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Writes Jerome Barber:

A great article by Dr. Clyde Wilson.  I really like his statement about loving our people and the land.

Too many modern Christians have made an idol of the U.S. government.

And that my friends, is a real problem.

See here.

The post Christian Nationalism appeared first on LewRockwell.

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

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(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/quando-i-keynesiani-prevedono-un)

Mi emoziono sempre per una correzione di mercato quando leggo che il consenso keynesiano prevede un disastro. Le stesse persone che sostenevano che la stampa di moneta sfrenata e l'impennata della spesa pubblica non avrebbero causato inflazione, sono quelle che sanno esattamente come i dazi influenzeranno i prezzi aggregati. Davvero affascinante.

Nel giugno 2016 sedici premi Nobel si aspettavano un'inflazione più elevata a causa dei dazi, ma questo non si è mai verificato. Inoltre molti di quegli economisti hanno raccomandato un'enorme spesa pubblica e un allentamento quantitativo alla Federal Reserve nel 2020, affermando che non vi erano preoccupazioni per l'inflazione. Tuttavia ciò ha portato alla più alta esplosione inflazionistica degli ultimi trent'anni. La realtà ha dimostrato che non c'è stata inflazione nel periodo 2016-2019 e che la folle ondata di stampa e spesa del 2021 ha portato all'attuale esplosione inflazionistica. Questo accade perché molti esperti giustificheranno sempre tutti gli squilibri governativi e gli aumenti delle tasse, ma lanceranno l'allarme per qualsiasi taglio fiscale o misura dal lato dell'offerta. Non dovremmo mai fidarci di esperti che lavorano a stretto contatto con i governi socialdemocratici.

Secondo i seminatori di panico, i dazi creeranno un'enorme esplosione dell'inflazione sia negli Stati Uniti che all'estero. Queste stime mostrano che i dazi di Trump saranno pagati dai consumatori statunitensi, così come i dazi cinesi contro gli Stati Uniti, e le contromisure dell'UE saranno pagate solo dai consumatori americani. Davvero divertente. Se credessimo a questa narrazione, i dazi sarebbero la migliore notizia per le aziende di tutto il mondo: gli americani ne ingoierebbero completamente i costi, i margini non diminuirebbero e il mondo ne sarebbe felice. Sarebbe oltremodo ridicolo se milioni di persone prendessero sul serio le loro parole. Inoltre, secondo la narrazione prevalente, i dazi causerebbero una recessione globale se imposti dagli Stati Uniti. Tuttavia quando i dazi vengono imposti dalla Cina o dall'UE, allora va tutto bene.

Quando i keynesiani prevedono un disastro, è improbabile che accada. Quando il consenso keynesiano vi dice che non c'è rischio, come nel 2008, scappate.

Dovremmo prendere in considerazione alcuni fattori rilevanti. I mercati già scontano una recessione e un rischio di stagflazione, ma l'ultima relazione sull'occupazione mostra il contrario. A marzo sono stati creati 228.000 posti di lavoro, nonostante alcuni siano stati creati nel settore pubblico. L'indice composito ISM indica un'espansione e il dato ponderato economicamente è ampiamente al di sopra del livello di espansione (50) secondo Real Investment Advice. Tutti gli indicatori principali di investimento e produzione sono ben lontani da un segnale di recessione. Inoltre molti operatori di mercato sembrano scontare una Federal Reserve aggressiva e una recessione, cosa che non accadeva da due decenni.

Ciò che trovo interessante è che, per la prima volta da molti anni, l'indice S&P 500 abbia un prezzo interessante. Dopo essere stato estremamente costoso in un mercato rialzista con una costante espansione dei multipli, possiamo finalmente affermare che sta iniziando a essere interessante, anche scontando una significativa revisione al ribasso degli utili. Il rapporto prezzo/utili di 15,2X per il 2027 offre ampio margine di revisione e mostra ancora un punto di ingresso interessante. Le azioni sono piuttosto convenienti, con un EV/EBITDA di 10,3X al 2027 (valore d'impresa/utile al lordo di interessi, imposte, deprezzamento e ammortamento). Inoltre, con il rendimento dei titoli del Tesoro a 10 anni al 4%, significa che per la prima volta da mesi le azioni sono interessanti rispetto alle obbligazioni. I margini sono solidi, le previsioni sono positive e i punti di ingresso per gli investitori a lungo termine stanno iniziando a essere evidenti, poiché è probabile che le pressioni inflazionistiche saranno limitate e la cosiddetta guerra commerciale finirà con dei negoziati, con oltre 50 nazioni che chiedono al governo degli Stati Uniti di raggiungere un accordo sulle barriere commerciali.

Qualsiasi investitore a lungo termine dovrebbe valutare opportunità in cui la paura è esagerata, le valutazioni sono interessanti e le preoccupazioni del consenso sono irrealistiche. Potrebbe essere una buona idea iniziare ad aprire posizioni lunghe, sapendo che a un quantitative easing e a tagli dei tassi seguiranno probabilmente periodi di volatilità.

Gli investitori devono proteggersi dall'inflazione e dalla distruzione del potere d'acquisto della valuta da parte delle banche centrali. Questo fenomeno non è scomparso; sta ritornando, mentre gli stati di tutto il mondo continuano ad accumulare debito e squilibri fiscali. Proteggetevi dall'inflazione con una strategia bilanciata, costruendo posizioni che proteggano il vostro patrimonio e vi aiutino a gestire la volatilità.

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

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Writes Saleh Abdullah:

World Council Health

The post HIV Contamination Found In Moderna’s Covid Shot appeared first on LewRockwell.

 Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

TNR News

The post The Coming Jewish Civil War Over Donald Trump appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah. 

See here.

The post Eric Trump: ‘The Banks Made The Biggest Mistake of Their Lives’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks,  Saleh Abdullah. 

The post Amazing Carnivore Bread That’s Worth Making! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Andy Thomas.

The post Proof That Civilization Is Shifting Back To Sanity appeared first on LewRockwell.

Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) is a stark reality for some children who are born into Illuminati bloodline families, or military families, or families with connections to mind control, or families with connections to the New World Order manipulators running the world today. Satanic ritual abuse seems to run in families, with each generation passing it along to the next.

Psychologists have known for a long time that every perpetrator is also a victim; what makes someone into a purveyor of aggression or violence is normally a deep wounding or trauma they experienced in the past. Satanic ritual abuse is also carried out against children who are kidnapped, then molded into slaves through the trauma of the abuse.

As sad and horrific as this subject is, it is central to an understanding of the worldwide conspiracy and the New World Order. What binds these criminal NWO manipulators together the most is not race, religion or family ties, but an adherence to Satanism, a willingness to invoke dark forces in ritual and an allowance to let those dark forces control their thoughts and actions – which results in all the pedophilia, war, manipulation and deception we see around us.

The Late Former FBI Chief Ted Gunderson Exposed Much Satanic Ritual Abuse

Ted Gunderson, who died in 2011, had a 27-year FBI career and claims he was in charge of 14 million people at one point. He began to investigate Satanic ritual abuse after he stumbled upon it in various cases. With decades of thorough investigation, Gunderson concluded that the world was ruled by a Satanic cult forming a powerful network and operating an international child trafficking and pedophilia ring. This included selling children into slavery and flying them to Washington DC to be used in sex orgies by politicians. With upwards of 100,000 kids missing every year in the US, Gunderson stated that the FBI was fully complicit in the coverup. On many occasions Gunderson stressed that this cult was composed of people of many professions – judges, athletes, law enforcement, celebrities, politicians, lawyers and more.

In many presentations such as this one, Gunderson presents proof of Satanic ritual abuse, including animal bones and satanic symbols in the dirt, and human sacrifice. The truth is that Satanists get a dark “high” from drinking the blood of their tortured victims, which contains emotional neurochemicals released into the blood at the time of their death. Former Satanic insiders such as Zachary King have also stated that these black magicians love raping young children because they can “steal their energy” during ritual sex. Some former mind control victims like Cathy O’Brien have even bravely stepped forward to publicly show the unspeakable horror of what they went through (vaginal mutilation at the hands of Satanist, psychological warfare specialist and NSA agent Michael Aquino). This is a ghastly topic, but if we want to stop it, we need to accept the reality that it operates all over the US and the world as an organized conspiracy.

The Story of Satanic Ritual Abuse Survivor Kathy Collins

There are many Satanic ritual abuse and mind control survivors who have come forward to tell their story, such as Brice Taylor, Cisco Wheeler, Arizona Wilder, Svali and Cathy O’Brien, to name just a few. However, the purpose of this article is to show that, although Satanic ritual abuse is a very real phenomenon, it can be healed. For proof of this, we turn to Kathy Collins, who was interviewed by Bill Ryan (Project Avalon) a few months ago.

What makes Kathy’s story so remarkable is that she underwent horrible experiences that would cause massive trauma in almost anyone. This included being brought, as a child, into Project Monarch, a sub-project of the MK Ultra CIA mind control program. She was also brought to places like Bohemian Grove. At a young age, Kathy was carted away in potato sacks by her father, went through a Satanic initiation ritual at age 3 (being forced to drink blood), suffered sexual abuse (from both men and women), was made into child prostitute and was experimented upon with drugs, electroshock and strobe lights. She recalls being at Bohemian Grove at age 5, tied naked to a stone altar, surrounded by 3 hooded figures who were trying to steal her soul but who were saying “we can’t break her”. Kathy was forced to watch a child sacrifice at Bohemian Grove, and in the end, only got out of the mind control and abuse because her father died.

(Incidentally, Kathy also recalls being hunted like an animal at Bohemian Grove. Cathy O’Brien has also alluded to this. Both were given a short amount of time to run and hide before being followed by huntsmen with guns. It seems that the 1924 story entitled The Most Dangerous Game was not fiction.)

Healing the Deep Trauma and Pain from Satanic Ritual Abuse

So how on earth did Kathy manage to heal herself after going through such harrowing ordeals? She realized she was thinking, identifying and acting like a victim. Although this is natural, it is an energetic truth of life that we create the kind of reality that we broadcast out to the Universe. Often we re-create the familiar. Identifying as a victim means subconsciously recreating trauma, even though we don’t consciously want to. This is because trauma victims have learnt to create serotonin through trauma and drama, and we need serotonin to live. For Kathy, the path to healing was to learn how to get serotonin in ways which were not traumatic (in her case sunsets and butterflies).

Kathy emphasizes that healing trauma is not about getting to a particular place. It is not goal-oriented or linear. Evolution is cyclical. Instead of being impatient to achieve “full healing”, whatever you define that as, she recommends that you learn techniques to deal with suppressed memories as they arise. For Kathy, it’s about mastering the moment, mastering your reaction as old memories arise, making pain a friend, seeing it as a messenger and attempting to understand what it is trying to tell you. Denying it only makes it continue. Also, for healing, a sense of humor is essential. There are many people who have healed serious disease like cancer through laughter. Additionally, it’s about listening to your body, which may feel something (e.g. fear or pain) before the mind knows it; in this way the body can teach the mind.

Ultimately, Kathy explains, a shift will happen when you take responsibility for your own actions. Transformation occurs when you move into forgiveness, i.e. looking back at the past without any judgement attached to it. You will always remember what happened – but you may be able to do so in a more detached manner, without any emotional charge attached to the memory. After many years of working through the issues, Kathy has actually gotten to the point where she sees the abuse as a gift. Why? Because it enabled her to grow, and to know how truly powerful and divine she was – and how truly powerful and divine everyone is. In this way, the scenario is like the comic story of a superhero who needed a challenge or a bad guy to know how strong and courageous he or she was.

There is no more empowering way to face the entire New World Order conspiracy than to see it as a challenge to prompt all of us into becoming better people.

Kathy’s Story is a Message of Hope for All Victims of Abuse

Kathy’s story is an inspiration not just for those who recovering from mind control, or coming out of Satanic ritual abuse, but for all victims of abuse, and for everyone who has suffered some degree of trauma. If you think about it, there’s probably not a single person alive on the face of the earth who has not felt like they have lost part of their soul, enthusiasm or creativity due some past emotional hurt, wound or trauma. We’ve all been through situations that have dimmed our spirit’s brightness. Indeed, most of us have been carrying it around for decades without ever managing to heal it.

The truth is that it is possible to reclaim your full humanity even if you have been through dark trauma. We can make our past into pain or power, depending on what we choose in the present. If you are a Satanic ritual abuse victim, you are not alone; there are many people out there who have gone through it and who can help you with it, if you reach out to them.

This article was originally published on Preppgroup.

The post The Satanic Ritual Abuse Is a Stark Reality appeared first on LewRockwell.

Voter ID and Paper Ballots are a great first step for preventing voting fraud. But they aren’t nearly enough. What happens when the paper ballots are submitted? How are they counted – by humans or by machines? How can we be sure that what’s counted matches what’s on the paper ballots? How are the totals counted at each voting location, forwarded to a central place and totaled? These are each opportunities for massive fraud to take place – unless systems are put in place to prevent it.

There are low-tech ways to solve each of these problems that can and should be implemented quickly. However, people determined to manipulate the results will be able to get around the low-tech methods in some places. Open-source, completely auditable high-tech methods following proven success patterns can be built that eliminate the remaining opportunities for cheating. Both the low-tech and high-tech methods enable continuous counting of ballots as they are submitted, with visible running totals and final results possible minutes after the polls close. In either case, no custom voting equipment would be required anywhere.

I can think of no reason other than inertia and the desire to enable cheating why neither of these approaches have been implemented in US. The low-tech one should be implemented immediately and the high-tech one as soon as possible – it should take no more than weeks for a first version to be implemented and months for a solid version to get working. Both approaches can and should be implemented in parallel. Both can be operated in parallel, each serving as a check for the other.

What’s the problem?

Everyone talks about Voter ID and paper ballots. Good topics. No one seems to talk about what happens next in the “back office” of the voting centers where ballots are counted, usually by machines even with paper ballots.

One important issue that every voting district has its own unique ballot! You experience this when you vote, but with all the concentration on national and state-wide candidates, it’s easy to ignore the fact that county and local candidates require that each locality (city or town) has its own unique ballot! When the paper ballots are counted by machine, a local administrator has to use complex administrative software to customize it for the local ballot. This is an opportunity for error and cheating. Of course the machine also counts the totals, generates them and somehow – by means that are never disclosed! – sends them to a central location where they are summed – again in secret! This is the problem: the secret, unauditable local back office operations, usually with proprietary computer hardware and software.

Who else has renounced or ignored voting automation?

Computer automation is everywhere. Isn’t it ignorant and backward to resist or, worse, to throw out computers? Is it even possible to handle huge voting rolls without computers?

Yes it is.

The United States remains one of the few major democracies in the world that continue to allow computerized vote counting—not observable by the public—to determine the results of its elections. Countries such as Germany Norway, Netherlands, France,  Canada, Denmark, Italy, United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, and most other countries, protect the integrity and trust of their elections with publicly observable hand-counting of paper ballots.

Here is more.

Some countries have implemented automated counting but have dumped it. Japan stopped using voting machines in 2018. Netherlands stopped in 2007

Norway trialed in 2003 but hasn’t used them. El Salvador moved to hand-counting after election irregularities.

In France,

Machine-voting was allowed as an experiment starting in 2002, but the purchase of new machines has been frozen since 2008 due to security concerns. Only a few dozen towns still use them.

How about mail-in voting? Terrible idea. France has more than 48 million voters.

People who can’t go to the polls for various reasons can authorize someone else to vote for them.

To do so, a voter must fill out a form ahead of time and bring it to a police station. A person can be the proxy of no more than one voter living in France — and potentially one additional person living abroad.

Up to 7% of people voted by proxy in the last presidential election five years ago.

…

Mail-in voting was banned in 1975 amid fears of potential fraud.

We should follow the lead of other countries that have reverted to hand-counting because, in the case of voting, it’s simpler, less expensive and more reliable.

Are there people who argue strongly in favor of machine counting with invisible software in locked back offices? Yes. Their arguments sound impressive unless you look at the facts and reality.

The low-tech solution

The low-tech solution is simple: hand-counting and hand-tallying of the ballots. Lots of places do it quickly, accurately and in great volume. Nothing needs to be invented. It just needs to be systematized, probably state-by-state, practiced to train people and weed out issues, and then implemented with full openness, including on-site auditors and cameras with visual and audio feeds that are publicly available.

The high-tech solution

I like this approach because I’m a long-time software guy, but truthfully, we can do just fine with the low-tech approach by itself.

The high-tech solution has never been implemented, to my knowledge, but can be done following widely proven success patterns. It starts with the voter placing his paper ballot in an off-the-shelf paper scanner that scans the ballot, stores it in the cloud, and displays it on the screen. The voter verifies that it’s a good image. Then the ballot is “read” by multiple pieces of software created by different groups and the totals displayed. The voter again verifies the accuracy. The votes are then sent from the cloud ballot readers to multiple cloud totallers, which make their results publicly readable in real-time, with a transaction stream that shows the origins and ID of each ballot that has been added. This enables each total to be tracked back to the physical ballots that contributed to it. Physical auditing can and should be done to expose cheats. Even better, run the low-tech and high-tech solutions in parallel, each serving as a check for fraud in the other.

Summary

The current voting system gives losers of elections lots of opportunities to claim cheating. And cheating probably has taken place! Because of the system’s opacity, we have no way of knowing whether or how much cheating has taken place. Moving to at least the low-tech system described here will make voting completely transparent, removing the cause of widespread suspicions that a group’s preferred candidate has lost. It’s not mysterious, expensive or difficult. Let’s do it!

Here is more about the problem of local control.

Here are details on how the hIgh-tech solution could be implemented.

This article was originally published on The Black Liszt,

The post Voter ID and Paper Ballots Don’t Prevent Cheating appeared first on LewRockwell.

All but two governments in the world agree that the slaughter of Gazans and decimation of Gaza must stop. None – but these two governments – fund it openly, and applaud it behind closed doors.  The strip has been buried, along with many of its men, women and children, their belongings, their pets and livestock, in the dust and rubble of what was before.  Those living are now being starved and chased in circles by the truly pathetic IDF, stupidly sharing proof of their criminality on social media, oddly expecting that there will be no trials, punishment, or retaliation.

The spiraling fear and narcissistic rage of 7 million Israelis has been created, not calmed, by a state experiment – political Zionism – gone horribly wrong.  Last century’s racialist colonialism, clothed in a flawed mythology, veiled by a false religiosity, shaded by a hatred of stateless tribes by a people who themselves traded badly, tribe for state.  This admixture of chaos is today evident on every dubious and shifting border of Israel.

The world begs that the genocide stop, that the perpetrators of genocide be brought to justice.  But global begging has not worked.  Neither has the growing sense of global guilt, or even late-stage panicked reaction to the imminent Zionist-required starvation of two million people for the collective crime of not being European or Jewish in Palestine.

The IDF tsunami in Gaza has never been a military conflict, nor a defensive operation.  Instead, it is the defining symptom of a diseased and defective state that, in its ache to politically survive, is itself committing committing political suicide.  It is time for triage, not only for Gaza, but for Israel itself.

The proposal that follows is offered as a kinder and more lasting solution for Israeli security in Palestine.  It is inspired by the latest Israeli plan for the land they ruined, and the people they are trying to exterminate, but unlike that one, will serve both sides in this conflict for centuries to come, rather than creating even more fear, more war, and more destruction.

In designing the self-governing religious state to be constructed in Palestine, Zionists ignored proven contemporary cases. The world already had a successful model of a small, religiously-defined, self-governed state, supported grandly by a diaspora, one that influences widely and has few security concerns: the Vatican, the influential and unifying hub of world Catholicism.

Zionists harnessed two mythologies to drag and drive European Jews to Palestine.  Atrocity narratives of World War II and biblical narratives of a promised land of milk and honey served as stick and carrot for urban Jews reporting for socialist agricultural duty in Palestine.  To deal with the fact that the land was already populated and owned, a kind of Zionist warrior ethos was coaxed into being, an apotheotic murder ethos written in the Talmud as “Rise and Kill First.”  Christians celebrating this aspect of political Zionism – and many Christian Zionists do celebrate it – reveal their deep ignorance of the words and example of Jesus Christ, among other things.

European-derived Israelis can claim no affinity for the land in practical terms, and Palestine under Israeli occupation has become literally unnatural, opposed to nature. It is polluted by concrete and unnecessary construction of roads and fences – to ensure the strict apartheid and “safety” of God’s chosen people.  The topsoil been scraped and mounded as Israel destroys all living things, as they prepare for the construction of Soviet-looking settler compounds – complete with more isolating walls, fences, and concrete.

It is as if Israelis covet not the land they destroy and sanitize, but the fences, the walls, lights on all night, never-ending patrols, as ghosts surely gather in the shadows.

The State of Israel’s disconnection from the land, its fear of wildness, its grating at the sounds and smells of the natural world, is captured in the performance art of killing and bulldozing ancient Palestinian olive trees, the sneers, slurs and curses hurled by settlers and soldiers providing the musical accompaniment. The utter pollution and pulverization of every square inch of Gaza, the size of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Hoboken all together, burying man and nature not once but dozens of time, has rendered what God made unidentifiable.  This Israeli hellscape, one they intend to later mold in their own image, confirms God clearly failed the Zionists, and they are on their own.

Zionism should have offered its European first men and women something very different.  It should have offered a city-state, not a Jewish empire.  It should have petitioned the British overlords for a small spot on the Mediterranean Sea, to construct and settle, for purposes of trade, religious study, banking, scholarship, and technology – for peace.

Just as we have a working model of an independent self-governing religious state, serving a global congregation, we also have a wide variety of successful secular models of economically brilliant independent city-states.  The world could surely benefit from another Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, or Macau, even a Monaco or a Liechtenstein.  In a future age of decentralization and peace, many more self-governing city-states will be welcomed, each a new and different jewel to be treasured by its residents, and the world.

States — and state-like institutions — that expand through conquest, force, and subterfuge are passé on a nuclear planet. States that insist on old world games will find the carrying costs too high, their populations disinterested, their wars irrational and immoral failures. NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine is certain testimony of this. Technology offers humanity all the benefits of great states – security, wealth, opportunity, identity — without the need for ruling juntas and elite planners advising overdone and generally corrupt governments.  We don’t need great states anymore, and billions of people know this and are living their lives accordingly.

Israel’s crimes in Gaza, driven by their long held objectives there, cry out for a solution that is humane, elegant and just.  Can Zionism be preserved, absent its criminality, without its endless arrogation of land, life and spirit?  If it cannot, then the experiment must be ended.  The current condition of Israeli society, immersed and transfused with hatred, fear, arrogance, and false righteousness – most observers must agree that it cannot continue like this.  The experiment must be halted.  Halting it will require a kind of physical destruction of Zionist institutions, and a relocation of many Israelis, much as the Israeli government is currently demanding of others.

By Israel’s own admission, what is happening in Gaza is not war, but an AI-assisted land grab, punitive and permanent.  The illegality of this, from every angle, through every lens of law and ethics, is clear.  Punishment is overdue and necessary, reparations warranted, and the Israeli state itself made sane, reduced to its native essence, freshly and simply compliant with natural law and humanity. The ongoing and persistent genocide can only be stopped by a total transformation of the State of Israel.

Could we consider a new city-state, in a territory no larger than the city of Houston, with a comfortable population of 6 to 8 million people, be established along the Mediterranean coast?  This proposed Zionist city-state would be demilitarized, politically neutral, and protected and defined by great walls, and its global neighbors.  Its security confirmed, its ability to militarily strike and threaten its neighbors would end. This neutral and disarmed city-state would be self-governed, no longer needing to export and murder non-Jews for their inconvenient birth rates, while exhorting Jewish women to procreate.   It will be safe, wealthy, more free than it ever was.  It will be unburdened by a militarized society, no longer dependent on faithless allies, bad 19th century ideas, and mistaken 20th century assumptions.

The State of Israel and its single ally, the US government, both lawless thieves on their best day, would surely resist this proposal, for three reasons – each revealing a fundamental truth upon which the current experiment rests.

These counterarguments are: 1) the state of Israel serves US imperialism; 2) the US government serves Israeli imperialism; and 3) Israel’s governing construct is not derived from Judaism, but is based on traditional secular racism, and the description of a religious state for Jews simply propaganda.  Each counterargument here is true, but these truths are not what the US, the government of Israel, or most Israelis commonly admit.  Perhaps we should start dealing with reality, instead of lies and fantasy.

Regardless of our collective refusal to speak truth about the Zionist experiment, forming a disarmed and nuclear-free city-state for Jewish Israelis remains at the heart of the complex correction and massive reparation required in and for Palestine.  Imperial dreams dashed, and religious establishment on shaky ground, a disarmed city-state to contain Israel, to end her imperialism, and guarantee her neutrality and security, is perhaps less elegant and less humane than hoped for, but it remains just.

Israel, already weakened and panicked, could in the future be conquered or destroyed, in which case, much as Zelensky has discovered, the winner of wars holds the cards, and calls the shots.  As we saw recently with the US ending of hostilities with the Houthi, and calling it a victory, Israel’s one remaining partner is not only less reliable and less capable, but in a nod to “America First” also less controllable, and more realistic.  Israel’s days – due to its habits of racism and violence, unreasonable objectives, and poor choice in allies – may not only continue to be bloody, but numbered as well.

When the Zionist experiment collapses under its own weight, via violence and war, the victors will not be much concerned about creating a safe place for Jews.  Ironically, Zionism never delivered that either.

The current proposition for Gaza is this:  an outside investment conglomerate will create a new city on the bones and homes of murdered Gazans, with their surviving relatives marched again into cages and slow death, out of sight. The settler cult will expand, never satisfied, itself incognizant of nature or justice, eventually embarrassing even their fellow Israelis who are hosting the new casinos, fine hotels, clean fresh factories, and a new Ben Gurion Canal.

A better solution, one that offers inconvenience instead of slaughter, requires the drawing back of the Zionist state, not just to the 1967 borders, not to the 1948 borders, but to a reduced cohesive area where Jews may have their ethno-religious state.  Just as the ideology and planning for the Zionist state were incorrect, the legal assumptions of the 1948 “War of Independence” were also flawed.  This is the same legal flaw we are reminded of today, when we hear about Israel’s “right to defend” what they stole and conquered “fair and square.”  The end of empire, disarmament of the state, and a new-old return of the concept of neighborhoods is a humane path forward.

One might say that a smaller and disarmed city-state of Israel would be more vulnerable to attack, to starvation, to embargoes and siege.  One might say those who have been brutally wronged by Zionism will seek their revenge.  Instead, new investment – newly free of Israeli connived and funded security crises, conflicts, and groups like Hamas – would flow in.  Unlike the apartheid practiced today, Jews willing to live as neighbors and citizens in a self-governed Palestine would be welcomed, much as Jews lived in Palestine for centuries, as they live in the US, in Iran, as they live on every continent, peacefully and cooperatively, without an Israeli Defense Force on hand to protect their every sin and misdeed.

We need to consider what comes next, not only for Gazans, but for Israel itself.  Israel’s Zionist empire  doesn’t work, and as designed, it cannot work.  It’s long past time to imagine a peaceful and just alternative, that doesn’t involve mowing the grass, that doesn’t require defacing and destroying the land and its people, that doesn’t require ever-ratcheting war and the growing spiritual impoverishment of the Abrahamic faiths.

The post An Excellent Solution to a Pressing Problem appeared first on LewRockwell.

It has been an interesting few days with the United States renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Persian Gulf while also doubling down on spying directed against Greenland in expectations that it will be acquired as a US territory sometime soon. Meanwhile, some of us who have been watching developments in what has been described as Donald Trump’s “peace initiative” trip to the Middle East, which might also have included a stop in Istanbul to sit in with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, are now examining the pluses and minuses as the travel has ended. In my mind, high grades should be awarded for two aspects of the trip. The first one is what he did do, and that was speak sensibly and decently in his address to the Saudi, Emirates and Qatari leadership when he specifically rejected a hegemonistic “neocon” inspired approach to US foreign policy, saying that independent countries in the Middle East and elsewhere are perfectly capable of acting to develop their economies and societies in such a fashion as to prosper and provide fundamental liberties for their citizens.

Trump put it this way in a speech that was widely publicized and well received by his audience: “But in the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called ‘nation builders’, Neocons or liberal non-profits, like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Baghdad and so many other cities. The birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves—the people that are right here, the people who have lived here all their lives, developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions and charting your destinies in your own way.” Trump also cited how what he called the “great transformation” of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East “has not come from western interventionists…giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs.”

The second ray of sunshine was something that Trump did not do. He did not stop in Israel to kiss Benjamin Netanyahu’s ring even though he was in the neighborhood and it is widely being reported that he is not even any longer on direct speaking terms with the Israeli leader. Trump allegedly attributed the distancing of Netanyahu to what he referred to as “manipulation” but it is becoming clearer that the process he was describing was good old-fashioned espionage, with members of the Trump cabinet, possibly to include Tom Waltz the National Security Adviser, being tapped clandestinely to provide information on security developments and plans and/or options relating to the Middle East and possibly also to Ukraine. The Atlantic’s chief Editor Jeffrey Goldberg might have been involved in the process during a notorious top secret national security group phone call using the Signal system back in mid-March. Waltz was subsequently demoted and given the post of United Nations Ambassador, where he will be carefully scripted in terms of what he says and controlled in terms of whom he meets. Reports have also come in about other dismissals apart from Waltz for what is being described as “leaks” and “politicization.” Tulsi Gabbard, Director of the Office of National Intelligence, fired two top officials on Tuesday, a top analyst and the head of her National Intelligence Council, possibly connected to the allegations about spying or simply because they disagreed with some Trump policies, including his stance on China.

So those were the good parts. Somewhere in the middle are the transactional aspects of the trip. Saudi Arabia was closely tied to Washington due to a $142 billion arms package and other energy related deals. Qatar, in a move that has become notorious, gifted Trump with a Boeing 747 aircraft that will replace the current ageing presidential plane Air Force One that is designated for presidential travel. As the new Boeing is reported to be a flying “palace” in terms of its amenities and is estimated to be worth $400 million, it is a substantial gesture tying the two nations together. Nevertheless, there has been a tidal wave of criticism over where the plane goes after 2028, when there may be a new president if there is no Trump “third term.” Trump expects the aircraft to be a “gift” that he will graciously receive before turning it over to his presidential library, one of his corporate subsidiaries. The move smacks of corruption for many in the political world and in the media, even including a number of prominent Republicans. Trump does not seem to care.

As expectations were high when President Trump started his trip it is inevitable that there should be regrets over those possible initiatives that were not pursued. Prior to leaving Washington there was much talk that Trump would likely tell his Arab audience that the United States would be recognizing the Palestinian State as a first step in the actual creation of a physical entity with real independence from Israel and actual sovereignty. It certainly would have been a game winner for his audience and also for the majority of Americans, 70% of whom now do not support Israel. Internationally it would also translate very well to the worldwide audience that has been watching Palestinians being slaughtered on live television. That audience knows full well that Israel and Netanyahu only get away with what they are doing due to the complicity of the United States – both under Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The US is a partner in the genocide and provides the political cover that enables the slaughter to go on, not to mention the steady flow of Made in USA weapons that the Jewish state uses to carry out the actual killing.

The second “sin of omission” is related to the first in that it was expected that Trump would present the Israelis with an ultimatum to immediately end the blockade of Gaza and enter into a ceasefire without any pro-Israel loopholes that would lead to a peace agreement to end the bloodshed. Trump’s only comment on the issue came when he addressed food shortages in Gaza on Friday, saying that “a lot of people are starving” but the US is “going to get that taken care of”… His mediator Steve Witkoff went so far as to say that the US will not interfere in Israel’s slaughter of the Gazans.

Insofar as is known, resumption of aid or a ceasefire were not discussed with the Arabs, possibly due to Israeli intransigence over both issues, which means that Palestine was a blank spot on the president’s trip. While Trump was flying around and being feted, Netanyahu was calling up army reserves and insisting that his plan to wipe out Hamas and apply a final solution to Gaza would be adhered to.

I would be remiss if I were not to mention that some very knowledgeable observers are detecting fraud in the whole narrative about a rift between Trump and Netanyahu. While the major Arab states were distracted when negotiating with an accommodating Trump, the Palestinians were left completely alone and without anyone really arguing their case. That means that the US was feigning a “breakup” with Netanyahu to enable it to reach an agreement with all the leading Arab countries of the Middle East in order to confirm Israel’s security while Netanyahu is completely wiping the Palestinians off the face of the earth. Trump has in fact said that his policies and the Mideast trip are “very good for Israel,” a claim that can be given credibility by his administration’s energetic efforts to dismantle all pro-Palestinian protests in the United States.

Upon his return on Friday the president declared, not for the first time, that “I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good: Make it a freedom zone. Let the United States get involved, and make it just a freedom zone. I’d be proud to have the United States have it, take it, make it a freedom zone, let some good things happen. Put people in homes where they can be safe, and Hamas is going to have to be dealt with.” Washington is also reportedly negotiating with Libyan factions to accept one million Palestinian refugees who, presumably, would be forcibly removed from his “freedom zone” by the Israeli army. It is always important to pay attention to what Trump actually does, not what he says, since what he says is usually primarily designed to make himself look good and powerful.

These two roads not taken insured that Trump would not be able to claim a major victory by extending his “Abraham Accords” to include the Saudis, Emirates, and Qatar in diplomatic relations with Israel. It is well known that the Saudis will not accept any diplomatic arrangement with Israel that does not include Palestinian Statehood within the borders defined by the United Nations in 1948. That would include “international status” for Jerusalem and a return of most of historic Palestine to the Palestinians.

Trump is far from predictable and an initiative that no one expected did take place, namely the ending of sanctions on Syria that have been in place since 2019 and the 37 minute long meeting with the new Syrian interim head of state Ahmed al-Sharaa, former al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham), in the Royal Palace in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates arranged the meeting and encouraged the president to help rehabilitate Syria while also encouraging it to develop its republican institutions that have been crippled by government corruption. Trump’s quid pro quo for al-Sharaa will be to provide an open door for the US to invest in the economic recovery of the country, which has suffered between $200 and $400 million dollars worth of damage. That would include development and marketing of oil and other resources as well as creation of new communications and transport infrastructure by companies like AT&T.

Normalization of ties with Syria does not appear to have been coordinated in any way with Netanyahu and it creates a sticky situation in that Israel has occupied a considerable chunk of southwestern Syria close to Damascus with no signs that it will be leaving soon. Trump apparently suggested to al-Sharaa that he would benefit from establishing normal relations with the Israelis even though Israel is regularly attacking targets inside Syria. Turkey is also holding on to territory in northern Syria through its Turkoman allies. That the United States is somewhat involved in developments is suggested by the recent decision by the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) to end its “war” against Turkey which has been raging for over 50 years. It is the US that has been arming largely Kurdish militias in their war against Syria’s al-Assad government, now deposed, and would have the leverage to bring about such an arrangement.

And finally there are the meeting going on in Istanbul between Ukraine and Russia and the negotiations between the US and Iran over its nuclear program. Zelensky was in Albania meeting with European leaders and Putin did not show up in Istanbul in spite of expectations that both might be present. It was assumed that Trump would drop in for a visit to give his blessing to the peace process which he was taking considerable credit for, but, without the Russian and Ukrainian leaders it did not happen and the talks went nowhere, though, on a positive note, both sides did agree to keep on talking. And is anything happening on Tehran’s nuclear program? Trump has stated that he has presented the Iranians with a written proposal, but Tehran denies the claim. We will find out soon enough and the Zionist controlled US Congress is already threatening to block any agreement that does not ban any and all capability by Iran to enrich uranium. That is also a bit of negotiating that is unlikely to go anywhere.

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

The post The Magical Mystery Tour That Wasn’t appeared first on LewRockwell.

In 1776, the Americans had a wonderful new idea for a republic in which each state (a common word for “country” in those days) would exist independently of the others, whilst a federal government would be in place to provide a few additional services, such as the creation of a common currency and joint protection from foreign invasion.

Unfortunately, those who sought to be all powerful were at work almost immediately, hoping to increase the power of the federal government to the point that the United States would be run as a conglomerate. By 1860, this had already reached the stage that the president denied the right of states to leave the Union.

The US later became the model for a new kind of empire. Until the 20th century, empires were often oppressive, with kings who ruled over a country and conquered other states. This was true right until the decline of the British Empire.

Since that time, the empire concept has not by any means gone away. It has just changed its marketing strategy. Today, the trend is toward collective unions patterned after the American model—the illusion that democracy is in full flower and that “the people” are in charge. This, of course, is Freedom in name alone. The propaganda soothes the more gullible of us into imagining that a modern empire is less oppressive than the empires of old.

The Rape of Liberty

Rights are regularly stripped away, generally to “protect the people from terrorism.” This has been most evident in the US, where, since 9/11, the country has devolved dramatically into a police state. (As second US President John Adams correctly stated, “Those who trade Liberty for Security have neither.”)

Those of us who are not US citizens tend to view the “Rape of Liberty” presently being carried out in much of the First World (and in the US in particular) the way we might watch a violent storm from the windows of our (hopefully) secure home, all the while hoping that the storm is not so strong as to destroy our home in the bargain.

We watch as, in recent years, rights are stripped away and the population is ordered to comply with a host of new restrictions that turn the citizenry into obedient cattle:

• Increasingly humiliating searches in order to be allowed to travel

• Passport confiscation from those whose tax payments “may be in question”

• Increasing restrictions on moving assets abroad

• Increasing taxation on moving assets abroad

• Increasing financial penalties for the renunciation of citizenship

• Increasing militarization of police

• Increasing indoctrination in the belief that powerful evil external forces are afoot that may destroy the country if they are not stopped by dramatic military action

This is, of course, a shortlist, and the reader can add many more without bothering to think very hard. But the list should serve as a reminder as to the direction in which the US is headed as a nation.

Americans are being taught to be in fear of some faceless outside force and told that they must be prepared to give up their principle freedoms in order to be safe. Above all, however, they must not decide to exit the US. Although the borders will open up for others to come in, they will close for those seeking to leave.

But surely, at some point, Americans will decide that too much liberty is being lost for the small increase in actual safety.

The Tipping Point

For those of us watching this charade from the outside, it is clear that, at some point, all the fear mongering by the US government will not be sufficient to justify the now-Hitleresque controls that are increasing each year. At some point, the government will need to provide justification—a demonstration that the threat is “for real.”

This will mean that an event that is sufficient to justify a sudden, dramatic increase in tyranny would be necessary. For the sake of argument, let’s say that an “attack” occurs on US soil—similar in nature to the 9/11 attack. The US government immediately announces who was responsible for the attack and that the US is now “at war” with that group or groups.

They state that their intelligence has identified several more planned attacks and that all of the US is in imminent danger. The unquestioned, most important consideration is that Americans be protected from possible attacks, and all other considerations must be “temporarily” sacrificed until the threat has been neutralised.

Such an event would allow for the tipping point—the effective lockdown of the country. Whilst there would be no “Berlin Wall,” there would be an “Iron Curtain.” The armoured vehicles, the automatic weaponry, the combat gear (right down to the bayonets) must already be in place nationwide, ready to be deployed. The old “serve and protect” training must be gone and “riot control” training must be fully in effect.

And as it happens, these preparations are in place.

Following such an event, it would be possible for the list above to change to the following one:

• No travel to other countries without written permission

• Confiscation of passports of all those who “may” have terrorist contacts

• Freezing of assets

• Confiscation of some assets (particularly in banks) until proof can be provided that these were obtained legally and taxes on them have been paid

• Renunciation of citizenship declared a terrorist act

• Presidential declaration that the US is a legal battleground and all constitutional rights are suspended until further notice

• Dramatic expansion of police control

• Regular televised indoctrination for citizens to report on the “suspicious” behaviour of any other person, including family members

Temporary Becomes Permanent

Sounds Orwellian. And of course, it is. It worked well for others (Messrs. Hitler and Stalin come to mind), and if a population is properly prepped (as Americans have been), it should be accepted. After all, it’s for the sake of safety and will only be temporary, right?

Possibly not. As Milton Friedman so correctly stated, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” So, if the above premise seems to the reader to be the logical outcome of the present direction of the government, what of the timing? Well, if we observe the rapidity at which the US is implementing its controls and we hazard a guess as to when they will become so overbearing that a dramatic event is necessary before full lockdown can be implemented, the reader can make his own guess. A year? Two years? Longer?

And again, the US is only the most extreme country of the First World in this regard. The EU is not far behind in its increasing controls. And other countries in the former “free” world are instituting similar controls.

Should the reader be a citizen of one of these countries, he might wish to weigh his options. He may decide that it is hopeless to escape. Or he might decide that he needs to escape, but he still has time. Or he may decide to “git while the gittin’s good.”

If he settles on the third conclusion, he would be well advised to plan an exit soon. If not, he may well find he has left the move too late and has unwittingly chosen to remain.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post The Day Freedom Ends appeared first on LewRockwell.

Many journalists pretend not to understand what’s going on in Washington. For them, Elon Musk and Donald Trump are appropriating what they can from the federal government without changing anything. The reality is quite different: the President of the United States is trying to dismantle his country’s imperialism. He is destroying the agencies, both secret and public, that, under various pretexts, legally finance those who implement color revolutions and other coups d’état.

President Donald Trump had made the dismantling of the “American Empire” the initial objective of his first term. He had appointed General Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor  [ 1 ] and had immediately eliminated the permanent seats of the Director of the CIA and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the National Security Council  [ 2 ] . This was a bad move: the American imperialists joined forces with the Democrats against him, forcing him, within two weeks, to dismiss General Flynn, then launching all sorts of mendacious operations, including two impeachment proceedings, to accuse him of being a Russian agent in the White House.

So, armed with a wealth of experience, he approached his second term, still with the same objective: to dismantle the “American Empire.” This time, he only addressed the substance of the subject during his speech in Riyadh on May 13. After recalling his speech eight years ago, in the same hall, during which he had urged Muslim states to no longer support terrorist organizations  [ 3 ] , he called for trade to replace war. He denounced “nation builders,” “neoconservatives,” “liberal NGOs” and “other interventionists claiming to reform complex societies that they themselves do not even understand” to praise the vitality of the populations of the broader Middle East. He declared: “As I have shown time and again, I am ready to put an end to past conflicts and to forge new partnerships for a better and more stable world, even if our differences may be very deep.” » […] « In recent years, far too many American presidents have been afflicted by the idea that it is our duty to examine the souls of foreign leaders and use United States policy to deliver justice in place of their sins. » […] « If the responsible nations of this region seize this moment, put aside your differences and focus on the interests that unite you, then all humanity will soon be astounded by what it will see here in this geographic center of the world, the spiritual heart of its greatest religions. »

But off camera, it’s in the courts that President Donald Trump is fighting to dissolve the organs of imperialism. For example, the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE) has hastily fired officials from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), especially those from the US Institute for Peace (USIP) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and is failing to clean up the shadowy Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

First, Elon Musk was tasked with showing everyone that USAID is not the humanitarian aid agency it claimed to be, but a “criminal organization” (sic). It revealed $200 million in questionable overseas spending, including $1.5 million for Cuban opposition media, $2 million for a transgender comic strip in Peru, $2.1 million for the BBC in Libya, $8 million to buy subscriptions to Politico Pro, $10 million for meals for al-Qaeda-funded terrorist groups, $15.4 million for LGTBQI+ organizations, $20 million to produce an Iraqi version of “Sesame Street,” $75 million for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and $150 billion aimed at building “an equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” by 2030.

Republican Senator Joni Ernst (Iowa) also revealed to Congress that the so-called humanitarian agency USAID had paid $1 million to a carpet company in Ukraine, $300,000 to the Ukraine Pet Alliance, which sells dog collars, $148,000 to a pickle company, $319,000 to a meatpacking plant, and $89,000 to a vineyard.

All the wording in these examples is shocking, but a priori these are not cases of corruption, but rather cover-ups for secret actions, which is even more shocking.

Following a complaint by Democracy Forward and Public Citizen Litigation Group on behalf of the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees, Columbia District Judge Carl Nichols has suspended the pending administrative leave of 2,200 USAID employees. He also ordered the temporary reinstatement of 500 agency employees already on administrative leave.

The US and international reactions to the Trump administration’s attempt to cut USAID budgets were coordinated by Nina Jankowicz, the former Biden administration censorship chief, now based in London. According to Elon Musk, Jankowicz’s work was funded by USAID, a claim she denies.

Trumpists have pointed out that the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which provided the false “information” that launched the impeachment proceedings against President Trump during his first term ( UkraineGate ), was a creation of USAID. Mediapart (France), Drop Site News and Reasonator (United States), Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italy), Reporters United (Greece) were merely straw media outlets used, perhaps unwittingly, by USAID to disseminate the “information” that the CIA wanted to make public.

The dissolution of USIP and NED, however, was not possible. Indeed, these two agencies were conceived by President Ronald Reagan to publicly duplicate the actions of the CIA. They are therefore not dependent on the White House, but are autonomous legal entities, although their annual budgets are voted by Congress in the chapters of the Departments of Defense and State. They are venture capital funds supposedly dedicated to democracy. Just as NATO was officially created to fight communism, even though its first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, admitted a completely different purpose, so too were USIP and NED officially created to empower those defending democracy against communism. But neither NATO, nor USIP and NED were dissolved at the end of the USSR. Today, the military alliance and the two venture capital funds are nothing more than organs of Anglo-Saxon imperialism. This is why NATO is governed in a dual manner by the United States and the United Kingdom, while USIP and NED have been incorporated into the Anglo-Saxon secret service alliance, the “Five Eyes” (Australia, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom).

After the vast majority of their employees were fired, they successfully won their reinstatement in court. The reform, decided by DOGE, was deemed illegal and overturned by the courts. While President Donald Trump aimed to rid the world of them, neither the White House nor the Departments of Defense and State have the authority to dissolve them, regardless of the reality of their actions.

Yet it has now been established that USIP and NED used their federal funds, appropriated by Congress, to interfere not only in the political life of foreign states, but also in that of the United States. For example, these venture capital funds contributed to the creation of the Digital Forensic Research Laboratory (DFRLab), which censored Americans who denounced the rigging of the 2020 presidential election. They also funded a British association, the Global Disinformation Index, which launched a global campaign to cut advertising revenues to media outlets fighting “American imperialism,” particularly Trumpist US media.

DOGE also attempted to penetrate the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Structurally, this is an administration under the authority of the Treasury Department. White House employees should therefore have been able to enter and seize the salary payment files of foreign political officials. The “American Empire” employs heads of state, ministers, deputies, and other political leaders around the world to defend imperial interests before those of their countries. At least twenty French officials appear on this list. Their salaries are at least 7,500 euros. Surprise: initially, a magistrate barred DOGE from accessing it on the grounds that this file also contains confidential information on US citizens. Subsequently, DOGE obtained permission for only one of its members to consult this file, but not to copy it, and was only authorized to take notes with a pencil. We will therefore have to wait a little longer to find out who the traitors are in each allied country.

There are other opaque structures of the “American Empire,” such as the US African
Development Foundation, located a few dozen meters from the White House. This organization is independent of the administration, but relies solely on federal funds. When DOGE attempted to enter it, a private security service dissuaded him, weapons in hand.

The imperialist opposition to the Trumpist revolution has not yet had its final word. It is dragging out presidential decisions until the next midterm elections, hoping they will be lost by the Trumpists. In the meantime, it is creating new structures to take over when the current Congress no longer votes for it.

—

[ 1 ]  “  Intelligence Reform According to General Flynn  ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Contralínea (Mexico), Voltaire Network , November 27, 2016.
[ 2 ]  “  Donald Trump dissolves the organization of US imperialism  ,” by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network , January 30, 2017.
[ 3 ]  “ Donald Trump’s Speech to the Arab Islamic American Summit ”, by Donald Trump, Voltaire Network , May 21, 2017.

The post US Imperialists Slow Down the Trumpist Revolution appeared first on LewRockwell.

The most important sentence from President Trump about yesterday’s phone call between President Putin and him is this:

Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.

The most important sentence by President Putin about yesterday’s phone call is this:

Notably, Russia’s position is clear. Eliminating the root causes of this crisis is what matters most to us.

Russia will not fall for ending the war without having achieved its main goal.

Western media, here the NY Times, continue to play dumb (archived) about what the Russia’s main goal is:

[Putin] repeated his mantra that a peace deal needs to “remove the root causes of this crisis,” referring to Russia’s pursuit of wide-ranging influence over Ukraine.

David Ignatius, a CIA spokesperson at the Washington Post, makes a similar (archived) nonsensical claim:

He still wants victory, which he described once again after Monday’s call with the phrase “eliminate the root causes of the crisis.” That’s code for his conviction that Ukraine cannot be a European country, as it wants, but must remain under Russian hegemony.

Russia as well as Ukraine are European countries. Russia has no interest in having ‘hegemony’ or ‘wide-ranking influence’ over Ukraine. Its interest is the defense of the Russian Federation. It had to prevent Ukraine from becoming a U.S. (NATO) spear tip aimed at its heart.

A different NY Times piece about the Russian northern defenses build up after Finland joined NATO is far more correct when it states (archived):

From Moscow’s perspective, the Russians need to bolster their defenses to protect themselves from NATO expansion, which has always been a sore subject. The Baltic nations were the first members of the former Soviet Union to join NATO, bringing large stretches of Russia’s border up against NATO’s. The prospect of Ukraine, an even bigger former Soviet republic, following suit was so threatening to Moscow that it became one of the causes of the most devastating land war in generations.

It is NATO expansion, not Ukraine the country, that is the root cause of the war. It is NATO expansion that has to be eliminated.

The U.S. and its European allies are still in denial of that. To ignore that the U.S. has, for over 30 years, been driving the NATO expansion that led to the war, allows Trump to play a ‘mediator’ in war in which the U.S. is a dominant participant.

It is stupid for western media to accept Trump’s claim (archived) of such a role:

After phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump posted that “Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War”.
…
In remarks that indicated that Washington may be stepping back from a role as a mediator, Trump said the “conditions” for a deal could only be agreed by the warring parties “because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of”.
…
Trump also said that immediately after his call with Putin, he recounted the conversation to Zelenskyy together with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Finland and the European Commission.  (1)
…
But two people briefed on the call with the European leaders said Trump was clear that he would pull the US back from engaging with the conflict and leave Ukraine and Russia to directly negotiate a ceasefire. He also made no promise of future US sanctions against Russia should Putin refuse any peace attempts. One person familiar with the conversation said the leaders were stunned by the US president’s description of what was agreed. They added it was clear Trump was “not ready to put greater pressure” on Putin to come to the negotiating table in earnest.

Trump is pretending to wash his hands (archived) over Ukraine:

The US desire to disengage has been flagged for weeks, by Trump himself but also by secretary of state Marco Rubio and vice-president JD Vance, who have repeatedly expressed frustration with Russia and Ukraine in equal measure. Vance told reporters on Monday that the US might ultimately have to say: “This is not our war.”

The U.S. can not be a mediator in a war, or wash its hands over it, when it continues to supply weapons and the all important field intelligence and communication means needed to wage it. Only yesterday the U.S. allowed Australia to send (old) U.S. made tanks to Ukraine.

Trump’s claims of disengaging from the war has yet to be confirmed by any evidence that he is really going to do so.

The only thing Trump did reject so far was to join the European attempts to escalate the war by inserting their own troops into it.

Having learned from the economic disaster his tariffs have caused Trump also rejected plans to impose secondary sanctions in form of 500% tariffs on anyone who continues to buy oil from Russia.

Aside from that Trump has kept support for the war on the same level as before and only refrained from expanding it.

That he is, for now, leaving the negotiations to Russia and Ukraine, is an admission that he has failed to keep his election promise of making peace.

The U.S. will have to reengage in negotiations if peace is to be achieved. It is U.S. (NATO) expansionism that has cause the war.

Russia needs to remove the root cause, U.S. (NATO) expansionism, to achieve peace.

A complete victory in Ukraine is a necessary but not yet sufficient condition for that.

But chances are good that the further disagreements over the defeat of Ukraine will rip NATO apart.

That might be the victory President Putin has on his mind.

—
(1) The FT claims that: “[Trump] recounted the conversation to Zelenskyy together with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Finland and the European Commission.

But Trump’s statement does not mention Britain at all: “I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin.”

It seems like, despite the FT‘s claim, Prime Minister Starmer was left out in the cold on this.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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If Jesus, God Incarnate, is not the ultimate norm for moral conduct for a Christian, who or what is? All Christian just warists, regardless of their status or standing in the Church or in the world, believe and proclaim that it is Jesus, who is with them, who tells them individually that it is okay to pull the trigger that discharges the bullet that rips off some other human being’s head.  For all Christian just warists, it is Jesus who ultimately says to the Christian, albeit through the ministry of a just warist institutional Church, “Go ahead! Fire! Blow his brains out.” Who else but Jesus would a Christian ultimately consult to discern if he or she could destroy a beloved son or daughter of the Father of all?

Jesus of the Gospels could never be reasonably or sanely interpreted as saying to a disciple, “Go ahead! Fire! Blow his brains out!” So, from whence do Christian leaders and Christians get the idea that Jesus approves of “Blowing some one’s brains out?”

It is one thing to have a mere limited human being, who is a Pope, Bishop or Priest, virtually standing beside or inside a disciple of Christ on the battlefield, or with a Christian in the cockpit of a fighter plane, telling him or her, “Fire! Destroy the enemy.” It is quite another to have Jesus, the Messiah of God and the “Word of God made flesh” standing or sitting beside or inside a Christian, telling him or her, “Fire! Kill them!” The former has been happening all day every day across the world for 1700 years. The latter has never happened in the history of the world.

If the risen Jesus Christ would never stand next to a soldier or fighter pilot  and say to him or her, “Go ahead! Fire. Kill the enemy,” then just warists Popes, Bishops, Priests, Ministers, Pastors, etc. are not teaching Jesus’ disciples what He explicitly commissioned them to teach, namely, “to obey all that I have commanded you,” and are not obeying it themselves (Mt 28:19). When Church authorities explicitly or implicitly lead the disciples of Jesus into thinking Jesus would say to them, “Go ahead! Fire! Blow the enemies’ brains out,” they are propagating disinformation, they are desecrating their ministry within the ministry of the Church and they are defrauding the Baptized in an eternally grave matter directly related to Redemption and to Salvation through the love, communication, means and merits of Jesus Christ.

Just war theory is and always has been and always will be a phony piece of Christian morality. It owes nothing to anything Jesus ever said or did or taught, or ever would say, do or teach. If you hear someone inside of you or outside of you, inside the Church or outside the Church say, “Go ahead! Fire! Kill the enemy,”  be certain, it is not Jesus, God Incarnate, speaking to you. The proper and only Christian response to such a temptation is the one Jesus gave to Peter the first Pope, when Peter became an agent to try to entice Jesus not to follow God’s will: “Get behind me, Satan.”

Realizing from their histories over the last millennium and a half that the institutional Churches don’t give a hoot about the stark and unfathomably consequential problem of their bracketing-out or squelching segments of the Way of Eternal Life as proclaimed by the One “who has the words of Eternal Life” (Jn 6:68), it can only be asked what in hell do the leaders of the Churches think they are spiritually doing when they do this? Do they think they are saving souls by brainwashing Christians to believe that Jesus would say to them, “Go ahead! Fire! Blow his head off?”

There have been hundreds of just war theories in the Churches over the centuries and thousands outside the Churches. Precisely, which just-war theory is the one that is a valid Eternal Salvation substitute for Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies as taught and modeled by Him in the Gospel? If a Christian does not want to trust in Jesus and His presentation of God’s will in the Gospels, and to struggle to love as the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels loves, then adhering to some piece of philosophical speculation is no substitute.

If philosophical speculation by sinful human beings could have conquered evil and death, and eternally incorporated human beings into the mystery of God who is love, there would be no need for Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, the Messiah and Savior. However, standing before the perennial and universal terrors into which human beings are thrown at birth, mere human speculation by men and women collapses into puddles of hopelessness and tears. Philosophy does not save. Where Christlike love seems to fail, philosophy is not a replacement.

The immortal soul of a fellow Christian and his or her eternal destiny are not realities that Church leaders or fellow Christians have a license to toy with. With Christian just war theories, the institutional Churches have gone far beyond human absurdity to possibly being purveyors of unending tragedy and the creators of a well of eternal tears.

Beware: Corruptio optimi pessima.

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I remember my grandma’s stories about the Great Depression – tales of scraping by on whatever food they could get their hands on.

Never thought I’d see anything like that in my lifetime. But lately? I’m not so sure.

“Out of stock.”

Three words that have become my grocery store nemesis. From sriracha to baby formula, it seems like nothing is sacred anymore.

My veggie patch which started as a pandemic project, is now my edible insurance policy.

With food prices doing the cha-cha skyward, it got me thinking – are we heading towards a time when Depression-era foods become our new normal?

The signs are becoming hard to ignore:

The Pinch at the Checkout

Let me tell you, my weekly grocery runs have become quite the rollercoaster ride lately. Just when I thought prices couldn’t climb any higher, they’ve taken a breather – but don’t break out the champagne just yet.

Back in ’23, I nearly choked on my coffee when egg prices skyrocketed. Now, they’re still up by a whopping 19.1% compared to last year.

It’s enough to make a hen blush! And don’t get me started on lettuce – it’s jumped 10.3% in just six months.

According to the number crunchers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, food prices have risen by 2.2% in the past year. That’s a darn sight better than the 4.4% we saw the year before, but it’s still pinching our pockets.

Here’s a quick breakdown of some increases I’ve noticed:

• Eggs: +19.1% (and they’re predicting another 2.4% hike in 2024)
• Beef and Veal: +4.5% (with a meaty 5.6% increase expected next year)
• Food-at-home: +1.2% (looks like home cooking’s still the way to go)
• Food-away-from-home: +4.1% (ouch, those restaurant bills are getting spicy)

Now, I’m no economist, but I’ve got eyes in my head and a wallet in my pocket. And let me tell you, over 80% of us regular folks feel like food prices have shot up more than these numbers suggest.

Maybe it’s because we’re at the store more often than those statisticians, or maybe it’s all the chatter about inflation on the news.

Either way, I’ve found myself getting crafty with my shopping. I’m eyeing those sales like a hawk, giving generic brands a chance, and cutting back on the fancy stuff.

Supply Chain Disruptions

Remember the great toilet paper shortage of 2020? Well, that was just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve seen firsthand how global events can wreak havoc on our food supply.

Last summer, I couldn’t find my favorite brand of pasta for weeks. The store manager told me it was due to supply chain issues. It got me thinking about how interconnected our food system is – and how fragile it is.

From pandemic lockdowns to the conflict in Ukraine disrupting grain exports, it seems like we’re constantly playing whack-a-mole with food shortages. It’s eerily reminiscent of the scarcity folks faced during the Depression.

Food Shortages

I never thought I’d see the day when I’d have to ration mustard, of all things. But there I was last week, staring at an empty condiment shelf, feeling like I’d stepped into a time warp.

It’s not just mustard that’s been hard to find lately. Over the past year, I’ve had trouble getting my hands on baby formula, Sriracha sauce, popcorn, canned pet food, and even cream cheese.

Each shortage has its own story – from factory closures to climate-related crop failures. It’s a stark reminder of how precarious our food system can be.

Changing Consumer Behavior

I’ve noticed a shift in my own shopping habits, and I’m not alone. Chatting with neighbors and friends, I’ve heard similar stories of belt-tightening and creative cooking.

I’ve noticed a few trends in my own habits recently. Bulk buying has become a go-to strategy, especially when non-perishables are on sale. I’ve also been leaning more toward generic brands, as the fancy labels just don’t seem worth the extra cost. My family has started incorporating at least two vegetarian dinners a week to cut down on meat expenses.

And as for takeout, it’s turned into a rare treat rather than the usual convenience it once was, with home cooking taking center stage.

It’s funny how these changes echo the resourcefulness of the Depression era. My grandma would probably nod approvingly at my newfound frugality.

A Scoop on the Depression-Era Diet

The Great Depression wasn’t just about empty wallets – it was about empty stomachs too. From 1929 to the late 1930s, America faced an economic downturn that left millions jobless and struggling to put food on the table.

It was rough. Soup kitchens popped up in cities, while rural folks relied on what they could grow or forage. Money was tight, and creativity in the kitchen became a necessity, not a hobby. This is what we are seeing bit by bit these days.

Read the Whole Article

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When it comes to the Donald’s Big Beautiful Bill there is one place, and one place alone, to start the discussion. We are referring, of course, to the built-in baseline of revenues, outlays and deficits under current Federal law and policy.

Needless to say, the latest CBO baseline amounts to a five-alarm dumpster fire. If Congress does nothing about entitlements, tax law or current funding policy for defense and nondefense discretionary programs, the annual Federal deficit will reach nearly $3 trillion and 6.1% of GDP by the end of the 10-year budget window. Accordingly, total public debt will soar from today’s $37 trillion to more than $58 trillion by 2035.

After that, it would be all over except the shouting because a combination of rising bond yields and soaring public debt would cause Uncle Sam’s interest expense to explode. Subsequently, the already massive structural deficit would easily double, thereby pushing the Federal debt level to a staggering $150 trillion by mid-century. Of course, we would likely never actually get that far because the financial markets would collapse long before 2050.

Given this cataclysmic outlook, you would think that slashing the deficit and braking the relentless growth of the public debt would be at the heart of the GOP fiscal plan. After all, it took the first 230 years of the American republic and 45 presidents to generate $21.8 trillion of public debt. Now, however, that figure would be duplicated again in the next 10-years unless Washington pivots hard toward fiscal austerity.

Alas, baseline deficit reduction is not even on the GOP’s agenda! That’s right. For the full ten year period they have not and will not table a single dime of net deficit reduction in crafting their Reconciliation Bill. And that’s actually pretty sick, given that the “reconciliation” mechanism was originally enabled in the 1974 budget reform act as a tool to facilitate fiscal control.

Instead, the GOP legislators are arguing about how much to INCREASE the already massive flow of red ink shown in the table below. In the fiscal scheme of things, the Donald’s Big Beautiful Bill is surely the most wanton act of fiscal perfidy ever committed on the banks of the Potomac.

Table: CBO Baseline Projections for FY 2026–2035 (billions)

Actually, the table above is barely the half of it. What is also embedded in the annual flow of these Federal budget numbers is the great big stinky trick the Trumpified GOP pulled the last time around in 2017. To wit, they embedded a huge $4 trillion “fiscal cliff” in the budget numbers beginning in FY 2026, owing to the expiration in 2025 of their ballyhooed TCJA tax cut of December 2017.

What this means, therefore, is that even the massive baseline deficit numbers shown in the table above assume a huge Federal tax increase commencing in 2026.

Accordingly, just to maintain the current individual income tax burden by extending the TCJA for a decade would add another $4 trillion to the baseline deficit even before you add higher debt service on the reduced revenue. And given that the GOP legislators devoutly desire to keep current tax rates, credits and deductions in place, they have actually started with a true baseline of upwards of $63 trillion of public debt by the end of the budget window.

And yet and yet. They are struggling to come up with even $1.5 trillion of budget cuts over the next decade, and virtually all of those cuts have been re-allocated to spending increases for defense, border control and other priorities—with hardly a net dime left for deficit reduction.

So, yes, the House bills show potential 10-year savings of $700 billion from Medicaid, $200 billion from Food Stamps, $300 billion from education and student loans and $200 billion from the delayed phaseout of the Biden green energy boondoggle tax credits. But those savings could be easily swallowed up over time by the $100 billion per year increase in the defense budget already tabled in the Trump “skinny budget” for FY 2026 alone and partially approved by the House Armed Services Committee. Also, there are tens of billions of additional increases annually for border control, veterans, air traffic control and other domestic priorities, which are virtually certain to become permanent, thereby eating up hundreds of billions of the above savings over the full ten-year budget period.

Indeed, the House markups to date are so full of budget gimmicks and scams, such as termination of many of the new tax cuts after 2028, that the Reconciliation bill’s net savings are likely to end up close to zero for one simple reason: The Trumpified GOP doesn’t give a good goddamn about fiscal control or the soaring public debt.

So to state the sheer criminal negligence of the matter: Faced with a fiscal dumpster fire, the Trumpified GOP looked $89 trillion of baseline spending for FY 2026-2035 squarely in the face and came up with a great big goose egg in terms of net savings.

It doesn’t get more perfidious than that. At the end of the day, the GOP rank and file know this bill is a Big, Ugly Debt Bomb, but they are so bamboozled by the fiscal miscreant in the Oval Office that they have thrown every bit of fiscal sobriety to the winds.

The truth is, unless they implant another fiscal cliff after FY 2035 by having the so-called Trump tax cut expire again, the honest longer-run impact of permanently extending the TCJA would be truly catastrophic: It would add an incremental 1% of GDP to the public debt each and every year, as far as the eye can see.

In short, the present policy of the Trumpified GOP is to guarantee that the bond pits will suffer a catastrophic breakdown long before 2050, meaning that smart investors will see it coming and begin to sell their US Treasury debt or even short it in order to get out of harms’ way. And once the selling starts in the bond pits, it will fuel a financial avalanche and collapse which will be unstoppable, even by the mighty printing presses of the Federal Reserve.

Federal Revenue Impact Of Extending the Expiring Provisions of the 2017 TCJA Thru 2035 (billions)

Despite all of this bad news, however, even the additional red ink displayed in the above table doesn’t tell the whole story. That’s because the real cost of TCJA extension for another ten years would be $1.2 trillion higher if the $10,000 per joint return cap on deductions for state and local taxes (SALT cap) is not also extended. Failure to re-up the SALT cap, in turn, would bring the total cost of extending the TCJA to $5.1 trillion over the decades ahead.

As it happens, Republicans cannot pass a Reconciliation bill without a drastic increase in the SALT cap because GOP Congressmen from high-tax blue states have drawn a firm line in the sand and they have more than enough votes to enforce it. So the Republican SALT caucus is demanding the cap be increased to $120,000 for joint returns, but even an eventual compromise at say $50,000 would reduce the revenue offset by $455 billion over the the decade, as shown in the table below.

Moreover, the GOP is also determined to enact the Trump campaign pledges to eliminate taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security, as well as make $10,000 of auto loan interest deductible. As shown below, those measures would add another $2.484 trillion in revenue loss over the decade. Yet at this point, this entire flood of additional red ink has been included in the GOP Reconciliation bill but is being hidden by an outright budget scam: To wit, most of the new tax cuts emanating from the Trump campaign pledge are written to expire after 2028.

Yes, indeed, in the presidential election year of 2028 we can hardly imagine a candidate from either party who would not be loudly advocating an extension of these provisions. In fact, that’s the very same kind of fiscal cliff that is embedded in the 2025 expiration of the TCJA.

10-Year Cost Of Additional GOP Revenue Measures (billions of $)

So, when you add it all up you get a pretty dire picture. The GOP started its mark-up process facing a $22 trillion baseline deficit over the next decade, but at this point the bill grinding out of the legislative sausage factory is bordering on adding $30 trillion. That is, damn near doubling the catastrophic $37 trillion of public debt already on the books.

Still, Donald Trump has the crazy-ass delusion that he is leading the nation toward a renewed Golden Age of Capitalist prosperity. Nothing could be further from the truth because even the tepid GOP restraint on Federal spending and borrowing that has been present historically has now been totally obliterated.

The Trumpified GOP, in fact, is every bit as threatening to the economic well-being of main street America as the Big Spending Dems ever were. And they will not escape that ignominy unless they are able in the next few weeks to kill the Donald’s Big Beautiful Bill deader than a doornail!

The Trumpified GOP’s Plan To Add $30 Trillion To The Public Debt (billions of $)

Of course, the Trumpian fanboys and the small phalanx of knee-jerk Republican economists will say not to worry because, well, “growth”. That is, the Donald’s Dog’s Breakfast of inflationary tariffs, inflationary labor supply deportations and interest rate-increasing Federal deficits will supposedly cause the economic growth rate to accelerate, thereby generating higher taxable incomes, increased revenues and reduced Federal deficits.

Except. Except.”Growing” your way out of fiscal policy deficits has been a bogus theory ever since the Lafferites invented it in the early 1980s and even bamboozled the Gipper with its endless repetition. In truth, this hoary claim is both wrong in theory and has never been even remotely proven in practice.

There is one powerful core reason for this inconvenient truth: To wit, Federal revenues are driven by nominal GDP, not so-called real GDP. To be sure, the tax brackets are indexed to prevent bracket creep, but when wages go up by 4% owing to 2% inflation and 2% real gains, taxable income is 4% higher. And if the mix is 4% real growth and 0% inflation, taxable income is still just 4% higher.

Indeed, the whole theory of tax cuts is that lower rates will increase the supply of labor hours offered in the market, as well as the supply of other factors of production such as productivity fostering capital investment. These additional supply-side resources, in turn, would tend to reduce costs and inflationary pressures.

That is to say, all thing equal supply side tax cuts will help improve the mix between the inflation component and the real component of nominal GDP. But as far as the US Treasury is concerned, it is nominal income that is reported on 1040s and nominal revenues that are collected in withholding tax payments.

So the question recurs. Is there any reason to assume that the tax provisions of the GOP reconciliation bill—along with the rest of the Trump agenda including tariffs and regulatory rollbacks—will cause nominal GDP, as opposed to real GDP, to be higher over the next decade than assumed in the CBO baseline.

As shown below, the CBO baseline which projects $22 trillion of deficits over the next decade assumes that nominal GDP will grow at a 4.20% compound rate, generating a total of $371.5 trillion of nominal GDP over the period. In turn, baseline revenue under current law of $67.167 trillion amounts to 18.1% of nominal GDP.

As it happens, the growth rate of nominal GDP between Q4 2007 and Q1 2025 was, well, exactly 4.21% per annum. And that was during a period in which there was massive monetary expansion and stimulus.

To wit, between Q4 2007 and Q1 2025, Federal Reserve credit outstanding—or what is otherwise described as high powered money—rose at the staggering rate of 12.5% per annum. And, folks, we do not believe there is a snowballs’ chance in the hot place that the Eccles Building will be in a position to run the Fed’s printing presses at anything close to that red hot rate during the decade ahead.

Obviously, that certainty is owing to the fact that the Fed finally let the inflation genie out of the bottle, and is now in a rearguard struggle to bring it down to even close to its supposedly sacrosanct 2.00% target. So we believe the Fed’s printing presses will stay close to idle for many years to come, yet without inflationary stimulus from the Fed there is absolutely no reason to believe that nominal GDP growth rate will accelerate. Indeed, if the US economy generates even the 4.2% nominal growth CAGR embodied in the CBO baseline, it will be something of an economic miracle.

So under no circumstances is it reasonable to assume more than $371.2 trillion of nominal GDP will materialize over the next decade. Art Laffer’s napkin to the contrary notwithstanding, therefore, there is no way that Federal revenue even under current law would come in higher than the $67 trillion already in the CBO baseline for FY 2026-2035. Under the circumstances, in fact, the CBO baseline already amounts to Rosy Scenario Redux.

CBO Baseline Assumptions For Nominal GDP, Real GDP, Interest Rates and CPI, FY 2026-2035

To be sure, it is possible that the implicit mix of inflation and growth will vary from the CBO assumptions, which peg real GDP growth at 1.9% per annum and the implicit GDP deflator at 2.3% in alignment with the CPI assumption shown in the table above. But even a shift to say real growth of 2.9% and inflation to 1.3% per annum won’t make a dimes worth of difference in the budget numbers owing to what might be termed the second Inconvenient Truth about economic growth and budget impact.

The idea that higher economic growth is significantly favorable to the budget is essentially an obsolete Keynesian axiom reflective of a time when the US economy was driven by Workfare, as opposed to today’s overwhelming dominance by Welfare. Under the older Keynesian formulation, an economy operating at well less than full employment would generate a surge in unemployment insurance (UI) payments, which, in turn, would balloon the deficit. And that was supposedly a good thing because unemployment payments would cushion the fall of wage-based consumption spending, thereby braking the recessionary contraction; and then such counter-cycle UI outlays would automatically shrink as the economy recovered.

Whatever the once-upon-a-time merits of this counter-cyclical budget model, it is surely vestigial today. The CBO baseline spending for FY 2026, for instance, includes $4.2mtrillion of outlays for Welfare State programs including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Benefits and food stamps versus just $38 billion for unemployment insurance. UI spending is thus a mere 0.9% of the Welfare State budget, which is almost entirely insensitive to the state of the macro-economy.

Accordingly, even a tripling of unemployment insurance spending owing to weaker than forecast real growth and employment would hardly make a ripple in Federal spending and deficits. On the other hand, of course, higher real growth than the 1.9% per annum rate assumed in the CBO baseline would not make a damn bit of difference to Federal spending, either.

In the first place, higher growth is largely irrelevant to the giant Welfare State budget–none of these 145 million people work or have jobs to loose anyway. At the same time, the CBO forecast assumes virtual full-employment for the entire period, meaning that the de minimis $38 billion projected for Unemployment Insurance outlays in FY 2026 and the years beyond is driven overwhelmingly by on-going “frictional” unemployment that is present even in a so-called full-employment economy. An even stronger economy than CBO optimistically assumes, therefore, wouldn’t reduce the cyclical component of UI spending because the baseline assumption already presumes full employment.

In short, high real growth owing to supply side tax cuts under today’s factual circumstances is likely to neither boost revenue collections materially nor reduce spending levels by measureable amounts relative to the CBO baseline. Accordingly, there is no revenue reflow or so-called dynamic effect of modestly higher economic growth rates on the budget outcomes.

The current catastrophic path of the Federal budget, therefore, can only be addressed by politically painful decisions to slash spending including entitlements and defense or force the people to pay higher taxes for the bloated level of government spending that no one wants to meaningfully challenge.

Nor are we talking pure theory and economic logic. The proof is actually in the pudding from the 2017 Trump tax cut itself. Owing to the immense cumulative distortions in the US economy owing to decades of money-printing and cheap debt, the Trump tax cut—even on the business side—got mostly captured by Wall Street speculators rather than fueling main street growth.

At the time of enactment in December 2017, net business investment in the US economy was already at an all-time low of just under 3.0% of GDP. As is evident from the graph, investment levels relative to the size of the economy actually continued to shrink, notwithstanding cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and supplying an additional $100 billion per year of incentives for CapEx by unincorporated businesses via the 20% investment deduction.

Business CapEx (nonresidential fixed investment) As % Of GDP, 1971 to 2023

The question arises, of course, as to where all the increased corporate cash flow from the sharp reduction in businesses taxes actually ended up. But, alas, the latter is no mystery. The money-printing policies of the Fed over the nearly four decades since Alan Greenspan took the helm at the Fed have turned Wall Street into a veritable casino, where gamblers reward the C-suites of America for financial engineering maneuvers like stock buybacks, leveraged recaps and outright LBOs rather than productive investment in plant, equipment and technology on main street.

Consequently, operating cash flows of the S&P 500, for instance, rose from $6.972 trillion during the six year period before the 2017 tax cut (2012-2017) to $8.929 trillion during the six year afterwards (2018 through 2023) or by +28%. At the same time, dividends rose by +49% and stock buybacks by +42% as between the two periods.

In total dollars, the gain of $1.957 trillion of operating cash flow during 2018 through 2023 compared to the prior six-year period was offset by an increase of $2.407 trillion in returns to shareholders. Stated differently, 123% of the corporate tax cut-assisted gain in operating cash flows of the S&P 500 companies ended up being flushed back through Wall Street in the form of dividends and stock buybacks!

Indeed, with 87% of operating cash flows being devoted to dividends and stock buybacks during 2018-2023, there was only $1.161 trillion left for net investment on main street. That compared to the 76% shareholder return ratio during the six years before the Trump tax cut, which had left $1.673 trillion for net investment on main street.

That’s right. The availability of cash flows for net investment on main street declined by 31% during the six years after the 2017 tax cut. What this indicates, of course, is that all things are not equal. The rampant money-printing of the Fed has so corrupted Wall Street that even supply-side tax cuts have been diverted into increased levels of rent-seeking speculation and financial engineering.

S&P 500: Aggregate Cash From Operations, Free Cash Flow, Dividends, Stock Buybacks And Total Returns To Shareholders, 2004 to 2023.

For want of doubt, here are two additional measures of economic performance for the seven-years before and after the 2017 tax cuts. In the case of real economic growth, as measured by real final sales, the annualized gain deteriorated sharply during the post-tax cut period, falling from 2.56% per annum during the five years ending in Q4 2017 to 2.27% per annum in the period since then.

In the case of real wage and salary income, the comparison is even more negative. The growth rate of real wages has deteriorated by nearly one-fifth since 2017.

Per Annum Inflation-Adjusted Growth In Wage and Salary Incomes:

• 2010-2017: 2.43%.
• 2017-2024: 1.92%.

At the end of the say, there is no if, ands or buts about it. The Trumpified GOP is fixing to serve up a veritable Debt Bomb, and there is no case whatsoever that the US economy can grow its way out of the $30 trillion of new debt the Donald’s Big Beautiful Bill is about to dump upon the already debt-entombed main street economy.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockton’s Contra Corner.

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The speculations about what kind of pope Leo XIV will be range from outrageous scurrility to overenthusiastic embrace. I have read terrible things on the far end of the ultra “conservative” enclaves on the Internet and ridiculous things from the official liberal “Catholic” who seems to be whistling past the cemetery. Not only do some of the modernist voices chant “santo subito” about the recently deceased Holy Father, they want to make his successor a kind of Francis Redux.

Only God knows how things will work out, but I sincerely doubt that Pope Leo will be Francis 2.0 or even 1.5. I am just an observer from afar, but one of the things that I wonder about concerns the reaction of Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga to the pre-conclave meetings of the cardinals.

According to a liberal “Catholic” magazine, the cardinal, a great friend of Pope Francis, “left Rome with a sense of bitterness and disillusionment, 12 years after he contributed decisively to the election of Pope Francis.” The National Catholic Reporter said that an Italian daily (Il Fatto Quotidiano) “said that at the general congregations he witnessed the unraveling of the pro-Francis alliance, with many former supporters of the pontiff now becoming, in his words, ‘turncoats.’”

This is significant from a man who not only influenced the election of Pope Francis but also was a close confidant of the Holy Father. He is another one of those prodigious polyglot churchmen with several languages at his command and a network of influence worldwide. I met Cardinal Rodríguez several times, and he was an extraordinarily astute leader and Church politician. If he was disappointed about what he felt was in the wind before the conclave, I would think that things were not boding well for the chosen candidate(s) of the Francis loyalists among the eminences.

Some “conservatives” (a word with so many different meanings that it is almost useless sometimes) didn’t like that Pope Leo had been appointed to the dicastery of bishops by Pope Francis. It did not encourage them that the new pope mentioned his predecessor several times and even talked about continuing in some way Francis’ legacy.

The new pope was obviously personally loyal to the pope, as we would expect every Catholic, every bishop, and especially every head of a dicastery would be. I think all the noises he made about his gratitude and appreciation of his predecessor were, in some ways, de rigueur as part of the Vatican structure. It might make some people happy to hear of “going in a different direction,” but it would alarm most of the Church and unnecessarily upset a significant part of the leadership. If in the Dark Ages a pope could disinter his predecessor and dramatically disown the other’s decision, it would be an absurd and frightening tactic in our present age.

Those afraid of “Francis 2.0,” or whatever, should be patient. A ship could upset both cargo and passengers taking sharp turns. A gentle and gradual approach is better and also takes advantage of some of the positive coordinates of the voyage so far. I think that Pope Leo is not going to have a “hermeneutic of discontinuity” but one of “continuity.”

He is a canonist, of a temperament much different from his predecessor, as much different as his background and experience is different. A priest who would definitely be called “conservative” in my diocese said to me about some of the critics of Pope Leo, “Why don’t they let the pope be his own man?”

I think the answer to that question is that some people have a bit too much skin in the game to be patient. The Tablet enthused that the election of Pope Leo was

a win for the Catholic Church, a win for the world’s poor—and a win for the late Pope Francis. As the pieces of the conclave jigsaw come together, it becomes clearer how Francis had managed to influence the outcome in advance, and in particular how he had planned to ward off the conservative and traditionalist forces in the Church who wanted a very different papacy to follow his own.

Where the Holy Spirit might have fit in the conclave “jigsaw” is something The Tablet is apparently not worried about. Just as a political narrative, the exultant note about an unknown quantity and quality (do they know Pope Leo?) appears to be something out of Robert Harris’ awful novel about the election of a hermaphrodite pope. Interpreting the operations of Divine Providence in and for the Church by the light of some tweets of the new Holy Father before the election seems like a lot of wishful thinking. There is a symmetry in this “dream a little dream with me” approach of claiming the new pope as one’s own and the concern of a fanatically ultra-reactionary blog that published a photo of the pope’s high school yearbook message to a classmate as doomsday prophecy.

Everyone on the radical discontinuity side of the spectrum loves that Leo XIII, whom his namesake admires, was aware of political and social issues and their theological perspectives. Of course, such people do not appreciate in the same way the pontiff’s Thomism or the prayers at the foot of the altar that Pope Leo added to the ritual, especially the St. Michael Prayer. Nor do the “liberals” seem to recognize the irony that a pope who spoke against the “Americanist” heresy now has an American successor who consciously identifies with his legacy.

Read the Whole Article

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In a recent speech to a Democrat audience Hillary Clinton reaffirms that it is Democrat Party Policy to Replace White Americans with Immigrant-invaders. Hillary blasted the Trump regime’s emphasis on “return to the family, the nuclear family, return to being a Christian nation, return to producing a lot of children.”  It is all a dastardly right-wing trick to take away women’s rights to have careers instead of children.  Having children, she said is the function of immigrant-invaders, not of white women.

She told the Democrat audience that “this very blatant effort to basically send a message most exemplified by Vance and Musk, and others, that, you know, what we really need from you women are more children. And what that really means is you should go back to doing what you were born to do, which is to produce more children.”  Now that feminists have taught women to take over the male role, here are the vile Trump Republicans trying to roll back the liberation of women from the home and children.

The question is, where can an American male find a female life partner? That is not what an indoctrinated feminist wants to be.  She wants to be independent, not constrained by a supportive relationship. Perhaps white American males can find wives among the female immigrant-invaders.  The resulting miscegenation destroys both races, thus the result is to eliminate diversity.  Funny, isn’t it, that the dumbshit liberal-left is so stupid that they don’t realize that the result of multiculturalism is the elimination of racial diversity.

Hillary, in her unbridled ignorance, actually said that unlike Europe, America’s welcoming of immigrant-invaders has caused our economy  to do “so much better than comparable advanced economies across the world.” Hillary says, “we actually had a replenishment, because we had a lot of immigrants, legally and undocumented, who had, you know, larger than normal by American standards, families.”

Does Hillary not know that all of Europe and the formerly British are overrun with immigrant invaders, and that these invaders are protected by the EU and UK governments?  So what is the basis of Hillary’s claim that the US, unlike “comparable advanced economies,” is the beneficiary of illegal immigration?

Don’t ask the stupid Hillary.  She doesn’t know.

Will the morons who vote Democrat notice these revelations? Are they willing to turn their country over to immigrant-invaders in exchange for the right of white women to appropriate the male role?

It is absolutely clear that the achievement of feminism will be the elimination of white ethnicities. Already corporate advertisers are pushing miscegenation.  Seldom do you see a white family in a corporate ad.  Miscegenation is a two-edged sword.  It replaces both races with a new rootless being without a race, a history, and a culture.

America is being erased, both whites and blacks, but Americans are too insouciant to notice. See this.

The post Hillary Endorses White Replacement appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Patrick Foy:

China slowly heads for the exits.

See here.

The post UK overtakes China as second-largest US Treasury holder appeared first on LewRockwell.