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I need to be more empathetic with Putin’s hopes.  Sometimes I, too, let hopes run away with me.  

Yes, I was wrong to hope President Trump would normalize relations with Russia.  Perhaps Trump intended to do so, until the men in black knocked on his door and told him that he was not allowed to takeaway the enemy that justified the power and profit of the military/security complex.

In the era of nuclear weapons it makes perfect sense to be on good terms with other nuclear powers.  Mutual suspicions and high tensions can result in catastrophic consequences.  Russia has not threatened us and clearly has no territorial ambitions.  Putin’s ambition is a mutual security agreement with the West.

For some reason Trump won’t consider it.  Perhaps the situation is one of armament profits taking precedence over life. 

Trump doesn’t negotiate.  He delivers ultimatums with punishments attached for non-compliance.  Never during the Cold War did an American president issue an ultimatum to the Soviet leader.  

What is Putin supposed to comply with?  Trump hasn’t told us or Putin.  It seems that Trump intends for Putin to make a deal with Zelensky to end the conflict.  But how can Putin do this when Zelensky has said that his terms are for Russia to give back Donbas, Crimea, and pay war reparations, when Zelensky is no longer officially the president and has no authority to negotiate for Ukraine, and when Zelensky is merely the proxy that Washington is using in its war with Russia?

Trump says it is not his war. Perhaps, but it is Washington’s war, and Trump is the president in Washington.  So it is Trump’s war.

Trump can stop the war by ending weapons delivery, financing, and diplomatic cover, but Trump has not done so.

Trump can stop the conflict by sitting down with Putin, understanding what Putin means by “the root causes of the war,” and addressing these issues, but Trump has not done so.

Instead, Trump issues meaningless ultimatums that show that Trump is not sincere about ending tensions with Russia.  Clearly, ultimatums are not the way to normalize relations. 

As far as I can tell, the media have not asked Trump what the agreement is or what parts of the agreement are unacceptable to the Russians.

It is reckless to issue threats to Russia in an atmosphere so tense.  Putin’s efforts to avoid real war have been misinterpreted as irresolution, thus resulting in more provocations.  Putin’s avoidance of war is leading to a larger war.  At some point the provocation will go too far.  Maybe it will be the missiles that Trump and the Germans are talking about firing at Moscow.

This is the dangerous situation that urgently needs to be resolved, not the conflict in Ukraine.  If the root causes are addressed, the war goes away.

The post Is Trump Taking Us to War? appeared first on LewRockwell.

For much of his life, John Henry Newman was a towering figure in the Church of England. A brilliant theologian, preacher, and professor at Oxford, he was widely respected for his intellect and piety. As a longtime Anglican priest, Newman devoted himself to defending the Church of England against both secularism and the perceived errors of Catholicism. Yet, in a dramatic twist of providence, the very work he undertook to defend Anglicanism ultimately led him to embrace the Catholic Church he had long opposed.

Newman was a central figure in the Oxford Movement (1833–1845), a group of Anglican scholars and clergy who sought to revive the Church of England’s connection to its ancient Catholic roots. They emphasized the importance of the early Church Fathers, apostolic succession, liturgical beauty, and the sacraments—all while remaining firmly within the Anglican tradition. Newman and his colleagues believed the Church of England represented a via media, or middle way, between the extremes of Protestant reform and Roman Catholic authority.

As opposition to the Oxford Movement grew and theological disputes intensified, Newman felt compelled to defend the integrity of Anglicanism on firmer intellectual ground. In doing so, he set out to write a theological work that would distinguish Anglican teaching from Roman Catholicism while still affirming its legitimacy as the true inheritor of apostolic Christianity. The result was his 1845 masterpiece, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.

The irony is inescapable: Newman’s attempt to defend Anglicanism became the very instrument of his conversion.

As Newman studied Church history with increasing depth, he became convinced that many of the teachings he had rejected as Catholic “additions”—like the papacy, Marian devotion, and purgatory—were not corruptions but organic developments growing from the seed of apostolic teaching. In contrast, he found the Anglican claim to possess full continuity with the early Church historically fragile and theologically inconsistent.

It was in this context that Newman wrote his now-famous line: “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”

By the time he finished writing the Essay, Newman had already made up his mind. His intellectual honesty, coupled with years of spiritual struggle, brought him to the conviction that the Catholic Church was the true continuation of the Church founded by Christ. In October 1845, he was received into the Church by the Italian Passionist missionary Blessed Dominic Barberi.

The conversion stunned English society and scandalized many of his former Anglican colleagues. For them, Newman had not just left a church; he had joined an enemy.

But Newman’s journey was not one of betrayal—it was one of integrity. He had followed the truth wherever it led, even at great personal and professional cost.

In the years that followed, Newman became one of the most celebrated Catholic thinkers in the English-speaking world. He was eventually named a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879. His influence extended far beyond theology into education, philosophy, and literature. In 2019, Pope Francis canonized him as St. John Henry Newman, recognizing his holiness, brilliance, and enduring impact.

Now, Pope Leo XIV is preparing to name St. John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church, a title reserved for saints whose theological writings have contributed significantly to the universal understanding of the Faith. Such an honor would affirm what many Catholics have long recognized: Newman’s insights into doctrine, conscience, and the development of faith remain essential for our time.

Newman’s story is especially powerful today, as many sincere Protestants wrestle with questions of authority, doctrine, and historical continuity. His own journey is a reminder that the search for truth must be grounded in both faith and reason. Perhaps our prayer might be that St. John Henry Newman will continue to lead others toward the fullness of truth and the beauty of the Catholic Faith.

His life stands as a witness to the idea that God sometimes works through irony—and that those who seek to defend error in good faith may ultimately become its most effective critics simply by following the truth to its source.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post John Henry Newman First Tried to Disprove Catholicism; Now He’s Being Named a Doctor of the Church appeared first on LewRockwell.

Last week the nuclear rhetoric between the US and Russia made some of us feel like we were transported back to 1962. Back then, Soviet moves to place nuclear-capable missiles 90 miles off our coast in Cuba led to the greatest crisis of the Cold War. The United States and its president, John F. Kennedy, could not tolerate such weapons placed by a hostile power on its doorstep and the world only knew years later how close we were to nuclear war.

Thankfully both Khrushchev and Kennedy backed down – with the Soviet leader removing the missiles from Cuba and the US president agreeing to remove some missiles from Turkey. Both men realized the folly of playing with “mutually assured destruction,” and this compromise likely paved the way to further US/Soviet dialogue from Nixon to President Reagan and finally to the end of the Cold War.

Fast forward more than 60 years later and we have a US president, Donald Trump, who last week stated that he had “ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions,” meaning nearer to Russia.

Had Russia attacked the US or an ally? Threatened to do so? No. The supposed re-positioning of US strategic military assets was in response to a sharp series of posts made by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on social media that irritated President Trump.

The war of words started earlier, when neocon US Senator Lindsey Graham’s endless threats against Russia received a response – and a warning – from Medvedev. Graham, who seems to love war more than anything else, posted “To those in Russia who believe that President Trump is not serious about ending the bloodbath between Russia and Ukraine… You will also soon see that Joe Biden is no longer president. Get to the peace table.”

Medvedev responded, “It’s not for you or Trump to dictate when to ‘get at the peace table’. Negotiations will end when all the objectives of our military operation have been achieved. Work on America first, gramps!”

That was enough for Trump to join in to defend his ill-chosen ally Graham and ended with Medvedev alluding to Soviet nuclear doctrine which provided for an automatic nuclear response to any first strike on the USSR by US or NATO weapons.

The message from the Russian politician was clear: back off. It was hardly Khruschev banging his shoe at the UN screaming “we will bury you,” but it was enough for Trump to make a rare public pronouncement about the movement of US nuclear submarines.

Trump is understandably frustrated that his promise to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours has not been fulfilled after six months in office. President Trump doesn’t seem to understand that you cannot arm one side in a war and then demand that the other side – the side that’s winning – stop fighting. That has never happened in history.

What is most tragic is that the war in Ukraine could have likely been ended if not in 24 hours, then surely in six months if Trump simply ended Joe Biden’s policy on Ukraine. It is continued US support for the war that keeps the war going. Even the US mainstream media admits that Ukraine will lose. But Trump seems under the spell of the neocons who can never reverse a failed policy.

Hopefully the return of nuclear rhetoric will awaken some in DC to the danger that the neocons pose to our country. We are no longer in 1962.

The post Cold War 2.0 Heats Up appeared first on LewRockwell.

The entire economic order is bankrupt–ideologically, politically and financially.

A friend sent me a clip of Tucker Carlson going off on the Boomer generation, and I get it. Tucker’s takedown was epic and entertaining (at least for me), but his disgust and rage were real. So let’s dig into the sources of those emotions.

If you watch the clip, it’s apparent that what really disgusts Tucker is the sanctimoniousness of the Boomers he references, the glibness of their virtue-signaling and claims to righteousness and significance. This extends to the financial level, where the sanctimony is expressed as a high-minded confidence that “we earned it,” overlooking the trillions of dollars handed to them on a Federal Reserve / bubble-economy / entitlements platter.

I think we all get that, but the problem isn’t the Boomers, it’s the entire economic order. The Boomers were just the hitchhiker who were lucky enough to be picked up by the big-finned Cadillac on the way into Vegas.

Even if everyone were absolute saints, they’d still own most of the wealth. Here’s why.

When Social Security was enacted in the 1930s, the retirement age was 65 and the average lifespan of Americans was 62. In other words, the program was intentionally designed to be self-funded (paid by a very modest tax on wages paid by both employer and employee) and act as a safety net for the fortunate few who lived long enough to collect it but who weren’t lucky enough to be wealthy.

As the economy boomed in the postwar era, the age of retirement (at a lower percentage of full benefits) was lowered to 62 as the average lifespan increased to 70 by 1965, when Medicare and Medicaid were enacted. At their inception, these programs were mere fractions of federal spending, and appeared to be “good things” that were affordable.

The Boomers weren’t born in the 1930s, and in 1965 they were kids. These entitlements were initiated in response to the grim reality that old age for the non-wealthy was generally a ticket to poverty.

Fast-forward to today, and the average lifespan is 80 (with millions of elderly living a decade longer) and 3/4 of adult Americans are at risk of lifestyle diseases / metabolic disorders due to an unhealthy diet and poor fitness. Over half of Americans are diabetic or prediabetic.

The entitlement programs to aid the elderly that were modest decades ago are now almost 50% of the entire federal budget, dwarfing all other spending. Entitlements aiding young families are so modest they aren’t even a blip compared to the soaring budgets of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. (Disability entitlements were added to Social Security, greatly expanding the program’s costs.)

Read the Whole Article

The post Go Ahead and Rage at Boomers, But the Problem Is the Entire Economic Order appeared first on LewRockwell.

In the 1950s Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter published a fascinating book titled When Prophecy Fails. Festinger later published his book, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. In When Prophecy Fails is a unique book detailing the events surrounding a UFO end times cult. Researchers and their assistants infiltrated the UFO cult and participated in their events, followed their teachings, and reported on their findings.

Examples of Jewish and Christian end times cults in the 1600s and the 1800s respectively are provided as case studies. In the 1600s Sabbatai Levi proclaimed himself as the Jewish Messiah and was to create his Messianic Kingdom in the Holy Land. Many Jews in the Middle East and Europe followed him. Part of the prophecy required the sultan to be deposed. Sabbatai and a small group of his followers went to Constantinople where the Turkish authorities immediately arrested him. His survival of the arrest only buoyed his support while in prison. It was not until he converted to Islam did his followers accept disconfirmation of their beliefs.

In the 1800s William Miller led what were called the Millerites. This end time cult had a predicted date of the end of the world and the return of Christ to set up his Kingdom on Earth. After the predicted dates for the return of Christ passed support and fervor only grew as new dates were focused on. After a few years of disconfirmation of the prophecies the Millerites disbanded.

In the UFO cult infiltrated by Festinger’s researchers a similar pattern was observed. There was a predicted end of the world date, and the UFO was supposed to save the followers and transport them to space. After the predicted dates of the end of the world passed some of the cult members responded to this disconfirmation with increased fervor and proselytizing.

Cognitive dissonance is the tension created when one’s beliefs are confronted with information that is inconsistent with those beliefs. It is the antecedent prompting actions designed to reduce dissonance and or increase consonance i.e. constancy with preexisting beliefs. This can sometimes manifest as ignoring information that contradicts the preexisting belief and seeking to cling more rigidly to those beliefs, or in buying into false narratives to support the original belief.

Cognitive dissonance is more likely to occur if the attachment is to beliefs that have a higher degree of emotional investment. Politics, with a plethora of emotionalized beliefs, is ripe with cognitive dissonance, as can easily be imagined.

The man made climate change hoax is a secular end times cult that is a prime example. This end times cult has absconded with billions of dollars, infringed on human liberty, and happiness. Senseless regulations and restrictions have been employed causing economic hardship. Literally people have altered their lives because of an irrational fear that the world is going to end because of human activity. Even agriculture is under attack because it is allegedly unsustainable.

Even as the climate change cult’s prophet’s predictions routinely are disconfirmed, this data is ignored, and the beliefs are clung to more rigidly. For instance, Al Gore had predicted that the oceans would rise and destroy cities and so on if civilization did not come to a grinding halt decades ago. Undeterred cult members just cling to their emotionalized beliefs. Even the fact that it first was a fear of the ice age, then global warming, and then climate change itself was to be feared, is a clear sign of the scam. This continuous bait and switch was ignored.

The Q Anon phenomena was a psychological operation that played to peoples’ cognitive dissonance, and many believed that Trump was rounding up the pedophiles in government while they started the lockdowns and were told to trust the plan as the white hats would go get the big bad black hats.

It was easier to buy these alternative reality theories than accept the fact that the government was becoming completely authoritarian and carrying out a global attack on humanity.

After the 2020 election many Democrats suffered from cognitive dissonance and discounted all evidence pointing to the likelihood that the 2020 election was stolen. The information was simply discarded as conspiracy theory.

On the flip side, many Trump supporters engaged in cognitive dissonance and started buying into narratives that while Biden was in office Trump was really running our government with the help of the white hats in the military. When confronted with the fact that Biden stole the 2020 election they sought out fantasy land to reduce the dissonance.

Unfortunately, in Trump’s second term there is quite a bit of cognitive dissonance. The Trump administration has signed onto the same exact policies that Kamala Harris and the Democrats would have promoted on several major issues. The Big Bad Bill that was passed adds trillions to the deficit. True, Democrats may have spent more, but MAGA did not vote to further bankrupt America. Trump has also adopted an interventionist foreign policy and jumped onto two foreign wars. One in Yemen that was negotiated to an end. The second was supporting and then joining a war with Iran that ended in a face saving bombing of an empty facility and then a token response by Iran. The Trump administration appears to be ramping up the war effort against Russia as well now.

There is also the promotion of technocratic slavery through a stable coin, with the Genius Act. This may become a centralized digital bank currency that will allow control over every aspect of our lives. The smart contracts will be able to freeze or remove money from accounts and apply a social credit score to determine allowed usage of funds and who to interact with. If this longer term plan comes to fruition, then it will not be your money, it will be your allowance based on good behavior. There will no longer be any private property.

On day two of the Trump administration, he announced Stargate and pretended that the new AI database facilities were a new idea when in fact they were in the works for years. Tasking Palantir with creating a digital database on every American is about as Orwellian as we can get.

Needless to say, the Trump administration has not stopped the mRNA biological and technological weapons of mass destruction. Instead, they keep approving new ones and are investing in self amplifying mRNA.

There is definitely cognitive dissonance. When the opposing party is in power there is a strong resistance to endless war, police state initiatives, and so on. Yet when the teams are switched and your team is in power. Well, then you shouldn’t say anything about these issues.

It is easier to ignore these issues and buy into than confront the tension and discomfort caused by facing the inconsistency of the cognitive dissonance. It is easier to buy into the new narrative designed to make you feel better by reducing your dissonance.

After all, we did get cane sugar in Coca Cola….

This article was originally published on Mind Matters and Everything Else.

The post Politics and Cognitive Dissonance appeared first on LewRockwell.

At least 100,000 Australians, including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, marched for Gaza across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the pouring rain at a demonstration on Sunday.

It wasn’t that long ago when I sincerely wondered if we’d ever see Assange’s face again, let alone in public, let alone in Sydney, let alone heading up what had to be one of the largest pro-Palestine rallies ever held in Australia. Dare to be encouraged. The light is breaking through.

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The western political/media class is fuming with outrage about images of Israeli hostages who are severely emaciated, which just says so much about how dehumanized Palestinians are in western society. Everyone stop caring about hundreds of thousands of starving Palestinians, it turns out two Israeli hostages are starving in the same way for the same reason.

❖

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has announced that in order to improve “public diplomacy” efforts the term “hasbara” will no longer be used, because people have come to associate it with lies and propaganda.

The Times of Israel reports:

“Long referred to as hasbara, a term used to denote both public relations and propaganda that has been freighted with negative baggage in recent years, the ministry now brands its approach as toda’a — which translates to ‘awareness’ or ‘consciousness’ — an apparent shift toward broader, more proactive messaging.

That “negative baggage” would of course be public disgust at the nonstop deluge of lies that Israel and its apologists have been spouting for two years to justify an act of genocide. Westerners have grown increasingly aware that Israel and its defenders have a special word for their practice of manipulating public narratives about their beloved apartheid state, so they’re changing the word.

Simply stopping the genocide is not considered as an option. Simply ceasing to lie is not considered as an option. They’re just changing the word they use for their lies about their genocide.

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This position only makes sense if you believe Israel just spontaneously became bat shit crazy and genocidally evil on October 7 2023. That’s the only way you can see Israel’s depravity as a response to October 7 instead of seeing October 7 as a response to Israeli depravity. https://t.co/yv5FpEAeAJ

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 2, 2025

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One of the reasons Israel’s supporters love to hurl antisemitism accusations at its critics is because it’s a claim that can be made without any evidence whatsoever. It’s not an accusation based on facts, it’s an assertion about someone’s private thoughts and feelings, which are invisible. Support for Israel doesn’t lend itself to arguments based on facts, logic and morality, so they rely heavily on aggressive claims about what’s happening inside other people’s heads which cannot be proved or disproved.

It’s entirely unfalsifiable. I cannot prove that my opposition to an active genocide is not in fact due to an obsessive hatred of a small Abrahamic religion. I cannot unscrew the top of my head and show everyone that I actually just think it’s bad to rain military explosives on top of a giant concentration camp full of children, and am not in fact motivated by a strange medieval urge to persecute Jewish people. So an Israel supporter can freely hurl accusations about what’s going on in my head that I am powerless to disprove.

It’s been a fairly effective weapon over the years. Campus protests have been stomped out, freedom of expression has been crushed, entire political campaigns have been killed dead, all because it’s been normalized to make evidence-free claims about someone’s private thoughts and feelings toward Jews if they suggest that Palestinians deserve human rights.

❖

A Harvard professor of Jewish studies named Shaul Magid recently shared the following anecdote:

“I once asked someone I casually know, an ardent Zionist, ‘what could Israel do that would cause you not to support it?’. He was silent for a moment before looking at me and said, ‘Nothing.’”

This is horrifying, but facts in evidence indicate that it’s also a very common position among Zionists. If you’re still supporting Israel at this point, there’s probably nothing it could do to lose your support.

__________________

The best way to make sure you see everything I write is to get on my free mailing list. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post Dare To Hope appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes David Martin:

Why, one might ask, is Trump acting so guilty?

The post The Epstein Cover-up, Trump’s Watergate, or His Waterloo? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm. 

Blaze Media

The post Scandal exposed: The FBI’s Catholic witch hunt just got even uglier appeared first on LewRockwell.

Today is the 61st anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The Johnson administration and the NSA alleged that North Vietnam attacked the USS Maddox ship that was deployed off the coast of North Vietnam. However, they knew that the alleged attack did not occur, yet they waged a brutal war of aggression against the Vietnamese people.

Unfortunately, less than a year before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the US national-security state probably murdered President Kennedy, who wanted to get the United States out of Vietnam after the 1964 presidential election. In October 1963, Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, which called for an immediate reduction of 1000 troops from Vietnam.

Kennedy planned on implementing a full withdrawal in his 2nd term as President. On October 20, 1963, Kennedy told his neighbor, “This war in Vietnam – it’s never off my mind, it haunts me day and night. The first thing I’ll do when I’m re-elected, I’m going to get the Americans out of Vietnam.”

Just days after the November 1963 assassination or coup d’état, Johnson signed NSAM 273 which reversed Kennedy’s Vietnam policy. NSAM 273 called for full victory over North Vietnam. In 1964, the US carried out a series of attacks and provocations against North Vietnam with the probable goal of inducing North Vietnam to retaliate against US forces.

On August 2, 1964, the USS Maddox, which was carrying out signals intelligence for the United States against North Vietnam, fired at North Vietnamese patrol boats. North Vietnamese patrol boats struck back at the USS Maddox which sustained minor damage.

The US government lied when they asserted that North Vietnam attacked the USS Maddox on August 4th and used the fictitious August 4th attack as justification for enacting the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the war on Vietnam.

For years, the United States government and military killed millions of Vietnamese civilians and wantonly used chemical weapons in the process. Thankfully, the Vietnamese people overcame the empire and prevailed against the US national-security state and its puppet South Vietnamese regime.

The post The Gulf of Tonkin Anniversary appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks,  Tim McGraw.

The bean counters are ruining almost every product made in America. Quality doesn’t matter anymore. Customer satisfaction doesn’t matter anymore. All the bean counters care about are the numbers and the bottom line.

Hang onto your older cars and trucks. Don’t buy the new ones. 

The post The Automotive Apocalypse Has Arrived: appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks,  John Frahm.

Natalie Winters

The post The CCP Is Inside the Fed: Shocking New Evidence of Chinese Infiltration at America’s Central Bank appeared first on LewRockwell.

People are walking up!

A recent poll revealed that 60% of Americans will likely NOT get the offered “Jab-Booster” this fall.

This article here by the Epoch Times provides the details (but is behind a paywall).

To read the full article FOR FREE please go HERE.

And Please Pass On The Good News.

The post GOOD NEWS! Most Americans Won’t Get COVID-19 Booster This Fall, Survey Says appeared first on LewRockwell.

Lo scandalo Russiagate è di proporzioni epiche. Le conseguenze giudiziarie dello stesso rappresenteranno la pietra tombale sulle infiltrazioni europee nelle stanze dei bottoni americane. La presidenza Obama, infatti, è stata il simbolo di questa infiltrazione: dal Dodd-Frank Act al JCPOA, il suo mandato è stato caratterizzato dalla demolizione della credibilità americana a più livelli. Il primo ingessava a tal punto il sistema bancario commerciale da far proliferare quello ombra e alimentare il mercato degli eurodollari; il secondo aiutava l'Europa a ottenere energia a basso costo, teneva aperta una porta sul retro in Iran e perpetuava il gioco “divide et impera” nella regione affinché la si potesse controllare senza disturbi (chi ci perdeva erano gli USA perché cani da guardia della situazione, la quale se fosse degenerata li avrebbe risucchiati e impantanati in un'ennesima guerra inutile). “Cui prodest”? Europa e Inghilterra. La prima presidenza Trump ha rappresentato una rottura col passato, materializzatasi formalmente nel 2019 quando JP-Morgan fece saltare consapevolmente il mercato dei pronti contro termine rifiutandosi di accettare come collaterale titoli europei a copertura dei finanziamenti in suddetto mercato. Ma questa è una storia che trovate nel mio ultimo libro, “Il Grande Default”. Di conseguenza i documenti declassificati da Tulsi Gabbard e riguardanti le nefandezze di Obama aprono la porta a uno scandalo superiore rispetto a quello di Epstein. Quest'ultimo potremmo definirlo “l'uomo delle connessioni”, lo scandalo sessuale è solo un paravento e uno specchietto per le allodole se confrontato a tale aspetto più profondo. Quello che penso è che Trump, avendo cavalcato il caso durante la campagna elettorale di fronte a una parte della sua base elettorale, si è accorto, una volta in carica, che non esisteva nessuna lista. Quello che dovrebbe importare del caso Epstein dovrebbe essere la pletora di ONG che ha contribuito a creare (tra cui la Clinton Foundation) e che sappiamo hanno rappresentato uno dei volani per eccellenza con cui far volare dollari all'estero e infiltrati ostili internamente (es. USAID docet). Detto ciò, la bufala del Russiagate, però, è ordini di grandezza superiori più grave rispetto al caso Epstein. Non solo ha il potenziale di mandare in prigione uno dei fautori principali del declino americano, ovvero Obama, ma di smantellare quella rete sotterranea di influenze che hanno i Dem. I tentacoli di questa piovra non finiscono negli Stati Uniti, ma si estendono al mondo intero.

______________________________________________________________________________________

di Peder Zane

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/epstein-and-russiagate)

Stiamo parlando di due storie diverse e di portata diversa.

La prima riguarda la marcia indietro del presidente Trump sulle promesse di pubblicare i documenti governativi collegati al defunto Jeffrey Epstein.

La seconda riguarda le prove che il presidente Obama e i suoi alti funzionari hanno diffuso la falsa narrazione che dipingeva Trump come un agente traditore al soldo della Russia, cosa che ne ha ostacolato, e non poco, il primo mandato.

Mentre la saga di Epstein è una squallida baraonda priva di significato profondo, le nuove rivelazioni sulla bufala russa forniscono dettagli scottanti su uno degli scandali politici più grandi della storia americana.

Indovinate quale stanno usando i media generalisti? Quale stanno cercando di seppellire?

La risposta è ovvia. Se solo affermarlo fosse sufficiente, potremmo ridere della copertura prevedibile e faziosa dei media generalisti. Non è gente seria, purtroppo è gente tremendamente noiosa nei suoi continui tentativi di diffamare Trump, nascondendo al contempo i propri illeciti. La copertura contrastante delle storie di Epstein e del Russiagate è solo l'ultimo esempio di un mondo mediatico che ha perso la bussola.

Innanzitutto, Epstein. Nelle ultime settimane i media generalisti hanno trattato la vicenda come se si trattasse del Watergate. Il New York Times, ad esempio, ha pubblicato più di 50 articoli e pezzi d'opinione su Epstein e Trump tra il 16 e il 23 luglio.

Gran parte del resto dei media generalisti ha seguito l'esempio. A parte una storia salace, seppur insignificante, propinata al Wall Street Journal – secondo cui Trump potrebbe aver contribuito con una lettera scurrile a un libro di auguri per Epstein 23 anni fa – nessuno di loro ha diffuso la notizia, o l'ha fatta avanzare.

L'ultimo articolo di grande successo scritto su Epstein è stato quello di Lee Fang del 21 maggio per RealClearInvestigations, in cui rivelava come i funzionari delle Isole Vergini americane, tra cui la deputata democratica Stacey Plaskett, avrebbero tratto vantaggio da Epstein e lo proteggevano, il quale portava delle ragazzine su un'isola privata di sua proprietà.

Sì, la saga di Epstein è una storia vera. Nonostante le affermazioni contrarie dei media generalisti, c'era una cricca di uomini ricchi e influenti che si divertivano con Epstein – e quasi certamente alcuni di loro facevano sesso con giovani ragazze. Ma è improbabile che le prove di tali atti criminali siano dettagliate nel materiale in possesso del governo federale. Ciononostante l'amministrazione Trump dovrebbe rendere pubblico ciò che ha e lasciare che le cose vadano come devono per queste persone amorali che si sono legate a una persona disgustosa; oppure Trump dovrebbe spiegare apertamente perché questa è una cattiva idea. Un resoconto completo potrebbe essere difficile, data la sentenza recente di un giudice federale della Florida secondo cui la legge “non consente” la divulgazione della testimonianza segreta del Gran Giurì su Epstein, come richiesto dal Dipartimento di Giustizia.

È significativo che la recente copertura mediatica si concentri così tanto su Trump. L'ironia è che sembra essere uno dei pochi uomini onesti nella storia di Epstein. I due erano apparentemente amici un tempo, anche se probabilmente non così vicini, data la mancanza di articoli che li collegassero prima che Trump si candidasse. Sappiamo che Trump è stata una delle poche persone a prendere le distanze da Epstein molto prima che quest'ultimo si dichiarasse colpevole di crimini sessuali nel 2008. Trump ha bandito Epstein da Mar-a-Lago prima del suo arresto, presumibilmente a causa del suo comportamento inquietante nei confronti di una minorenne. Ci sono anche segnalazioni secondo cui Trump potrebbe essere stato colui che ha allertato le autorità sulle predazioni di Epstein, forse non per coscienza ma probabilmente a causa di una controversia immobiliare.

Mentre le testate giornalistiche mainstream si concentrano sulla storia di Epstein, minimizzano le recenti rivelazioni che descrivono dettagliatamente gli sforzi dell'amministrazione Obama per promuovere la bufala Trump/Russia. Secondo i media generalisti la sua amministrazione avrebbe declassificato una serie di nuovi documenti per distogliere l'attenzione dallo scandalo Epstein e per vendicarsi dei suoi presunti nemici.

Qualunque siano le motivazioni di Trump, i documenti appena divulgati sono significativi. Come ha riportato Aaron Maté questa settimana per RealClearInvestigations, essi sono la “conferma” ufficiale della bufala del Russiagate – la Valutazione della Comunità di Intelligence completata nel gennaio 2017 e i rapporti del Procuratore Speciale Robert Mueller e della Commissione del Senato che indaga sulla questione – “hanno tutti escluso i dubbi e le lacune probatorie segretamente individuati dalla stessa comunità di intelligence sull'accusa principale di ingerenza russa”.

La complessa cronologia degli eventi descritta da Maté rende questo punto chiaro: i sospetti che la Russia avesse interferito nelle elezioni del 2016 sono stati riconfezionati come presunti fatti dopo la sorprendente vittoria di Trump nel 2016.

Sappiamo che Wikileaks pubblicò email rubate dal Comitato Nazionale Democratico nell'estate e nell'autunno del 2016. Tuttavia, osserva Maté, una valutazione dell'intelligence del settembre 2016 “non conteneva prove concrete che Putin avesse ordinato il furto di materiale del Partito Democratico nell'ambito di una campagna di influenza a favore di Trump”. Anche i precedenti reportage di Maté per RCI hanno dimostrato che non ci sono prove che la Russia abbia rimosso email dai server del Comitato Nazionale Democratico o le abbia trasmesse a qualcun altro.

Tale valutazione venne ignorata dopo la vittoria di Trump a novembre del 2016. È altrettanto chiaro che il presidente Obama abbia avuto un ruolo chiave nel promuovere la falsa narrazione dell'interferenza russa. Obama – che quell'estate era stato informato dei piani di Hillary Clinton di presentare Trump come un burattino del Cremlino per distogliere l'attenzione dallo scandalo delle sue email – richiese una nuova valutazione di intelligence nel dicembre 2016. Doveva essere un lavoro frettoloso che voleva portare a termine prima di lasciare l'incarico. Quella relazione, redatta in gran parte dall'allora direttore della CIA, John Brennan, soppresse i dubbi di FBI e NSA sulla presunta interferenza russa.

Obama andò oltre. Il 5 gennaio 2017 tenne un incontro nello Studio Ovale con diverse personalità, tra cui il direttore dell'allora FBI, James Comey. Due giorni dopo Comey informò il presidente eletto Trump del dossier Steele – una ricerca, falsa e approssimativa, finanziata dalla campagna elettorale della Clinton, che suggeriva che Trump e i suoi collaboratori fossero stati compromessi dai russi. Quel briefing divenne l'esca di cui i media anti-Trump avevano bisogno per dare rapidamente notizia del dossier fasullo, dando il via alle indagini sul Russiagate.

Due punti: in primo luogo, la Russia probabilmente ha tentato di interferire nelle elezioni del 2016, ma i fatti concreti che conosciamo – che abbiano acquistato una manciata di annunci pubblicitari sui social media e che abbiano probabilmente hackerato i server del DNC, sebbene senza prove di aver rimosso le email pubblicate da Wikileaks – non supportano la famosa affermazione della Relazione Mueller riguardo a un'azione “rampicante e sistematica”.

Ancora più importante, i Democratici e i media generalisti stanno cercando di far finta che abbiamo passato tre anni a discutere dell'ingerenza russa. In realtà, i loro sforzi miravano a dipingere Trump e i suoi soci come alleati traditori di un nemico straniero. Non si è mai trattato di interferenza, ma di collusione.

Credo che questo sia il peggior scandalo della storia americana, perché, a differenza del Watergate – i cui illeciti erano in gran parte confinati alla Casa Bianca – il cancro del Russiagate si è diffuso dalla Casa Bianca alla CIA, all'FBI e ai media generalisti. La mancanza di responsabilità per queste azioni ha dato ai Democratici e ai loro alleati nel mondo del giornalismo un senso di impunità. È per questo che si sono sentiti liberi di mentire sfacciatamente su altre cose, tra cui il portatile di Hunter Biden e la presunta acutezza mentale di Joe Biden.

Queste forze sono così impegnate a nascondere la propria doppiezza che non riescono mai ad ammettere la verità. Mentre le storie del Russiagate e di Epstein sono chiaramente di ordine diverso, i Democratici e i media generalisti continuano a diffondere insistentemente un'immagine speculare delle notizie, sostenendo che le nuove rivelazioni sulla corruzione ai vertici del governo federale siano semplicemente il tentativo di Trump di “deviare” l'attenzione dal caso Epstein.

È un'affermazione talmente ridicola da essere assurda, a meno che non lo facciano loro.

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

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I’d like to begin by telling you something about how I founded the Mises Institute in 1982 and what we are trying to accomplish. Thirty-five years ago, when I was contemplating the creation of a Ludwig von Mises Institute, the Austrian School of economics, and its Misesian branch in particular, were very much in decline. The number of Misesian economists was so small that all of them knew each other personally and could probably have fit in Mises’s small living room. This is a world that young people today, who find Austrian economics all over the place, can hardly imagine.

I wanted to do what I could to promote the Austrian School in general and the life and work of Mises in particular. Mises was a hero both as a scholar and as a man, and it was a shame that neither aspect of his life was being properly acknowledged.

I first approached Mises’s widow, Margit, who was what Murray Rothbard called a “one-woman Mises industry.” After her husband’s death, she made sure his works stayed in print and continued to be translated into other languages. She agreed to be involved and to share her counsel as long as I pledged to dedicate the rest of my life to the Institute. I have kept that pledge. Margit von Mises became our first chairman. How lucky we were to have as her successor, the great libertarian businessman Burt Blumert, who was also a wise advisor from the beginning.

When I told Murray Rothbard about the proposed institute, he clapped his hands with glee. He said he would do whatever was necessary to support it. He became our  first Academic Vice-President and inspiration.

Murray would later say, “Without the founding of the Mises Institute, I am convinced the whole Misesian program would have collapsed.” Of course, we can’t know how things would have turned out had we made different choices. I simply wanted to do what I could, with the help of dear friends like Murray and Burt, to support the Austrian School during some very dark times, and I was prepared to let the chips fall where they may.

At the Mises Institute, we aim to introduce students to the thought of Mises and his great student Murray Rothbard. I am glad to be able to tell you that Mises University 2025, which took place from July 20 to July 26, was the best ever. I was excited to see 125 students from universities all over the world listening with rapt attention to topics in Austrian economics that were often of daunting complexity, such as the time preference theory of interest and Austrian Business Cycle Theory. You don’t have to take my word about how great the lectures were. You can watch the videos on the Mises Institute YouTube channel.

But that’s not all. The students continued to discuss Austrian topics at lunch, in which they could sit with a faculty member of their choice and at dinner. Many of the students took the voluntary written exam, and those who passed had the opportunity to compete for cash prizes and honors.

I don’t have space to sum up all the lectures, but here are a few highlights. In the opening lecture on Sunday night, the great Tom Woods spoke about “Austrian Economics in the Age of MAGA.” He began by recalling the Ron Paul for President Campaign, in which he and I had the honor to be major participants. Dr Paul is of course a great libertarian hero, and Tom mentioned that one thing that had impressed him about the students in the campaign was that, as he put it, “they had done the reading.” The students had studied Mises and Rothbard, in large part through the materials available on the Mises.org website and through their attendance, many more than once, at Mises University and at other programs we feature, such as the Rothbard Graduate Seminar and the Mises Summer Fellows program. To them, “End the Fed” was more than a slogan. They knew exactly what was wrong with the Fed and what needed to replace it.

Unfortunately, Tom continued, this was not true of the young people attracted to Trump’s MAGA movement. It was futile to try to convince them of free market economic policies by explaining the irrefutable arguments of Mises and Rothbard. They would not understand them and would not care even if they did.

But there is another way that has a better chance of success. The MAGA supporters profess to be conservatives, and if we can show them that our policies are more in line with conservative values than theirs are, maybe we can win them over. To that end, Tom noted that American conservatives often oppose Big Government. They correctly see that the State is likely to act in the interests of the elite groups that control it rather than in the interest of ordinary people. Was it likely that Trump’s supposedly rightwing government would do things differently? Far better to trust the voluntary actions of people on the free market. We at least know that voluntary exchanges are in the interest of the people who make them; otherwise, they would not have engaged in them. Maybe they will regret what they have done afterwards, but they have a better chance of being right than the State. Further, another important conservative value is self-reliance. Is it really “conservative” to seek special favors from the State, like tariff protection that harms American consumers, instead of trying to build up your business through your own efforts? Tom, for one, did not think so.

Tom spoke about the insights of the Austrian School, and the opening talk on Monday by our Academic Vice-President Joe Salerno appropriately began with a great talk about “The Birth of the Austrian School.” He began by praising the insights of the Classical School, the predecessors of the marginalist revolution of 1870 and 1871. The great economists of this school, David Hume, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo, realized that market prices shift to meet the changing demand of consumers. They also supported free trade and, for the most part, favored laissez-faire. But although they knew that people wouldn’t voluntarily exchange goods unless both parties expected to benefit, they thought that you couldn’t come up with a theory of value that was based on people’s subjective preferences. The trouble was the diamond-water paradox. Which is more valuable to people, water or diamonds? Obviously, water. People couldn’t survive for more than a couple of days without it, but diamonds are a luxury good that some people enjoy. If goods were valued according to their subjective value, water would have a much higher price than diamonds. But in fact diamonds are extremely expensive, and water is normally free. Even bottled water is very cheap. How can this be?

The answer, Joe explained, is that the economists of the Classical School made a fundamental mistake. They failed to realize that the people are not choosing between the total supply of water and diamonds when they want to make an exchange. They are choosing between individual units of the goods. If this is taken into account, the diamond- water paradox is easily solved. When you buy a good you use the first unit of the good for the use of the good you find most valuable. If, for example, someone stranded in the desert was buying water, he would pay an extremely high price for a small amount of water, since his life depended on it. But after this, as he purchased more and more units of water, the price he would be willing to pay for each additional unit would drop.  This is an example of what is called the law of diminishing marginal utility. Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian School, didn’t call the law by that name, but he clearly understood the idea. Moreover, and this is the key point, the price of the good demanders are willing to pay is the value of the last, or marginal, unit. This is true because the law of one price requires that all units of a good be sold at the same price.

Although the other great marginalist revolutionaries of the 1870s, William Stanley Jevons and Leon Walras, defended the subjective theory of value, the Austrians had an insight that was lacking in the others. They realized that subjective utility cannot be measured. Goods can only be ranked ordinally, i.e., first most valued use, second most valued, etc. As Austrians put it, utility is ordinal, not cardinal.

Our great President of the Mises Institute, Tom DiLorenzo, gave another  brilliant lecture on “Competition and Monopoly.” He showed that Mises and Rothbard both rejected the unrealistic notions of perfect competition and it variants, like monopolistic competition. Perfect competition, which assumes a large number of firms that cannot influence price, isn’t competition at all. Real competition involves rivalry between firms that can influence price. The only valid definition of “monopoly” is a grant of privilege by the state. There cannot be a monopoly on the free market. Furthermore, Tom pointed to his own research that showed that firms accused of being monopolies, like John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, gained their dominant position by supplying better quality and cheaper products than their less successful rivals, who sought to use the Sherman Antitrust Act and other measures to compel them to break up.

I have had space to discuss only a few of the many outstanding lectures, but all of the faculty did an outstanding job. A feature of the faculty that especially delighted me was how many of them, including Mark Thornton, Peter and Sandra Klein, Jonathan and Patrick Newman, Bob Murphy, and Dave Howden were former students at Mises University and our other programs.

I look forward eagerly to Mises University 2026! Let’s do everything we can to encourage promising students we know to attend it.

The post Mises University 2025 appeared first on LewRockwell.

This is a chapter from The Latin America Red Pill (2024) by Fergus Hodgson. An audio version, as of July 2025, is available via Audible and the Impunity Observer.

Note: this account comes from 2017–2018, but I am writing it in 2024. I had a Poets & Quants interview in 2019 about the case, so I am somewhat drawing on that.

After moving on from the PanAm Post in 2016, I debated what to do next with my life. In particular, I wanted to go beyond journalism and add more practical value. Since I loved economics, I looked to finance, a subfield of applied economics.

That led to a search around the world for graduate programs in finance, and eventually I stumbled across the Master of Finance (MFIN) at Francisco Marroquín University (UFM) in Guatemala City. Beyond UFM’s libertarian inclinations—which motivated founder Manuel Ayau (1925–2010), whom I admired—this program had many advantages. I had been to UFM before and could move to Guatemala without any visa challenges, at least for the duration of my studies. There was also no tax on foreign income.

Further, the MFIN had a doble titulación with Tulane University in Louisiana. That means you graduate simultaneously with degrees from two different universities. At the time I was not familiar with this approach, but I had lived in New Orleans and assumed Tulane to be relatively rigorous.

Apparently, the doble titulación is commonplace among Latin American universities, and that should have been a red flag. Typically, students want more prestige from an Anglo-American or European university. Sometimes the lesser programs align with the very top schools in Latin America, such as the Catholic University of Chile.

However, the existence of the doble titulación begs the question: why do Latin Americans strongly prefer the branding associated with universities from outside the region? Further, how desperate are the more prestigious universities to make a buck that they partner with much less selective programs?

Little did I know, but I was soon to find out. I got more of an education than I bargained for.

Warning Signs

People in Guatemala whom I respect and trust suggested this was a risky move, although I did not understand why. One UFM professor told me that the university was going through a lackluster era. A local who had worked at UFM told me she knew of an American who had recently begun studies at UFM and then left abruptly.

However, the MFIN program would allow me to strengthen my Spanish, and at half the price of studying at the Tulane campus (US$33,000 versus about $61,000). It all seemed like an ideal fit and even too good to be true. The MFIN director (who soon resigned from UFM) interviewed me and welcomed me to the UFM Business School (Escuela de Negocios). With admission in hand and an apartment sorted within walking distance, I was eager to get started with readings and classes.

I must admit that the technical Spanish spoken in finance classes was beyond what I was accustomed to, and it was awkward because I knew all the students understood my English. Often, I would approach lecturers during or after class and get clarification in English.

However, I soon also became aware of a serious problem: everyone else knew each other, and they coordinated their quizzes and assignments, both during and after class. I was the lone non-Hispanic, and I can only remember there being one or two Latinos not born in Guatemala, out of perhaps 40 students in the cohort.

Coming to a Head

Cheating—or collaboration, if we are being charitable—seemed to be taken for granted. I told one of the professors that everyone was copying each other on the quizzes, and she shrugged. She already had a lot on her plate.

I tried to brush this aside, but it became too much. We went to New Orleans to complete a semester-long class in three days at the Tulane campus. This seemed like a charade to me.

I have since learned that many business schools offer hypercondensed classes with minimal educational value. Retention falls markedly with lecture time, especially after 45 minutes, so this is an unhelpful way to learn. It works great if you are trying to cram in credits and care not for the material.

We received a take-home exam that was due in two weeks. The Tulane lecturer warned against cheating, but I thought he must have been joking. Did he seriously believe the students would heed the warning? To be frank, the exam was difficult, and I struggled with material that was not familiar to me. There had been no tutoring or small-group discussions for this class, so I was a bit lost.

Meanwhile, I noticed people were bringing their exams to class and working on them together, right in front of the other lecturers. This was far from a one-time occurrence, so eventually I got my phone out and photographed people passing around copies of the exam.

At this point, I expressed my concerns to the Tulane lecturer and asked to speak with the dean of Tulane’s Freeman School of Business. I also met with the UFM Business School dean and the rector.

Initially, these men welcomed my feedback, although from memory I only got to speak with the assistant dean at the Freeman School. However, they swiftly realized they would not have a program if they cracked down, since nigh everyone appeared to be cheating. Although the Tulane lecturer sympathized with me and did not like the situation, he did not want to proceed with attempting to punish anyone.

A UFM instructor, familiar with my concerns, told me that he and his peers were aware of the widespread cheating. They believed letting such people in was a business necessity: the school needed the tuition. This particular instructor also said pushing back against cheating would make other Guatemalan universities not want to hire him.

The dean of the UFM Business School saw me as the problem and offered to assist with transferring me to a school in Spain. A move to Spain did not interest me, and I asked whether I could finish out my MFIN with Tulane at the New Orleans campus. Even if everyone was cheating at UFM and degrading the value of the degree, at least at Tulane I believed I would get a better learning environment. However, neither side was willing to accommodate such a move.

The Final Straw

This was all happening as one of my classes back in Guatemala City was finishing up. We went into the final exam one evening, but the professor was feeling ill. He stayed with us for a while, but then he asked how close people were to finishing. Since no one was done, he said he would leave and people could hand in the exam at noon the next day.

As soon as he left, the students went right to work collaborating on the exam. Apparently, a couple of people had copies of last year’s exam, and they were helping the rest, since it was the same exam.

That was more than I could take, so I walked out and never returned to a UFM class. If I could not take the program seriously, how could I expect anyone else to?

Moving On

Unfortunately, the timing was awkward, being early 2018 by then: too late for me to easily get funding for top US programs that year. Some solid programs admitted me but not with sufficient funding to make it prudent. I remained in Guatemala, worked on other endeavors, and prepared to enter business school in 2019.

Fortunately, my GMAT (business-school exam) result proved high enough for me to receive three full-tuition scholarship offers to study finance at Boston College, Johns Hopkins University, and Rice University. They were the best schools I had applied to, and Boston College also offered a stipend to cover my living expenses. Other schools were writing to me with offers and encouraging me to apply, including one ranked in the top 10 in the United States.

In the end, I opted for Rice, felt vindicated, and graduated with my MBA in finance in 2021. Unfortunately, my rural background meant I had no idea about the scholarships on offer from US business schools. Further, I had underestimated my capacity to get admitted to top programs. With hindsight, I would have approached the business-school endeavor much differently.

A Few Take-Home Lessons

As you can guess, I did not leave with positive feelings towards UFM, although I still have honorable, impressive friends working there. I had hoped to support what I believed to be a bastion of classical liberalism. In the end, UFM spat me out, and Tulane turned a blind eye.

The doble titulación appears to be a low-effort money-maker for Tulane. Presumably, the university, which has been on a downward slide for many years, is desperate for cash and willing to dilute its brand value by selling degrees abroad. Tulane’s Freeman School actually cheated on its own exams, metaphorically speaking. For at least five years (2007–2011), the Freeman School faked admission and test numbers to artificially improve its standing on the US News & World Report rankings.

When my interview with Poets & Quants was published in 2019, some people said I had made it up. Someone translated the interview to Spanish and published it all on an X thread, so that sparked plenty of finger pointing.

However, most Guatemalans I met wondered why I was surprised at all. Some laughed about the story, since they were all too familiar with similar patterns. Libertarian friends from Latin America sighed and said UFM, despite noble origins, had been Latinized.

In a low-trust society such as Guatemala, people perceive cheating very differently. They go along to get along and are inclined to see you as foolish for sticking to the rules or caring about academic standards. For most of them, that is all they know.

That is one reason why I do not blame any one person, although I wish the business-school deans had been more helpful. The students and faculty were working in a difficult, style-over-substance scenario that disincentivized integrity. Their pragmatism was predictable and stemmed from deeper cultural challenges. Locals are not going to change for one or even a cluster of new arrivals, so do not expect them to.

Although I could have helped the UFM Business School raise its profile and compete internationally, there appeared to be little interest in the idea. The students and faculty touted the notion that the school was number-one in Guatemala, which did not impress me. UFM fails to make the top 250 universities in QS Latin America rankings and comes 49th in Central America.

My experience in the school was somewhat of a microcosm of the broader Guatemalan (chapín) society. While you might think the professional and wealthier classes would be eager to welcome foreign entrepreneurs and investors, that is not typically the case. When you are at the top, you want to stay there and preserve the status quo. Outsiders are disruptive to the economy and the social hierarchy.

Anyone thinking of moving to start a business or study in Guatemala should go in with his eyes open. Even if we ignore the traffic, pollution, and crime, Guatemala has customs that keep her poor. In particular, overcoming and not getting tainted by corruption is a tremendous challenge. A friend and rule-of-law advocate there warned me I would struggle to rise without compromising myself. Then, if you do become successful, you will have a target on your back and require even more comprehensive security.

Revealed rather than stated preferences are incredibly telling. Guatemalans sing “Soy chapín de sangre, vas a respetarme” with vigor (I am Guatemalan by blood; you will respect me), but they move or study abroad when they can. They do not trust their own institutions and, as a general rule and default position, nor should you.

This is copyrighted material from The Latin America Red Pill (2024), published with permission from the author.

The post Inside Guatemala’s Libertarian University appeared first on LewRockwell.

Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News – Israelis have been buying land in Cyprus, and the locals are concerned.  Why should they be concerned?  Cypriots live right across the eastern Mediterranean Sea facing Palestine, so they must know what has been taking place since the end of World War II when Zionist Jews from Europe and elsewhere started occupying Palestinian land.  It began in 1947 after Great Britain decided to withdraw from Palestine which led the United Nations to propose a partition plan that would divide Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state with an internationally administered Jerusalem.  But the Zionists did not agree to the proposed borders set forth by the UN and planned an agenda for its territorial expansion by seizing Palestinian land by force since Israel was founded on May 14, 1948.

However, when it comes to the Middle East and its surrounding areas, Zionist ambitions have no boundaries.  Cyprus is the latest island-nation in the eastern Mediterranean Sea that is witnessing a silent invasion of its homeland by Zionists who are buying real estate in record numbers.

In an analysis by The Cradle, Israelis have been purchasing a significant portion of real estate in Cyprus and the people have been noticing, “The opposition in Cyprus has recently warned that Israel is establishing a “backyard” in the EU island nation, in response to increasing property acquisitions in the country by Israeli investors.” 

But of course, it’s antisemitic to say something like that, right?  Well, Israelis and many people in the West who support Israel are already making such claims of antisemitism.  Al Mayadeen reported that “Observers note that criticism of Israeli policy has increasingly been met with accusations of antisemitism, with some critics arguing that legitimate political concerns are being rhetorically neutralized by invoking collective victimhood.”

According to the local media news Politis, Cyprus’s chief Rabbi and head of the Chabad movement, Zeev Raskin said that “More than 12,000 Jews have passed through the country’s six Chabad houses in the past 10 days, receiving food, assistance with shelter and emergency assistance of all kinds.” As of June 2025, Raskin estimated there were over 15,000 Jews who remained in Cyprus.

The Jerusalem Post published ‘Jews buying Cyprus’: Left-wing leader’s remark sparks diplomatic storm’ that described what is happening in Cyprus as Antisemitism:

Cyprus’s main opposition party, AKEL, faced renewed accusations of antisemitism this week after its secretary-general, Stefanos Stefanou, repeated on state radio that Israeli investors were “buying up” swaths of land, erecting “Zionist schools and synagogues,” and turning coastal districts into gated “ghettos.”

The secretary-general, Stefanos Stefanou said that “Israel does not tolerate any criticism and wants to control everyone” and that “the party merely seeks tighter rules on foreign real-estate sales.”

Israeli ambassador Oren Anolik wasted no time and criticized Stefanou’s statements on Israelis buying real estate especially in Southern Cyprus and pulled out the antisemitism card:

Israel’s ambassador in Nicosia swiftly condemned the remarks. In a post on X, Oren Anolik said Stefanou’s language crossed from political critique into “plain-and-simple antisemitism” because it singled out a community “based on its identity,” as reported by KNews, the Cypriot edition of Kathimerini 

Stefanos Stefanu, Secretary-General of Cyprus’s left-wing AKEL party, has expressed alarm over increasing Israeli property investments in southern Cyprus, labeling the trend a potential national security concern. Speaking at the AKEL party congress, Stefanu noted that Israeli… pic.twitter.com/8kRCAx34xo

— Middle East Monitor (@MiddleEastMnt) June 26, 2025

According to the Jerusalem post, it is a “classic antisemitic trope” so Stefanou can get himself into trouble, “The latest Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) weekly newsletter devoted a section to Cyprus under “Antisemitic Hate-Speech Incidents.” The report quoted Stefanou’s radio comments and Anolik’s rebuttal as an example of “classic antisemitic tropes” entering mainstream European discourse, alongside incidents in France and Argentina” 

Not only are the Israelis buying up real estate, they may get involved in the liberation of Northern Cyprus according to a report in Israel Hayom by Shay Gal, ‘Northern Cyprus is also an Israeli problem’ which describes Northern Cyprus as a terrorist haven and for Israel, that’s a problem they must face sooner or later:  

Cyprus recently marked the 51st anniversary of Turkey’s 1974 invasion – a lasting trauma for Greek Cypriots. For decades, Israel treated this conflict as a distant Greek-Turkish issue, but must now clearly acknowledge: Northern Cyprus is not just a Greek-Cypriot problem – it is also an Israeli one. In practical terms, Northern Cyprus functions as an international no-man’s land, enabling Turkey and terrorist groups like Hamas and Iran’s Quds Force unrestricted operational freedom

Can Turkey be a target for the Israelis in Northern Cyprus?

Since the invasion, which killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands, Turkey’s presence has quietly transformed. The area is now a forward base for Turkey’s military, hosting sophisticated weapons systems, cyber surveillance, and signals intelligence (SIGINT) infrastructure capable of intercepting both military and civilian Israeli communication, alongside covert terrorist facilities supported by Ankara. According to leaked intelligence documents, senior Turkish officials characterized Northern Cyprus as an ideal location “where anything can be done without interference by police or judicial oversight”.

Turkey can deploy armed drones from Lefkoniko airfield – converted from an abandoned airport into a drone base amid regional gas disputes – far more rapidly than from its mainland bases.

Israel views Turkey as a serious threat to Greece, Cyprus and of course, to Israel because they have links to extremist groups:

Meanwhile, the EU continues security cooperation with Ankara despite Turkey’s occupation of EU territory – a contradiction undermining EU credibility and posing risks to Greece, Cyprus, and Israel as well. Ankara’s aggressive foreign policy, marked by unlawful occupations, sanctions violations, and ties to extremist groups, aligns it with rogue regimes rather than NATO allies. Given NATO’s requirement of unanimous consent and Turkey’s strained relations within the alliance, Article 5 protection is unlikely even in unrelated conflicts, and practically impossible regarding Northern Cyprus, internationally recognized as Cypriot territory

According to the report, Israel must realign its priorities and liberate Northern Cyprus from the Turkish threat:

It is not Israel’s role or desire to liberate Northern Cyprus. However, if the threat from the area reaches a critical threshold, Israel’s strategic posture must shift. Israel, in coordination with Greece and Cyprus, must prepare a contingency operation for liberating the island’s north. Such an operation would neutralize Turkish reinforcement capabilities from the mainland, eliminate air-defense systems in Northern Cyprus, destroy intelligence and command centers, and finally remove Turkish forces, restoring internationally recognized Cypriot sovereignty

The sudden urgency for Israel’s involvement to remove Turkey’s position in Northern Cyprus should be a concern for all of Cyprus.  Can Israel leverage the animosity between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots and create a new civil war, a sort of a divide and conquer strategy?

‘Poseidon’s Wrath’?

Can Israel establish a contingency plan in the near future for Northern Cyprus?  It looks like Israel Hayom’s author, Shay Gal, who is described as “an expert on international politics, crisis management, and strategic communications” is giving Israeli officials a new idea:

This contingency plan could be termed “Poseidon’s Wrath,” named after the Greek god of the sea, highlighting maritime dominance and the devastating consequences of a worst-case scenario. The name underscores Israel’s focus on safeguarding strategic maritime assets and maintaining open sea lanes critical for regional security. This would remain a contingency plan: Israel does not seek confrontation but must remain fully prepared. The Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, previously regarded as a highly unlikely scenario, was eventually executed. Turkey, currently constructing the problematic Akkuyu nuclear plant on its Mediterranean coast – a project Russia is quickly abandoning due to recognized risks – should internalize this lesson

Can this be a turning point for the “Cypriot Israeli brotherhood”?  A brewing conflict in Northern Cyprus?

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The post The Zionist Occupation of Cyprus? appeared first on LewRockwell.

I defy anyone to name one single war in the last 80 years that was fought for the National Security of the United States. All of these wars were fought for money and power promoted by government and media propaganda supported by a false flag or two.

It is impossible to tell an injured veteran or a grieving  family that their loss was based on a scam by government and the Military Industrial Complex of the Parasitic Super Rich Ruling Class (PSRRC).The truth is that these veterans did serve the United States honorably  but the government sold their services to the highest bidder much like mercenaries with a great deal of subterfuge, propaganda and payoffs..

Our Constitution requires a Declaration of War for every  war but there was not one single declaration in the last 80 years. The simple truth is that  Congress funded these wars for profit by the Military Industrial Complex and in return got their bribes.

The wars in the last 80 years resulted in the deaths of 105,000 members of our armed forces, millions of innocents killed and entire countries devastated, all for profits and the hatred of people where we fought without justification..

Without the Coup of 1913 the traitors could never have financed these wars.

While it is true that the countries directly involved  were major losers from the wars, the citizens of the United States lost more than their sons and daughters, they lost their prosperity,  the American dream, the Constitutional Republic, etc.

Wars and Foreign Aid both enrich the Military Industrial Complex of the PSRRC, but at least Foreign Aid does not result in our military being returned in body bags.

I strongly maintain that Wars without a Declaration of War and Foreign Aid of any type is Unconstitutional and those in Congress who vote for it are traitors and should be prosecuted. Those in Congress who vote for wars and Foreign Aid are well aware of the death and destruction they are causing. But don’t give a Damn as long as they get their bribes. In addition to the loss of life the American people suffer from increased taxes, inflation, reduction in assets, declining dollar, declining living standard, etc.

It should also be noted that the rest of the world hates us for using our power and resources in the interest of business, power, profits and nothing for humanity or the American people.

We must look at our Foreign Aid to Ukraine of $ 182.8 Billion. Everything reported about Ukraine by Government and Media was mostly a Damn lie. There is ample evidence that the United States was mostly responsible for this war. We have no business defending Europe when they refuse to defend themselves and can’t reciprocate. We have drawn down our military stockpiles and further impoverished our citizens for nothing.

Foreign Aid to Israel is as wrong as any Foreign Aid but is complicated by the fact that no one can find fault with Israel without being labeled Anti- Semitic.

We regularly give Israel $3.8 Billion a year, since Oct. 7 attack we gave them an additional $17.9 Billion and we spent $ 4.86 Billion attacking Houthi in defense of Israel and shipping. These expenditures add up to $ 26.56 Billion. We have no reason to be involved in Israel or anywhere else except for our traitors in government and the extraordinary power of the Jewish lobby and media. I leave it to the books and countless articles written on the subject to explain the problem.

We have spent over $ 200 Billion on foreign aid to Israel and Ukraine where in truth we have no national security interest. Foreign Aid to these two countries equals about 20% of the cost of our armed forces. Our only reason is to satisfy the supporters of both countries and the Military Industrial Complex that is getting rich. The American people are of course suffering to pay for it with all the usual hardships.

Our infrastructure is crumbling and people are living on the streets in tents. We have absolutely no excuse or reason to support any wars or foreign aid as both are unconstitutional. The legislators who support Foreign Aid and Wars should be prosecuted and thrown out of office. The only way this outrage is going to stop is for citizens to vote against the warmongers in Congress and prosecute them.

Simply stated you must inform your Member of Congress that if they vote to approve any war or fund any Foreign Aid program that you will actively campaign against them.

May God Bless You and the Republic.

The post I Am Not Against Wars To Defend the United States But there Has Never Been One in Last 80 Years appeared first on LewRockwell.

We live in a country whose citizenry have been, almost from the beginning of the Republic, carefully coached to observe all the requisite protocols. What that means, as a practical matter, is, quite simply, keeping religion and politics in separate compartments. In other words, Church and State must never be seen in the same room. That being the case, the very idea of a confessional society becomes an affront to both law and custom. For all the appeal it may have in theory, the actual reality of a Christian culture tends to make people nervous and unsure. Is this really something, they ask themselves, we want to organize our lives around? The prospect appears to be an unwelcome one.

This is especially true, I think, for native-born Americans, men and women whose sensibilities have been largely formed by the framers of the U.S. Constitution and the whole elaborate mythology that has grown up around it. To propose a model of governance along the lines of, say, Christopher Dawson’s vision, where faith and life go together because otherwise one is forced to live an almost schizophrenic life, provokes a certain amount of pushback. Why, it seems positively medieval. Certain disclaimers, therefore, will need to be made.

Much of the problem, it seems, turns on the word public, a pesky little thing that tends to set people on edge. And yet what the word itself signifies is something entirely natural and unavoidable; it should not in the least feel threatening to anyone. And that is the fact that every culture is nothing other than an outward sign of, an embodiment even, of faith, any faith, so long as it finds enfleshment in people’s lives. People need to see and to smell, to touch, taste, and hear the sounds of a culture. And so, what every culture consists of is nothing other than the reification of a people’s religion, which is as natural and necessary as the air we breathe.

Take that as a given, therefore, a nonnegotiable minimum, and the whole argument falls neatly into place. Christian Culture—Catholic Christendom, if you like—is simply what happens when a political society finds its animating and fundamental principle of unity in the public profession of the Catholic Thing.

Again, the operative word here is public. Which is to say, it has got to be given visible, palpable expression. It can never be a mere Platonic idea, as in the Methodist version of the Catholic Mass, in which the Real Presence of Christ becomes an entirely ethereal event at which a group of people come together to evoke memories of Jesus, awakening perhaps a warm fuzzy or two over a glass of grape juice. There is no existential import to the event at all. And, to be sure, in its absence nothing real will ever happen. Only a pale, etiolated symbol lifted up, shared among others but never offered to God. Never, as in the sacrificial setting of Roman Catholic worship, God offering God to God, which is the deepest meaning and application of the phrase in persona Christi.

So much then for the definition. And the disclaimer? It is very difficult for native born Americans to think like this, including a great many Catholic Americans, who almost invariably think of themselves as primarily and essentially Americans. And as for the so-called Catholic component, it is at best an accidental and fortuitous addition, a mere footnote, easily detachable from the main event.

And the main event? Wholesale Americanization of countless Catholic ethnic groups pouring into this country over the past couple of centuries, their memories of the homeland progressively bleached away in order to hasten the day of complete absorption into the American Way of Life. Among the saddest examples, surely, are all those wonderful Italians who braved an unknown ocean to get here, only to forget as promptly as possible the language of Dante.

The point is, we Americans do not ordinarily think in the categories of Christian Culture when navigating our way through the American experience. And not, heaven knows, because we happen to be less generous or sincere in the practice of our Christian religion. It is not a moral failing so much as it is a failure of imagination, an absentee historical sense, for which no one is to blame. It is simply because we Americans have spent roughly the past two and a half centuries in a place where the whole corporate and institutional life of the nation has developed without any explicit or public recourse to Catholic Christianity at all.

Our Founding Fathers, for all that their vision remains noble and pure, were not exactly driven by holy desire. They were not interested in spreading the Gospel or creating a Christian Commonwealth designed to help others reach the Kingdom of God. If anything, their religious persuasion tended to be deist, given over to a God who was no more than a Clockmaker, who got everything going, saw it all ticking happily away, and then pretty much retired to His celestial God-Cave.

Ours is the first nation under God which makes no real provision for God in its public life, owing to a great and sundering wall of separation between Church and State, religion and politics, faith and life. Isn’t this why, to use Professor Dawson’s phrase, “the historic reality of Christian Culture,” which is the outcome of a people’s consecration to God of the entirety of the temporal order, could not possibly have emerged from within the American historical experience? With the lamentable result, to be sure, of our having marginalized whole areas of human experience, areas left untouched by the richness of the intersection of faith and life, grace and nature, eternity and time. Because it is only there, as the poet Eliot reminds, that all the polarities come dramatically together.

There at the still point of the turning world…
Where past and future are gathered…
Except for the point, the still point
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

Has he not also reminded us that “A people without history is not redeemed from time,/For history is a pattern of timeless moments”?

We live in a society in which there are two and only two things that we must never talk about at parties and in public places. It is the great taboo tyrannizing over the world we inhabit, a world we ourselves have built in large part to avoid having to talk about them. And what are the two great unmentionables? Religion and politics. And yet they are the only two things in the world worth talking about. Worth fighting about, actually. “From quiet homes and first beginnings,” writes Hilaire Belloc, “Out to the undiscovered ends/There’s nothing worth the wear of winning/But laughter and the love of friends.”

It is from that world, a world configured to Christ, that we are likely to find such “laughter and friends.” Enough, certainly, to make “the wear of winning” not just worthwhile to have but both honorable and necessary to defend as well.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post Religion and Politics in Public Life appeared first on LewRockwell.

The disastrous jobs-numbers that were released on Friday August 1st, showing that the U.S. added only 73,000 jobs in July and a mere 106,000 jobs since May (while the U.S. economy needs to add 80,000 to 100,000 jobs each month in order to replace employees who leave the workforce for retirement or incapacity), mean that the enormous uncertainty that Trump’s tariffs have created for business planners — whose top concern is their supply-chains, which need to be planned months in advance of signing contracts with suppliers — are crashing the U.S. economy. I therefore had always had been expecting this collapse to happen, and was consequently very surprised by the favorable May and June numbers, but now they have been drastically revised downward, which suggests that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had been padding the employment numbers during those two months, and that its Commissioner had finally decided not to do it yet a third time, because that would only lead to an even bigger reality-deficit building up, and so the person would then definitely be investigated for having committed fraud. But, anyway, this supply-chain issue is the critically important one, though the U.S. press, for some reason, had been paying little attention to it. So, that problem has simply been quietly festering till now.

For example, if a supplier is in China (the biggest exporter to the U.S.) or in Mexico (the second-biggest exporter to the U.S.), then all of the unclarity till now, regarding what Trump’s tariffs would be on those countries, has made impossible for an American corporation to know whether or not to switch to importing from a different country — which would mean for the U.S. company to go through a possibly months-long searching-and-negotiating process, of finding and contracting with a different supplier, in a different country.

Trump did not start his second term on January 20th by announcing what his tariffs would be, but instead started, at that time, his own negotiating-process with all countries, in order to determine what his tariffs would be. Actually, he still is doing it. And he constantly is changing what his tariffs will be. He is thereby killing the American economy. Republicans in Congress, who have been voting for Trump’s bills, are going to have a lot of explaining to do, but the cake has, by now, already been baked for the 2026 mid-term elections; and, so, Trump will start 2027 with a Democratic-Party-led Congress, which will make Biden’s last two years in office look like a bipartisan holiday by comparison.

The announcement on August 1st by the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, was immediately followed by Trump’s firing of her. President Biden had nominated McEntarfer in July 2023, but she didn’t enter office until after the U.S. Senate approved her nomination by a vote of 88 to 8 on 11 January 2024, and her first day in office was 29 January 2024. Ever since then, she was heading the agency. Prior to her, the agency had been headed by an interim Commissioner (not confirmed by the Senate), William J. Wiatrowski, for almost a year, and he takes over now, without Senate confirmation (which the law requires), again as an interim Commissioner. So, Trump will now be getting his numbers from Wiatrowski, who had been serving from 28 March 2023, to 28 January 2024, during Biden’s Administration (and is therefore, yet again, a Biden appointee). (Irrespective of whether McEntarfer had been, as Trump claimed, falsifying the numbers during Biden’s Presidency, his having waited till now to fire her is itself a black mark upon him; and, to the international financial community, the credibility of America’s financial reports has been severely damaged by the entire incident. It shows that — regardless of McEntarfer — “The Emperor has no clothes.”)

Trump’s having immediately fired McEntarfer sent shock waves throughout the global financial community, which compounded their shock earlier in the day from the drastically revised-downward prior published jobs figures from May and June; and the result from this double-whammy will be a global collapse in the confidence-level in U.S. Treasury bonds. We are consequently experiencing a turning-point downward in the U.S. as the world’s imperial power. The U.S. empire (almost all of Europe, almost all of the Western Hemisphere, plus Israel, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, and Australia) has reached its pinnacle, and the world-center is now definitely in Asia, especially if Russia, China, and Iran, will form a mutual-defense treaty, which will be especially important to defend against America’s NATO treaty organization. If it will, and if it invites into itself any member-nation of NATO that will exit NATO, then the prospects could be bright for the world. But, otherwise, the prospects are dark, because any empire during its declining phase intensifies its aggressiveness. Simply to passively wait for the U.S. empire to end would therefore likely mean that the increasingly-desperate-to-maintain-its-hegemony U.S. Government will become even more boldly aggressive than it already is. The likely outcome from that would, of course, be World War Three (the end of the world).

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and, not knowing which to choose, long I stood, peering down both as far as I could, to where they disappeared in the undergrowth. … I took one, and that has made all the difference.” An abbreviation of the classic poem about decisions, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”

But that is hardly the only indication that Emperor Trump is so desperate as to be going crazy with his failures and with his ever-rising threats and retaliations:

Also on August 1st, Trump, on his Truth Social, posted the following in reply to a statement by Russia’s #2 leader Dmitry Medvedev that if the U.S. will push things too far and force a WW3, then Russia’s “Dead Hand” automated nuclear response to an American blitz attack will still decimate the U.S., and Trump announced there that, in retaliation to what he takes as a personal insult, he is now sending two nuclear submarines right up close to Russia; Trump was, apparently, affronted by Medvedev’s statement that a WW3 would have no winners:

Truth Details

4453 replies

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

10.6k

ReTruths

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Aug 01, 2025, 12:53 PM

This article was originally published on Eric’s Substack.

The post Trump’s Effectiveness Has Now Been Shattered. Dems Will Win the Mid-Terms. appeared first on LewRockwell.

In recent years I’ve often thought that we, as a society, fail to appreciate how much our high living standard—our safety, creature comforts, and conveniences—are provided by an unseen and unsung army of skilled laborers.

Flip a switch and you have light; turn on a tap and you have clean water; adjust the thermostat and you have heat or AC; depress a lever and you flush the toilet. It wasn’t so long ago—a little over a century—that such conveniences were not available to even kings and emperors. Now most houses in the developed world are equipped with them.

Most of us take these comforts and conveniences—and hundreds of others—for granted. Likewise, we give little thought to the skilled workers who maintain them. If our civilization is going to maintain itself, we must have a large, skilled, and reliable workforce.

My recent trip home from Europe caused me to become concerned that airline maintenance departments are struggling to maintain their fleets of aging aircraft. For me, the result of mechanical problems was a comical experience of hassle and inconvenience. However, I fear that if airline maintenance departments are indeed understaffed with skilled and reliable people, the consequences could eventually be far more serious.

My journey began at the Vienna airport, where I zipped through security and quickly boarded my BA flight. I had a very tight connection in Heathrow, but it looked like we were going to push off on time.

Then the captain came on the PA. With pretty good Hugh Grant-bumbling British charm, he explained that the cargo door sensor was indicating the door was ajar, even though it seemed to be closed.

“But no worries, ladies and gentleman, the engineer will soon be here, put some magic spray on the thing, and then we’ll be off.”

The captain’s prophecy proved to be true, and we departed 25 minutes late. This would give me exactly 30 minutes on the ground in Heathrow to get to my connecting flight’s gate before boarding began.

We landed at Heathrow and pulled up to our gate. Glancing out a port window, I saw the jet-bridge. For some reason the aircraft had parked 70 yards from it, and it appeared to be the jet-bridge operator’s first day on the job.

Ever so slowly and halting, with multiple lateral corrections made with each foot advanced toward the aircraft, the jet-bridge seemed to be an eternity away from reaching us. Watching it inch forward was sheer agony. At last it made it to the plane and I got off and sprinted up the jet-bridge.

“Just follow the purple connections signs” said the stewardess as I set forth like Pheidippides running from Marathon to Athens.

Heathrow was apparently laid out by a drunk madman. My arrival gate might as well have been in another county, with a series of interminable corridors turning at right angles onto yet more interminable corridors.

At last I arrived at the security checkpoint just before the international departures section of Terminal 3. The line was long, but it moved fairly fast—until I arrived at the scanners. The lady directly in front of me was in her seventies and sitting in a wheelchair. A couple of security guys helped her out of her chair to hobble through the scanner, and she set off the alarm.

This initiated an extraordinary search of the poor old, disabled woman for weapons or explosives. The only rational explanation I could think of was that security was concerned that she was cognitively impaired and had been tricked into embedding C-4 on her person. Multiple scans of her limbs and swabbing of her hands for ammonium nitrate or whatever—all the while with me standing behind her, waiting for my turn to proceed through the scanner.

Finally I got through, but then the carry-on bag conveyor seized for no apparent reason. Two minutes elapsed, and then another two, and at last the belt started to move and my briefcase emerged, but then stopped again in plain sight but just beyond my reach—so close and yet so far away.

Finally it inched forward; I grabbed it and set off on the home stretch to my gate, which proved to be the furthest away in the entire terminal. I sprinted over half a mile before I finally reached it, a taste of rust in my mouth from running at maximum heart rate for about 5 minutes.

The flight was already boarding. I went my seat and tried to get some sleep for the remainder of the boarding process.

We took off at 11:00 a.m. sharp. About forty minutes into the flight, the cabin was prepared for meal service, and a pleasant feeling of well-being swept over me. I looked forward to eating lunch, as I had skipped breakfast and was hungry. After lunch, a long nap and then maybe a bit of reading. I reckoned I would, in just over eight hours, arrive in Dallas and have dinner with my mother that evening. It was a pleasant thought.

At 11:45, the captain came on the PR and said:

Folks, I am sorry to disturb you, but due to a mechanical problem, we cannot fly with this plane across the Atlantic, and we must return to London. I can assure you there is no danger, but for strict, regulatory reasons, we must take this precaution. We are about thirty minutes from London, and as soon as we are back on the ground, we should have additional information for you.

Thirty minutes elapsed, and then forty-five, and still the aircraft was at level flight at over thirty thousand feet. Clearly we weren’t flying back to London—at least not directly. A stewardess walked past.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but I don’t think we’re flying to London. Where are we flying?” I asked.

“We are flying to London, but first we must dump fuel because we are too heavy to land.”

Finally we landed in London. The captain came on the PA and explained in unusually formal English, suggesting a literary bent, that the AC packs on both engines—crucial for maintaining a comfortable cabin temperature and pressure—had failed. Additionally, the flight attendants had heard unusual mechanical sounds and detected an acrid smell. Though the engines had continued to run, the loss of the AC packs had obliged the captain to turn the airship back.

There we were, stopped on the tarmac at Heathrow with no gate assignment, waiting for a maintenance crew to assess the problem and ascertain how long it would take to fix it. I figured there was no way that two broken AC packs would be fixed anytime soon. The plane would have to go into a service hangar.

It seemed that all we could do was hope that American could scramble another 777—just as the airline had done on my outbound flight from Dallas when our first 777 had developed a maintenance issue after we pushed back.

To me, it it seemed like yesterday that the fabled “Triple 7” had entered service in 1995. Back then I was an aviation buff in my twenties and had marveled at the new machine with its stupendously strong airframe and huge new GE 90 turbofan engines—the biggest ever developed, producing up to 115,000 pounds of thrust. Now it seemed like an old horse—still willing to work, but often injured and in constant need of veterinarian care.

The captain came on the PA and explained that the plane could not be fixed with us onboard, so we would have to get off and go back to the terminal. Moreover, because he was reaching the end of his legally allowed daily work limit, he was signing off and wished us the best of luck.

It was, he elaborated, unclear how we were going to get to Dallas. One “hypothetical possibility,” he explained, was that American Airlines could get us on an American flight to JFK at some point that evening.

“From JFK, we will, out of courtesy, arrange flights on other airlines to your final destination,” he explained.

How courteous, I thought. After all, I could have foraged for a connecting flight from JFK to Dallas on some other airline. American Airlines was really going the extra mile to volunteer to get me from New York to Dallas.

At last the buses arrived and took us to the terminal, but our only instruction was to “follow the purple signs for transfer.” Transfer to what?

My AA flight alert text message was going off every two minutes with different announcements about our new flight time. The first said we’d be taking off in 30 minutes, the second said 4:00 p.m., the third said 2:00 am, then a fourth said 10:00 am, and then a fifth said we were flying to JFK at 7:00 a.m.

A group of us arrived at what appeared to be an AA transfer desk. One agent told us to line up, then another told us to follow her back in the direction from which we’d come, and then another directed us to go through UK pass control and collect our bags. This we did, but when we arrived at the baggage claim, there was nothing on the digital display about which carousel would dispense our bags.

Word spread among my fellow stranded passengers that AA had a special baggage claim desk at the end of the corridor. We herded towards the desk and were met with a formidably long line. Then I heard talk that our bags would arrive at Carousel 5. By then I’d resigned myself to spending the night in London and logged onto my laptop with my cell phone hotspot to look for a room.

Then I heard someone say that AA was handing out hotel vouchers. I approached the man and asked, “Vouchers for what hotel?”

“The IBIS at Heathrow,” he replied.

I thought about the prospect of checking into the Heathrow IBIS—even though we still had no idea when our flight was departing—and my heart sank. I imagined myself in a grim modernist room with a stained carpet feeling sorry for myself. No, as tired as I was, I was determined to make the best of my night in the British capital.

I booked a room at the Pelham in South Kensington—a charming little boutique inn in a Victorian townhouse.

“Any idea when the luggage is going to come out?” a female voice said. I looked up from my laptop and saw an attractive young blonde woman.

“No,” I replied. “No one knows when the luggage will appear, or if it will ever appear. Maybe it no longer exists.”

She laughed and gave me what I interpreted to be a flirtatious look.

“Are you also stuck in London for the night,” I asked, wondering if she was akin to the sorceress Circe, who persuades Odysseus to stick around on the island of Aeaea.

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