Aggregatore di feed

In his first address to the College of Cardinals, Leo XIV explained his choice of name was inspired by “Pope Leo XIII [who] in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”

I knew of Rerum Novarum as the foundation of Catholic Social Teaching, and I had accepted the common claim that it rejects both socialism and capitalism. But there was a certain dissatisfaction about this understanding, a sense that I must have been missing something. As the daughter of Cuban exiles, I could not fathom how the Church could reject these two systems to the same degree when one had lifted millions out of poverty while the other had slaughtered millions in the name of equality.

So, now that Leo XIV had given this encyclical a place of honor in his new pontificate, I stopped relying on secondhand interpretations and read it for myself.

What Does Rerum Novarum Really Say?

As I read it, disbelief gave way to outrage. How misled I had been! This was no evenhanded critique of socialism on the one hand and capitalism on the other! It was a strong condemnation of socialism backed by a vigorous, principled defense of private property and the family. And, even more radically for our day, it was an explanation of why socialism hurts the poor rather than helps them. Leo never once promotes government redistribution of wealth as a general policy, but he does say—several times!—that only when private property is held sacred (yes, sacred) can we truly help the needy.

I could hardly think of a more provocative statement these days, certain to make most modern social justice warriors uncomfortable.

And it seems others feel the same. The opening paragraph of the Wikipedia entry on Rerum Novarum (RN) contains what I now know are multiple misrepresentations:

It supports the rights of labor to form trade unions [true], and rejects both socialism and capitalism [false] while affirming the right to private property [true, though vastly understated] and to a living wage [misleading, given how the term is used today].

Does RN champion the right to form unions governed by Christian morality? Absolutely, and with good reason.

Does it critique the treatment of workers as means to an end, inhumane working conditions, defrauding workers of their wages, and other practices where the rich and powerful treat workers as slaves? Yes, strongly. But capitalism hardly has a monopoly on these—it’s got nothing on atheistic Communism. And as the horrors of Communism began to be made known two generations after Leo XIII wrote RN, the Church has left absolutely no doubt that Communism is evil and irreconcilable with Christianity.

What Is a “Living Wage”?

One point from the Wikipedia entry is especially salient today: the “living wage” claim. Does RN argue that workers have the right to a living wage? Yes, though it does not use that term. Here is how RN expresses the idea (emphasis added):

Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages; nevertheless, there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages should support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner…. If a workman’s wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners. Many excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided…

Do you believe the average Wikipedia reader thinks this is what “living wage” means? Sadly, the term is often used by those aiming to stoke division and envy, and nothing will put that fire out more quickly than realizing Catholic Social Teaching emphasizes property ownership as a natural right, requires wages to reflect the individual’s situation, and places demands on how employees spend their earnings. And that, Leo XIII argues, is how you get a more equitable distribution of property. Equity!

Read the Whole Article

The post They Lied to You About Rerum Novarum appeared first on LewRockwell.

In terms of geopolitics one could argue that allies don’t have to like each other, they just have to provide a mutual benefit that serves the greater purposes of peace. One could also argue that through cultural exchange the good habits of one country could easily influence the bad habits of another, but that kind of influence can also happen in reverse.

Though we might think of American culture as the content driver of the planet, the reality is that our ideals are an exceedingly rare dynamic found in no other society. We provide sanctuary to a fragile ember of free thought in an otherwise gloomy world of globalist oppression. It is something that must be protected at all costs.

Over the years I’ve heard many arguments from ignorant liberals about the grand progressive accomplishments of the European experiment and its centralized system. I’ve been told many times about how much safer Canada and Australia are. How the UK has near zero gun crime and how socialism works so well in Norway and Sweden.

Leftists in the US have long embraced this messaging as gospel and for generations they have told us that we MUST join the rest of western civilization by sacrificing certain liberties for the sake of future generations. We must become more like our allies in “more civilized” and liberal nations, or be left behind and labeled an “embarrassment”.

In reality, progressive leaders have abandoned western civilization, forsaking it in exchange for the elitist “Great Reset”. The political landscape in the UK, Canada and Australia has turned decidedly sour. They are speed running into technocracy and communism and abandoning any semblance of “democratic” governance. The mask is coming off to reveal Orwell’s “Big Brother”.

Europe Is Now A Third World Cesspool

Western civilization has been a net positive for humanity over the centuries and the only people that deny this are those that don’t know history and those that refuse to look at what is happening in the EU today with any honesty.

When you truly study the history of third-world societies you will find that life in these environments is brutal, devoid of compassion and bereft of freedom. The majority of their conflicts are solved with violence, often to the point of barbarism.

No woke liberal today stands a chance living within these societies. They would be laughed at over their calls for “equity” and slaughtered for their activism. Yet, leftists aggressively lobby for open borders so the third-world can invade.

It’s important to understand that Multiculturalism is a weaponized ideology. It’s not about coexistence, or labor markets, or population decline; it’s about eliminating western culture. The goal of globalists is to destabilize the connective tissue of the west, to saturate and dilute our shared cultural principles and make us as weak as possible.

They hope to use migrants as enforcers. It’s a classic strategy implemented by many tyrannical regimes that prefer to recruit foreign mercenaries as leverage to control an otherwise rebellious peasantry. Third world migrants are creating an atmosphere of crime and decay that globalists think will terrorize native Europeans into submission and apathy.

If you’re afraid to walk the streets of your own country, then your country no longer belongs to you.

The Muslim/Leftist Alliance

It’s no coincidence that the EU is importing migrants primarily from Islamic societies: They have no intention of integrating and they openly brag about how they’re coming to Europe to plunder and conquer. As these groups enter the west they bring with them a philosophy of exploitation – Their religious rules only apply to believers; non-believers are fair game and can be freely targeted.

One might wonder how an alliance between the leftists and the Muslims is even possible. They seem to be diametrically opposed to each other on almost everything. But consider for a moment what they share: A parallel hatred of western civilization and a desire to destroy it. Muslims see atheist progressives as disgusting, but they also see them as useful for opening the gates to predominantly Christian nations. Leftists, being generally weak and unable to project physical power, see Muslims as much needed hired muscle.

Keep in mind that the Canadian government has been flooding the country with Muslim migrants over the past ten years and is allowing them extreme latitude to run their own communities. There has been no government effort to silence the anti-LGBT rhetoric of Islamic speakers.

Canada has been quickly sinking into authoritarianism with draconian censorship laws and woke indoctrination. The Carney government is currently implementing a mass gun ban with over 300 models of firearms abruptly prohibited. Conservative Canadians in provinces like Alberta believe that the Carney government is trying to disarm them to prevent secession, a serious possibility under the current conditions. Our conservative brothers to the north have a difficult path ahead of them.

The legal changes in Canada will leave the US as the only nation left in the west with widespread civilian gun ownership, not to mention the only nation left with legitimate free speech rights.

America Soul Searches At The Edge Of The “Great Reset”

Incrementally, the majority of the western world has been turned into a pit of dystopian despair. Australia, for now, is the only region not burying their population in hostile migrants but it’s enforcing all of the same speech and thought control laws. The US is the only country trying to reverse course, but our soul searching is, frankly, too slow.

The defeat of woke doctrine in the US is certainly a relief. Clearly most Americans are done with deconstructionism and liberal mental illness. Most people hate leftists and want nothing to do with them. However, there is a deep divide among populists, from conservatives to libertarians to moderates. Their isn’t a strong bond except for our opposition to wokeness, and this is a problem.

Loving freedom is not enough. Having a shared enemy is not enough. There needs to be more for a society to survive and thrive. There needs to be a greater purpose.

In the meantime, we still have millions of illegal migrants to deal with as well as a small army of unhinged woke militants that are roaming the streets when they should be locked up in padded rooms. The will to take necessary action is limited by a refusal among many people to accept that we are alone, and we are at war.

There are millions of patriots in the EU, the UK, Australia and Canada that want to join the fight. We’ll have to wait and see if their civil disobedience bears fruit. I believe that they are waiting for us to make a move. They’re hoping we spark a greater rebellion against globalism. This requires that we clean our own house first and rediscover the unifying ideals that make the west something worth fighting for.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post As America Soul Searches, the Rest of the West Is Falling Apart appeared first on LewRockwell.

“It will not be long before we are reduced to savagery. We are the barbarians within our own empire.”

—Russell Kirk

Eighty years ago today, the U.S. government committed one of the awful acts in human history. Three days later, it did it again.

Harry Truman insisted the decision to vaporize or fatally irradiate almost a quarter million civilians (plus a dozen American prisoners of war) was his and his alone.

Whether meant as acknowledgment or confession, this assertion was correct. The buck stopped with him. It was Harry Truman who (literally) “gave ‘em Hell”.

The president assured the world (and presumably his conscience) that he had no choice. Proud and stubborn, the Japanese would never surrender. Nuclear weapons were the only way to end the war.

In a sense, like an abortionist convincing himself his victims aren’t really human, Truman had to believe that. Otherwise, what would his actions say about him?

Most Americans seemed to accept his argument. Retroactive propaganda argued the destruction of two sizable cities saved up to “a million lives” that would’ve been lost by invading the islands. Besides, “the Japs” had it coming for bombing Pearl Harbor!

OK. But which “Japs”?

Leave aside FDR’s pre-war actions intended to entice a Japanese attack. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were filled with half a million civilians who had no say in what their government did. Were those “the Japs” who had it coming? Why?

Grasping for Straws

Almost four years earlier, 2,400 Americans died on the “date which will live in infamy”. Most were in the Navy… plus over 200 in the Army, about a hundred Marines, and 68 civilians. Nearly half the dead were on the USS Arizona.

Government officials (in Tokyo and DC) needed to answer for that. But did the mothers, infants, and elderly of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? How many of them picked the fight, gave the orders, flew the planes, or dropped the bombs that killed Americans that morning in Hawaii?

Dastardly as Pearl Harbor was, the attack was obviously trained on a military target. Atomic bomb advocates, including Truman, suggested Hiroshima and Nagasaki were too. That’s preposterous… akin to wiping out Waikiki because Pearl Harbor was near Honolulu.

Truman grasped for more straws. On the day Nagasaki was obliterated, the president defended the first bombing by saying Hiroshima was “an industrial center”. But its major factories sat far from the bullseye at the center of the city, and “Little Boy” left those largely unscathed.

As historian Ralph Raico wondered, if Hiroshima were such a vital military target, why was it untouched by years of air raids, and excluded from Bomber Command’s list of thirty-three primary targets?

After the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden earlier that year, official angst over innocent life carries little credibility. The U.S. government clearly had few qualms about killing civilians. Truman was caught chuckling during his announcement of the Hiroshima bombing (at the 2:30 mark):

The president did acknowledge some compunction during an inadvertent confession. He’d contemplated a third bomb, but rejected the idea because (as he put it to his Cabinet the day after Nagasaki), “the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people”… including “all those kids”… was “too horrible” to contemplate.

The president was well aware the number of innocents he was killing, including “all those kids”. But did the quarter million dead Japanese save half a million Americans (or “millions”, as President George HW Bush once ludicrously claimed)?

It’s astounding that anyone accepts this. But for decades it’s what Americans have been taught. They’re expected to believe that an invasion of Japan would’ve cost almost as many lives as the War Between the States, and more than America lost in every other theater of Second World War combined.

Worst-case scenarios for a Nipponese D-Day come to fewer than 50,000 American dead. This estimate (approaching the U.S. death toll in Vietnam) is obviously horrific. But it’s still unrealistic. An invasion was never necessary to compel Japan to give up.

“Barbarians of the Dark Ages”

As citizens of China, enemy prisoners of war, and the peoples of Pacific archipelagos will attest, the Japanese military was vicious and barbaric.

But by 1945, despite its persistent pride and notorious intransigence, it was on the cusp of defeat. The Imperial government knew it, and was prepared to capitulate.

As Stanford professor Barton Bernstein relayed in a New York Times article preceding a Smithsonian exhibit commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

“Neither the atomic bombing nor the entry of the Soviet Union into the war forced Japan’s unconditional surrender. She was defeated before either of these events took place.”

These weren’t Barton’s words. He was quoting what Brigadier General Bonnie Fellers wrote to General Douglas MacArthur soon after V-J Day.

As John Denson relayed in his terrific anthology, The Cost of War, “other high ranking military expressed similar sentiments.”

Among them was Admiral William Leahy, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the war:

“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was no material success in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. … My own feeling was that in being the first to use [nuclear weapons] we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

Former President and retired Five-Star General Dwight Eisenhower chimed in with similar sentiment:

“The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. … I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”

Major General JFC Fuller described the bombings as “a type of war that would’ve disgraced Tamerlane.” He also dispensed with the common justification:

“Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the customs of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretext of shortening a war and of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified.”

This isn’t the convenient clarity of 20/20 hindsight. Skeptics were wearing corrective lenses many months before the Enola Gay left the runway.

In January 1945, the Japanese offered to surrender on terms virtually identical to those they accepted after Nagasaki. MacArthur informed FDR of this two days before the president left for Yalta. Leahy provided the information, and Truman himself later corroborated the account.

Had the US accepted the overture, not only the devastation of the atomic bombs would’ve been avoided, but Iwo Jima and Okinawa wouldn’t have occurred, sparing 20,000 American lives.

Denson elaborates on the Japanese proposal:

“… the surrender terms of the Japanese government were specified in a 40-page memorandum from General MacArthur to President Roosevelt dated January 20, 1945, which has never been made public, acknowledged, or denied by the American government. It is reported that the information in the memo was secretly delivered by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William D. Leahy, to journalist Walter Trohan of the Chicago Tribune because the Admiral rightfully feared that the offer would be ignored by the president and he wanted history to record the truth. Furthermore, President Truman, who assumed office after Roosevelt’s death in April, 1945, is reported to have later admitted to former President Herbert Hoover that by early May, 1945, he was aware of the peace offer and that further fighting was unnecessary, yet he still authorized the bombing. It is further alleged that President Truman also discussed the specific terms of the peace offer with Stalin at Babelsberg prior to the bombing; and finally, that General MacArthur confirmed the existence of this memo and its contents after the war.”

Wartime censorship forced Trohan to withhold this vital information for seven months. As Denson notes, he “first published this information about the Japanese peace offer in the Chicago Tribune on August 19, 1945, after the bombs were dropped earlier that month causing the deaths of approximately 210,000 civilians.”

The Japanese kept fighting only because the U.S. required unconditional surrender. This destructive demand (which Truman reiterated at Potsdam) had prolonged the war in Europe, and extended fighting in the Pacific.

The Japanese assumed those terms included dethroning the Emperor, which they wouldn’t abide. Truman knew this, yet insisted the bombs be dropped. Not to end the war, which was happening anyway… but to send a message to someone else.

The bombs were less to subdue Japan than to signal the Soviets. British scientist P.M.S. Blackett, one of Churchill’s advisers, wrote that dropping the bombs was “the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.” They were the opening shots of the Cold War, with a quarter million innocents lined against the wall.

Read the Whole Article

The post Eighty Years After the Atomic Bombs appeared first on LewRockwell.

A “scientific” ideology banned raw milk and vilified mothers who chose it anyway. Behind this, was a wealthy philanthropist pushing his agenda and setting the stage for the demise of the small farmer and food security in America.

An age-old food

In the opening scenes of the famous musical Fiddler on The Roof, our hero–Tevye–arranges his milk cart.

As the overture plays, drawing us into the scene and his inner musings on “Tradition!” he and his horse drive through the village serving his community with the milk from his cows and the cheeses he makes from that milk.

He is a farmer. A milkman. He is central to his community.

He dips his ladle into his milk can and pours the liquid into the waiting pitchers of the women. The activity of feeding his community is a small detail almost lost in the background of the plot–an illustration of a challenging time in 1905 Imperial Russia. It is lost in the background because of its normalcy. In this illustration of a time long ago, there was nothing unusual about a milkman feeding his community. It was what happened in many civilizations for millenia. The drama of the story unfolds as a controlling ideology comes closer into village life, destroying what they treasured and leaving them to ruin.

This is not a story about imperialism. It is about raw milk. It is about how this life-giving food has become a villain in modern America.

What Happened To Change How We View Raw Milk?

Raw milk–it is a food that is obscure to many Americans. Do you fear it? Despise it? Are you curious about it? We’ve been told that raw milk is dangerous. Is it?

Forgotten details of American history allow us to explore the topic and untangle our societal prejudice against it. Perhaps understanding the facts of our history will help us to understand how we got here and how we can make better decisions for the future.

The history is a tangled web of greed, deceit, and control.

Raw Milk Is a Significant Food for Civilization

Raw dairy is a perfect food–one of the two foods designed by nature to nourish the young (honey is the other). It is rich in nutrients humans need–filled with protein, fats, and sugars. It contains vitamins and minerals. It has vital enzymes that help our bodies absorb and use these nutrients. For example, lactase helps us digest the lactose (sugars), while the phosphatase helps us absorb phosphorus. Raw milk is probiotic, containing bacteria that help our own microbiomes thrive and that allow milk to change into other desirable foods.

There is nothing more basic between a mother and child than milk. Historically, a mother nurtures her child on the milk she produces. For the first few months of life, the child gets all the nutrients he or she needs from this wonderful mechanism our creator bestowed on all mammals.

We humans are not special in this regard.

For millennia, human civilizations have relied on a relationship between us and other mammals–most notably cows, goats, sheep, camels, water buffalo, and horses.

Not every civilization developed these relationships. But in those civilizations that did, milk became a fundamental ingredient in their food security.

There were 2 things that were true across the cultures that had dairy:

It was local.

It was primarily consumed raw.

In some lands, because these were warm climates, there was no way to keep dairy cold. It would immediately begin its fermentation process. Cow and water buffalo milk turn to clabber (drinkable yogurt), goat and sheep milk become yogurt, while camel and horse milk transform to a sour kefir-like drink.

These fermented dairy products brought life to the cultures that depended on them. They were often revered.

In time, cheese became a way we learned to preserve milk. All types of milks could be crafted into cheeses specific to their regions.

What happened that changed raw milk from a staple of civilization to something obscure, scary, reviled, and even criminal?

It all started with whisky…

The Entangled Relationship Between War, Whisky, and Milk

You are probably asking “What does whisky have to do with milk?”

We must understand whisky production in America to understand our history with milk.

In 1800s America, high taxes (to pay for the Revolutionary War) on imported spirits led to the rise of whisky distilleries in America. American farmers said “We can do this!” and they did. American whisky skyrocketed in popularity and production.

Whisky distilleries popped up everywhere. Even in certain cities. Transportation was a big cost, so putting the distilleries near the people seemed like a good idea. Disposing of the spent grain used to make whisky was expensive and cumbersome. This led to the concept of putting dairies right next to the distilleries and feeding the cows the spent grain from the whisky-making process. Spent grain is not a cow’s native food. Her native food is a diversity of grasses, while she roams the fields in the sunshine.

For those profiting from both the whisky and the milk, this seemed like a great idea. However, these abominations on agriculture led to disastrous results for cows and humans.

What ensued from this situation was predictable. The cows spent most of their short miserable lives indoors, in filthy conditions, unhealthy and producing milk that was of terrifying quality. There were no closed milking systems at the time. Workers hand milked into open pails.

This milk became known as “swill milk.”

It is not shocking that infant mortality was unacceptably high during this period. Sanitation was poor, there were no closed milking systems and no refrigeration. Public voices began to implicate the milk from the distillery dairies as a factor in the infant mortality rate.

This tragic situation had an easy-enough solution: stop feeding cows spent grain. Return cows to their native diets. Give them adequate lives out on pasture, and provide clean milking conditions. Have healthy workers milking the animals. Bring clean milk to the cities from the surrounding countryside.

But that was not the proposed solution.

A Wealthy Philanthropist “Saves” The Children

By the late 1800s, Nathan Straus, a wealthy philanthropist and co-owner of Macy’s department store, advocated for and then subsidized the pasteurization of all milk in New York City.

Several doctors spoke out against this policy noting that clean raw milk was highly nutritious and great for children. Leading the campaign for clean raw milk was Dr. Henry Coit. He saw the terrible conditions of the “distillery dairies,” and the health consequences that were blamed on the raw milk. He proposed an entirely different solution: establishing a “Medical Milk Commission” that would have doctors certify raw dairies outside the city. These doctors would ensure the farms had clean practices and produced healthy, safe milk.

His approach was a decentralized approach to feeding communities. Farmers remained in control of their own farms, the Medical Milk Commission simply became a certifying agent.

Many doctors participated in this endeavor and they had great results.

These doctors advocated for proper nutrition for children and proper animal husbandry. The results were a win-win.

But Straus’ argument against this was that certified clean raw milk was more expensive than Straus’ subsidized, “efficient” pasteurized milk. It was often double or quadruple the cost of the swill milk or the subsidized, pasteurized milk that Straus offered.

The obvious solution is a dual approach. But that is not what happened.

The “public health” campaign, backed by Straus’ deep pockets, prevailed. Pasteurization won out on the better “efficiency” although most all players recognized that certified clean raw milk was the better option. (One can only wonder what types of influence Straus’ “philanthropy” led to.)

What ensued was a decades-long battle. Many doctors advocated for clean raw milk. Those in Straus’ camp campaigned for “public health” and compulsory pasteurization without focusing on the underlying quality of the product.

The doctors who advocated for clean, certified farms were vilified, ridiculed, and bullied. The “public health advocates” who spoke about the dangers of raw dairy and pushed for mandatory pasteurization shifted policy in many cities.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there.

Read the Whole Article

The post How The 1987 Ban Came About in America and What It Means to Your Food Security Today appeared first on LewRockwell.

U.S. President Donald Trump is now largely following his predecessors hostile policy towards Russia.

If the war in Ukraine continues on its current path Russia will end it with an outright victory. The U.S. and its European vassals are trying to impose a ceasefire to prevent that. It would give time to rebuild the Ukrainian army and to restart the war at a more convenient time. But Russia won’t budge until its war aims are met.

A hoped for countermeasure is to pressure Russia’s oil customers, to thereby decrease its income and prevent it from finishing the war in its favor.

When the war started in 2022 the European Union cut its own access to Russian oil and gas supplies. It started to buy more oil from Gulf countries and other producers. India and China were thus suddenly cut of from their traditional suppliers. They started to buy Russian oil. Then U.S. President Joe Biden encouraged that. He did not want global gas prices to rise. Global supplies continued on an unchanged level and the change in the routes of oil around the globe had only a minor effect on prices.

One side-effect though was noticeable in some European refineries. Several of them were specialized in processing heavy Ural oil. They eventually had to go idle. Their business were picked up by Indian refineries which processed Russian oil and exported the resulting diesel fuel to Europe.

But now the U.S., and its European vassals, are trying to impose sanctions and/or tariffs on China and India for their continued buying of Russian oil. This would disturb the new market balance and eventually lead to higher oil prices for everyone.

China has successfully rejected U.S. pressure. In response to tariff threads it withheld minerals the U.S. needs. Trump had to pull back.

India is Trump’s new target:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – Aug 04, 2025, 14:50 UTC

India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits. They don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine. Because of this, I will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!

India’s Ministry of External Affairs responded by pointing out the hypocrisy of demanding for it to end trade relations while continuing the U.S.’  own trade with Russia:

…

4. Europe-Russia trade includes not just energy, but also fertilizers, mining products, chemicals, iron and steel and machinery and transport equipment.

5. Where the United States is concerned, it continues to import from Russia uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for its EV industry, fertilizers as well as chemicals.

6. In this background, the targeting of India is unjustified and unreasonable. Like any major economy, India will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security.

Seeing resistance Trump promptly upped his demands:

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would increase the tariff charged on imports from India from the current rate of 25% “very substantially” over the next 24 hours, in view of New Delhi’s continued purchases of Russian oil.

He also said a “zero tariff” offer for imports of U.S. goods into India was not good enough, alleging that India was “fuelling the war” in Ukraine.
…
The latest comment followed a similar threat on Monday, which prompted India’s Foreign Ministry to say the country was being unfairly singled out over its purchases of Russian oil.

India ia a very large and proud country. It is likely willing to fight back. Over the last 25 years the U.S. has tried to win the formally neutral India, which was friendly with Russia, as an ally. Trump is ruining this attempt.

There are Indian products, like pharmaceuticals, for which it has near monopolies and which the U.S. needs. If it is smart it will play the same game as China did with rare earth: Withhold what the U.S. needs and wait for Trump to capitulate.

To compensate for eventual damage it will, at the same time, have to seek better relations with China and even cheaper oil from Russia.

The European Union, meanwhile, continues to hurt itself. Last months it sanctioned an Indian refinery for buying Russian oil which promptly led to higher diesel prices in Europe:

The recent EU sanctions on India’s Niara Energy refinery have removed approximately fifteen percent of European diesel imports overnight, sending prices higher and creating significant market volatility.
…
With alternative supplies needed from the Middle East, Asia, and the US, diesel prices have jumped from $2.40 to $2.47 per gallon, and gas oil has climbed from $700 to $725 per metric ton. The shift comes amid already tight global supply, with Europe now required to pay a premium to attract new barrels.

It is also planning new sanctions on China even as China has proven to have escalation dominance in trade and is certain to hit back.

The attempt to fight Russia by secondary sanctions against its customers is likely to fail.

We can thus expect more attacks on Russia related shipping.

This article was originally published on Moon of Alabama.

The post The Secondary Sanctions Squeeze appeared first on LewRockwell.

It’s only a matter of time before the political West delivers previously banned missiles to its Neo-Nazi puppets in NATO-occupied Ukraine and then orders them to use it against Russia. This would effectively turn every M142 HIMARS and its tracked counterpart, the M270/MARS MLRS (multiple launch rocket system), into a ground-based platform for the PrSM. Thus, Moscow has no choice but to respond with the mass production and later deployment of far more dangerous weapons such as the now legendary “Oreshnik”, which will be complemented by upgraded “Iskanders”, “Kinzhals”, “Zircons” and a plethora of other Russian hypersonic weapons.

On August 4, Russia announced it’s ending the unilateral moratorium on the deployment of medium and intermediate-range missiles that were previously banned under the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty. Since August 2, 2019, when the United States made a unilateral decision to officially withdraw from the INF Treaty, Moscow respected the limitations of this defunct arms control agreement despite the fact that it was not required to do so. However, as per usual, the political West views the Eurasian giant’s desire to avoid escalation in Europe (and beyond) as nothing more than a “sign of weakness”.

It was only thanks to the growing incompetence of the American Military Industrial Complex (MIC) that the Pentagon never got the chance to deploy advanced medium and intermediate-range missiles, specifically hypersonic weapons, resulting in the adoption of far less capable land-based platforms. However, the mass deployment of such systems is now forcing Russia to react and utilize its much more advanced missiles, including a plethora of hypersonic weapons that nobody in the entire political West can match. The Kremlin’s goal is to use its massive advantage to deter mounting NATO aggression.

Despite Russia’s efforts to promote restraint in hopes of avoiding a new (First) Cold War-style arms race, this was met by total hostility in the political West. This also included attempts to prevent escalation in the increasingly contested Asia-Pacific region, but to no avail. The world’s most aggressive power pole had other ideas, particularly concerning its attempts to encircle both Russia and China. Multipolar superpowers tried their best to avoid tensions, but that’s extremely difficult (if possible at all) given the US/NATO’s determination to maintain the state of constant crawling conflict that could potentially degenerate into a real one.

For instance, Moscow has repeatedly suggested that Western countries declare a reciprocal moratorium on deploying previously banned missiles. However, this was met not only with silence, but open enmity and US/NATO’s support for prolonging its war in Ukraine. In a statement released on August 4, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that the US, its vassals and satellite states openly declared their plans to deploy American ground-based, INF-banned missiles across various regions and made significant progress in their efforts to implement these plans. The Russian MFA stated they’re already well into the deployment phase.

The report further warns that, since 2023, Moscow observed instances of “US systems capable of ground-launched INF strikes being transferred to the European NATO countries for trial use during exercises that clearly have an anti-Russia slant”, such as those in Denmark which involved the use of a mobile Mk 70 Mod 1 launcher. This containerized four-cell VLS (vertical launching system) is a land-based derivative of the naval Mk 41 found on US Navy ships. Interestingly, the same VLS is used in the US/NATO so-called “missile shield” deployed in Romania and Poland (specifically in military bases in Deveselu and Redzikowo, respectively).

It was precisely the blatant lies about this that caused Russia to retain (albeit not yet deploy) the capability to promptly develop medium and intermediate-range weapons, such as the Novator’s 9M729 cruise missiles used by the “Iskander-K”. After decades of lying about its compliance with the INF Treaty, the US then unilaterally withdrew from it, citing precisely the 9M729 as the supposed reason. Such double standards are the common theme of the American/Western foreign policy approach. Now that the INF Treaty is history, the political West has zero formal constraints to even bother lying about its long-range strike capabilities.

The aforementioned Mk 41 can be used to deploy offensive missiles (such as the “Tomahawk”) and nobody except the people who installed them would know it. This gives the US/NATO unprecedented strike options against Russia while keeping it all concealed under the guise of “missile defense”. This is now being complemented by undisguised platforms, the most prominent of which is the “Typhon” Weapon System that can fire the land-based SM-6 multipurpose and “Tomahawk” cruise missiles. The latter can hit targets at ranges of approximately 1,600 km, putting nearly the entire territory of European Russia within striking distance.

Worse yet, the “Tomahawk” can be armed with the W80 thermonuclear warhead, meaning that the old (First) Cold War-era BGM-109G GLCM (Ground Launched Cruise Missile) “Gryphon” is effectively resurrected. In fact, the very usage of the name “Typhon” indicates that the missile is a successor to the “Gryphon”. The W80’s yield goes up to 150 kt, which is approximately ten times more powerful than the “Little Boy” (gun-type fission uranium bomb that obliterated Hiroshima on August 6, 1945). Hundreds of missiles armed with such nuclear warheads could soon be deployed all over Europe, prompting Russia to respond with its own equivalents.

However, the Kremlin is not nearly as alarmed by such missiles as it is by the potential deployment of much faster weapons that the US/NATO is still trying to develop. The Russian MFA noted that American military exercises in the Asia-Pacific region saw the deployment of officially still non-operational intermediate-range systems such as the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), better known as the “Dark Eagle”. The Pentagon openly bragged about “projecting power” and emphasized the system’s “rapid redeployment capability” (although the LRHW program is yet to produce an actual working hypersonic weapon).

However, the US has other systems that could serve as an interim solution. This was evident during the highly controversial “Talisman Sabre” exercises in April, when the Australian military used a US-made HIMARS platform to launch the PrSM (Precision Strike Missile). This weapon is a relatively compact SRBM (shorter-range ballistic missile) with a range of up to 1,000 km (depending on the variant) designed to compete with Russian systems such as the 9K720M “Iskander-M” and its more capable iterations that use hypersonic missiles like the latest 9M723-S (maximum range at least 1,000 km, speed up to 13,000 km/h).

It’s only a matter of time before the political West delivers the PrSM to its Neo-Nazi puppets in NATO-occupied Ukraine and then orders them to use it against Russia. This would effectively turn every M142 HIMARS and its tracked counterpart, the M270/MARS MLRS (multiple launch rocket system), into a ground-based platform previously banned by the INF Treaty. Thus, Moscow has no choice but to respond with the mass production and later deployment of far more dangerous weapons such as the now legendary “Oreshnik”, which will be complemented by upgraded “Iskanders”, “Kinzhals”, “Zircons” and a plethora of other Russian hypersonic weapons.

This article was originally published on Infobrics.org.

The post Russia Ends Unilateral INF Treaty Compliance Amid Escalating NATO Aggression appeared first on LewRockwell.

The Death of Civic Faith
I used to believe in the system. Not in unicorns or bipartisan kumbayas—just the notion that governance might still function behind the scenes. I believed elections mattered, debates had meaning, and somewhere in the bureaucratic swamp, a few frogs were still swimming toward something that looked like Integrity.

I graduated from Republican orthodoxy to Libertarian purity: self-ownership, private property, limited government, Constitutional sanctity, and the sacred Non-Aggression Principle. I evangelized on Talk Radio, spoke at conventions, hosted icons like Walter Williams, and truly believed we’d cracked the code to save the Republic. Turns out it was just another dialect of dysfunction as I watched the Party regularly implode under the weight of its own purity tests and amateur theatrics. Libertarians are just Republicans with better vocabulary and worse organizational skills.

But Belief has a shelf life. Mine expired after watching Republicans and Democrats re-enacting the same rituals, producing the same rot. Politics, politicians, and process—the holy trinity of American governance—had morphed into a taxpayer-funded escape room: rigged, performative, and absurdly expensive.

What I once saw as civic faith, I now recognize as institutional theater. And like any atheist who’s left the church, I traded reverence for ridicule, hope for a well-earned eye roll, and belief for the cold clarity of disillusionment.

The Political Atheist Defined

The political atheist isn’t an anarchist. He doesn’t reject order—he rejects sanctimony. He doesn’t burn the Constitution—he just stopped pretending anyone reads it. What he rejects is the civic religion: the quaint idea that politics is sacred, that politicians are high priests, and that the rituals of governance deserve obeisance simply because they exist.

Where the religious atheist walks away from divine authority, the political atheist walks away from institutional authority that demand reverence. He’s unmoved by phrases like “sacred duty,” “moral arc,” “soul of the nation,” or the ever-nauseating “for the greater good”—not because he lacks morality, but because he’s seen how those words are used to launder power. He doesn’t pray at the altar of party or process. Instead, he asks who built the altar, who profits from the sermon, and why the pews never change.

Political atheism isn’t nihilism. It’s clarity. It’s the refusal to genuflect before a system that rewards cowardice, punishes dissent, and cloaks dysfunction in ritualized jabberwocky. It’s not the absence of belief—it’s the presence of discernment. The political atheist doesn’t want chaos. He wants accountability. But he’s done imagining accountability lives in a government pulpit.

The Ritual of Cowardice

The system doesn’t demand courage; it requires choreography. Politicians don’t lead; they perform. They rehearse outrage, recite empathy, and bow to optics like altar boys afraid of excommunication. The brave are punished not for being wrong, but for being off-script. The coward is rewarded for staying in character.

Dissent isn’t crushed; it’s drowned in ceremony. The system doesn’t silence critics; it invites them to speak, then buries their words under process. A four-year, multi-million-dollar Special Prosecutor investigation ends with no indictments, no accountability, and no clarity—just a press conference and a shrug. Bipartisan panels promise truth but deliver theater. Hearings generate heat, not light; allegations, not facts. The rituals are elaborate, expensive, and exhausting. They simulate justice but demand nothing from the powerful.

The ritual of dysfunction is always followed by the illusion of reform. A scandal breaks, a committee forms, a bill is introduced with a name so noble it bows deeply—“The Accountability Act,” “The Truth in Governance Initiative,” “The Restoring Trust Commission.” Cameras roll, statements are made, and nothing changes. Reform becomes its own ceremony: a performance of contrition designed to preserve the status quo. Both parties play along, not to fix the system, but to protect it. They weaponize these rituals to shield their own, turning failure into virtue and outrage into a renewable resource. The result isn’t justice; it’s equilibrium. The system absorbs dissent, metabolizes scandal, and – just like that – emerges untouched.

The political atheist doesn’t reject politics because it’s flawed. He rejects it because it’s self-cleansing. Every failure is ritualized, every scandal sanctified, every betrayal rebranded as resilience. The system doesn’t collapse; it renews itself, like a church that canonizes its sinners or transfers a guilty priest, undisciplined, to a distant parish. The atheist has seen too many redemption arcs with no repentance, too many reforms that reform nothing, too many sermons about “for the children” while the rot remains untouched. He doesn’t walk away in anger. He walks away in clarity. Faith is for the pews. He’s looking for proof.

Vigilantism: The Illegality of Moral Urgency

The American colonists didn’t wait for permission. They didn’t petition the Crown for a more favorable interpretation of ‘tyranny’. They broke laws. They sabotaged supply lines. They fired on soldiers. To the British Crown, they weren’t patriots, they were insurgents. Their moral urgency didn’t make their actions legal; it made them dangerous. They declared authority where none had been granted. And we call it ‘founding’.

But strip away the marble and myth, and what remains is guerrilla warfare. Decentralized militias. Irregular tactics. A moral calculus that said: If justice won’t come from above, it must be seized from below.

This isn’t unique to America. Every revolution begins as vigilantism. The French stormed the Bastille. The Haitians burned the plantations. The Bolsheviks overran the Winter Palace. Legality was not the starting point—it was the aftermath. First came urgency. Then came rupture. Only later did the victors write laws to sanctify their defiance.

So what makes today different? Why is moral urgency now dismissed as extremism, while past insurgencies are enshrined as heroism? If colonists were justified in breaking laws to pursue justice, who gets to decide when that justification applies now?

If they could declare authority, why can’t we?

The political atheist doesn’t romanticize violence. He recognizes its inevitability when systems refuse to self-correct. He sees vigilantism not as a solution but as a warning; a sign that legitimacy isn’t a fixed state but a fragile agreement. Break the deal, and the governed will take control themselves.

The whistleblower is the system’s internal vigilante. He doesn’t plant bombs; he reveals truths. But the response is the same: prosecution, exile, character assassination. Edward Snowden didn’t sell secrets; he exposed surveillance. Reality Winner didn’t sabotage democracy; she revealed its vulnerabilities. Their crime wasn’t betrayal; it was impatience. They refused to wait for institutional reform that never came.

At the border, vigilantes patrol the desert with rifles and radios, convinced that the state has abdicated its duty. They aren’t sanctioned, but they are tolerated because their urgency aligns with the power’s narrative. Their illegality is quietly absorbed, even as it violates the same laws they claim to defend.

Then there’s January 6. A grotesque eruption of grievance, delusion, and performative patriotism with criminal government interference. But beneath the flags and fury lies a familiar psychology: the belief that the system has failed, and that moral urgency justifies illegal action. The political atheist doesn’t excuse it, but he recognizes the pattern. When institutions lose credibility, people don’t wait. They act. Often recklessly. Sometimes violently. Always urgently.

The system’s response is revealing. Snowden is exiled. Border vigilantes are ignored. January 6 rioters are prosecuted—but not uniformly. The message is clear: moral urgency is tolerated when it serves power, and criminalized when it threatens it.

Illegality vs. Illegitimacy: What Power Really Fears

Illegality is a nuisance. It can be prosecuted, pardoned, or ignored. It’s manageable. But illegitimacy is existential. It questions the very right to govern. That’s why the system tolerates certain crimes and panics at certain truths.

A corrupt senator can violate campaign finance laws and remain in office. A whistleblower can reveal mass surveillance and be exiled for life. The difference isn’t the crime, it’s the threat to the narrative. Power survives broken laws. It doesn’t survive broken myths.

This is why January 6 was prosecuted not just as a riot, but as a heresy. It wasn’t the violence, it was the symbolism. The breach of the Capitol was a breach of sanctity. It exposed the fragility of legitimacy, and that’s what had to be punished.

The Liberal Counterpart: Narrative as Narcotic

Liberals don’t patrol borders or storm buildings. Their vigilantism is rhetorical. They weaponize the narrative to preempt urgency, to anesthetize the public with stories of progress, process, and patience.

When institutions fail, the liberal instinct isn’t rupture, it’s reassurance. “Democracy is resilient.” “The arc of history bends toward justice.” These aren’t observations. They’re incantations designed not to describe reality, but to delay confrontation with it.

This is why the liberal media obsess over norms, decorum, and the “return to civility.” It’s not about truth; it’s about tempo. Keep the public calm. Keep the system intact. Keep the urgency at bay. Urgency is rebranded as extremism. Defiance becomes disinformation. The narrator becomes the gatekeeper.

The political atheist sees through this. He knows that a narrative without consequence is sedation. That reassurance without reform isn’t comfort, it’s betrayal. And that sometimes, the most radical act is refusing to wait.

The Collapse of Permission

In healthy systems, patience is a virtue; in broken ones, it’s a trap. The system doesn’t ask for obedience; it demands patience. The citizen is told to wait for the next election, the next investigation, the next reform. Wait for the ‘process’ to play out. But waiting is not passive; it’s performative. It signals belief in a system that no longer deserves it. And in a broken system, it’s complicity.

The political atheist has stopped waiting. He’s done mistaking delay for dignity. He’s watched whistleblowers punished, vigilantes tolerated, and narrators rewarded for keeping the public sedated. He’s seen urgency criminalized and illegality selectively enforced. And he’s reached the only conclusion left: permission is a myth. Because when the system no longer delivers justice, the refusal to act becomes an endorsement. The collapse of permission is not the collapse of order; it’s the collapse of the illusion that order ever ruled.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Rise of the Political Atheist appeared first on LewRockwell.

The CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla – who ought to be in prison – was instead at Trump’s  golf club in Bedminster, NJ recently – attending a fundraiser for MAGA, Inc. Wasn’t MAGA supposed to be opposed to creatures such as Bourla? Didn’t Trump get elected to a great extent by riding a popular wave of fury about creatures such as Bourla (and Fauci, et al)?

A pro-Trump web site explains this apparent incongruity as being in accordance with Don Corleone’s dictum, “keep your friends close but your enemies closer.”

This assumes, of course, that Bourla is Trump’s enemy rather than his collaborator. If not the latter, why hasn’t the Orange Don sicced his Just Us Department on Bourla or any other of the grifters who sicced the government on the American people, using its coercive powers to push them into getting jabbed else lose their jobs? Bourla is a criminal every bit as detestable as Epstein and arguably worse since Epstein only abused a relative handful of young people. Millions of young people – many of them absolutely children (as opposed to nearly of-age and of-age young women) who had no say in the matter because it was up to their parents, who were mightily pressured to have their children injected with whatever-it-was in those needles, because if they didn’t then the children weren’t allowed to attend school (and in some case, failure to inject was taken as tantamount to child abuse).

Not one indictment. Not one investigation, even. Instead, the creature that profited to the tune of billions off the misery (and damage done to the health of) millions is free to attend a gala, high-roller fundraiser for MAGA.

Res ipsa loquitur. It speaks for itself.

Bourla and other criminals of his ilk ought to be personas non grata at Trump/MAGA fundraisers. That they are welcomed (more finely, their money is welcomed) says all you need to know about MAGA or who controls it, at any rate. The run-of-the-mill Red Hat does not. People such as Miriam Adelson and Albert Bourla do. This is reflected by actions taken – and actions not taken – by the Orange Don, who isn’t really that since a Don is the one who runs things. The Orange Don does the bidding of things like Bourla and Adelson.

They got what they paid for.

Mass starvation in Gaza that goes officially unnoticed. The detestable CEO of the greatest legal crime syndicate in the country treated like royalty at a fund-raiser for the political movement that owes its popular support almost entirely to run-of-the-mill Red Hat fury over what was done to millions of Americans by creatures such as Bourla during the “pandemic.” And by Trump, too. Let’s never forget that – much as he’d like us to (just as he’d like us to forget about the Epstein Business now that it’s no longer politically useful to him).

Is it necessary to recap?

Trump declared the “emergency” that gave the legal green-light to Pfizer, Moderna and the rest of the “families” to not just peddle but push their poison on the entire population without even the minimal firewall of the usual and previously required safety-testing. Just trust us! It’s “safe” and “effective”! And it was Trump who did not end the “emergency” he declared – even on his way out the door – even though it was obvious by then that the “pandemic” was an orchestrated and extremely evil con. He was part of that. The fact is undeniable. Yet there are still Red Hats who not only deny it but j’ accuse those who have the temerity to mention it as being TDS sufferers. This is astounding as much as it is wilting. It does, however, give the still-sane among us a window into the insanity that walks among us.

If only Stalin knew, they cry!

The fulsome scurvy truth is this: Trump has no interest in seeing Bourla or Fauci or any of these things investigated and prosecuted or even being turned away from a MAGA fundraiser because it is not in his interest. The italics ought not to be necessary and yet they are. People – all too many – continue to believe that the interests of the ruling cabal and the people are sometimes congruent. Well, they sometimes are – in the way that the interests of a feed lot owner and the cattle therein are congruent. The cattle get fed. Eventually, so does the feed lot owner.

Trump is not even the feed lot owner. He works for the owners of the feed lot. This has become so obvious lately it is not possible to honestly say it’s otherwise. Unless, of course, you still want to believe otherwise.

This article was originally published on Eric Peters Autos.

The post Trump’s Pharma Fan appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post The Duran: US Economy and the Future of America First w/ Robert Barnes appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Trump Pulls Trigger On India Mega-Tariff: Will It Backfire? appeared first on LewRockwell.

J.K. Baltzersen wrote:

Dear Sir:

With the 80th anniversary, the apologists for the uranium (Hiroshima) and plutonium (Nagasaki) bombs will be at it again. Same procedure as last year. Same procedure as every year.

While Japan was ready to surrender, they were dragging their feet, and they were preparing massive troops for defense of the homeland.

But who would be surprised at that? The Allies were basically saying that they would reshape Japan in their image. Why would not the Japanese, a regime fearing extinction, drag its feet and fight desperately for its life?

Without the unconditional-surrender concept in the first place, we might not have had an American redesign of the Japanese state. Japan might have kept a monarchy in a more real sense. While not a Western monarchy, that might not have been such a bad thing. And a better balance in the region might have given another outcome of the Chinese civil war.

The post Hiroshima at 80 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

The Blaze Media

The post The case for Americans to ditch smart meters appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Activist Post

The post Canada Uninterrupted Flow of Arms Delivery to Israel Exposed appeared first on LewRockwell.

Un altro settore ricco di miti e povero di riscontri con la realtà è quello delle energie rinnovabili. Se si guarda all'Unione Europea, vi sembrerà che la produzione di elettricità sia un caso di attività di libero mercato, con i burocrati di Bruxelles che si limitano a stabilire le regole generali che consentono al tutto di funzionare. Purtroppo, nonostante la propaganda, le cose non stanno così. Sebbene esista un mercato europeo dell'elettricità, ha ben poco a che fare con ciò che di solito consideriamo scambi di libero mercato. I player nel mercato elettrico devono seguire un cosiddetto ordine di merito, o meccanismo di pagamento, in base al principio “pay-as-clear”. I fornitori presentano le loro offerte in base ai costi di produzione e i richiedenti devono acquistare prima dalle fonti più economiche, fino a quando la domanda non viene soddisfatta completamente. A tutti i fornitori viene quindi pagato il prezzo marginale. Sebbene questo ricordi il modo in cui funziona la determinazione dei prezzi nel libero mercato, è tutt'altro. I richiedenti sono costretti ad accettare le offerte dei fornitori più economici. Le energie rinnovabili sono le più economiche, poiché in senso stretto i loro costi di produzione sono pari a zero: non serve carburante per le pale eoliche. Di conseguenza i burocrati hanno costruito un sistema che porta a enormi guadagni per gli investitori nelle energie rinnovabili, quindi non è un mistero che la capacità di tal settore si sia espansa enormemente in Europa, poiché qualsiasi prezzo positivo (o qualsiasi prezzo che copra i costi di capitale e manutenzione) sarà redditizio per coloro che ci hanno investito. Dato che l'elettricità prodotta dalle energie rinnovabili ha un prezzo pari a zero, si potrebbe sostenere che l'operatore, agendo nell'interesse del consumatore finale, sceglierebbe comunque di acquistarne la maggior quantità possibile, quindi non importa che sia tecnicamente costretto a farlo. Tuttavia l'operatore è interessato non solo a operare ai minimi costi di input, ma anche a mantenere la propria rete nel modo più economico ed efficiente possibile, rendendola al contempo il più resiliente possibile. Purtroppo l'energia rinnovabile è incompatibile con questi obiettivi, data la sua imprevedibilità. La mancanza di resilienza è il problema più rilevante emerso durante il recente blackout spagnolo. Il mercato elettrico europeo è strutturato in modo tale che non ci sarà mai capacità libera da impianti eolici e solari. Poiché l'operatore è costretto a ricorrere alle energie rinnovabili, e poiché i fornitori traggono profitto praticamente da qualsiasi prezzo positivo, funzioneranno quasi sempre a piena capacità. In caso di crisi, quindi, non saranno disponibili come riserva e, poiché le centrali a carbone e nucleari non possono aumentare la produzione con sufficiente rapidità, rimane solo il gas. Quest'ultimo, tuttavia, è una delle fonti di energia elettrica più costose, non da ultimo dopo la “guerra di aggressione russa contro l'Ucraina”, come la chiamano come un mantra i burocrati e i politici dell'UE, e l'aumento della dipendenza europea dal GNL. Cosa succede alla produzione di gas quando per un periodo di tempo prevedibile le energie rinnovabili dominano il mercato, come è successo in Spagna fino al blackout? Poiché le energie rinnovabili hanno fatto scendere il prezzo dell'elettricità, le centrali a gas spagnole hanno smesso di fornire elettricità e, prevedendo che questa situazione si protraesse per un po', hanno chiuso i loro impianti. Quando si è verificato il disastro, e un'importante fonte di approvvigionamento è stata improvvisamente rimossa dal mercato, non c'era praticamente alcuna riserva disponibile. Diverse fonti del settore hanno dichiarato alla Reuters che la mancanza di fonti di energia stabili e sincrone era un problema chiave. L'interventismo statale rende l'elettricità non solo molto costosa in tutta Europa, ma rende anche le reti elettriche in tutta Europa molto fragili. Quello che è successo in Spagna potrebbe essere un caso estremo, ma non c'è motivo di non aspettarsi molti altri casi simili in futuro, finché le energie rinnovabili saranno forzate sul sistema in questo modo.

______________________________________________________________________________________

di Vladimir Snurenco

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/il-ruolo-della-plastica-nella-lotta)

È raro sentire parlare della plastica in modo positivo. I titoli dei giornali traboccano di statistiche allarmanti sulla contaminazione da microplastiche e di immagini inquietanti dell'inquinamento degli oceani. Eppure la plastica ha silenziosamente svolto un ruolo essenziale nel ridurre la povertà, migliorare gli standard di vita globali e persino salvare vite umane. Come potrebbe la plastica, tossica e soffocante, combattere la povertà in tutto il mondo?

In recenti articoli intitolati “Elogio della plastica” e “La plastica è più verde di quanto sembri”, The Economist evidenzia come la plastica riduca il peso e i costi di trasporto. Ad esempio, una bottiglia di plastica da un litro pesa solo il cinque percento del suo equivalente in vetro, il che la rende 20 volte più leggera e molto più facile da trasportare! Mentre gli articoli originali si concentravano principalmente sull'efficienza, il mio punto è che un imballaggio più leggero non solo riduce i costi, ma aumenta drasticamente l'accesso dei poveri del mondo ai beni di prima necessità.

Gli alimenti confezionati in plastica durano molto più a lungo: una grande vittoria per il miliardo di persone più povere. I contenitori di plastica ermetici mantengono alimenti di base come farina di mais, riso e olio da cucina più freschi, più convenienti e più facili da conservare. Inoltre gli imballaggi in plastica consentono al cibo di percorrere distanze maggiori e di raggiungere più facilmente le aree remote. Questo è particolarmente importante nelle regioni povere, dove le infrastrutture stradali sono carenti e la refrigerazione è rara.

In ambito sanitario, siringhe di plastica e dispositivi di protezione come guanti e mascherine hanno fatto una grande differenza. I dispositivi monouso in plastica contribuiscono a ridurre i tassi di infezione e hanno svolto un ruolo fondamentale nella distribuzione dei vaccini. I dispositivi medici in plastica sono fondamentali per proteggere le persone più vulnerabili al mondo da malattie e morte.

Un esempio specifico, ma tristemente trascurato, è il ruolo che la plastica ha svolto nel dimezzare i decessi annuali per malaria a livello globale. Nel 2000 la malaria ha ucciso quasi un milione di persone in tutto il mondo, ma le siringhe di plastica monouso hanno garantito un trattamento sicuro contro di essa, prevenendo al contempo la trasmissione dovuta ad aghi contaminati. Le zanzariere, spesso realizzate in fibre di plastica, hanno fornito barriere fisiche contro le zanzare portatrici di malaria. Un altro brillante prodotto in plastica sono i teli di plastica trattati con insetticidi (ITPS), i quali vengono utilizzati nella costruzione di case e rifugi, e uccidono le zanzare al contatto. Negli ultimi 25 anni questi prodotti in plastica hanno ridotto significativamente i tassi di infezione da malaria in tutto il mondo, soprattutto in Africa, e hanno dimezzato i decessi annuali per malaria.

Ecco il quadro generale degli ultimi 25 anni: con l'aumento della produzione di plastica in tutto il mondo, i tassi di mortalità per malaria sono diminuiti e la povertà è diminuita drasticamente. Secondo The Economist, la produzione globale di plastica è raddoppiata tra il 2000 e il 2021, passando da 234 milioni di tonnellate a quasi 460 milioni. Nello stesso periodo la povertà estrema (definita come vivere con meno di $2,15 al giorno) è scesa da circa il 28% della popolazione mondiale ad appena l'8,5%, secondo i dati della Banca Mondiale. Il FMI prevede che i tassi di povertà scenderanno ulteriormente a circa il 7% entro la fine del 2025.

Il legame tra l'aumento dell'uso della plastica, la riduzione della povertà e il calo dei decessi per malaria è impressionante. La plastica potrebbe essere l'eroe sconosciuto ai più nella lotta contro la povertà e le malattie? E se lo è, dobbiamo anche affrontare una domanda difficile: l'inquinamento da plastica è un compromesso accettabile, o addirittura inevitabile, per ridurre la sofferenza umana?

Il modo di pensare economico richiede di riconoscere i compromessi. In un mondo fatto di scarsità, non ci sono soluzioni perfette. Risolvere un problema spesso ne crea, o ne aggrava, un altro. La contaminazione da plastica è senza dubbio allarmante. Mentre scrivo queste parole, non posso fare a meno di ragionare sul pensiero inquietante che frammenti microscopici di plastica potrebbero circolare nel mio cervello proprio in questo momento. Ma qual è l'alternativa? Se smettessimo di usare la plastica domani, le catene di approvvigionamento globali collasserebbero, il cibo non raggiungerebbe le persone che ne hanno bisogno nelle aree remote e milioni di persone perderebbero l'accesso a forniture mediche salvavita. Siamo disposti ad accettare questo aumento della sofferenza umana per vivere in un mondo senza plastica? Io no.

Il ruolo della plastica nella riduzione della povertà è immenso. La plastica permette ai poveri di migliorare la propria salute e di accedere più facilmente al cibo e ad altri beni. Per il miliardo più povero del pianeta, i benefici della plastica superano di gran lunga i suoi svantaggi ambientali.

Ovviamente dobbiamo cercare di gestire i rifiuti di plastica in modo responsabile. I nostri attuali tassi di riciclaggio si attestano intorno al nove percento, una percentuale ancora troppo bassa. Altre importanti priorità associate all'uso della plastica sono l'innovazione nelle tecnologie di riciclaggio, il miglioramento delle infrastrutture di raccolta dei rifiuti e una gestione più sicura delle discariche. Infine, ma non meno importante, dovremmo cercare di utilizzare meno plastica ogni volta che è superfluo.

La domanda globale di plastica continuerà ad aumentare, mentre i tassi di povertà mondiale continueranno a diminuire. Forse accettare entrambe le tendenze è il miglior compromesso che l'umanità possa realisticamente raggiungere in questo momento: il mondo di domani sarà un mondo con meno povertà e più plastica.

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

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

Tim McGraw wrote:

Meanwhile, the tyrants who caused all this Covid mayhem walk free.

NY Post.

The post Canadian Freedom Truckers Leaders Face 7-8 Year Prison Sentences for “Mischief” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Scott D.:

Hi Lew,

Why stop at the penny or even the nickel? We should drop everything less than a dollar. Based on silver value, a quarter is the new penny, and based on gold value, the two dollar is the new penny. Let’s make it simple – make the dollar the new penny.Personally, I would prefer a return to coins, best done by redenominating the dollar by 100x, making a penny the value of today’s dollar. Other countries do it, why can’t we? Is it too dangerous to point out the emperor has no clothes? Alas, I can dream can’t I?

The post The Happy Penny appeared first on LewRockwell.

I recently visited my brother. On a wall in his house is this small display in remembrance of our father’s war experience (see photo below). My dad was a gentle guy, he became a general practitioner who made house calls in the middle of the night. I believe he worked too hard for his patients because he not only worked everyday including weekends (from my childhood memories), but because he died of a heart attack at 42. Somehow he ended up in the Marines during WWII. He never fired his gun at a human being, though from his letters he did enjoy shooting. He was trained as a radar operator and sent to Tinian Island (the top image). He arrived there after the fighting ceased. He saw dead bodies of Japanese soldiers and took a bayonet home as a souvenir, though they were often booby trapped. The only action he saw was from Japanese aerial attacks. He did witness several crashes of American bombers returning to the base which in later life made him afraid to fly.

From top to bottom: Tinian, my dad, his unit in training camp, and a Japanese souvenir.

Many decades after my father’s passing I had a conversation about the use of the atomic bombs during the war with my mother. She saw the absolute necessity to use them to save the lives of American soldiers like my dad (though they were not a couple at that time). She showed no remorse for the tens of thousands of civilian deaths. I suspect that she was influenced by anti-Japanese propaganda though she had a love of Japanese gardens and design in general. See examples of this propaganda below. The clear goal was to dehumanize the Japanese people, depicting them as small (they were but grew taller with better nutrition after the war), sullen, buck toothed and ugly.

The war propaganda depicted Japanese people as small, sullen, buck toothed and ugly.

How to Spot a Jap (1942) pamphlet.

I have been a serious baseball fan since childhood. I know that baseball was an integral part of American culture in the 1940s as explained in this essay; Baseball in Wartime: How WWII Reshaped America’s Favorite Pastime, “Finally, WWII helped cement baseball’s role in American identity. The sport mirrored the resilience and adaptability of the American spirit. It played a role in boosting morale and national pride, both crucial during a time of global conflict. The post-war period saw baseball firmly established as America’s national pastime, a symbol of American culture and values.” Even Japanese Americans forced into concentration camps played baseball.

From the Visalia Times-Delta, “this photo shows a baseball game at Manzanar Internment Camp around 1943. In September 1942, more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were crowded into 504 barracks organized into 36 blocks at the camp after the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

These musings about my parents, WWII, propaganda and baseball were instigated by Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese baseball player now with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He is arguably the most talented player in the history of the game; hitting, pitching, running, tall and handsome. I wonder what my parents, and all of their Greatest Generation cohort, would have thought of him compared to their concept of the Japanese in 1945. Would this real Japanese person dispel the propagandist view of the Japanese people?

The most talented baseball player ever, pitches like Nolan Ryan, hits homeruns like Babe Ruth, steals bases like Maury Wills, all with movie star good looks.

Today the propaganda is of a different style than the 1940s, but it can be as virulent. Be it against Russians, Chinese, Iranians, Palestinians, or Israelis there is language (much less today in images) that degrades their humanity. The clear and present danger is that this propaganda, like those of the past, will lead to potential war crimes including the use of nuclear weapons. Everyone should think hard about the dangers of propaganda induced bigotry.

The post Bombs, Baseball, and Bigotry appeared first on LewRockwell.

Matt Smith: Doug, I’ve failed to keep up with the constant firehose of news—or more accurately, disinformation and noise—so I don’t have a long list today. But I know there were a few things that caught your attention.

Doug Casey: Well, it’s not that I’ve researched them. They are things that I’ve absorbed almost by osmosis. News items float like a layer of scum on the cesspool of media. However, a couple of things have risen to the top and were drawn to my attention.

Number one, there’s a very cute actress named Sydney Sweeney —blonde, blue-eyed, shapely. She was contracted by American Eagle to model their denim. She was featured in ads emphasizing her assets. The copy was, “Our jeans are good genes”, a pun on jeans as in blue jeans and genes as in genetic makeup.

The interesting thing is that it caused the stock of the company—American Eagle—to go from $10 to $12 overnight. It became a meme stock because of the ads that it ran.

It was a relief, finally, to see a good-looking white girl peddling jeans. I thought they’d been banned.

Matt Smith: Reminded me of something straight out of the 1990s.

Doug Casey: It was great. Now, you’d think any corporate management with half a brain would say, “Wait a minute, the market likes this approach. It helped our stock price, and maybe people will actually buy our jeans because they want to look like Sydney Sweeney.”

But no. What did they do? Defying logic, they pulled the ad because the usual suspects—leftists, Wokesters, and other psychological criminals—started howling, “Oh, this is racist, sexist, Nazi-adjacent, blah, blah, blah.” And they pulled the ad.

Lau Vegys, who writes Crisis Investing for us, did a very nice article about this (LINK).

It turns out that when DEI was popular a few years ago, the gutless corporate whores at American Eagle ran an ad featuring a morbidly obese black woman who looked like a whale, a rhino, or a hippo got stuffed into a pair of their jeans.

I mean, what’s the matter with these people? Who wants to emulate somebody that physically degraded?

I despise corporate America for all kinds of reasons—but not least because they’re stupid and self-destructive.

Matt Smith: And completely spineless.

They found something that worked—it literally added 20% to the company’s market cap overnight—and they still caved. The stock’s now come down a bit from the peak. It’s still above where it started, but it’s drifting back down… around $11.25 last I looked.

Doug Casey: I think the stock is headed way down, because the market will realize that these people are stupid, dishonest, weak—and cowardly.

Matt Smith: You’d think profit motive would eventually kick in, but most of these executives are comfortable. They’re raking in big salaries, sitting on boards, collecting stock options. They’re not trying to win—they’re trying not to lose. No guts, no conviction.

Doug Casey: I think the managements of almost all corporations are like that. Other than founding entrepreneurs, who are in a different breed of cat, the people who rise to the top climb the corporate ladder by backslapping and backstabbing, not by being productive and creative.

Matt Smith: Their goal is to avoid mistakes, which means avoiding risk, which means avoiding value creation. The whole system rewards mediocrity.

Doug Casey: They’re basically bureaucrats. The people running large corporations could just as easily work for the government. We have a revolving door between big corporations and the government. They’re the same damn people.

It makes sense on every level. Government drones, corporate ladder-climbers—the same people.

Matt Smith: And we’re watching that convergence accelerate. The corporate state is merging with the actual state. It’s not theoretical anymore—it’s just happening.

Doug Casey: It’s further reason to believe that we’re watching the continuing collapse of Western civilization.

Matt Smith: Sure looks that way. But it was still refreshing—briefly—to see something authentic sneak through.

Doug Casey: An ad featuring a healthy, good-looking girl who— unbelievably—was white with blue eyes on top of it all. Oh, can’t have that. Better strike that.

Matt Smith: Hopefully she’s not straight. That would really be the final straw—white, blonde, and straight.

Doug Casey: I’ll conjecture that she’s straight because there’s no hint of purple hair, hostility, or craziness about her in those pictures.

Matt Smith: Another thing I know was on your radar: the “success” of the tariffs. Lutnick’s saying they’re pulling in $700 billion a year if you annualize it.

Doug Casey: And he’s presenting this as a good thing. But it’s not. If he’s right, these tariffs will bring in $700 billion a year to the enemy, the State. But I don’t think he’ll be nearly as right as he thinks. The tariffs will severely reduce economic activity and prosperity. Giving the State more power, more assets—which have been extracted from the American people—is destructive.

He’s selling that as a good thing, but it’s just making the State bigger. From an ethical and philosophical point of view, Lutnick is a moron.

And then Trump wants to spend that extra money like a drunk sailor. Trump, from the goodness of his heart, wants to give away $600 to every American. It makes him look like a hero.

What’s happening is that the government takes away from some people and gives back to other people. So, who’s your daddy? The State. It’s insane, and completely backwards.

Look, Trump has done some good things. Unlike that abysmal schlemiel Biden, he’s at least talking to Putin. That’s great. If you want to avoid a nuclear war, it really helps to talk to your adversary—which the previous administration wasn’t doing. We should appreciate that on Trump’s part.

And the fact that he’s anti-woke is great. And the fact that he wants to massively deregulate—although DOGE has mostly gone away—is great. Trump has done some good things.

But on the other hand, he really is a narcissist, an egomaniac, and a megalomaniac. That makes him dangerous.

Matt Smith: And at the end of the day, he’s a statist. Sure, he wants to remake the State, but he still wants it to be powerful—and his. The $600 is just bread for the plebs. The circus is implied.

Doug Casey: That’s right. He believes whatever he does is righteous and good. He thinks he can do no wrong. That’s a dangerous attitude for the most powerful person in the world, and I think his attitude will become ever more dictatorial.

Matt Smith: Yeah, and the so-called trade deal with Europe is a perfect example. Americans are patting themselves on the back over it, saying, “We just crushed the EU.” Zero tariffs for our stuff going there, 15% on theirs. LNG exports doubling, billions more in defense sales, and $600 billion in foreign direct investment into the U.S., including moving pharma production here.

What does Europe get in return? Americans act like, “Who cares? We showed them who’s boss.”

Doug Casey: The deal doesn’t appear to make sense. What’s in it for Europe?

Matt Smith: If you connect the dots, I think the answer is fear. Scott Bessent laid it out early—this administration is using a whole-of-government approach. Military, diplomacy, trade—all aligned.

This isn’t just about selling goods. The trade agreement is clearly entangled with military commitments.

And not coincidentally, right after that deal, Trump’s deadline for Putin shifts from 50 days to 10 or 12.

So these European leaders—they’re afraid. I don’t know if you watched that interview with Tucker and that Bild reporter?

Doug Casey: I did. What a weak little Euroweenie he was.

Matt Smith: Right. But, this is a reporter who rubs shoulders with the establishment. The fear of Putin, for them, is real. Crazy, but real. So what does Europe get from the deal? U.S. protection. I think they get what they need most—which is American support against Russia.

Doug Casey: They’re like scared little kids. It’s that CIA boogeyman under the bed.

But the fact is that Putin impresses me as the most reasonable, the most rational, and the most thoughtful of all the European leaders. Russia is not going to invade Europe for all kinds of reasons. It would serve no useful purpose. It would be extremely expensive and counterproductive. Putin sees that. He’s keeping cool even though he’s being massively provoked.

These Europeans are basically—they’re psychos, frankly. And Trump is egging them on. I mean, it’s wonderful that European countries were spending only 2% of their GDP on weapons. Now, they’re ramping it up to 5%, to buy a shitload of weapons—with borrowed money. And what do you do when you have all those weapons? You wind up using them.

And the same is true of Japan, which is only spending about 1.5% of its GDP on weapons. But the U.S. and Trump are pushing them to spend 5%.

Matt Smith: Yeah, and they signed on to the same 15% tariff deal.

Doug Casey: So what’s going on? Is the U.S. looking to fight and “win” a global thermonuclear war against both Russia and China?

Matt Smith: It sure looks like military cooperation is baked into these trade deals. The same European leaders who trashed Trump earlier are now falling in line. My guess is, in return, there were some promises made about what would happen with Ukraine that they were happy with.

Doug Casey: The Europeans are encouraging his naturally narcissistic tendencies. None of this is good.

And the question is: What are the Russians going to do in the face of all this? The West is idiotically backing the Russians into a corner. And if you back even a mouse—forget about a bear—into a corner, it will fight.

Matt Smith: Eventually, yeah.

But the surprising part is—wouldn’t we have expected that response already?

I mean, even Biden drew supposed red lines: “If we send Abrams tanks, that’s too far.” Then, “If we send F-16s, that’s too far.” And here we are—we’ve blown through all those red lines.

There have even been direct attempts on Putin’s life—allegedly—via drone strikes. But Putin still hasn’t escalated. Officially, it’s still a “special military operation.” He’s refusing to call it war.

Doug Casey: Well, I don’t mean to sound like a Putin fan. What I’m saying is that leaders of great states almost must be criminal personalities. But of all the people out there, Putin is the most prudent and the most rational. I’m sure he sees what’s going on, and does not want to start World War 3. Unlike the NATO people.

Matt Smith: He absolutely doesn’t.

And that restraint is being used against him.

I wrote an article recently that International Man will re-run on Monday. It’s about DARPA and one of their lesser-known programs—”Theory of Mind.” It’s a concept centered around understanding how your adversary thinks, modeling their decision-making, and shaping it.

They use AI, mass surveillance, data profiling—on not just the adversary but their entire circle of influence—to create predictive models. And then they apply strategies designed to provoke certain responses without triggering escalation.

Ukraine’s a great example. Even when Ukraine briefly invaded Russian territory, it didn’t cross a line that caused a dramatic Russian counter. That’s Theory of Mind at work.

Palantir—spun out of DARPA—has been the tip of the spear in implementing this. It was originally created to do things the U.S. government couldn’t legally do. So they had a private company do it instead.

And it’s public knowledge that Palantir’s been directly involved in targeting decisions in Gaza by the IDF. We know for sure the U.S. has used it in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen—all within the last year.

So this tech is out there being used in the field right now. And think about how weird all the conflicts have been—how lines have been pushed so far, but they haven’t escalated. This is what Theory of Mind was all about.

In fact, I would say—to give you an idea of what it does to an adversary—Palantir was a key vendor during COVID, allegedly just providing real-time feedback on the population.

During COVID, the general public—not just in the U.S. but everywhere—was the adversary. So with these systems everything is gamed out—where can they push, where do they have to stop pushing, what messaging needs to go out from the leaders, what messaging should be on social media.

In real-time, it gives them information on how the situation should be managed.

From my perspective during COVID, as an American living in America at the time, I felt like the population was under attack. But the way these tools work is that they create real confusion among what they label as adversaries—in this case, all of us—that you’re not sure if you’re being attacked, and if you are being attacked, who exactly is attacking you.

It creates this confusion in the mind of the adversary and even helps shape the adversary’s thoughts through officials’ statements, the press, and social media.

I think this Theory of Mind type warfare has been driving everything we’ve seen since 2020.

Doug Casey: It makes perfectly good sense because it all comes down to psychology. Sun Tzu, in the fifth century BC, said war is all about psychology—understanding how your enemy thinks and knowing yourself.

Yes, you’re quite correct. And there must be many, many reasons why these gigantic data centers are accumulating unbelievable amounts of disparate information, sorting it out, and then putting it together to predict what the average person might be thinking and how he’s reacting.

Matt Smith: Right. And under Trump, Palantir’s footprint has exploded.

The DoD has doubled its contract with Palantir. ICE has signed a deal with Palantir. DHS, the Social Security Administration, the IRS, and the Department of Transportation have all signed contracts with Palantir.

Take all that government data and combine it with commercial data—the scope of data they’re ingesting now is beyond belief. Not just your emails and phone calls, your bank transactions, and online history. Every location you’ve ever been with your phone is available for purchase commercially. That’s not a conspiracy theory—that’s a fact.

All of the data gets fed into building digital twins of us—simulations of how each individual behaves. And then they simulate against those avatars in their AI systems and implement actions against the adversary directly or indirectly to shape their perceptions.

To DARPA, we’re all adversaries by default—until proven otherwise.

Doug Casey: Oh, it’s actually worse than that. Because the people who control Palantir have not only made billions and billions of dollars on Palantir stock, but they have lots and lots of ways to become even richer by using all this information as insiders. Not necessarily insider trading, but just by having information on everybody and everything. It’s rather dystopian.

Matt Smith: Exactly. Here’s a small example—hard for us to know who did it, but you can see the trades. Trump announces a new tariff—this time on copper. Two or three minutes before he says anything publicly, someone makes a massive trade and walks away with a fortune.

That’s not an accident.

And, look, I said earlier this year that the Biden administration felt like it was looting and pillaging on the way out—which they were. But now it looks like Trump’s people are doing it too—just in a different way.

They’re front-running trade announcements, launching meme coins, starting investment funds, and gaming the system via private market mechanisms.

Different methods, same outcome—plunder.

Doug Casey: Well, fear not, because Trump is planning to distribute $600 to everybody. It’s nice to toss a few pennies to the plebs.

Matt Smith: And the people will say thank you.

Doug Casey: Oh, yes, and it’s absolutely perverse. As a laissez-faire capitalist I’ve never believed that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That only happens in heavily state-directed systems. But that’s exactly what we’ve got now.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer because we don’t live in a capitalist system. As I’ve explained in the past, we live in a fascist system—a word which is totally misunderstood and misused.

Listen, I thought we were going to end our conversation today on a happy note, because I always like to look at the bright side.

Matt Smith: Well, the sun’s out. It’s winter here in South America, but it’s still a beautiful day.

I don’t follow sports, so I’ve got no cheerful sports story to share.

Doug Casey: Pro athletes are just hired gladiators anyway—for whatever city or team that pays them

Matt Smith: But there is some good news: our book is finished—at least the writing. It’s in typesetting now and heading to print soon. We’re just weeks away.

I think it’s going to be a book like no one’s ever held before—both for the content and how it’s put together. It’s meant to be useful, but also, we’re trying to make it beautiful.

Doug Casey: I don’t know if I like that word “beautiful.” Trump uses it way too much. He’s degraded the word.

Nonetheless, it’ll be a big, beautiful book.

Matt Smith: It is a Big, Beautiful Book, actually. But, I’m not letting them ruin our language. Screw them!

Doug Casey: That’s right.

Matt Smith: All right, Doug—we’ll leave it there for today.

Doug Casey: Thanks, Matt.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Corporate Cowardice, Government Surveillance, and the Creeping Fascism appeared first on LewRockwell.

There is no shortage of Internet forums filled with energetic contributors all predicting the imminent collapse of the West.  Communicating about current events, culture, war, and the economy, a multitude of anonymous speakers publicize their worries every day.  Western governments — increasingly insecure, hostile to tradition, and unmoored from any abiding principles — have decided that the best way to project strength is to silence critics.

As European governments more overtly embrace censorship and criminalize speech, the incremental push toward a regulated online system requiring authenticated digital identities promises a future when only government-engineered narratives will be approved for public expression.  Society will lose another “pressure release valve” as the Western Establishment welds shut the ventilators of public debate — hoping to trap citizens’ combustible grievances deep underground.

This century has been eye-opening for many reasons.  Technological innovation has weakened institutional control over public opinion and empowered regular people to question authorities in meaningful ways.  Among the important revelations that have subsequently come to light is the inescapable conclusion that Western governments are not at all committed to free speech.  For many Westerners who lived through the Cold War, this has come as a bit of a shock.

The principal distinction that supposedly separated the Soviet Union from the “free” West, after all, was that the former maintained a “closed” system managed by a strong central government, while the latter restrained government power and ensured protections for citizens’ personal liberties.  In the Soviet Union, government apparatchiks constructed and disseminated official “truths.”  In the U.S.-led West, no government had a legitimate monopoly over truth.

Yet what do we see today?  Western governments are in a tizzy over so-called “disinformation” and “misinformation.”  Again, for those who lived through the Cold War, government attempts to classify information as “good” or “bad” stinks of Soviet communism.  Hunting down foreign “disinformation” was an obsession for the Soviets.  Children were taught from an early age to report anyone (even parents!) heard uttering “incorrect” opinions.  It was a crime against the State to publicly express “misinformation,” and many people lost their lives for doing so.  A stark dividing line, we thought, separated the West from the Soviets: Communists controlled speech, while Western citizens were encouraged to speak their minds.

To see Western governments recycle the same Soviet vocabulary in a totalitarian quest to police language is disheartening.  Those who fought to defend the West from communism did not put their lives on the line so that future Western governments could oversee “disinformation” boards, “hate speech” police, or censorship committees.  The Soviets used similarly oppressive tools to subjugate citizens behind the Iron Curtain for seventy years.  A “Digital Curtain” monitoring what Westerners say is no less threatening.

During the Cold War, Westerners took pride in repeating some version of this statement: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.  There was no parenthetical caveat along the lines of, unless what you’re saying may be designated by the government as misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, or toxic hate speech.  The inclusion of such a glaring exception would have entirely nullified what it means to defend free speech.  Any Western government that claims to protect free speech while simultaneously asserting the power to determine what kinds of ideas may be expressed out loud shares a common spirit with the former Soviet Union.

Societies wise enough to protect the public expression of an individual citizen’s thoughts understand that government agents are the natural aggressors from whom citizens need protection.  When governments intercede in the public forum to police what can and cannot be said, they will always claim to be doing so for the public’s own good.  Tyranny is forever clothed in the garments of benevolence.  Depending upon governments to secure free speech is like hiring wolves to guard the sheep.  Neither survives.

What Westerners have learned during the interregnum between the Cold War’s conclusion and the emerging censorship State being constructed today is that Western governments were never faithful stewards of the public’s natural liberties.  They told us that they were for free speech and against Soviet-style oppression, but they didn’t mean real free speech.  They meant speech relatively aligned with the governments’ own interests.

While Western governments have long championed their countries’ newspapers and broadcast stations as exemplary models for a free press, they hide the ways that government agents often apply pressure to “independent” news publications to keep Western citizens from learning unsanctioned — and potentially explosive — truths.  Some news groups — such as the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — are explicitly taxpayer-funded, government-run operations.  Even privately-run news publications, however, are corralled through a system of broadcast regulations, licensing agreements, national security laws, and not-so-subtle government threats.  As much as the Soviet Union deserved to be denounced for its steady stream of State-produced propaganda, the West has always operated its own version of a State press.

If you go back in time to watch old network news shows from the second half of the twentieth century, modern eyes and ears immediately see and hear how manufactured broadcast news always was.  In the United States, three national anchors on three prestigious networks all repeated similar scripts for decades.  They covered the same stories.  They shared the same points of view.  They produced the same “narratives.”  Three decades after the widespread adoption of the personal computer and the communication revolution unleashed by the Internet, however, the same news sources that Americans trusted decades ago now sound remarkably fake.  The illusion of an independent news media keeping government power in check has been permanently shattered.

It is easy to condemn governments responsible for gulags and mass murder as intrinsically evil.  It is far more difficult to recognize tyranny when governments psychologically manipulate and enfeeble their citizens.  Manufacturing the public’s consent to be harmed is much like an abusive spouse or parent conditioning members of the household to feel responsible for their own beatings.  When governments subdue citizens’ minds, victimized citizens wear invisible chains.  Conversely, when citizens begin thinking for themselves, they see the abusive behaviors of their government much more clearly.

A significant shift in social consciousness has occurred this century.  Citizens have come to understand that all forms of government naturally gravitate toward tyranny.  Therefore, preserving personal freedom starts at home.  The struggle against government coercion is a kind of never-ending cold war.

The most troubling sign for the West’s future is Western governments’ stubborn refusal to listen to their citizens.  They are still stuck in last century’s paradigm when governments easily controlled public opinion.  Shocked that they are no longer capable of subtly manipulating the masses with appeals to authority and a steady diet of carefully crafted network news, Western governments would rather demonize free speech than accept limits to their power.

In essence, Western governments that once defined themselves as protectors of liberty and enemies of tyranny now openly scorn free expression and defend censorship.  They pursue the old Soviet model while labeling their opponents “extremists.”  The problem for Western governments, however, is that those being demonized give no indication that they will yield.

Right now Western news publications and government-controlled broadcasters are busy talking about the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war, and the looming China-Taiwan war.  But there is another war shaping up much closer to home between Western governments and their citizens.  It concerns the very foundations of Western civilization.  It concerns the public’s right to reject Establishment narratives and determine its own future.  It concerns a basic question: What does it mean to be a free nation?

Either citizens will reclaim control over their governments, or governments will succeed in silencing their citizens.  That’s the preeminent contest of the twenty-first century.

This article was originally published on American Thinker.

The post What Does It Mean To Be a Free Nation? appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Work expands to fit the allotted time,” the saying goes. And that education is no exception holds a lesson: Some will say when pondering homeschooling, “I’m not qualified to teach my kids.” But, informs homeschooling advocate Brett Pike, it’s not just that you can teach your kids — and splendidly.

It’s that you can do it in a fraction of the time schools do.

In a Friday X video post, Pike relates the story of parents Aaron and Kaleena Amuchastegui. The Amuchasteguis were typical Americans who believed in the “system.” You send your kids to school, they ascend through the grades, go to college, and then start a career. But as luck would have it, they at some point found themselves needing to teach their elementary-school daughter at home for a couple of weeks.

Well, it was the parents who learned the biggest lesson.

That is, they found they could teach their girl all the prescribed material in just one hour a day.

This revelation completely changed their lives. It inspired them to write a book, too: The 5-Hour School Week: An Inspirational Guide to Leaving the Classroom to Embrace Learning in a Way You Never Imagined.

Time for What Matters

It wasn’t just that the Amuchasteguis saved time, either. Pike, who hosts the YouTube channel Classical Learner, reports that the Amuchasteguis’ daughter actually improved educationally. (For example, after just the two weeks of homeschooling, she was finally able to spell and pronounce her last name.)

(Fake news alert: That was a joke.)

The girl did improve, though, and, what’s more, the time saved could be used for ancillary activities. The Amuchasteguis could, consequently, more effectively cultivate their daughter’s interests. She became a successful entrepreneur while just a teenager, states Pike. “All of a sudden,” he relates, “cooking and gardening and field trips became amazing opportunities for learning. And that’s what homeschool families understand.”

“You don’t need that much time for formal education,” he continues. This “leaves so much more time for less formal things that your children love, they look forward to.”

Apropos here, the inefficiency matter takes me back to a conversation I had decades ago. My best friend and I both attended the Bronx High School of Science in New York City. “Bx Sci,” as it’s known, is a somewhat famous “elite” institution known for academic rigor. (Students must pass an entrance exam to attend.) The intellectual level — i.e., average IQ — of the students certainly was impressive, too. To this day, my fellow classmates are still the most intelligent large group of people among whom I’ve ever circulated. Despite this, around our high-school days’ conclusion, my buddy and I both had the same realization.

We agreed that we could have easily absorbed the entire four-years’ academic load in six months.

We were correct, too.

Now, in fairness, though, a critic may point out that the above is anecdotal. So what do the data show?

It’s No Contest

Whatfinger news answers this question. Along with posting Pike’s video, the site presents an article that contrasts homeschooling with government schooling. To summarize, according to Whatfinger:

• Public schools’ inefficiency is explained by bureaucracy, the need for “crowd control,” and emphasis on ideological issues. Actual learning time is limited.
• Homeschooling is a commonsense-oriented solution to government education’s declining standards, woke indoctrination, and union agendas. It stresses academic rigor, a better sense of virtue, and liberty.
• Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) data demonstrate that homeschoolers score 15 to 30 percentile points higher than government-school students on standardized exams, regardless of income or parental education.
• The tailored, efficient homeschooling model surpasses government schools’ one-size-fits-all mandates.
• The Heritage Foundation (2008) reports that homeschoolers’ median test scores are in the 70th to 80th percentile; government-school students languish in the 50th. Moreover, the gains for black homeschoolers are especially robust.
• National Review attributes the 15- to 30-percentile point advantage to avoiding government schools’ “social-welfare” distractions, such as “gender” ideology lessons.
• The Federalist cites homeschoolers scoring 31 to 37 percentile points above government-school kids, countering “lazy parent” criticisms.
• Daily Wire states that homeschoolers excel on difficult tests owing to one-on-one instruction free from “leftist curricula.”
• Homeschoolers average 22.8 on the ACT (vs. 21 for government-schoolers), reached the 77th percentile on the Iowa Test, and surpass SAT averages, according to Heritage.
• National Review points to homeschool graduates’ superior college readiness and graduation rates.
• Critics’ claims of lacking socialization or rigor are debunked by evidence. Homeschoolers do not live in bubbles. They have co-ops, church programs, play dates, siblings, organized sports, and other extracurricular activities.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Homeschoolers Who Proved That School Is a Waste of Time appeared first on LewRockwell.