who opposed the Covid overreaction say that, because so many have seen that they were duped by the viral hype and the ridiculous, damaging measures that were said to protect us, people should “Never again!” fall for such a scam.

But I wonder how many of those who supported the failed lockdown, school closures, masks and tests (collectively, “NPI”) and shots have been chastened. To protect their egos, many with whom I’ve spoken and social media commenters are sticking to their untenable narrative that a virus killed over a million otherwise healthy Americans and that the NPIs and shots saved millions of lives. Additionally, as during Coronamania, some will always, during social and economic disruptions, see profits and other opportunities therein and thus, endorse various interventions or products, not caring that these will harm others.

—

George Eliot closes Middlemarch by writing that “(t)he growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

The growing bad of the world similarly, commensurately depends on the misconduct of the panicky masses, who bought lies dressed up as sophistication and modernity. Between 2020-25, hundreds of millions who saw themselves as well-educated and intelligent showed that they were no smarter than those who freaked out about a bogus alien invasion eight decades earlier. And Team Covid Panic had hundreds of millions more members than did the Martian Phobes.

Increasingly, some—including millions of middle school students—are reflecting on Coronamania and mocking those who fell for it. Yet, as is often said, the winners write history. And though the NPIs and shots failed and caused tremendous, lasting harm, the Coronamania “winners” who used the Scamdemic to make money and sway elections will continue to recite their false, self-serving viral narrative.

As awareness of Coronamania’s damage widens over time, those who supported the NPIs and shots will, like St. Peter and the rapper, Shaggy, revisionistically say, “It wasn’t me!” or “We didn’t know.”

But they did support these measures. And they should have known it was all a Scam.

It’s too late to undo the harm that the Covid overreaction caused. Nonetheless, to enable more people to understand what happened, we must continue to call out the many viral lies and the liars who tell them. This will help people to see the linkage between the Covid response and the growing and social and economic problems that manifest themselves daily. We can also hope that, as War of the Worlds and Mrs. Kasper alerted us to peoples’ susceptibility to media-driven scams, more people will reject future government and media attempts to induce hysteria.

But does the bulk of society really get smarter as years go by?

Reprinted with permission from Dispatches from a Scamdemic.

The post Are We Smarter Than Our Ancestors? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” — Ayn Rand

Call it what it is: a panopticon presidency.

President Trump’s plan to fuse government power with private surveillance tech to build a centralized, national citizen database is the final step in transforming America from a constitutional republic into a digital dictatorship armed with algorithms and powered by unaccountable, all-seeing artificial intelligence.

This isn’t about national security. It’s about control.

According to news reports, the Trump administration is quietly collaborating with Palantir Technologies—the data-mining behemoth co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel—to construct a centralized, government-wide surveillance system that would consolidate biometric, behavioral, and geolocation data into a single, weaponized database of Americans’ private information.

This isn’t about protecting freedom. It’s about rendering freedom obsolete.

What we’re witnessing is the transformation of America into a digital prison—one where the inmates are told we’re free while every move, every word, every thought is monitored, recorded, and used to assign a “threat score” that determines our place in the new hierarchy of obedience.

This puts us one more step down the road to China’s dystopian system of social credit scores and Big Brother surveillance.

The tools enabling this all-seeing surveillance regime are not new, but under Trump’s direction, they are being fused together in unprecedented ways—with Palantir at the center of this digital dragnet.

Palantir, long criticized for its role in powering ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and predictive policing, is now poised to become the brain of Trump’s surveillance regime.

Under the guise of “data integration” and “public safety,” this public-private partnership would deploy AI-enhanced systems to comb through everything from facial recognition feeds and license plate readers to social media posts and cellphone metadata—cross-referencing it all to assess a person’s risk to the state.

Palantir’s software has already been used to assist ICE in locating, arresting, and deporting undocumented immigrants, often relying on vast surveillance data sets aggregated from multiple sources. In New Orleans, the company secretly partnered with local police to run a predictive policing program without public knowledge or oversight, targeting individuals flagged as likely to commit crimes based on social networks and past behaviors—not actual wrongdoing.

This isn’t speculative. It’s already happening.

Palantir’s Gotham platform, used by law enforcement and military agencies, has long been the backbone of real-time tracking and predictive analysis. Now, with Trump’s backing, it threatens to become the central nervous system of a digitally enforced authoritarianism.

As Palantir itself admits, its mission is to “augment human decision-making.” In practice, that means replacing probable cause with probability scores, courtrooms with code, and due process with data pipelines.

In this new regime, your innocence will be irrelevant. The algorithm will decide who you are.

To understand the full danger of this moment, we must trace the long arc of government surveillance—from secret intelligence programs like COINTELPRO to today’s AI-driven digital dragnet embodied by data fusion centers.

The threat posed by today’s surveillance state did not emerge overnight. The groundwork was laid decades ago through covert government programs such as COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), launched by the FBI in the 1950s and continuing through the 1970s. Its explicit mission was to “disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” political dissidents, including civil rights leaders, Vietnam War protesters, and Black liberation groups.

Under COINTELPRO, federal agents infiltrated lawful organizations, spread misinformation, blackmailed targets, and conducted warrantless surveillance.

Though exposed and publicly condemned by Congress, the spirit of COINTELPRO never died—it merely went underground and digital.

Post-9/11 legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act provided legal cover for mass surveillance, allowing intelligence agencies to collect phone records, monitor internet activity, and build profiles on American citizens without meaningful oversight. Fusion centers, initially conceived to coordinate counterterrorism efforts, became clearinghouses for domestic spying, facilitating data-sharing between federal agencies and local police.

Today, this infrastructure has merged with the tools of Big Tech.

With Palantir and similar firms at the helm, the government can now watch more people, more closely, for more arbitrary reasons than ever before. Dissent is once again being criminalized. Free expression is being categorized as extremism. And citizens—without ever committing a crime—can be flagged, tracked, and punished by an invisible digital bureaucracy that operates with impunity.

Building on this foundation of historical abuse, the government has evolved its tactics, replacing human informants with algorithms and wiretaps with metadata, ushering in an age where pre-crime prediction is treated as prosecution.

In the age of AI, your digital footprint is enough to convict you—not in a court of law, but in the court of preemptive suspicion.

Every smartphone ping, GPS coordinate, facial scan, online purchase, and social media like becomes part of your “digital exhaust”—a breadcrumb trail of metadata that the government now uses to build behavioral profiles. The FBI calls it “open-source intelligence.” But make no mistake: this is dragnet surveillance, and it is fundamentally unconstitutional.

Already, government agencies are mining this data to generate “pattern of life” analyses, flag “radicalized” individuals, and preemptively investigate those who merely share anti-government views. Whistleblowers have revealed that the FBI has flagged individuals as potential threats based on their internet search history, social media posts, religious beliefs, or associations with activist groups.

In a growing number of cases, individuals have found themselves visited by agents simply for attending a protest, making a political post, or appearing on the “wrong” side of a digital algorithm.

This is not law enforcement. This is thought-policing by machine.

The FBI has developed detailed dossiers on individuals based not on criminal activity, but on constitutionally protected expression—flagging citizens for visiting alternative media websites, criticizing government policies, or supporting causes deemed “extreme.”

According to leaked memos and internal documents, terms like “liberty,” “sovereignty,” and even the Gadsden flag have been cited as potential indicators of domestic extremism. In one case, a peaceful protester was interrogated for merely using encrypted messaging apps. In another, churchgoers were surveilled because their religious leader spoke critically of the government.

These are the logical outcome of a system that criminalizes dissent and deputizes algorithms to do the targeting.

Nor is this entirely new.

For decades, the federal government has reportedly maintained a highly classified database known as Main Core, designed to collect and store information on Americans deemed potential threats to national security.

Investigative journalists have revealed that Main Core may contain data on millions of individuals—compiled without warrants or due process—for potential use during a national emergency. As Tim Shorrock reported for Salon, “One former intelligence official described Main Core as ‘an emergency internal security database system’ designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law.”

Trump’s embrace of Palantir, and its unparalleled ability to fuse surveillance feeds, social media metadata, public records, and AI-driven predictions, marks a dangerous evolution: a modern-day resurrection of Main Core, digitized, centralized, and fully automated.

What was once covert contingency planning is now becoming active policy.

What has emerged is a surveillance model more vast than anything dreamed up by past regimes—a digital panopticon in which every citizen becomes both observed and self-regulating.

Imagine a society in which every citizen is watched constantly, and every move is logged in a government database.

Imagine a state where facial recognition cameras scan your face at protests and concerts, where your car’s location is tracked by automatic license plate readers, where your biometric data is captured by drones, and where AI programs assign you a “threat assessment” score based on your behavior, opinions, associations, and even your purchases.

This is not science fiction. This is America—now.

This is the panopticon brought to life: a circular prison designed so that inmates never know when they are being watched, and thus must behave as if they always are. Jeremy Bentham’s original vision has become the model of modern-day governance: total visibility, zero accountability.

Our every move is being monitored, our every word recorded, our every action judged and categorized—not by humans, but by machines without conscience, without compassion, and without constitutional limits.

And in this surveillance state, the people have become inventory. Lives reduced to data points. Choices reduced to algorithms. Freedom reduced to a permission slip. You are no longer the customer. You are the product.

In this new reality, we are not only watched—we are measured, categorized, and sold back to the very systems that enslave us.

We are no longer free citizens.

We are data points in a digital control grid—commodified, categorized, and exploited.

In this new digital economy, our lives have become profit centers for corporations that track, trade, and monetize our every move.

The surveillance state is powered not only by authoritarian government impulses but by a corporate ecosystem that sees no distinction between the marketplace and the public square.

We are being bought and sold, not as citizens with rights, but as consumers to be studied and shaped.

Our autonomy is being eroded by design, not by accident.

This modern surveillance state knows everything about you—where you go, what you buy, what you read, who you associate with—and it uses that information to predict your behavior, shape your preferences, and ultimately control your actions.

Your phone is tracking you.

Your car is tracking you.

Your smart TV, internet searches, and digital assistant—all of it is being harvested to feed a growing network of AI-powered surveillance.

Even your refrigerator and your doorbell are reporting on you.

Every electronic device you use, every online transaction you make, every move you make through a smart city grid, adds another data point to your profile.

This is the machinery of oppression, and it is being refined daily.

The difference between past regimes and the one being constructed now is its subtlety. Today’s totalitarianism doesn’t come with jackboots and secret police. It comes with convenience. With apps. With “national security” justifications. With the illusion of safety.

As in the dystopian world of Soylent Green, where the individual is reduced to a consumable product of the system, today’s surveillance state treats Americans not as citizens but as data points to be harvested, scored, and fed back into the machine of control.

We are no longer governed—we are managed.

It is no less dangerous—just more efficient.

The tragedy, however, is that most Americans don’t see the bars being built around them, because the architecture of tyranny is disguised as convenience and cloaked in comfort.

Most Americans are still asleep to the danger. They live in a prison masquerading as paradise, where surveillance is sold as safety, compliance is branded as patriotism, and convenience has become the currency of captivity.

We have been conditioned to love our servitude, to decorate our cells with apps and smart devices, and to mistake technological dependency for freedom.

The prison walls are invisible, the bars digital, the guards automated.

We are inmates in a high-tech prison, lulled by convenience and pacified by illusion. We carry our tracking devices in our pockets. We whisper our secrets into microphones embedded in our own devices. We voluntarily surrender our privacy to digital overlords.

Meanwhile, those who dare question this system—journalists, whistleblowers, dissidents—are silenced, surveilled, and punished. All under color of law.

Consider:

• The FBI has used geofence warrants to identify individuals at protests based solely on their location.
• Palantir tools have helped track people not for crimes committed but for potential future criminal activity.
• DHS fusion centers have profiled Americans based on political views and religious affiliations.
• AI-driven risk assessment scores are now influencing bail decisions, parole eligibility, and more.

This is predictive policing turned preemptive prosecution. It is the very definition of a surveillance state.

As this technological tyranny expands, the foundational safeguards of the Constitution—those supposed bulwarks against arbitrary power—are quietly being nullified and its protections rendered meaningless.

What does the Fourth Amendment mean in a world where your entire life can be searched, sorted, and scored without a warrant? What does the First Amendment mean when expressing dissent gets you flagged as an extremist? What does the presumption of innocence mean when algorithms determine guilt?

The Constitution was written for humans—not for machine rule. It cannot compete with predictive analytics trained to bypass rights, sidestep accountability, and automate tyranny.

And that is the endgame: the automation of authoritarianism. An unblinking, AI-powered surveillance regime that renders due process obsolete and dissent fatal.

Still, it is not too late to resist—but doing so requires awareness, courage, and a willingness to confront the machinery of our own captivity.

Make no mistake: the government is not your friend in this. Neither are the corporations building this digital prison. They thrive on your data, your fear, and your silence.

To resist, we must first understand the weaponized AI tools being used against us.

We must demand transparency, enforce limits on data collection, ban predictive profiling, and dismantle the fusion centers feeding this machine.

We must treat AI surveillance with the same suspicion we once reserved for secret police. Because that is what AI-powered governance has become—secret police—only smarter, faster, and less accountable.

We must stop cooperating with our captors. Stop consenting to our own control. Stop feeding the surveillance machine with our data, our time, and our trust.

We don’t have much time.

Trump’s alliance with Palantir is a warning sign—not just of where we are, but of where we’re headed. A place where freedom is conditional, rights are revocable, and justice is decided by code.

The question is no longer whether we’re being watched—that is now a given—but whether we will meekly accept it. Will we dismantle this electronic concentration camp, or will we continue building the infrastructure of our own enslavement?

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, if we trade liberty for convenience and privacy for security, we will find ourselves locked in a prison we helped build, and the bars won’t be made of steel. They will be made of data.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

The post Trump’s Palantir-Powered Surveillance Is Turning America Into a Digital Prison appeared first on LewRockwell.

This is Israel. This is what the Zionist project looks like. The dead kids. The blown-out hospitals. The desperate, starving civilians. This is it.

There is no alternate version of Israel where these things are not happening. The liberal Zionist vision of a two-state solution and a just and peaceful Israel exists solely in the imaginations of the people who envision it. Nothing like it has ever existed. Everything about the modern state of Israel is unyieldingly hostile to that vision.

You either support the existence of the Israel you see before you, or you support the end of the apartheid Zionist entity. There is no hidden third option. There are no other positions on the menu. To pretend otherwise is to live in a fantasy land.

You either want to burn children alive, or you don’t. You either want to deliberately starve civilians, or you don’t. You either want to bomb hospitals, or you don’t. You either want to deliberately assassinate Palestinian journalists while forbidding foreign journalists entry into Gaza, or you don’t. You either want to deliberately massacre civilians and systematically destroy civilian infrastructure in order to force the removal of Palestinians from a Palestinian territory, or you don’t. And if you don’t, you must oppose the state of Israel.

That’s Israel, the state. Not just Netanyahu. Not just extremist settlers. Not just “far right elements within the Israeli government”. Israel itself. Because everything we are seeing Israel do is the result of everything Israel is as a state.

Everything Israel is doing is the result of everything it has always been. As soon as the west decided to drop a settler-colonialist state on top of a pre-existing civilization wherein the new immigrants would receive preferential treatment over the indigenous inhabitants who were already living there, it became inevitable that Israel would wind up in the condition it’s in today.

Because there was no way to uphold that status quo without mass displacement and nonstop tyranny, violence and abuse. There was no way to set up a tiered society where one tier is placed above the other without indoctrinating the public to accept that apartheid system by systematically dehumanizing the members of the disempowered group.

Set up a status quo of dehumanizing a group of people and manufacturing consent for violence and abuse against them, and you will inevitably wind up with a far right apartheid state which is committing genocide, as surely as dropping a stone off a building will result in a stone falling to the ground.

What we are seeing in Gaza today was baked into the state of Israel ever since its inception.

All those dead kids on your social media feed are the fruit of a tree whose seed was planted after the second world war. That tree has been bearing more and more fruit, and it will continue to for as long as it remains standing. Because that’s just the kind of tree it is. The only kind of tree it ever could have been.

Saying “I support Israel but I don’t support the actions of Netanyahu in Gaza” is like saying “I like this apple tree but only when it sprouts coconuts instead of apples.” That is not the kind of tree it is. The apple tree will only produce apples, and the genocide tree will only produce genocide.

Israel’s supporters avoid confronting obvious truths like these. Support for Israel depends on mass-scale psychological compartmentalization. Everything about it revolves around avoiding unpleasant truths instead of deeply and viscerally reckoning with them.

Averting the eyes from the video footage of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. Averting the eyes from the contradictions between the values they purport to hold and everything Israel is as a state. Averting the eyes from the mountains upon mountains of evidence staring us all in the face. That’s the only way support for Israel is able to continue.

In order to become a truth-driven species, we need to stop hiding from uncomfortable truths. And one of our favorite hiding places for uncomfortable truths at this point in history is the modern state of Israel, and the western empire’s support for it.

________________

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The post This Is Israel appeared first on LewRockwell.

More than 100 years ago, the world went to war over a squabble in the Balkans and the assassination of a Balkan politico – the Archduke Franz Ferdinand – in Serbia. What followed was both ridiculous and tragic –  and it looks like it may happen again.

This time, over a ridiculous little comedian who plays the role of “president” of Ukraine, a piece of the old Soviet Union that is being used as a front for a proxy war on Russia, which has so far shown almost unbelievable restraint in the face of provocations so obnoxious only an American jingo could fail to see it. Of course, Americans are lectured endlessly about “Putin’s aggression” – nevermind the aggression of America in backing the loathsome little comedian with weapons and support. And nevermind that the whole dirty business was precipitated by obnoxious reneging on promises made to the Russians that Ukraine would not become a member of NATO, something the Russians understandably consider to be unacceptable for exactly the same reason Americans would consider it unacceptable if Mexico or Canada became a Warsaw Pact member. One does not need to be a genius to comprehend this. Just not a blinkered, flag-humping jingoist.

The Russians have put up with a lot. More than we would have put up with. It seems clear that Putin does not want to go to war with NATO, which would mean going to war with the United States. On the contrary, it seems very clear there are people occupying positions of authority in the United States – such as the loathsome Lindsey Graham, senator from Boeing – who want very much to goad the Russians into a war with NATO and so with the United States. If this happens – and at this point, it seems more likely than ever that it will happen, unless these maniacs are somehow dealt with – it will be even more ridiculous and far more tragic than the world going to war over the assassination of Franz Fucking Ferdinand. The latter was at least the heir to throne of Austria-Hungary – whereas the “president” of Ukraine is a third-rate comedian who played the president of Ukraine (literally) before he became “president” – which happened after he played the piano with his penis on TeeVee.

It is nothing less than astounding that – as of this writing – Keeeeeeeeeevv (as we’re superciliously expected to enunciate the name of the capital city of Ukraine) has not been flattened if not turned to glass in the wake of the mass drone attack the other day deep inside Russian territory that destroyed a number of Russia’s long-range strategic bombers, their counterparts of our B-52s.

Chew on that. Try to not be a flag-humping jingo, if you are one (turn off that horrible jingo jerk-off Lee Greenwood song Trump loves to play) and imagine the Russians egging on the Cubans to launch a mass drone attack on American strategic assets such as B-52 bombers. Imagine even one of ours got bombed to smithereens on our soil by a Cuban drone probably supplied by the Russians and almost certainly guided to its target with the help of the Russians.

Of course, the Russians would never do that as they are not insane. More finely, that country is not under the control of lunatics, as here – all of whom, to a man, are old men with no skin in the game who believe they will be just fine, even if the Russians are goaded beyond what they can suffer and respond.

When they do, it will be something a sane mind has difficulty imagining. More finely, a sane mind has difficulty understanding why anyone not out of their mind would risk it, over Wlodomyr  Fucking Zelensky and that Balkan country which isn’t worth (to quote Bismarck) the bones of a single healthy Pomeranian grenadier.

Let alone an American.

Except, perhaps Graham and his ilk.

This article was originally published on Eric Peters Autos.

The post Today’s Franz Ferdinand appeared first on LewRockwell.

In 1976 the French anthropologist Emmanuel Todd predicted the down fall of the Soviet Union. In After The Empire, first published in French in 2001, he predicted the (relative) decline of the United States.

In his latest (and last) book, La Défaite de l’Occident (The Defeat of the West), he laments the West’s inability to distinguish facts from wishes, as seen in its behavior during the war in Ukraine. Nihilism, a lack of values and of acceptance of reality, has infested western thinking:

Trans ideology is therefore, in my opinion, one of the flags of this nihilism that now defines the West, this drive to destroy not just things and people but reality.

Todd recently opened a substack where he is posting speeches and talks he has given.

Two of those, a recent talk given in Russia (in French) and one given in Hungary (in English) make (mostly) similar points.

The downfall of the Soviet Union led to deep psychological and societal dislocations in Russia. The defeat of the West, or ‘liberal democracy’,  is leading to similar consequences in Western societies.

While Todd had predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, he had not anticipated the consequences it would have for Russia:

But the collapse of Russia in the 1990s is something I would never have anticipated. The fundamental reason why I was unable to understand or anticipate the dislocation of Russia itself is that I had not understood that communism was not simply a means of organising economic activity in Russia, but also a kind of religion. It was belief that allowed the system to exist and the dissolution of that belief represented, of course, something at least as damaging as the dislocation of the economic system.

It took three decades for Russia to overcome the psychological dislocation that was the result of the destruction of its political and economical system.

Todd is suspecting that a similar process is currently happening in the West:

All of this has a bearing upon what is happening today. I will talk about two things in my lecture. I will talk about the defeat of the West, by which I mean something quite technical and specific, which is not very complex and has not surprised me. I had anticipated it, and to a certain extent it’s already under way in Ukraine. But we are now in the next phase, which is the dislocation of the West, and I have to say that, just as in the dislocation of communism, of the Soviet system, I am unable to understand exactly what is going on. The fundamental attitude that we need to have now is, I would say, an attitude of humility. Everything that’s happening, especially since the election of Donald Trump, surprises me.

I have been surprised by the violence with which Trump has turned against his Ukrainian and Europeans allies – or rather his vassals. The will of the Europeans to continue or restart the war – even though Europe is certainly the region of the world which would be most advantaged by a peace agreement – has also been a great surprise to me. We have to start from these surprises if we want to think properly about what’s going on.

I will discuss those surprises, some of which concern me a lot, in a later piece.

The defeat of the Soviet Union (and Russia) came after it had lost the economic war with the West. It had also lost a war in Afghanistan. The Soviet system had turned out to be a failure.

The West, or as Mearsheimer is arguing (vid), ‘liberal hegemony’, has been routed in Afghanistan. The attempts to ‘liberate’ Libya and Syria have failed to the point where the Western ‘war on terror’ launched against al-Qaeda has led to the installation of an al-Qaeda bigwig as the new president of Syria. The economic decline of the West is demonstrated by the rise of China. The West’s moral self-defeat of its ‘values’ can be daily witnessed in Gaza.

‘Liberal democracy’, the system of ideas that has for decades been the leading light of the West, has failed.

Like communism in Russia, ‘liberal democracy’ has not only an economic side but is also a kind of religion. The failure of this belief system is upon us.

The accumulation of defeat after defeat by the ‘liberal democracy’ system has led to a psychological breakdown, an internal dislocation of the West. This is now leading to irrational acts and to seeking refuge in wishful thinking.

Or, as Alastair Crooke is summarizing the phenomenon and warns:

The psychological dislocation caused by ‘defeat’ may explain (but not justify) the West’s ‘curious’ inability to understand world events: The almost pathological dissociation from the real world that it displays in its words and actions: It’s blindness – for example, to the Russian experience of history and to the long history behind Shi’a defiance in Iran. Yet, even as the political situation deteriorates … there is no sign of the West becoming more reality-based in its understanding – and it is very likely that it will continue to live in its alternative construction of reality – until it is forcibly expelled.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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As the media is reporting, Ukraine just launched a massive drone attack that wreaked major destruction deep inside Russia. Ukrainian officials smuggled the drones in trucks into Russia and launched them from inside the country. U.S. officials and the U.S. mainstream press are praising the attack as a brilliant maneuver. They are hoping that the attack will force Russia to the negotiating table with the aim of bringing an end to the war.

One thing is clear: the attack now escalates the conflict in a major way. Ukraine has now shown that it can attack military installations, towns, and cities deep inside Russia.

An important question that is not being asked is: Did Pentagon or CIA officials serve as secret advisors or directors in the drone operation? Since Congress is effectively owned by the U.S. national-security establishment, it’s a question that unfortunately is not going to be asked by any congressional committee. Given the longtime deference to the national-security establishment by the mainstream media, the question is unlikely to come from them either and even if it did, there is no doubt that the Pentagon and CIA would deny it even if they were involved.

Why is the question important? Well, think about it: The U.S. government furnishes weaponry to the Ukrainian government to use against Russian forces. But let’s assume that it goes one step further than that. Let’s assume that it also assists, advises, and directs Ukrainian officials in the use of such weaponry.

That would mean, as a practical matter, that it was the U.S. government that launched that drone attack and was simply using Ukraine as its agent — in order to preserve “plausible deniability.” It would mean, as a practical matter, that it is the U.S. government that is using its weaponry to kill and injure Russian soldiers and destroy Russian armaments, not only in Ukraine but also deep inside Russia.

Ukraine and U.S. officials are hoping that Ukraine’s drone attack will force Russia to end the war. But what they are ignoring in this calculus is the big elephant in the room — NATO. It was because of NATO’s expansion eastward and its threat to absorb Ukraine that caused Russia to invade Ukraine in the first place.

After considerable sacrifice of men, money, and armaments, how likely is it that Russia would agree to a peace treaty that leaves NATO on Ukraine’s border and ready to absorb Ukraine on a moment’s notice? I say: Not likely at all. Even if a peace treaty promised that NATO would not absorb Ukraine, everyone knows that the U.S. government cannot be trusted to keep its word. After all, let’s not forget that U.S. officials promised that NATO would not move eastward, and it broke that promise.

Thus, with NATO still in existence and still on Ukraine’s border, why would Russia be interested in settling the war, given that that’s what motivated Russia to invade Ukraine in the first place? And yet we all know that U.S. officials would not think of dismantling NATO or even just moving it back to Western Europe as part of a peace treaty.

Given these intractable positions, the war will inevitably continue, notwithstanding the fondest hopes of U.S. and Ukrainian officials. But the problem is that the longer it goes on, the more dangerous it is becoming. What if U.S. officials actually are secretly assisting, advising, and directing Ukrainian attacks on Russia? Wouldn’t this be sufficient importantly that Congress, not the Pentagon and the CIA, should decide it? Isn’t that why the Constitution places the decision to go to war against another nation-state in the hands of Congress rather than the Pentagon and the CIA?

One of the big problems with war is its unpredictable nature. How long will Russia put up with U.S. armaments being used to kill and maim Russian soldiers and destroy Russian armaments and property without attacking the armaments before they reach Ukraine, especially if Russia concludes that it is actually the Pentagon and the CIA who are waging the war using Ukraine as their agent? If Russia were to attack such armaments before they arrived in Ukraine, say in staging grounds in NATO member Poland, we all know what that would mean — all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Even if the U.S were to “win” such a war, the United States would cease to exist as a viable nation.

All this is simply to show that the U.S. national-security establishment, operating through its Cold War dinosaur NATO, is getting the United States ever close to the possibility of the nuclear destruction of our nation. Would “winning” a nuclear war with Russia be worth it? Is NATO worth it? I say no. I say it’s time to throw not only NATO into the dustbin of history but also the U.S. national-security state form of governmental structure that was foisted upon our land in the 1940s to protect us from the supposed international communist conspiracy that, U.S. officials claimed, was based in Moscow.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

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I raise the question in the title because the Russian media looks askance at what it labels “a rise in the popularity of right-wing forces” in “recent elections in three EU countries.”  The Russian media describes as “right-wing” the awakened ethnic nationalities–the French of France, the Germans of Germany–as “right-wing.”  But President Putin of Russia describes Russia as Russian, even though the Federation is comprised of different nationalities.  Putin stresses that whatever the ethnicities of the Russian Federation, all are Russian.  This is likely the case as the non-Russian ethnicities have been part of Russia for a very long time, whereas in the West the newly-arriving immigrant-invaders are proving to be unassimilable hostiles.

Putin doesn’t regard Russian ethnicity, an ethnicity extended to the Muslim provinces of the Federation such as Chechnya, as right-wing. So why does Russia regard European ethnic nationality “right-wing?”

The answer, I think, is that the American, European and British left-wing have conflated an ethnic consciousness that constitutes a national state with Nazism.  The Nazis were a socialist party, not a right-wing one.  But they were National Socialists which the left-wing contrasted with approved international socialism associated with the Soviet Union. Right-wing became anything to the right  of  Trotskyist International Communism. Nationalism was seen as a barrier to the spread of Communism, and thus it was evil.

Do Russians comprehend that European ethnic states are being over run by non-European ethniticies and that France is ceasing to be France, that Britain is ceasing to be British, that Germany is ceasing to be German?

The efforts of European peoples to defend their ethnicities is not right-wing. If Marine Le Pen is a Nazi because she speaks for the ethnic French people, so is Putin who describes Russia as Russian.

Russians should understand that the reappearance of ethnic nationalism in Europe is a demand for sovereignty and is compatible with Putin’s demand for Russian sovereignty.  Instead of falling into the narrative that ethnic nationalism is right-wing, hence Nazi, Russians should realize that ethnic European national states are allies who wish to be free of open borders that are overwhelming Europe with immigrant-invaders.

French President General Charles de Gaulle was the last independent European leader.  He refused Franch’s entry into the American empire and refused to submit France to NATO.  If European ethnic nationalism can be revived, it means the end of Washington’s European empire.  

The post How Well Does Russia Understand the West? appeared first on LewRockwell.

The United States, formerly these united colonies, is preparing for its 250th anniversary of its break-up from that era’s Great Satan by reminding us of what brought it about, such as the Battle of Lexington and Concord and subsequent battles of 1775, along with issues that preceded them.  In spite of all the bloodshed and fiery tavern rhetoric, most members of the Continental Congress wanted reconciliation from Britain, not independence, even after the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense on January 10, 1776.

“Nobody whose voice counted within the American colonies,” writes John Keane in Tom Paine: A Political Life, “thought outside the existing terms of the British Empire.” At the same time, the colonists’ “fearless love of English liberties [made] them in spirit more English than the English.”

As Paine’s pamphlet “poured off the presses in a never-ending stream” during the spring and summer of 1776, it not only roused the rabble but swayed key military personnel such as George Washington, Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, who described it as “working a wonderful change in the minds of many men” while pronouncing its reasoning “unanswerable” and converting him in full to independence.

By April 1776 Paine estimated that 120,000 copies of his pamphlet had already been published and was spreading far and wide.  As Keane tells us,

Common Sense fueled the desire of some Virginia tobacco planters to repudiate their large debts to British merchants, fanned the ambitions of certain colonial leaders to boost their reputations by declaring the colonies independent, and fired the aspirations of some colonial merchants and producers to escape the trading restrictions imposed by British navigation acts.

Its impact on all areas of colonial life would be difficult to exaggerate.  “Whether intended or not, Paine had succeeded in outflanking the very body that was supposed to be the mouthpiece of the American colonists.”  Founder Benjamin Rush, who suggested the title “Common Sense,” claimed it was “delivered from the pulpit instead of a sermon by a clergyman in Connecticut.”  Silas Deane, a commercial agent for Congress in France, said it “has a greater run, if possible, here than in America.”

How did Paine suddenly show up?

Members of the Continental Congress were not all rich, possessed of prestigious degrees, or lawyers.  But many had established leadership skills and could generally be considered successful individuals. Paine had none of these attributes.  In no sense could he be considered an elite.  His life until late 1774 was a train of personal and occupational failures. So how did he become, in some 13 months, the American Revolution’s major catalyst?

We can get some idea of his sudden emergence from his character and three strong influences.

Paine was born in Thetford, England on January 1737 to a Quaker father and an Anglican mother.  What made Thetford special — and his first influence — was its close proximity to an annual execution site called Gallows Hill. A bureaucrat with the title Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas traveled from Cambridge to Thetford each spring to conduct the executions. “His arrival in Paine’s hometown was bathed in pomp,” Keane writes, “above all because the Lord Chief Justice symbolized the power of George II’s government over outlying courts and regions.”

The accused had no say in their trials.  They stood mute, awaiting their punishment.  Most were accused of petty offenses.  Of these, they were “ordered to be branded, put in the town pillory, publicly or privately whipped, or fined and imprisoned.”  Criminal cases typically involved “ad hoc acts against property — that is, driven by material desperation and not by any widespread culture of criminality within the ranks of the poor.”  The Lord Chief Justice would hang a beggar (never a gentleman) for stealing a bushel of wheat or purchasing a stolen horse.  On Gallows Hill they were dressed in blue coats, made to listen to some prayers and hymns, then ordered to mount the scaffold before being hanged and left to dangle in public for a day.

Paine witnessed this ritual for the first 19 years of his life.

During the next two decades Paine “relentlessly failed in everything personal and professional” he attempted, writes Craig Nelson in Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations, including staymaker, taxman, grocer, teacher, and husband (twice), his last marriage ending in divorce.

Paine meets Franklin

At this point, with nothing to lose, he decided to see what London had to offer, where he met some scientists and American diplomat Benjamin Franklin.  Paine’s sharp wit and keen interest in science impressed Franklin, leading to the second key influence of his life when Franklin, on September 30, 1774, wrote a letter of recommendation for Paine to carry to his son-in-law Richard Bache (“Beech”) in Philadelphia: “If you can put him [Paine] in a way of obtaining employment as a clerk, or assistant tutor in a school,” as a means of subsistence, you “much oblige your affectionate father.”

The only catch was Paine had to sail to Philadelphia first.  As Nelson writes,

Traveling to the other side of the world meant facing the threats of marine storms, becalmings, icebergs, pilot error, and rotted food, not to mention state-sanctioned buccaneering.

At age 37, Paine had already surpassed his life expectancy of 36.6 years. What would drive him to board a ship when his likely future was so uninspiring and uncertain?  Nevertheless, he did, and it almost killed him, as he wrote to Franklin later:

I had very little hope that the Captain or myself would live to see America. Dr. Kearsley of this place, attended the ship on her arrival, and when he understood that I was on your recommendation he provided a lodging for me, and sent two of his men with a chaise to bring me on shore, for I could not at that time turn in my bed without help.

After six weeks of bed rest in Kearsley’s home, Paine found other lodging and a job as editor of a new monthly periodical, The Pennsylvania Magazine.  The city in which he now lived, with a population of 30,000, was the wealthiest and largest in America.  His job as editor was to inform its readers, per the magazine’s owner Robert Aiken, not to create controversy, a rule Paine violated often.

The colonies were such a motley lot that “the entire continent teetered at the edge of civil war,” Nelson writes.  The population was too heterogeneous a mix “of class, religion, traditions, food, and beliefs [to expect them to] cohere into a unified nation.  Though two-thirds of colonial America had come from one tiny island, and the vast majority of them from a very narrow socioeconomic range, they had, in every other way measurable, absolutely nothing in common.”

Paine was too happy in America to let such things bother him, as he wrote in the magazine’s first issue, January 24, 1775:

America yet inherits a large portion of her first-imported virtue. Degeneracy is here almost a useless word. Those who are conversant with Europe would be tempted to believe that even the air of the Atlantic disagrees with the constitution of foreign vices; if they survive the voyage, they [the vices] either expire on their arrival, or linger away in an incurable consumption. There is a happy something in the climate of America, which disarms them of all their power both of infection and attraction. [my emphasis]

Further on, he mentioned that wit, “though it attacks with more subtlety than science, has often defeated a whole regiment of heavy artillery.”

It turned out that many of the motley mix did have something in common, a love of liberty and a hatred of arbitrary authority.  ”With a high rate of literacy in the colonies,” writes Jack Fruchtman, Jr., in Thomas Paine: Apostle of Freedom, “even the artisans and craftsmen read the newspapers and pamphlets of the day,” thus providing Paine an eager audience.

Paine’s skillful writing brought the motley mix together when Benjamin Rush encouraged him to write a pamphlet.  According to Rush’s “not entirely accurate memoirs,” Nelson asserts, “[Paine] readily assented to the proposal, and from time to time he called at my house, and read to me every chapter of the proposed pamphlet as he composed it.”

Common Sense had many influences, but the words were Paine’s alone.  No member of Congress, not even Sam Adams, had the audacity to say that kings originally were “nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners or pre-eminence in subtlety obtained him the title of chief among plunderers.”

It is such bold, direct language that won the day then and serves to sustain us now.

P.S.  For a researched account of Paine’s role in the Revolution, see my speculative screenplay, “Eyes of Fire: Thomas Paine and the American Revolution.”  Or see my more reader-friendly book of the same name.

The post The Failure To Stop Thomas Paine appeared first on LewRockwell.

POTUS better wake up. Quick. The Deep State is in the midst of f#cking him yet again.

We are referring, of course, to Sunday’s utterly reckless attack on Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent, allegedly by the Ukrainian military. Yes, the one that’s so feeble and incompetent that thus far it has lost one-fifth of its territory—despite upwards 150,000 dead soldiers according to Col. Douglas Macgregor and more than $200 billion of US and European military and economic aid.

That is to say, the Sunday drone attack according to Zelensky himself was nearly 20 months in the making. So it was surely hatched, kitted, trained and pre-positioned with heavy duty support from US covert operations and then actually triggered, launched and guided by US intelligence assets.

Stated inversely, it appears that forces which were most surely not the bedraggled Ukrainian military operating in rogue fashion attacked the heart of Russia’s nuclear deterrent. And yet and yet: It is likely that the Donald was also not honestly informed ahead of time!

After all, when Trump had his “Putin’s gone crazy” outburst a few days ago he didn’t even know—by his own public admission—that a swarm of Ukrainian drones had attacked Putin’s helicopter while the latter was being transported inside it. And again, given the in-depth layers of protection around Putin, there is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that the Ukrainian military pulled off this near-miss on Russia’s demonized dictator without heavy duty intelligence support from the US.

Therefore, we are strongly inclined to believe that the Deep State is once again sabotaging the Donald while keeping him in the dark about crucial operations that bear heavily on the risk of escalation and war with Russia. To be sure, in connection with his outburst at Putin, Trump did warn that something “VERY BAD” could happen to Russia without him, but when you see all caps you know it’s just regular Trumpian bluster of the kind that is now being emitted from the man’s social media accounts on nearly a daily basis.

Besides, we believe Trump is attempting to function as an honest peace-maker on the Ukraine front because he suffers badly from NPPE (Nobel Peace Prize Envy). In turn, the latter is due to Obama’s surely undeserved snaring of the award within months of taking office. Accordingly, the Donald may well be playing an amateur “art of the deal” game with Putin on Ukraine, but we don’t think for a moment that he would have been knowingly reckless enough to put his prize in jeopardy by authorizing attacks on four or five of Russia’s strategic bomber airfields.

And we do mean “knowing” in the sense of comprehending as opposed to the wild ass bluster Trump frequently emits—even when he doesn’t vaguely appreciate the stakes, such as was evident in his 72-hour threat to put a 50% tariff on $600 billion of imports from the EU. So it needs be understood that what is reported to be the destruction or serious impairment of between 20 and 40 of Russia’s heavy intercontinental strategic bombers at at least four different Russian bases thousands of miles from both Ukraine’s borders and from each other constitutes a drastic escalation of the proxy war on Russia, veering toward the precipice of nuclear confrontation.

These hits on Russia’s strategic bombers by the nominally “Ukrainian” drone swarms—about 120 devices in total—account for upwards of 20-25% of the bomber leg of Russia’s triad nuclear deterrent. Yet these long range heavy bombers have had almost no role in Russia’s attacks on Ukraine because in the actual war theater it primarily uses intermediate range bombers to launch cruise missile assaults, and, if need be, could use ground based launching pads, as well.

So the Sunday drone attack had no resemblance whatsoever to a militarily-relevant knock-out blow. Instead, it amounted to an order of magnitude escalation toward nuclear confrontation designed to prolong and intensify Washington’s proxy war on Russia and throw immense new roadblocks in the path of a negotiated peace agreement.

Most especially, these reckless attacks were irrelevant to Ukraine’s rapidly deteriorating position on the battle front at the line of contact in eastern Ukraine. In fact, just during the last week of May the Russian forces captured another 18 settlements and villages and over 200 square kilometers of territory, meaning that the Ukrainian army is no longer capable to hold its defense lines and that the end is near.

At the same time, this drone attack hugely implicated the core strategic nuclear equation between the world’s two nuclear superpowers. To wit, the attack broke the rules of the strategic deterrence game and what remains of the 2010 New Start arms control agreements that nominally remains in effect through February 2026.

Although New Start was suspended by Russia in response to the US sanctions and NATO seizure of $300 billion of Russian assets in the global banking system, the limits and enforcement protocols have been largely observed by both sides. This included retaining the limit of 700 deployed strategic nuclear delivery vehicles.

Moreover, New Start’s inspection regime had provided for substantial transparency as to the locations and operational particulars of each land, sea and air-based delivery vehicle that had been declared under the 700 deployed vehicle limit. So to now use this New Start based compliance information to unilaterally attack and destroy previously declared weapons systems was a blatant breach of the entire arms control confidence building regime that had evolved over the decades since the 1970s and Soviet times.

In Russia’s case, it had chosen to list and have inspected 300-400 land-based ICBMs, 200-300 sea-based ballistic missiles and 50-60 heavy bombers. Among the latter was 40-50 Tu-95MS bombers and @15 Tu-160 bombers of the type that were destroyed in Sunday’s attack and about which the US has abundant detailed knowledge. That’s because the inspection and enforcement protocols with respect to these disclosed delivery vehicles included biannual data exchanges, notifications of changes in status (e.g., silo activation/deactivation), and up to 18 annual inspections.

In Russia’s case it generally kept its heavy bombers—which were subject to this comprehensive inspection regime—visible on open airfields per the illustrative photo shown below. There was nothing to hide, anyway.

So to repeat: the wanton attack on the known locations and regularly inspected strategic bombers in Russia’s nuclear deterrent like those depicted here was a radical breach of the whole arms control regime itself.

Equally importantly, it is damn obvious that Washington was in full cahoots with the Ukrainian military. The 120 or so drones used to attack the Russian bombers in the vastly scattered locations shown in the map above were surreptitiously smuggled into Russia in the covered containers shown in this photo. They were then secretly transported to near the Russian airfield locations and prepped for the eventual simultaneous launches.

Again, the odds that no one in the US military or the upper rungs of the Deep State in Washington was involved in this extensive and daring operation are somewhere between slim, none and hideously impossible.

At length, of course, after being pre-positioned near the target airfields, the crates shown above were opened, revealing that attack drones inside. We long ago gave up wearing our tinfoil hats, but are damn sure that the simultaneous launch of 120 of these little buggers at the same moment across thousands of miles of Russian territory was indeed the result of an intricate Washington-driven plot and conspiracy.

No Ukrainian cowboys could have pulled this off on their own steam.

At the very same moment, therefore, heavy Russian bombers spread across the Eurasian continent met the fate depicted below. And while this feat has the Washington and NATO warhawks and neocons gloating over the alleged brilliance of the scheme, that’s not even the half of it.

The real purpose of the attack was to destroy any vestige of trust that remains between the Donald and Putin, and leave the latter with no choice except to retaliate in kind. But further escalation into the zone of MAD (mutually assured destruction) that has kept the nuclear era peace for 60 years is surely the most dangerous thing that has happened since October 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of annihilation.

So the hour is late indeed. The Warfare State and the MIC (military-industrial complex) are about to establish dominance over the Donald once again. This time with virtually existential implications.

So man up, POTUS, and cut off Zelensky and his Deep State puppeteers at the knees. That is, shut off the spigot of all aid, all weapons delivery, all intelligence and all other operational support, demand a cease fire and invite both Zelensky and Putin to Camp David.

Then, keep them there until they agree to dismantle the handiwork of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev. After all, the latter were the actual bloody authors of today’s dubious borders and a Ukrainian state that had never existed before in all of history prior to 1922.

It shouldn’t take long to partition the map and allow Crimea and the four provinces of the Donbas and south to go their separate ways back to Mother Russia. And the only “guarantees” that would be needed would be a Russian pledge to not allow the partitioned provinces to attack the rump of Ukraine, and for the US to guarantee that the shrunken state of Ukraine will not join NATO or attack the lost provinces.

As it happens, that’s all that Putin has ever wanted. And for the US it would mean not only closing another hideously stupid chapter in the Forever Wars, but also the chance start down a new path toward global peace and disarmament that might actually offer the Donald a real chance to get his Nobel Prize.

Needless to say, a 11th hour Camp David summit would also give the Donald a chance to reclaim his own presidency, which was clearly usurped when the Senate’s two leading Ukraine warmongers—Graham and Blumenthal—showed up in Kiev last week on the eve of this insane escalation.

And we do mean insane. The Ukraine warhawks led by the despicable Lindsay Graham, in fact, are now so far off the deep-end that they have introduced in the Senate new out-of-this-world sanctions on Russia which would impose a 500% tariff on countries that buy Russian energy, uranium, and other raw materials – measures aimed chiefly at India and China. Can you say, “WWW III here we come!”

Indeed, putting the three stooges of Ukraine’s latest disaster back in the dunce’s corner where they belong would be progress in itself. Self-evidently, Graham and Blumenthal knew what was coming but not the Donald, at least according to a leak to Tanya Noury of NewsNation by a high administration official: Like in the case of the attack on Putin’s helicopter, Trump was not informed of the drone caper, either.

Well, now the Donald surely knows they are coming for him again. So he better get busy taking names, kicking ass and cleaning house or his second Administration will be done before its gets started. And that’s to say nothing of the rest of us, too.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post The Deep State’s Drone Attack Was Aimed To Escalate the Ukraine War and Deny Trump His Nobel Peace Prize appeared first on LewRockwell.

The leaked Liturgical Norms document from Bishop Michael Martin of the Diocese of Charlotte reads like a parody of 1970s fervor, delivered by a tyrannical hand through a series of ironically rigid dictates. They are poised to cause direct harm to the priests of the diocese and, through their pain, to faithful parishioners.

The man who claims that the liturgy is not the place for “our preferences” has decided to turn it into his playground. While slighting the decisions of individual parishes that reflect pastoral choices, he exercised his own whim with disregard to nuance. He claimed that “there are no particularities that would allow any of us to contravene the magisterium of the Church or the rich tradition that has been handed down to us,” and then he dictated changes that are in violation of the GIRM and which denigrate every traditional practice that he had seen being exercised in the diocese.

An area that hasn’t been considered enough is the effect upon priests who have offered their lives in service to God and who now face what can only be described as abuse. In refusing pastoral discretion and personal acts of piety, a priest is denied the fullness of his vocation and is reduced to a mere executor of another man’s frivolous preferences. His role as alter Christus—another Christ—is denied as he is reduced to a mere liturgical functionary.

Those who love God enough to sacrifice themselves for Him lose the ability to celebrate Mass with the reverence that is due—with symbolic acts that reflect their devotion and love of Christ. The priest participates in the power of consecrating the Body and Blood of Christ, which he exercises in the person of Christ. To interfere in this sacred exercise and reduce every element to a diocesan policy, detached from the universal tradition of the Church, is to dishonor the very nature of Holy Orders. Ironically, it is a hyper-clericalism that denies hierarchy.

Let us be clear: it is not the case that this bishop is merely bringing Vatican II to fruition, as he claims. Rather, his exhortations run contrary to it. Instead, he is bringing the worst of 1970s liturgical abuses to bear. While citing Sacrosanctum Concilium selectively, he demands the removal of all Latin from the liturgy, including as chants and responses, while the very same document that he quotes says the opposite: “The use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”

Thus, the commands of the bishop become expressions from outside of the larger body and universal tradition of the Church. They form a diocese that reflects the iron hand of one man’s preferences. The proposed norms are rigid enough to dictate almost every motion by priests, ironically under the guise of openness.

Such dictatorialism denies that a pastor might have well-contemplated reasons for his choices. St. Gregory the Great insisted in Pastoral Rule that the priest must be rooted in what might be called “contemplative dignity,” learning in stillness what he is to proclaim outwardly in his speech and actions. But if his outward decisions cannot reflect that contemplation and personal piety, his dignity is eviscerated by the hollowness of callous decisions made above him.

In attempting to follow their bishop, priests necessarily become the unwilling instrument of pain for their flocks, denying the faithful the reverent Masses that have formed them and in which they find the recognizable sacrifice of Our Lord. Denied even a crucifix on the altar, for the visual representation of Christ is reduced to a “visual impairment,” they are made to stand before their people and perform a gesture that wounds both priest and laity: a liturgy stripped of sacred orientation, emptied of its symbolic transcendence, and recast as a horizontal display. It is a humiliation not only of their priesthood but of their humanity, as they must act against both conscience and formation, offering not what they know to be fitting but what they are told is expedient.

There is a cruelty to a set of commands that target those, clergy and laity, who merely wish to show the utmost respect to God—denying them the spiritual nourishment that can satisfy and then attempting to turn that former source of consolation into an entertainment service. Nobody can be entertained into fullness, but rather, that is the vain temptation of the world. They will be left empty by mandate, grieved at the abuse of their Lord. Under the veneer of accessibility, they are denied access to that which they were made for. After all, reverence is not just due; such acts symbolize reality and help to remind us of our place, of the smallness of our trials, and of His Greatness.

St. Thomas Aquinas taught that in sacraments the signification ought to be expressive because they are signs of something sacred insofar as they sanctify men. Therefore, they ought to signify the effect which they produce.

Our acts of reverence during the Mass ought to be fitting toward what they signify. The rite of the Mass is framed to make present again the Passion of Christ, which justly demands our shared respect, thanks, and grief. When the symbolism is flattened and replaced with banality, there is a failure of our behaviors to reflect the truth of what is being executed. When the focus is migrated from Christ to the laity, it teaches falsely and forms them incorrectly. Under the proposed plans, priests are forced to play a role in this reductionism.

Read the Whole Article

The post Charlotte’s War on Reverence: A Priesthood Undone appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks,  John Frahm.

Wray Lied About Extent Of FBI’s Anti-Catholic Surveillance.

See here.

The post Evil FBI appeared first on LewRockwell.

On Tim McGraw wrote:

AI… I’m always reminded of the great Sci-Fi short story by Ray Bradbury. “There Will Come Soft Rains” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_Will_Come_Soft_Rains_(short_story)

A nuclear war has killed mankind, but a house run by AI stays alive as if the humans in it were still alive.

Eventually, a windstorm drops a tree branch onto the house. This causes a fire and all kinds of mayhem that the AI can’t control.

The house burns to the ground to join humanity.

That’s the future of humans and AI. Eventually, all those nukes will be used unless they are disassembled. I don’t see that happening.

Make the most of each day.

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