Aggregatore di feed

Click here:

Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute on Mind Matters and Everything Else, EP 65 by Dr. Joseph Sansone

Trump Foreign Policy and Civil Liberty Positions

Read on Substack

The post Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute talks to Dr. Joseph Sansone appeared first on LewRockwell.

* Warning: indelicate language.

If we in the West are the most propagandized people in the world; Gazans are the least propagandized. Outwardly captives, Gazans are liberated from the illiberal political propaganda that grips the West

WHAT has Israel been up to since March 18, 2025, which was when the “genocidal entity” formally broke the nominal ceasefire agreement in Gaza? Oracular insight here is unnecessary.

Israel has been trampling underfoot everything decent and good.

Genocide is back. This time with President Trump in fawning agreement, playing procurer and pimp for the Israeli State, and subjecting ingrate Bibi Netanyahu to no more than a curt jerk of the leash: During a press conference with the US president, on April 7, the Israeli prime minister’s face, nevertheless, grew as dark as a thundercloud on mention of possible diplomacy with Iran.

Under such favorable circumstances, Israelis are louder and prouder about killing and destroying with monomaniacal diligence. Indifferently, and for the first time, Israel openly admitted to targeting journalist Hussam Shabat for “elimination,” in December of 2024, and executing the him on March 24. The sadistic serial killer stalked its prey, then pounced.

The predator has so far singled out and assassinated 232 other Palestinian journalists.

Shabat thus knew, as he put it, that “journalism meant Israel would kill him.” Only 23, so full of promise, Shabat wrote his epitaph in advance of his death. It read:

“If you’re reading this, it means I have been killed — most likely targeted — by the Israeli occupation forces. … For [the] past 18 months, I have dedicated every moment of my life to my people. I documented the horrors in northern Gaza minute by minute, determined to show the world the truth they tried to bury.

I slept on pavements, in schools, in tents — anywhere I could. Each day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months, yet I never left my people’s side.”

By God, I fulfilled my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to tell the truth, and now, at last, I have found rest—something I have not known for the past 18 months. I did this because I believe in the Palestinian cause, in our right to this land. The greatest honor of my life was to die defending it and serving its people.

I ask you now: Do not stop speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away. Keep fighting, keep telling our stories—until Palestine is free.

For the last time,

Hussam Shabat, from northern Gaza.”

Trampling underfoot everything decent and good: Fatma Hassona was to be the subject of an upcoming documentary, “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,” to debut at the Cannes Film Festival. Israel could not allow that. So, Air Force Genocide bombed the 25-year-old Palestinian photojournalist, also murdering nine members of her family.

After a brief, relative lull, eighteen months into the genocide of the Palestinians of Gaza, Israel has resumed its slaughter of civilians at an average rate of 103 souls a day, with 223 individuals dealt life-altering injuries, also daily. Since March 18, reports Ha’aretz, Israel has killed 1,652 people and wounded 4,391 in strikes on Gaza. (Ha’aretz “Israel News” newsletter, Wednesday, 16.04.2025.) The number murdered now approaches 2,000.

With 62,000 Palestinians missing, over 52,000 confirmed dead; and indirect deaths ranging from three to fifteen times the number of direct deaths, by the Lancet’s account—the fake, fossilized media should be obligated to report the official number of Palestinians dead by Israel as well over 100,000. That too is a vast undercount.

The mind is crowded. Palestinians murdered melt into a montage of faces. Yet remember we must men like Rifaat Radwan. Radwan was among fifteen medical and humanitarian workers who were summarily executed pointblank, on March 23, by the Israeli regime in Gaza.

The underworld that is the IDF (Israel Defense Forces)—the world criminals and lawbreakers inhabit—is premised upon lies. By now you know The Liar’s lines, as he drops American “earthquake bombs” on kids at community kitchens:

“Hamas. Terrorism. If Palestinians die; they needed killing.”

But Satan’s non sequiturs can’t conceal the truth—or silence the deeply felt devotionals of the righteous. As the SS IDF stood above him, riddling his colleagues and himself with thousands of bullets, Radwan, Palestinian Red Crescent Society medic, did not beg the agents of his demise. Instead, he recorded their crime for posterity while righteously reciting his last prayers. These are achingly beautiful:

“Oh Lord, accept us. Oh Lord, accept me as a martyr. Mother, forgive me. This is the path I chose … that I help people. … .” Until he expired.

As Monday of April 7 dawned, a Wi-Fi rigged world watched a funeral pyre of Palestinians, except that the people Israel lit up were alive. The IDF incinerated “a tent housing Palestinian journalists in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.”

Late last year, when teenager Shaban al-Dalou smoldered alive, the presstitutes did what they always do: Fudge the English language in the service of Israel. To shore up this oppressive foreign regime, media deploy euphemisms and the passive voice; syntactic devices that mask the excruciating death of a boy kind, beautiful and bright, who was driven by devotion to kin and community.

“Killed in a fire,” media said about Shaban’s murder. The same fate has now befallen Helmi Al-Faqaawi, “a correspondent for Palestine Today News Agency, and Youssef Al-Khazandar, a civilian assisting the group of journalists.” Photojournalist Ahmed Mansour, seen in images engulfed in flames, is fighting for his life in Gaza.

Does Mansour have a fighting chance, what with the last barely functional hospital in the Strip having been obliterated by Israel? On the morning of Palm Sunday, IDF fiends flattened the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, which had stood since 1882. “Burning a journalist alive in Gaza, exclaimed Lima Bustami, Euro-Med Monitor’s legal department director, “is not aimed at silencing the truth. Israel already relies on a far greater force: the world’s indifference to the truth.”

With a world of indifference as backdrop, Israel set ablaze yet more civilians in tents on April 17. (And still more again on April 21.) Seventeen Palestinian civilians, including nine children, were dispatched, apparently, dead by “waves of [some sort].” Yes, even Al Jazeera has caught the botched-English bug, writing that, on April 18, “a wave of Israeli air strikes” killed them.

Another trope of the malpracticing media is to qualify the daily carnage in Gaza with the clause, “mostly women and children.” Or, “Including many women and children.” As though Palestinian men were fare game.

This genocide exclusionary clause is pronounced among the vanishingly small number of conservative influencers who have registered their objection to Israel’s crimes. Out of Christian charity, these influencers allow that the murdered are “women and children,” for the most. Or, that among the murdered are Christians. This from creedal conservatives who otherwise champion the centrality of men and manliness in society.

This from the same conservatives who must surely know that Jesus Christ stood not for sectarian favoritism, but for the universal value of all human beings.

“Meet the Palestinian men the media don’t want you to know exist,” narrates Lara Elborno, a Palestinian daughter, human-rights attorney and activist. This here is a woman who can speak both poignantly and with authority about Palestinian men. By now, so can we. And it is the men of Palestine whom we’ve watched on our screens first to the scenes of slaughter. They dig, carry, evacuate, comfort, perform religious rites of burial, and cry when lulls allow.

The contrast between Palestinian men and the IDF stares at you like blood on a Kaffan, the traditional Palestinian shroud.

At bottom, the most cowardly army known in military history doesn’t engage in battles. The IDF is an air force: It strafes civilians from above. Since it broke the ceasefire, Israel has conducted daily massacres by airstrikes, shelling, and drone strikes, reports Jon Elmer, military analyst for the Electronic Intifada. Well over 1000 such airstrikes—fifty a day—have seen nearly 600 children and babies blown to bits.

With every avenue of ingress and egress sealed off by the Israelis for the last six weeks, fuel to power earth-moving machinery is unavailable. So when, on April 10, thirty-five civilians were murdered and fifty injured by warplanes strafing a “densely populated residential block,” in a Shuja’iyya neighborhood—civil defense teams, Palestinians, were on the scene. They always are. How they do it nobody knows. They currently use trawls, spades, finger nails and faith to get at the trapped.

Ugly and evil seeks to eradicate its opposites. Reflexively do the West’s brash, technocratic, atomistic and irreligious societies aim to eradicate communities unlike their own. Decadently woke and cruelly impersonal Gaza is not. Gaza, attests Zahad Rahman, an American nurse who volunteers in what remains of the enclave, is a community-centered, gracious society. Rahman is not a Palestinian. Israel has murdered more than 1,000 individuals like him—”members of the medical, defense and aid teams in Gaza,” confirms B’Tselem (an Israeli human rights organization). Despite the risk, like so many medical volunteers who go to Gaza, Rahman has found himself drawn back to people who will give you their shirt in zero weather.

In the Ramadan tradition of “cultivating empathy,” in the ruins, Gazans thus laid tables to celebrate. Eid al-Fitr, in particular, explains Imam Dr. Omar Suleiman, a scholar and theologian, “is meant to continue that empathy into our celebrations. On the morning of Eid, every Muslim is required to pay Zakat al-Fitr—a form of charity designed to ensure that no one is left out of the feast. It is a beautiful practice: a way of saying that joy is only complete when shared, that our celebration is meaningless if others are starving.”

Inescapably, Eid al-Fitr spirituality was shattered by Israeli barbarity.

On April 3, Israel murdered 92 worshippers. A volunteer doctor from Gaza Medic Voices spent Eid, which marks the conclusion of Ramadan, cutting away party clothes from the bodies of kids dressed to the nines for Eid. By day’s end, the number of human beings murdered had swelled. Little girls festively dressed were, instead, transported to the morgue, jewelry and finery shrouded in the garments of death.

While 100 Palestinian kids are now “killed or injured in Gaza every day,” since [genocide] resumed,” Israelis have gone and slapped a disability classification on “over 20,000” of their own safe and sated offspring. Victims of terror, claim the Israeli State’s mental-health mavens.

The Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is an ever-mutating manual, now in its fifth iteration. The criteria for manufacturing illness under the DSM, or similar industry-developed manuals, are malleable. In real life, no psychiatric manual required, tens of thousands of Palestinian children are being terrorized, are actually dead, mutilated, mentally scarred for life, orphaned without a soul in the world.

Still, one can well-understand why their Israeli adversaries—predators parading as prey—would want to tar even the Palestinian toddler as an irremediable terrorist-in-the-making. Like so many of their formative figures, Palestinian children are formidable, fierce.

Amid the worry and wear of finding food and staying alive, a slip of a girl composes and recites the poetry of resistance:

“I’m Palestinian and proud.”

“I’m proud because I’m the strong brave girl, the daughter of heroes.”

“The daughter of Gaza, the land of the free…”

And so she goes in modulated, melodic Arabic. Here another young Palestinian girl stops her idol, the late Mr. Shabat, aforementioned, to tell him of her admiration. When she grows up; she wants to be a brave journalist like her hero, since martyred. These are very centered children.

If we in the West are the most propagandized people in the world; Gazans are the least propagandized. Outwardly captives, Gazans are liberated from the illiberal political propaganda that grips the West.

And Gabi Siboni knows this. The former IDF colonel, now an unthinking member of Israel’s think-tank ranks, reflects Jewish-Israeli public and political discourse. For Gazans Siboni expresses genocidal contempt and intent—but also a warped understanding of Gazan ferocity about liberating their ancestral homeland. Said Siboni:

“Hamas is not the problem in Gaza. Hamas is a symptom of a bigger problem. The population in Gaza is a ‘barbaric mob.’ If we don’t wish to bleed our soldiers for decades—because in Gaza there will be Hamas B and C—the only solution is Trump’s ‘vision.'”

Sidoni is a lot more honest, and only a tad less subtle, than the oleaginous Bernie Sanders, an unreconstructed liberal Zionist.

Gaza is no more because of a concerted campaign to wipe it out; because of extermination and depopulation; not because of “Israeli self-defense,” which is when one sovereign state wards off the armies of other sovereign nation-states. Yet “in the year 2025,” Sanders’ mass rallies are festooned with the line, “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

Bernie Sanders’ sophistry should explode the brain like an ammunition dump!

In international law, explains Philip Proudfoot, a British political scientist, “Occupation is temporary, imposing duties, not rights, upon the occupier. The Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly demands that an occupier safeguard civilian rights. Accordingly, Israel cannot resort to anything more than police powers to ‘defend itself.’”

Genocide is the acid test. Sanders’ insistence, well into genocide, that “Israel has a right to defend itself can only be interpreted as blatant genocide apologia,” propounds Caitlin Johnstone. Clearly an expert in untruths, Sanders, who oversaw the removal from his rallies of protesters and their Free Palestine flag, has further exposed himself as a slick establishment operative, who seeks to capture naïve, politically homeless Democrats.

Back to the malodorous cauldron of death and decadence that is the Israel Defense Forces. (Or perhaps the Israel Defense Feces?)

A new load of grief came, in March, to residents of the al-Faraa refugee camp in the foothills of the Jordan Valley, in the northern occupied West Bank. Slatternly IDF soldiers have a familiar signature. They leave behind human waste in the homes they wreck:

“Feces, urine and used condoms—these are just some of the things that Israeli soldiers left behind in these Palestinian homes during their 11-day assault [in March],” reports the Electronic Intifada.

That the IDF has a documented “tradition” of defecating and urinating in the West Bank and Gazan homes they occupy and vandalize is seconded by a 2014 account in the Guardian: “Palestinians returning home find Israeli troops left feces and venomous graffiti.”

Somebody should rub IDF noses in their own mess to teach them a lesson, once and for all. Nobody has.

Yes, Israel makes atrocities past and present look like sandbox play. Still, puzzling even to me is this recent account of used condoms left by the IDF in these West Bank homes. Why puzzling? We know that despite the feel-good official designation of some Israeli females as combat soldiers, the few women in combat roles “are not explicitly deployed into combat situations.” During these ostensible “military” raids, the IDF functions, I believe, as a male-only “fighting” force.

So, why the condoms left in vandalized Palestinian homes, in the course of the IDF’s Dionysian bacchanalia in the West Bank? Whose are they, exactly?

Is this what Ha’aretz, Israel’s center-liberal paper of record, calls “the homoerotic side of Israeli army life”? Is “copulating” to be added to the documented IDF “tradition” of male soldiers defecating and urinating in Palestinian homes?

Ha’aretz, I’ve noticed, waters down debauchery—but not because it is concealing the truth for the “Fatherland.” They tell the truth but frame it differently. Thus, the debauchery of uniformed IDF doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal in the Israeli State. Israel doesn’t appear to share American sensibilities—at least so it seems to me, who has closely observed this society in the Hebrew, for eighteen ugly months.

American culture is quite prudish; Israel’s expressed aesthetic is more pornographic. An example is the familiar images of IDF wearing or rummaging through the sexy lingerie of Palestinian women dead or dispossessed. You and I would consider these cross-dressing displays among uniformed men as inappropriate, kinky.

Not Haaretz. Kinky acts of cowardice and sadism—invading Palestinian homes, looting, vandalizing and manhandling private effects—a writer at Ha’aretz is wont to label “Machismo”: The “Military machismo of Israeli soldiers in Gaza will rear its ugly head at home,” blared a January 2025 Ha’aretz headline.

I’m a subscriber. I read enough of Ha’aretz to get a sense that Israel has a different, un-American aesthetic. Take this depiction of Purim, which used to be celebrated, largely, as a children’s festival. To “a brief history of Purim, the Halloween of Jewish holidays,” Ha’aretz has appended an erotic image of men flirting and kissing deeply. Ha’aretz appears to consider this image to be Halloween/Purim-appropriate, wholesome.

The only reasonable, quality newspaper in Israel, Ha’aretz, also dishes a lot of bafflegab. The IDF has invaded large swathes of Syria, is bombing the place, annexing kilometers for a so-called buffer zone, and making overtures to certain cowed Syrian communities so as to further divide and rule that country.

An “overbearing embrace,” however, is how Ha’aretz has euphemized the violence of conquest and the breach of Syrian borders, in March of 2025: “Israel’s Overbearing Embrace Threatens Syria’s Druze at a Critical Juncture.

Utter opposites, too, are Palestinians. If Palestinians are united in the yen for freedom; Israeli circuitry is wired for cruelty.

Israel Katz, defense minister, stonily threatened all of Gaza’s civilians, on March 19, 2025. As a Twitter adage goes, “Translating an Israeli tweet from the Hebrew is like finding a lost page of Mein Kampf.” Listen to the “sound of impunity”—and for that matter, never believe any Hebrew-English translation come to you via Israeli officialdom.

These are Katz’ precise words translated from the Hebrew:

“Residents of Gaza, this is the last warning. The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza. The second Sinwar will ruin her completely. The assault of the air force against the Hamas terrorists is just the first step. The rest will be many times harder, and you will pay the full price. Evacuations will soon start from areas of battle. If all the Israeli hostages are not released, and Hamas is not expelled from Gaza—Israel will act with the kind of force unfamiliar to you. Take the offer of the president of the US: return the hostages and expel ‘The Hamas,’ and other options will then open before you, including migration to other places across the world, for whomever wishes it. The alternative is destruction and complete ruin.”

Defense Minister Katz further reiterated, on April 16, his policy of “halting the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza.” “The State of Israel’s policy is clear. No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, as this is one of our main pressure tactics” with Hamas. Under the current reality, nobody intends to stray from the policy, barked Katz.

In an instant, Minister Katz had pacified the “Hostages and Missing Families Forum.” While “emphasizing that the release of the hostages and the continuation of the war cannot happen simultaneously,” the group had nonetheless condemned the Israeli government for “quietly preparing to reinstate humanitarian aid.” (Ha’aretz’s “Israel News” newsletter, Wednesday, 16.04.2025.)

On the whole, it has been well-established that from janitor to general, from soldiers to supreme court justices; in words and in deeds—Israeli society generally shares in the genocidal mindset. The exceptions are a few heavily proscribed, miniscule (“around 300 Israelis come to hold pictures of Gazan children”), pro-peace, Arab-Jewish groups. All told, Israelis speak of Palestinians as though they were sub-humans, untouchables, unmentionable, lacking any say in how they live or die.

When I wrote, moreover, that “criminality is codified in Israeli law; that genocide, snuff films, extra-judicial assassinations and rape of Palestinians are de facto legal in Israel; I was not engaging in hyperbole. Systemic, societal criminality is regularly codified by the highest court in that land. Late in March came a ruling from the Israeli Supreme Court, “explicitly and directly legitimizing Israel’s illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip.”

Both asinine and depraved, the Israeli high court used, in support of its authoritative ruling for starvation, “the argument that the State of Israel is exempt from the obligations of belligerent occupation under international law in all cases pertaining to the Gaza Strip.”

Sure, you may subsume in logic, as the Israeli supreme court indirectly does, that you are not obligated to help dying human beings. But you cannot make a cogent, rational case for your right to stop others from feeding and healing dying human beings. This displays a defect in the faculty of reasoning, as well as a defect of character. By default, the outcome of the Israeli high court’s ruling is the death of the starved population—the process of mass murder will play out to its legislated conclusion.

The fault for inaction lies now entirely with those who won’t act to save Gazans: The USA, Western European- and East European countries, East and West Asian governments.

The emanations from the minds of Israel’s Supreme Court are mind-numbingly boorish and banal. Most pertinent for our purposes here is that Israel does not enjoy an independent judiciary. Yet Israel regularly exploits the principle of complementarity in international law, according to which the International Criminal Court (ICC) shares legal jurisdiction with the democratic nation-state under investigation, provided the latter has an independent judiciary.

Beware! With chameleon alacrity, Israel typically scurries to “investigate” itself, and to exploit the principle of complementarity, when the world looks like it’s had enough. Legal investigations by Israel of its own crimes are part of the Israeli superstructure of deception. Nominal prosecutions, or ersatz investigations, by genocidal Israel of its crimes against Arabs must themselves be treated as part of Hasbara’s meta-chicanery, aimed at concealing the Israeli State’s transparently despotic tendencies.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, like Joe Biden before him, has made Americans confederates in Israel’s crimes. A malign conjunction of events engineered by Trump has further positioned Israeli leadership to finalize its genocidal goal, as its lobby proxies and influencers stateside successfully silence us, and sunder our Bill of Rights protections, including the First Amendment right to think and speak freely.

The level of “state capture” by Israel, a small, oppressive foreign regime, is unprecedented, inveighs Craig Mokhiber, activist and scholar of international, humanitarian law. This is “state capture” at every level: foreign and domestic, federal, state, county and city. For Israel, law enforcement agencies under this and the previous government are willing to silence and disappear activists against genocide for exercising our American liberties.

Absurd, of course, but Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had tweeted that their job is to stop illegal ideas at the U.S. border: “People, money, products, ideas. If it crosses the US border illegally, our job is to stop it.”

“An American-style Cultural Revolution” à la Mao Zedong.

The post Genocide’s Back: Trump-Backed Israeli Brutality appeared first on LewRockwell.

The key MAGA issue is not foreign policy, but how to structurally re-balance an economic paradigm in danger of an extinction event.

Trump clearly is in the midst of an existential conflict. He has a landslide mandate. But is ringed by a resolute domestic enemy front in the form of an ‘industrial concern’ infused with Deep State ideology, centred primarily on preserving U.S. global power (rather than on mending of the economy).

The key MAGA issue however is not foreign policy, but how to structurally re-balance an economic paradigm in danger of an extinction event. Trump has always been clear that this forms his primordial goal. His coalition of supporters are fixed on the need to revive America’s industrial base, so as to provide reasonably well-paid jobs to the MAGA corps.

Trump may for now have a mandate, but extreme danger lurks – not just the Deep State and the Israeli lobby. The Yellen debt bomb is the more existential threat. It threatens Trump’s support in Congress, because the bomb is set to explode shortly before the 2026 midterms. New tariff revenues, DOGE savings, and even the upcoming Gulf shake-down are all centred on getting some sort of fiscal order in place, so that $9 trillion plus of short-term debt – maturing imminently – can be rolled over to the longer term without resort to eye-watering interest rates. It is Yellen-Democrat’s little trip wire for the Trump agenda.

So far, the general context seems plain enough. Yet, on the minutiae of how exactly to re-balance the economy; how to manage the ‘debt bomb’; and how far DOGE should go with its cuts, divisions in Trump’s team are present. In fact, the tariff war and the China tussle bring into contention a fresh phalanx of opposition: i.e. those (some on Wall Street, oligarchs, etc.) who have prospered mightily from the golden era of free-flowing, seemingly limitless, money-creation; those who were enriched, precisely by the policies that have made America subservient to the looming American ‘debt knell’.

Yet to make matters more complex, two of the key components to Trump’s mooted ‘re-balancing’ and debt ‘solution’ cannot be whispered, let alone said aloud: One reason is that it involves deliberately devaluing ‘the dollar in your pocket’. And secondly, many more Americans are going to lose their jobs.

That is not exactly a popular ‘sell’. Which is probably why the ‘re-balance’ has not been well explained to the public.

Trump launched the Liberation ‘Tariff Shock’ seemingly minded to crash-start a restructuring of international trade relations – as the first step towards a general re-alignment of major currency values.

China however, wasn’t buying into the tariff and trade restrictions ‘stuff’, and matters quickly escalated. It looked for a moment as if the Trump ‘Coalition’ might fracture under the pressure of the concomitant crisis in the U.S. bond market to the tariff fracas that shook confidence.

The Coalition, in fact, held; markets subsided, but then the Coalition fractured over a foreign policy issue – Trump’s hope to normalise relations with Russia, towards a Great Global Reset.

A major strand within the Trump Coalition (apart from MAGA populists) are the neocons and Israeli Firsters. Some sort of Faustian bargain supposedly was struck by Trump at the outset through a deal that had his team heavily peopled by zealous Israeli-Firsters.

Simply put, the breadth of coalition that Trump thought he needed to win the election and deliver an economic re-balance also included two foreign policy pillars: Firstly, the reset with Moscow – the pillar by which to end the ‘forever wars’, which his Populist base despised. And the second pillar being the neutering of Iran as a military power and source of resistance, on which both Israeli Firsters – and Israel – insist (and with which Trump seems wholly comfortable). Hence the Faustian pact.

Trump’s ‘peacemaker’ aspirations no doubt added to his electoral appeal, but they were not the real driver to his landslide. What has become evident is that these diverse agendas – foreign and domestic – are interlinked: A set-back in one or the other acts as a domino either impelling or retarding the other agendas. Put simply: Trump is dependent on ‘wins’ – early ‘wins’ – even if this means rushing towards a prospective ‘easy win’ without thinking through whether he possesses a sound strategy (and ability) to achieve it.

All of Trump’s three agenda objectives, it turns out, are more complicated and divisive than he perhaps expected. He and his team seem captivated by western-embedded assumptions such as first, that war generally happens ‘Over There’; that war in the post Cold War era is not actually ‘war’ in any traditional sense of full, all-out war, but is rather a limited application of overwhelming western force against an enemy incapable of threatening ‘us’ in a similar manner; and thirdly, that a war’s scope and duration is decided in Washington and its Deep State ‘twin’ in London.

So those who talk about ending the Ukraine war through an imposed unilateral ceasefire (ie, the faction of Walz, Rubio and Hegseth, led by Kellogg) seem to assume blithely that the terms and timing for ending the war also can be decided in Washington, and imposed on Moscow through the limited application of asymmetric pressures and threats.

Just as China isn’t buying into the tariff and trade restriction ‘stuff’, neither is Putin buying into the ultimatum ‘stuff’: (‘Moscow has weeks, not months, to agree a ceasefire’). Putin has patiently tried to explain to Witkoff, Trump’s Envoy, that the American presumption that the scope and duration of any war is very much up to the West to decide simply doesn’t gel with today’s reality.

And, in companion mode, those who talk about bombing Iran (which includes Trump) seem also to assume that they can dictate the war’s essential course and content too; the U.S. (and Israel perhaps), can simply determine to bomb Iran with big bunker-buster bombs. That’s it! End of story. This is assumed to be a self-justifying and easy war – and that Iran must learn to accept that they brought this upon themselves by supporting the Palestinians and others who refuse Israeli normalisation.

Aurelien observes:

“So we are dealing with limited horizons; limited imagination and limited experience. But there’s one other determining factor: The U.S. system is recognised to be sprawling, conflictual – and, as a result, largely impervious to outside influence – and even to reality. Bureaucratic energy is devoted almost entirely to internal struggles, which are carried out by shifting coalitions in the administration; in Congress; in Punditland and in the media. But these struggles are, in general, about [domestic] power and influence – and not about the inherent merits of an issue, and [thus] require no actual expertise or knowledge”.

“The system is large and complex enough that you can make a career as an ‘Iran expert’, say, inside and outside government, without ever having visited the country or speaking the language – by simply recycling standard wisdom in a way that will attract patronage. You will be fighting battles with other supposed ‘experts’, within a very confined intellectual perimeter, where only certain conclusions are acceptable”.

What becomes evident is that this cultural approach (the Think-Tank Industrial Complex) induces a laziness and the prevalence of hubris into western thinking. It is assumed reportedly, that Trump assumed that Xi Jinping would rush to meet with him, following the imposition of tariffs – to plead for a trade deal – because China is suffering some economic headwinds.

It is blandly assumed by the Kellogg contingent too that pressure is both the necessary and sufficient condition to compel Putin to agree to an unilateral ceasefire – a ceasefire that Putin repeatedly has stated he would not accept until a political framework was first agreed. When Witkoff relays Putin’s point within the Trump team discussion, he stands as a contrarian outside the ‘licensed discourse’ which insists that Russia only takes détente with an adversary seriously after it has been forced to do so by a defeat or serious setback.

Iran too repeatedly has said that it will not be stripped naked of its conventional defences; its allies and its nuclear programme. Iran likely has the capabilities to inflict huge damage both on U.S. forces in the region and on Israel.

The Trump Team is divided on strategy here too – crudely put: to Negotiate or to Bomb.

It seems that the pendulum has swung under intense pressure from Netanyahu and the Jewish institutional leadership within the U.S.

A few words can change everything. In an about face, Witkoff shifted from saying a day earlier that Washington would be satisfied with a cap on Iranian nuclear enrichment and would not require the dismantling of its nuclear facilities, to posting on his official X account that any deal would require Iran to “stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program … A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal”. Without a clear reversal on this from Trump, we are on a path to war.

It is plain that Team Trump has not thought through the risks inherent to their agendas. Their initial ‘ceasefire meeting’ with Russia in Riyadh, for example, was a theatre of the facile. The meeting was held on the easy assumption that since Washington had determined to have an early ceasefire then ‘it must be’.

“Famously”, Aurelien wearily notes, “the Clinton administration’s Bosnia policy was the product of furious power struggles between rival American NGO and Human Rights’ alumni – none of whom knew anything about the region, or had ever been there”.

It is not just that the team is insouciant towards the possible consequences of war in the Middle East. They are captive to manipulated assumptions that it will be an easy war.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The post A ‘Trump Deal’? Juggling War, ‘Easy War’ and Negotiation appeared first on LewRockwell.

Many consider anxiety to be the disease of the modern age. It is thus one of the most significant disease markets in America (e.g., from 2001-2004, approximately 19.1% of American adults had an anxiety disorder and in 2007, 36.8 billion was spent on medical care for anxiety and mood disorders). Yet despite spending billions on anxiety, rather than be appropriately addressed (like many other industries that depend upon the perpetuation of the problem they “solve”), it has only increased.

Worse still, a recent survey found slightly over half of young adults (18-26) now suffer from anxiety, 43% have panic attacks, a third take anxiety medications, 54% found they became worse in 2023, and 26% of them were diagnosed with a new mental health condition due to COVID-19.

All of this suggests we may not be utilizing the best approach to deal with anxiety—particularly since the drugs used to treat it are some of the most problematic ones on the market.

Insufficient Treatment Time

One of the biggest challenges in psychiatric care is the lack of time spent with patients. This rushed approach leads to some serious issues such as:

• There isn’t time to warn patients about significant drug side effects.
• Patients don’t feel safe reporting important side effects, like SSRI sexual dysfunction and medications aren’t adjusted properly.
• Medications end up replacing more time-intensive therapies that are far more effective in the long run.
• Most of the true healing a psychiatrist can provide requires them to be fully present to patients for a prolonged period of time.

Sadly, in today’s healthcare system, unless you work with a holistic cash-pay psychiatrist appointments are typically limited to just 15 minutes, leaving little room for meaningful interaction.

Overlapping Syndromes

A major challenge in medical diagnosis is that the same disease can create different symptoms in different patients, while completely different diseases can present with fairly similar symptoms. Because of this, it is typically much easier (and profitable) to give therapies that are directed at the symptomatic expressions of disease rather than taking the time to determine exactly what is causing the illness to trigger, and treating the root cause.

As such, one of the most common reasons individuals seek out the (often costly) realm of non-insurance covered integrative medicine is due to the fact that the symptomatic management conventional care offers leads to unacceptable outcomes (e.g., many debilitating symptoms remaining, costly and harmful “treatments” needing to be done indefinitely, or the illness progressing).

In an article on the depression industry, I highlighted a major problem with the condition—rather than there being one type of depression, numerous different things can cause it. This is often quite consequential, as while some types of depression respond well to SSRI antidepressants, others do not, and some become significantly worse with antidepressant therapy. As such, it is not appropriate to quickly diagnose someone with depression and then prescribe an antidepressant—but this is unfortunately what frequently happens, particularly in 10 minute primary care visits.

In turn, the exact same is true for “anxiety” (which helps to explain why “anxiety” and “depression” remain the two most common psychiatric diagnoses).

Types of Anxiety

Some of the most common types of anxiety include:

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): Characterized by excessive worry about various topics greatly out of proportion to the actual issue, often with physical symptoms like muscle tension, and affects about 3.1% of the U.S. population, with a higher prevalence in women. It responds to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) but is significantly worsened by benzodiazepines.
• Panic Disorder: In the last year, roughly 2-3% of Americans experienced sudden, unexpected, and recurrent panic attacks with symptoms like heart palpitations and dizziness. Psychotherapy, especially Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), is effective, and in certain cases (discussed here), benzodiazepines can help panic disorders.
• Specific Phobias: Roughly 7-9% of people at some point in their life will have an irrational fear of a specific object, situation, or activity, such as heights, spiders, or flying, and experience panic symptoms when exposed to it. Like panic disorders, this condition responds to appropriate benzodiazepine use& and ERP therapy.
• Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD): Intense fear of being judged in social situations, leading to avoidance (which 7-13% of people will experience at some point in their lives). ERP therapy and low-dose beta-blockers are helpful treatments.
• Agoraphobia: About 1-2% of people fear being in situations where escape might be difficult if anxiety or panic strikes. Agoraphobia responds well to ERP therapy but not to benzodiazepines.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Involves intrusive thoughts and repetitive behaviors. Does not respond well to CBT or benzodiazepines but can benefit from ERP therapy. SSRIs may be used by psychiatrists for treatment.
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): A common cause of anxiety in 3-6% of the population, often leading to flashbacks and self-medication. Can respond to ERP or CBT but often is inappropriately medicated.
• Adjustment Disorder: Occurs after major life changes, leading to difficulties functioning. CBT and supportive therapy are most effective, with SSRIs sometimes used temporarily for short-term relief.
• Stressful Life Syndrome: Anxiety due to ongoing stressful situations, such as unhealthy relationships or job dissatisfaction. Psychiatric medications rarely help in these cases as they are ill-suited for addressing an external issue creating internal distress.

Understanding these different types of anxiety is crucial for accurate diagnosis and treatment. For example, in many cases, benzodiazepines or SSRIs are not appropriate for the condition (and frequently can make it worse or create a medication dependence), while the appropriate psychotherapy can be quite helpful. However, in practice, we find inappropriate medications are frequently given while psychotherapy (which is often far more beneficial for resolving anxiety) is never offered. This I believe to a large extent results from the prescribing physician not understanding that different types of anxiety require different treatments and it requiring far more resources to provide psychotherapy.

Note: it can sometimes initially be difficult to determine what form of anxiety someone has either because they are concealing it or are in denial over the root cause of it or because they have multiple forms existing concurrently. As such, I believe it is important for patients to understand the types of anxiety so they can avoid being misdiagnosed and given the wrong treatment.

Causes of Anxiety

With some types of anxiety (e.g., PTSD anxiety), the cause is fairly straightforward. However, it is far more ambiguous for many others and hence often missed by a rushed clinician. Important causes to be aware of include:

Mental Causes of Anxiety

Anxiety, particularly Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), often stems from anticipating a negative future, being fearful of it, and then getting trapped into an overthinking response. Many things in our society encourage this:

• Overthinking: Our society teaches individuals the solution to the dilemmas we face is to overthink them, rather than encouraging the development of emotional intelligence and emotional coping skills (which I’ve long suspected is due to emotional intelligence increasing one’s immunity to marketing).
  Note: GAD individuals with high IQs tend to have a greater degree of worry
• Media Influence: Marketing and mass media focus on future expectations, while social media (particularly Facebook and Instagram), target users with distressful content to increase their likelihood of clicking on ads (as unhappy people are more likely to make emotional purchases).
• Inadequate Emotional Coping: the media has sold the message to America that we “should never feel bad.” Because of this, a common response individuals will have to an anxiety producing situation is to try to suppress the anxiety (e.g., with a product, pill, alcohol, or illicit drug). Many hence never develop the emotional coping mechanisms necessary to handle stressful situations.
• Anxiety Contagion: Anxiety can spread among people, making it helpful to distance oneself from others who are anxious. Likewise, treating a parent’s anxiety (e.g., with CBT) has repeatedly been found to reduce anxiety in their children.
• Unrecognized Issues: Speech disorders, past trauma, or unconscious phobias can also trigger chronic anxiety.

Physiologic Causes of Anxiety.

Frequently, while anxiety is treated as a psychiatric illness, there is actually a physical cause of it. These include:

• Autonomic Nervous System Dysfunction: Excessive sympathetic (fight or flight) activity or deficient parasympathetic (rest and relax) activity can frequently cause anxiety (e.g., this is commonly seen in panic disorders). Treating this imbalance often significantly improves anxiety.
  Note: many of the most commonly prescribed drugs adjust autonomic function and often are no longer needed once a natural approach is utilized to rebalance it.
• Hormonal imbalances: Abnormal thyroid levels or progesterone levels (particularly in post menopausal women) are common triggers for anxiety and should always be considered when evaluating anxiety.
• Low Blood Sugar: Reactive hypoglycemia, which causes frequent blood sugar drops, can trigger sudden sympathetic activation (to raise blood sugar) which thus creates anxiety-like symptoms.
  Note: this common condition should be addressed through diet, but instead it frequently ends up being medicated with benzodiazepines.
• Environmental Factors: Many individuals report anxiety relief in low EMF (e.g., Wi-Fi-free) environments.
• Artificial Light & Sleep Disruption: Blue light and circadian disruptions can irritate the nervous system, worsening anxiety. We find reducing blue light exposure is often one of the most helpful things we can do for anxious patients.
• Medical Injuries: individuals with drug and vaccine injuries often experience increased anxiety, which in many cases appear to arise from heart issues or neurological damage. Likewise, heart conditions or brain injuries can cause anxiety.

When the physiologic causes of anxiety are addressed, rapid improvements are frequently seen. For instance, I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve met who had rapid and dramatic improvements in their anxiety once the dysfunctional half of their autonomic nervous system was addressed.

Metabolic Causes of Anxiety

William Walsh analyzed the blood of 2,800 individuals with depression and discovered there were five common metabolic types of depression which each have characteristic symptoms. Walsh’s paradigm is quite useful as:

• If the metabolic biotype of depression is recognized, it can frequently be safely and permanently treated with natural therapies (e.g., post-postpartum depression is often due to a copper overload and responds to that treatment).

• It explains why patients will often have very positive or negative responses to medications (e.g., SSRIs can be helpful for undermethylators but cause severe reactions for overmethylators). Likewise, it helps predict if patients will have an adverse reaction to supplements or other medications

• Anxiety often occurs concurrently with depression in these biotypes and hence can be treated (or fully resolved) by treating the biotype.

Note: the five biotypes of depression are discussed further here.

Read the Whole Article

The post What They Don’t Tell You About Anxiety appeared first on LewRockwell.

Archbishop Viganò believes that globalists schemed to remove Benedict XVI from the Vatican and replace him with Francis as part of a worldwide “coup.”

According to an April 23 letter by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, he gave a characteristic interview about the Bergoglian reign to editors of Italy’s “Fuori dal coro” (“Out of the Ordinary”) television program.

When asked for his evaluation of Pope Francis, the former papal nuncio to the U.S. suggested that every Catholic would judge the Francis papacy, “which was not really a papacy at all but only seemed to be such,” to have been “terrible.”

“The Church of Rome, after these twelve years of tyranny, is devastated by scandals, corruption, violations of human rights – I am thinking of the Agreement with the communist dictatorship of Beijing – and by a failed management on all fronts,” he added.

Viganò detailed that “a subversive lobby” aiming to carry out an “anti-Christian and Masonic plan of the Revolution” has taken over both governments and institutions. To carry out this “global coup” the lobby needed the collaboration of “corrupt government officials … politicians, doctors, judges and teachers.” According to Viganò, even after the Second Vatican Council, many in Rome “remained firmly anchored to certain non-negotiable principles” and thus still presented an obstacle to the globalists.

“Benedict XVI was clearly opposed to the globalist plan and would never have derogated from these principles by legitimizing the LGBTQ ideology, gender ideology, the pseudo-health follies of the WHO in matters of genetic modification and world depopulation, or the Islamization of Europe through ethnic substitution,” the archbishop wrote, adding that it was thus necessary to “eliminate Joseph Ratzinger” and usher in someone more agreeable to the scheme.

In Viganò’s opinion, this was done through a “coup” brought about by both the Saint Gallen Mafia and the American “Deep State,” which “pushed Benedict XVI to resign and managed to appoint Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the highest position in the Church.”

He believes that, along with this “usurpation,” a “globalist lobby” imposed “government leaders under order of the Davos Forum”: naming such figures as Emmanuel Macron in France; Boris Johnson and Sir Keith Starmer in the United Kingdom; Justin Trudeau in Canada; the Clintons, Barack Obama; and Joe Biden in the U.S.; and Ursula von der Leyen in the European Union, among others.

According to his letter, the archbishop was asked by his Italian interviewers to explain why, on the day Francis died, Viganò described statements Francis made to atheist journalist Eugenio Scalfari as“heretical ravings.”

Viganò responded by recalling Francis’ alleged denial of hell:

According to Scalfari, Bergoglio confided to him that he did not believe in hell, and that he was convinced that good souls are saved by ‘merging’ with God, while damned souls are destroyed, dissolved into nothingness. This contradicts both Sacred Scripture and the Catholic Magisterium, which teach that every soul, at the moment of physical death, faces the Particular Judgment and is rewarded with either eternal bliss (possibly passing through Purgatory) or punished with eternal damnation, depending on how it behaved in life, and on its state of friendship or enmity with God at the moment of passing away. This is why I spoke of heretical ravings: they are added to a very long list of nonsense and heresies that we have all had to endure in recent years.

The archbishop was apparently also asked about his reference to Francis’ “heirs,” whom he had called “subversives.” This, too, he answered in characteristic fashion:

Bergoglio surrounded himself with corrupt and blackmailable characters, whom he used casually in order to obtain what he intended. He mocked, denigrated, and offended honest cardinals and bishops. He protected and covered up investigations into prelates accused of serious crimes. He promoted the entire chain of American prelates, corrupt and ultra-progressive, all connected to the former Cardinal McCarrick, who today occupy the main American dioceses and key positions in the Vatican. He lifted the excommunication of his Jesuit brother Marco Rupnik, whose shameful affairs had scandalized even the most moderate. He persecuted all his opponents, including me, inflicting excommunication on me, in violation of law and justice. All of these people are still in their places, they continue to demolish the Church and are preparing, with the next Conclave, to complete the task assigned to them: to transform the Church of Christ into an ecumenical and syncretistic organization of Masonic origin that lends its support to the New World Order.

Asked to explain why he believes Francis was an anti-pope, Archbishop Viganò stated that he believes Cardinal Bergoglio had taken the office of pope without intending to fulfill its proper functions. The archbishop likened this alleged decision to someone who fraudulently takes marriage vows.

“I believe that Bergoglio’s acceptance of the Papacy was flawed because he considered the Papacy something other than what it is; like the spouse who marries in church excluding the specific purposes of Marriage, therefore nullifying the marriage precisely due to his defect of consent,” he stated.

Read the Whole Article

The post Archbishop Viganò: Bergoglio Was Installed by Globalists To Further the Masonic Revolution appeared first on LewRockwell.

The title of this column on April 3 was Trump’s Three Greatest Betrayals So Far.  Today, I’m highlighting Trump’s fourth greatest betrayal so far. And, given the fact that we are only three months into Trump’s second term, there are doubtless many more betrayals on the way.

Trump’s Greatest Betrayal Number Four

On May 7, the Trump administration will require that all Americans obtain a Real ID to be able to board a domestic airliner.

FOX News covers the story:

Conservatives are speaking out against the Trump administration’s plans to finally enact long-expected REAL ID laws in a bid to crack down on illegal immigration.

“If you think REAL ID is about election integrity, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Someone has lied to you, or you’re engaged in wishful thinking. Please don’t shoot the messenger,” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., wrote on X earlier this week.

Responding to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem’s video announcing the May 7 REAL ID deadline, the former vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin questioned in a lengthy post: “Or what?? Evidently, existing ID requirements for American citizens just aren’t adequate now, so Big Brother is forcing us through more hoops for the ‘right’ to travel within our own country.”

Palin continued: “Other administrations delayed this newfangled, burdensome REAL ID requirement. Are you curious why its implementation is imperative now?? And who came up with this?”

The REAL ID Act was passed in 2005, but the federal government has yet to implement it 20 years later. It requires all U.S. travelers to be REAL ID compliant when boarding domestic flights.

This was during G.W. Bush’s purge of constitutional liberties via his “war on terror,” which created the Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, etc.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced last week that REAL ID would go into effect May 7, and that no other state-issued ID cards would be accepted for air travel.

While an overwhelming majority of Republicans appear to have few issues with the change, some on the right have cried foul.

Republicans at large have always been eager to join Democrats in two areas: 1) Going to war with anybody overseas and, 2) Enabling and enlarging a police state and surveillance state inside America.

Massie argued in an X post, “As long as the pilot’s door is locked and no one has weapons, why do you care that someone who flies has government permission? REAL ID provides no benefit, yet presents a serious risk to freedom. If a person can’t be trusted to fly without weapons, why are they roaming free?”

“REAL ID is a 2005 George Bush-era Patriot Act overreach that went completely unenforced until Trump got into office. Let me guess: he’s playing 4D chess and I should just go along with it?” Massie wrote.

Former presidential candidate and ex-House Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, wrote on X, “Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem announced Friday that the notorious PATRIOT Act-era REAL ID scheme would go into effect at the end of the month. REAL ID is one of the greatest threats to Americans’ civil liberties in decades.”

Kentucky state Rep. TJ Roberts, a Republican, agreed with Paul on social media, writing, “Repeal REAL ID!!”

New Hampshire state Rep. Joe Alexander, a Republican, added on the accusations, calling REAL ID a “violation of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution,” and writing, “the Federal Government should not be mandating ID for its citizens to travel between states. Just say NO.”

Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Eddington told Fox News Digital, “I’m not aware of a single post-9/11 instance of an alleged or actual terrorist being apprehended, much less successfully boarding an airliner, with false ID credentials — which is the entire-stated rationale for REAL ID.”

Eddington argued it imposed unconstitutional burdens on people who are seeking to travel by air versus train.

“If you got word that your mother had just had a stroke and her prognosis was uncertain, and you wanted to quickly fly home to be with her but couldn’t because you didn’t have a REAL ID-compliant ID card, that would be one very real-world example of a tangible harm this insane law could cause on literally a daily basis,” he said.

“The REAL ID Act effectively institutes a form of mass surveillance and verification that doesn’t discriminate between those who have given reason for suspicion and those who haven’t, which is why it should never have been enacted in the first place.”

The reason the REAL ID Act hadn’t gone into effect after the GOP Congress moronically passed this super surveillance atrocity until now is due to the fact that conservatives and libertarians en masse rose up in opposition to it, forcing Bush to procrastinate signing it into law. And since then, neither Obama nor Biden wanted to awaken the sleeping giant on this issue. Of course, the sleeping giant has turned into Rip Van Winkle since Trump became president. So, now Trump is allowed to greenlight more egregiously unconstitutional assaults against our liberties than even Obama and Biden dared to do.

As I have previously noted, Donald Trump has commissioned uber Zionists Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem with the task of expunging the First Amendment protection of the freedom of speech for those who are vocalizing opposition to Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza—or any other murderous policy emanating out of Tel Aviv, for that matter.

And Trump is also collaborating with Elon Musk and Peter Theil in orchestrating a technocratic takeover of the U.S. government. It is not hyperbole to say that Trump is engaged in a hi-tech coup against the constitutional government in the United States. I discussed this treachery in this column here and here.

I urge readers to watch a 16-minute video exposé on Palantir’s plot—using the Trump administration—to dominate and control the entire federal government politically, economically and militarily. If they succeed, the Constitution and Bill of Rights will completely vanish and so will the voice and power of We the People—not to mention our freedom.

The introduction to this video is as follows:

A former Palantir employee is sounding the alarm. The tech company, founded by Peter Thiel, claims they can revolutionize government systems with their AI-powered software. They’ve been hired by the Department of Defense, the FBI, ICE, and even Wendy’s. Now DOGE will likely hire Palantir as well.

We talked to a former Palantir employee, dug into decades of research and listened to hours of Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s own words to carefully unwrap the layers of Palantir’s carefully cultivated sales pitch — and how they capitalize on fear and unrest to make money.

We report on the abuses and wrongdoing of corporate power, and we seek to hold accountable the ultra-rich who have too much power over America’s political and economic systems.

The plan is straight out of Orwell’s 1984. And Trump and Vance are the men who are bringing it into reality. Instituting the REAL ID Act by Trump is a major part of the technocracy surveillance agenda.

Watch the video here.

Pete Hegseth

In my view, Pete Hegseth is one of the most despicable people in Trump’s newly formed Zionist government. He is a maniacal Zionist. He has zero credentials to be Secretary of Defense. He is an uber neocon warmonger in the similitude of Lindsey Graham. And he is a punk bully, just like his boss.

That being said, we read this report:

The White House has begun the process of looking for a new leader at the Pentagon to replace Pete Hegseth, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. This comes as Hegseth is again mired in controversy over sharing military operational details in a group chat.

The defense secretary is under fire after revelations that he shared classified information in a group chat with his wife, brother and lawyer, according to the official.

The source said Hegseth used the Signal messaging app on his personal smartphone, detailing minute-by-minute classified information about airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. It happened at about the same time in March that Hegseth shared similar details with top White House officials in a different Signal chat group that accidentally included a journalist. That leak, hours before air strikes hit, could have endangered U.S. pilots if that information about the timing of strikes was intercepted by U.S. adversaries. Already the Houthis have twice shot down American predator drones.

I am already on record as saying that Hegseth should not only be fired for this flagrant violation of U.S. law but he should be criminally prosecuted. But if you think that Hegseth is being fired for these leaks, you need to think again.

During an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Max Blumenthal, editor of the Grey Zone, reported that it was Pete Hegseth, of all people, who was the one who actually talked Donald Trump out of following Israel’s madman Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran last week.

As soon as I heard that report, I told my son-in-law that Hegseth would soon be relieved of his position as Defense Secretary. Sure enough, this seems to be the case.

But, again, if Hegseth is indeed sacked, it will NOT be for the leaks. No one in a senior position of government is ever sacked for violations such as these. Democrat or Republican, they are above the law. But what they are not above is the wrath of the Israel lobby.

Hegseth’s uber Zionism was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby—and C.I. Scofield. His appointment to Defense Secretary was due to the Israel lobby—and the Theil technocrats. When he was outed by people such as Max Blumenthal that he had been instrumental in Trump’s refusal to go along with Netanyahu’s massive attacks on Iran, the Israel lobby went ballistic.

Doubtless, the reason Hegseth opposed the madman’s plan was due to what America’s military officers (not the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I mean REAL military officers in the field) told him: That such an attack would be catastrophic; it would result in a total regional war; thousands of American troops in the region would die; it would produce an economic Armageddon; it would be a war that America could not win; and it even had the potential of igniting a global war with Russia and China.

Fortunately—albeit shockingly—Hegseth sided with his officers.

We might chalk this one up to a miracle of God.

But the wrath of the Israel lobby is now crashing down on Hegseth. Trump saying “No” to Netanyahu will not be repeated often. The Zionists were confident they had Hegseth in their pocket. You can bet that they will make an example out of him by orchestrating his dismissal. And who knows what will happen to the man after that?

Reprinted with permission from Chuck Baldwin Live.

The post Trump’s Fourth Greatest Betrayal so Far — And Pete Hegseth appeared first on LewRockwell.

So where are corporate profits going to come from as globalization, price-gouging, planned obsolescence, shrinkflation and immiseration run out of rope?

We all know there’s a time lag between the moment Wile E. Coyote runs off the cliff at full speed and the moment he realizes there’s nothing but thin air beneath his feet. His expression in the second before he begins his descent communicates surprise, fear and a woeful awareness of impending impact with unforgiving ground.

This is an apt description of the present moment. The economy has already run off the cliff, but we haven’t yet experienced that second of realization that there’s nothing but thin air below.

We can call this the Wile E. Coyote Recession, as there is a time lag of around one quarter between the moment we left the cliff edge and the moment we start falling. The economy has momentum, as what’s in transit and in the warehouses is already in the pipeline. But now that Deglobalization has disrupted supply chains, once what’s in the pipeline has been distributed, the new realities start playing out.

Legions of economists and financial pundits are claiming to measure the odds of a recession. This is akin to Wile E. Coyote attempting to measure his odds of catching the Roadrunner in mid-air: the recession is already a matter of gravity.

Similar prognostications are being issued about the stock market, which depends on many factors, but the one that looms largest is corporate profits. If profits rise, this justifies higher stock valuations. If profits fall sharply, then stock valuations will adjust downward.

Two charts reveal the primary sources of soaring corporate profits: globalization from 2001 to 2024, and profiteering from 2020 to 2025.

Here we see that corporate profits were in the $700 billion to $800 billion range all through one of the greatest booms in American history, 1995 to 2000. This was sufficient to spark an economic boom and a booming stock market.

Then globalization kicked into high gear in 2001 with China’s entry into the WTO (World Trade Organization). As corporations rushed to offshore production. profits soon tripled to the $2.2 trillion – $2.4 trillion range, a range that held steady through the 2010-2019 boom in GDP and stocks.

The Covid pandemic lockdown triggered a mini-crash which was reversed by unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus. In the span of a few years, corporate profits nearly doubled. Since globalization had been a force for two decades, this extraordinary rise can’t be attributed to that factor.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Wile E. Coyote Recession appeared first on LewRockwell.

The true scandal of current American fiscal governance needs be commented on. Or, better still, hammered upon good and hard.

To wit, the American electorate apparently doesn’t give a shit about runaway government spending because as a practical matter the overwhelming share of voters don’t pay the taxes to fund it. Aside from social insurance taxes, which most payroll taxpayers still believe to be a premium for a government-sponsored retirement annuity, the bottom 90% of households fund only a tiny fraction of Federal spending.

That’s right. The bottom 145 million US income tax filers (out of 161 million total filers) currently pay just $500 billion in Federal income taxes. That’s barely $3,500 per return and even then approximately 50 million of these returns owe zero taxes or actually get tax credit refunds for taxes they haven’t paid!

In the grand scheme of things, therefore, direct tax payments by the bottom 90% of income tax filers amounted to only 12% of Federal spending in FY 2024 outside of social insurance trust funds. To wit, Federal spending ex-social insurance was $4.82 trillion in FY 2024 and upwards of $4.3 trillion of this was paid for by the top 10% of income tax payers, corporations, minor excise and import duty payers and borrowing—of which there was $1.8 trillion of the latter in FY 2024.

Needless to say, the top 10% got soaked good and hard, paying $1.538 trillion of Federal income taxes and as a practical matter nearly the entirety of the $530 billion corporate income tax, which in today’s globally competitive world gets mainly pushed back to shareholders. In effect, $2.1 trillion or 43% of Federal spending outside of social insurance is paid for by the top 10%.

Needless to say, that’s just plain unfair and economically counter-productive, too. The current marginal rate for top bracket taxpayers is 40.8% when you include the Medicare surcharge and the so-called NIIT  (net investment income tax). That’s already extortionate because in a free society there is no way that the government should grab 40% of anyone’s income—especially since that’s only the Federal take, which can easily grow to 50% after state and local income and property taxes.

Moreover, when the TCJA act of 2017 expires at year-end 2025, the top marginal rate will jump to truly confiscatory rate of 43.4%, and well beyond 50% in most states after state and local levies are layered on.

In short, America desperately needs to raise more revenues to fund even a downsized government after the DOGE treatment. But the income tax is more than tapped out, and 90% of the public is getting a hall pass on the latter.

Accordingly, what needs to happen is a sweeping reform, which would shift the Federal revenue base overwhelmingly to consumption and sales tax levies. That would ensure that the economic damage is limited and that 100% of the voting public would have skin in the game and feel the pain of spending via commensurate tax extractions. Then they might well demand fiscal sanity from their elected representatives in a manner that rarely occurs under the current defective fiscal regime.

We will elaborate more on the needed sweeping tax base reform in Part 2, but suffice it here to say that not only is the current Federal income tax grossly unfair to the productive classes and tapped out as a practical matter of revenue generation, but it is also unadministratable. Accordingly, more than half of the massive 100,000 man IRS bureaucracy could be eliminated even without a sales/consumption tax replacement, while upwards of 90% could be eliminated if the income tax were mainly substituted by a sales tax.

Needless to say, we are not talking about just bureaucratic nannies and meddlers in the case of the current 83,000 IRS employees—-a figure which is heading for 102,000 by the end of the decade under the still unrepealed Biden revenue grab. In the ranks of what amounts to a small city’s worth of Federal bureaucrats are also a goodly phalanx of tax cops, gumshoes, enforcement lawyers and tax filing proctologists.

So the question recurs: What has generated this massive bureaucracy in the first place, and what fundamental policy shifts are needed to cut the IRS headcount by 50% (42,00 jobs) and upwards of $5 billion of compensation and other operating costs?

The answer starts with calling the IRS’ bluff.  When you look at the actual tax filing data it is damn evident that the Deep State bureaucrats are faking mightily when it comes to their massive staffing demands. We discovered the scam way back in our OMB days while jousting with the Treasury Department over the sacred cows in its budget. But nothing is different 40-years later—so here’s the smoking gun that points the way.

In the most recent complete tax-year (2022) there were 161.336 million individual income tax returns filed, which reported $14.83 trillion of Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). But fully 146.045 million of those filings, which reported $10.025 trillion in AGI, did not claim any itemized deductions.

Moreover, among these non-itemizers about 97 million owed taxes and used the standard deduction to calculate taxable income and the amount owed before tax credits. And another 49 million standard deduction users owed no Federal income taxes at all due to low taxable income or child and other tax credits.

In short, you absolutely do not need a giant IRS bureaucracy—and, indeed, hardly any labor-intensive operation at all—to administer the IRS code in the case of 92% of annual tax filings and the overwhelming share of US income taxpayers. That’s because virtually all the relevant data for completion of these non-itemized filings is machine readable and available on other IRS reporting systems, as shown below.

For want of doubt, here is the entirety of the tax computation for a couple earning wages at the US median income of $80,000, using the $13,850 standard deduction for a joint return and claiming two $2,000 child tax credits. The fact is, with today’s technology 99.999% of the work of processing, examining and adjusting (if necessary) non-itemized tax returns of this type should be accomplishable by IRS computers, with nary a bureaucrat’s finger-prints evident in the whole shebang.

That’s especially the case because the overwhelming share of the $10 trillion of AGI among non-itemizers is for wages and salaries reported to the IRS on W-2s; and, also, for interest, dividends, rents, royalties, independent contractor earnings, stock sales, pensions, annuities, IRAs and taxable Social Security earnings—all of which are also reported by the payers of these amounts on Form 1099s.

In the illustration below, any alert machine—to say nothing of an AI-enabled one rigged-up by Elon & Co.—could cross check the W-2s, calculate the taxable income, apply the three relevant tax brackets, deduct the $4,000 of child credits, verify the tax liability of $6,243 and subtract the taxpayer’s withholding amounts to determine whether a payment or refund was required.

All in literally a nanosecond. Presto!

Step-by-Step Calculation of $80,000 Wage-Earning Couple With 2 Kids And The Standard Deduction

1. Gross Income: $80,000
2. Standard Deduction: $13,850 (for married filing jointly in 2023)
3. Taxable Income: $80,000 – $13,850 = $66,150

Tax Liability Calculation

1. Taxable Income: $66,150
2. Tax Rates:
   • 10% on income up to $22,000
   • 12% on income from $22,001 to $38,600
   • 22% on income from $38,601 to $66,150

Tax Calculation

• 10% on the first $22,000: $22,000 * 0.10 = $2,200
• 12% on the next $16,600: $16,600 * 0.12 = $1,992
• 22% on the remaining $27,550: $27,550 * 0.22 = $6,051

Total Tax Before Credits: $2,200 + $1,992 + $6,051 = $10,243

Child Tax Credits

• 2 Child Tax Credits: $2,000 per child
• Total Credits: 2 * $2,000 = $4,000

Tax Liability After Credits: $10,243 – $4,000 = $6,243

So how in the world can they justify 83,000 bureaucrats and a budget of $16.1 billion when the overwhelming share of returns involve what can be aptly described as “machine work 101”?

The answer, purportedly, lies in the balance of filings—the 15.29 million itemized returns. But even here the overwhelming bulk of the relevant income items and deductible expense items are not so complex or opaque at all. Indeed, they too are available on other IRS reporting systems and are machine readable at the individual taxpayer ID level.

Specifically, in 2022 the amount of AGI reported on these itemized returns was $4.809 trillion or about 32% of total AGI. But within this total there was included the following amounts which are all machine readable from W-2s and 1099s:

• Wages and salaries: $2,345 billion.
• Taxable interest: $78 billion.
•  Taxable dividends: $230 billion.
• IRAs: $110 billion.
• Pensions and annuities: $176 billion.
• Taxable Social Security $82 billion.
• Unemployment benefits: $3 billion.
• Subtotal: $3.024 trillion.
• Above Income As % of AGI on Itemized Returns: 63%.

When it comes to verification on a machine-readable basis, the above income items are all check, check and check. This means that when you combine the above machine-readable AGI amounts from itemized returns with the $10.025 trillion reported on non-itemized returns, it works out to 88% or $13.049 trillion of the $14.834 trillion of total AGI reported for 2022.

None of this AGI should require any significant labor-intensive administration, examination, adjustment or enforcement. The IRS computers should be aware of every dime of AGI from the above categories and whether it was filed accurately by the taxpayer or in need of the proverbial IRS-ordered “adjustment”.

So it is hard to figure out why on the AGI/income side of the equation there is a need for anything remotely like the headcount and budget magnitudes shown below. For instance, the 22,000 headcounts in “enforcement” and “compliance” should be as idle as the proverbial Maytag repairman when it comes to standard deduction returns and the machine-readable sources of income filed on itemized returns. In these instances, there is nothing material for taxpayers to cheat on that wouldn’t be flagged by a properly programmed computer instantly upon filing.

And the same is true in the case of the 33,000 headcounts in “taxpayer services”, “operations support” and “administrative support”. Virtually none of these bureaucrats are needed to process the $10 trillion of AGI on the 146 million non-itemized returns and the $3 trillion of AGI on 15 million itemized returns that is already reported independently by the underlying payers of these income sources.

To the contrary, that’s work for 24/7 machines, not 6.5 hours per day (after civil service required breaks and lunch) government bureaucrats who get 35 vacation, personal leave and sick days per year, on average. And a high share of whom in the post-pandemic era don’t deign to come into the office even on workdays, anyway!

Breakdown of IRS Budget and Headcounts By Function:

For want of doubt, here are the other arguably more complicated categories of AGI reported on itemized returns. But even in these cases, there is plenty of work for the machines to do with respect to examination and verification. For instance, $845 billion or nearly half of the total below is owing to capital gains. But that source of income is already reported by issuers on Form 8940 and Schedule D of 1040s. So Elon’s machines should be on top of that, as well.

At the end of the day, most of the complexity and opacity of the IRS code relates to the $106 billion of net profits reported for business and professional income and the $704 billion reported by sub-chapter S corporations. Here the complexity arises not just from gross income reporting, but more especially from the timing and amounts of allowable business expenses incurred in getting to the net profits figures shown below.

Still, the total amount of AGI involved in these two sources at $950 billion is just 6.5% of total AGI. Even if returns with heavy sub-chapter S or professional and business earnings involve a lot of digging, checking, reconciling and verifying by humans, it is hardly likely to be anything close to 83,000 bureaucrat’ worth.

So, yes, there may well be 2,650 pages of IRS code and another 9,000 pages of IRS regulations, and the whole thing may have 25 times more words than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But when it comes to the overwhelming bulk of income tax filings and the AGI reported on them, 98% of this legal labyrinth is largely irrelevant. It’s unfortunate existence is merely cited as a smokescreen to justify a massive, unnecessary tax collection bureaucracy.

Other Sources of Income Reported on Itemized Returns in 2022

• Business and professional profits: $106 billion.
• S-corporation net income: $704 billion.
• Capital Gains: $845 billion.
• Property sales: $26 billion.
• Rents and royalties: $20 billion.
• Estate and trust income: $29 billion.
• Gambling income: $29 billion.
• Other, net: $5 billion.
• Total of above: $1.785 trillion.

Nor does the itemized deduction side of the ledger change the picture. Upwards of 91% of itemized deductions, which amounted to $669 billion in 2022, were accounted for by the first five line-items shown below. These are largely machine readable based on standard reporting forms that originators of these deductions are required to file with the IRS.

For instance, mortgage interest deductions are reported on Form 1098; charitable contributions are reported in Form 990 and deductions for state and local taxes paid are available from IRS information sharing reports by the states. Yet in 2022 these three deductions alone amounted to nearly $500 billion or 75% of the total.

Major machine-readable itemized deductions in 2022:

• Medical deductions after floor: $93 billion (gross deductions of $121 billion less $28 billion floor effect).
• Taxes paid deduction: $125 billion.
• Mortgage interest deduction: $147 billion.
• Investment interest deduction: $23 billion.
• Charitable contributions deduction: $222 billion.
• All other itemized deductions: $59 billion.
• Total Itemized Deductions: $669 billion.

In short, upwards of 90% of the AGI reported in 2022 for all returns was machine readable from independent reporting sources and more than 90% of itemized deductions were also machine readable. Accordingly, the preponderant share of income and deduction data coursing through 161 million annual income tax filings is essentially riding in a self-driving vehicle. The work of processing, assessing, validating and adjusting it, where necessary, does not likely require more staff than the current headcount of the Capitol Hill Police (2,400).

Moreover, even a few small intelligent changes in the IRS code would narrow even further the number of returns and amounts of AGI that need labor-intensive review and verification. For instance, among the 15.29 million itemized returns filed in 2022, the overwhelming share were at the lower and moderate ends of the income scale where disputed deduction amounts are inherently limited.

2022 Distribution Of Itemized Deduction Returns By AGI Level:

• $100,000 and under: 5.755 million (37.6%).
• $100,000 to $500,000: 8.076 million (52.8%).
• $500,000 to $1,000,000: 0.903 million (5.9%).
• $1,000,000 and over: 0.558 million (3.7%).
• Total Itemized Returns: 15.292 million (100%).

As indicated above, 13.831 million of itemized returns, or more than 90%, reported AGI of $500,000 or lower–including 5.8 million at $100,000 or lower.

In turn, these $500,000 and under filings reported an aggregate of $1.960 trillion of AGI and $475 billion of itemized deductions. So a “variable standard deduction” allowance of roughly this ratio—24% of AGI— for currently itemized returns up to $500,000 would be revenue neutral. But by eliminating upwards of 90% of itemized deduction filings, an income based “variable standard deduction” would also surely reduce the need for several thousands of examiners, service personnel and overhead managers, as well.

After all, there are only 1.461 million returns with AGI of $500,000 or higher, which reported the amounts shown below for 2022. We absolutely do not believe, for instance, that you need a bureaucracy of 83,000 to examine $213 billion of itemized deduction taken by the wealthy, when $126 billion of these were owing to charitable contributions and $41 billion to investment interest deductions.  That’s nearly 80% of the total deductions taken by the wealthy, yet every dollar of this is machine readable and verifiable because it is reported independently to the IRS by the charitable institution recipients and interest-receiving banks, respectively.

Likewise, 71% of the $2.78 trillion of AGI is due to W-2 salaries ($931 billion), investment interest ($62 billion), ordinary dividends ($170 billion), capital gains ($774 billion) and rents and royalties ($40 billion). As indicated previously, all of these items are also reported to the IRS separately and are machine readable by its computers at the taxpayer ID level.

So even in the insane nest of complexity which is the US tax code as it applies to the wealthy, the case just isn’t there to justify the egregiously padded payrolls at the IRS. Not even remotely—and that’s before taking a legislative scalpel to the tax code with the aim of drastically broadening the base and flattening the rates.

Key Tax Data for The 1.461 Million Filings with AGI of $500,000 or Higher:

• Total AGI: $2,780 billion.
• Itemized Deductions: $213 billion.
• Other Adjustments: $86 billion.
• Taxable Income: $2.481 billion.
• Taxes Paid: $708 billion.
• Itemized Deductions as % of AGI: 7.6%.
• Taxes Paid As % of Taxable Income: 28.5%.

So can the DOGE find a way to cut the IRS staff by upwards of 50% and 42,000 bureaucrats at a budget savings of $5 billion per year? We’d say, yes, just dig into the rich drove of data in the IRS Data Book for recent tax years and the degree of the current scam will become more than evident.

In that context, DOGE might well consider a technologically modern version of the old postcard-based approach to simplification of the Federal income tax. Thus, there is no reason why upwards of 150 million filers with AGIs under $500,000 could not simply receive an “E-Card” from the IRS at their personal email address in which the IRS machines have already done all the work. The E-Card would:

• Calculate and sum all sources of AGI.
• Apply the standard deduction and child credits.
• Compute the tax liability owed.
• Calculate the amount of either payment or refund due after crediting taxpayer withholdings.
• Provide an option to “accept” the E-Card outcome or elect to file different amounts in the regular way.

Again, based on the IRS filing data it is likely that at least 90% of E-Card recipients would check the “accept” box and be done with tax time, with no expense on their end and no IRS bureaucrats on the other end.

Our confidence in the conclusion is based on these considerations from the 2022 IRS data. Only 4.7% of the 120 million returns with AGI under $100,000 claimed itemized deductions and the amount of AGI on these returns was just 7% of AGI on all returns under $100,000.

Summary of Filings with AGI of $100,000 or Under:

• Returns With No Taxes owed: 47.048 million returns with $922 billion of AGI.
• Standard Deduction Returns: 66.865 million returns and $3.424 trillion of AGI.
• Itemized Deduction Filers: 5.755 million returns with $345 billion of AGI:

Likewise, 1.88 million or 22% of filings in the $100,000 to $500,000 range used itemization, but it is likely that the aforementioned variable standard deduction approach would limit the number of itemizers very sharply.

Finally, even without sweeping tax reform and the substitution of tariff and consumption taxes for the income tax, as has been vaguely proposed by President Trump, a huge share of the $550 billion that taxpayers now absorb to figure and file their taxes and contest with the IRS bureaucracy could be readily and substantially reduced.

Of course, the prospect of 42,000 IRS agents and hundreds of billions of filing and record keeping expenses should be more than welcome.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockton’s Contra Corner.

The post Why and How To Fire 42,000 IRS Agents… appeared first on LewRockwell.

By now it’s become increasingly clear that both the U.S. and China are eager to de-escalate the trade war, yet neither is willing to make the first move. In China, export orders are drying up, and factories are shutting down. Meanwhile, across the Pacific Ocean in the U.S., containerized cargo volumes through the Port of Los Angeles are teetering on the edge of a very sharp decline, threatening to send shockwaves through Southern California’s economy and beyond.

Early Friday, several media outlets reported that China’s government has either considered or exempted some U.S. imports from a 125% tariff rate.

Let’s begin with Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter who said Beijing is considering removing tariffs on medical equipment and certain industrial chemicals, including ethane.

As we noted earlier this week, the U.S. is a major supplier of ethane—a petrochemical feedstock and component of natural gas. Ethane is a critical input for China’s plastics industry, with few alternative suppliers outside the U.S. Needless to say, any disruption to ethane shipments would severely impact China’s plastics sector.

Those sources continued down Beijing’s laundry list of potential tariffs to be removed, including waiving the tariff for plane leases… Boeing has caught a sigh of relief.

“It’s another step toward a de-escalation of the trade war,” said Kok Hoong Wong of Maybank Securities, adding that a trade deal might not be imminent, but certainly, “it would appear the worst may truly be over.”

Bloomberg Economics analysts Chang Shu and Eric Zhu commented on the BBG headline:

“Exempting critical, hard-to-replace U.S. products from tariffs would be a pragmatic approach that could ease tensions with the U.S. and serve the interests of Chinese industry. Anything that helps lower the temperature in the trade war is also beneficial from the perspective of avoiding broader clashes with the U.S.”

In a separate report, Reuters stated that instead of merely considering exemptions, Beijing has already “exempted” certain U.S. imports from the 125% tariff, citing businesses that were notified by authorities about the change.

“As a quid-pro-quo move, it could provide a potential way to de-escalate tensions,” said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, a senior adviser to the Conference Board’s China Center.

Montufar-Helu warned: “It’s clear that neither the U.S. nor China want to be the first in reaching out for a deal.”

Earlier in the week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned a US-China trade deal could take 2 to 3 years to finalize.

Bessent emphasized at a closed-door investor meeting on Tuesday: “No one thinks the current status quo is sustainable, at 145% and 125%, so I would posit that over the very near future, there will be a de-escalation. We have an embargo now on both sides.”

Both sides may want a deal to avoid further tariff fallout in their respective economies, but neither wants to appear desperate on the global stage. China is grappling with shuttered factories and possible ethane supply woes that threaten to roil its core manufacturing economy, while in the U.S., containerized volumes through the Port of Los Angeles are poised for a steep decline in the coming week.

Reprinted with permission from Zero Hedge.

The post Who Blinks First? China May Exempt Tariffs on US Ethane & Other Goods appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Fighting fascism,” for the American Jacobins who lead the Democratic Party, means opposing any attempt to flush the corruption out of the entrenched bureaucracy, just as their pet phrase “our democracy” actually refers to the matrix of grift and despotic activism that drives their political operating system. That is exactly how and why the USAID was so crucial to spread captured taxpayer spoils as NGO salaries for the gender studies grads to play “activist,” so as to inflict their special brand of sadistic power madness over the land — to keep the game going.

Now, USAID is scattered to the winds and all they have left is their installed base of federal judges and the horde of lawfare lawyers who feed them bogus cases to halt the remaining work of Mr. Trump’s executive branch clean-up operation. Remember: Robespierre, leader of the Jacobins in the French Revolution, was a lawyer. Their version of defending “our democracy” in 1793 was the Reign of Terror that sent at least 17,000 political opponents to the guillotine.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is the Democrats’ Robespierre. He is promising his own reign of terror when his party recaptures Congress in the 2026 “midterm” election. Norm Eisen is his chief lawyer and legal strategist. His sole aim is recapture power in order to restore the Democrats’ sadistic regime of thought-control and the money-flows that feed it. That’s where things stand for the moment. You can sense how this tension is tending toward something that looks like civil war.

The game now is to goad President Trump into any kind of executive action in defiance of this legal insurrection that would subject him to impeachment after January 2027, when a new Congress is seated, theoretically with a Democratic majority. There are several flaws in the Raskin / Eisen plan-of-action. One is their supposition that the Democratic Party is popular enough to win a Congressional majority in 2026, or that they will enjoy the installed devices of electoral cheating to achieve victory no matter what.

The party is currently blundering wildly in support of obviously insane actions that a vast majority voters oppose, such as stopping the deportation of illegal immigrants, allowing men to compete in women’s sports, and opposing proof of citizenship in federal elections. Which is to say that the voters are onto exactly how crazy and destructive the Democratic Party has become.

The question is: what can be done about this lawfare insurrection. An easy solution would be for Congress to pass a law restricting the power of federal judges to issue orders that affect the nation as a whole outside their own designated districts. Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Grassley has introduced the Judicial Relief Clarification Act of 2025. Grassley argues that nationwide injunctions, which allow a single district judge to block federal policies across the country, represent judicial overreach and disrupt the constitutional balance of powers.

In the House, Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA) has introduced the No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025 (HR 1526, passed on April 9) to complement Sen. Grassley’s bill. The Constitution is somewhat vague about the composition of a federal judiciary below the Supreme Court, and essentially leaves the matter to Congress to set parameters for the power of federal judges. Congress can also alter or abolish districts, such as the DC federal district from which so much partisan Democratic Party lawfare has emanated under political activist Judges James Boasberg, Amy Berman Jackson, Tanya Chutkan, and Beryl Howell (all of them involved in the sadistic prosecutions of J-6 defendants).

The bills from each house next must go through a reconciliation process that boils them down to a single piece of legislation that can be sent to Mr. Trump for the presidential signature. The House passage is likely assured. The hang-up is that under Senate rules, the Democrats could mount a filibuster that would require 60 votes to break. The Republicans only control the chamber by a 53 to 47 majority, and no Democrats have signaled any intention to vote in favor of such a bill. In any case, the entire process would take months and might not succeed at all.

A much simpler remedy would be for the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to rule in any of a number of cases now on their docket that the lawfare antics of the federal judges amount to interference with an independent executive branch — in short, that the judiciary can’t usurp the executive powers of the President, which include the conduct of foreign policy, the ability to manage personnel in executive agencies, and certain issues around the spending of taxpayer dollars.

A different sort of remedy would be the application by the DOJ of federal statute 18 USC 371, Conspiracy to Defraud the United States against Norm Eisen and his colleagues-in-lawfare for attempting to maliciously bury the executive branch in litigation for the purpose of nullifying the executive powers of the president. Beyond all that is the abyss: a nullified election, a paralyzed chief executive, and a constitutional crisis that has the potential to lead to civil violence. The Democrats seem willing to go there, perhaps even avid for it.

The Jacobins of 1793 were mad for blood, too, and they spilled a whole lot of it. By the summer of 1794, the blood was finally spouting out of their own necks. . . and then the Jacobin reign of terror came to a sudden and complete end. Heed their example.

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

The post Where Things Stand appeared first on LewRockwell.

Supporters of liberty had much reason for hope due to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. becoming secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This man’s tenacity and eloquence in challenging the coronavirus crackdowns suggested great potential accomplishments for both liberty and health at HHS with him in the lead.

Indeed, there are early signs that HHS under Kennedy’s oversight is seeking to roll back the dangerous to health and liberty extreme vaccine pushing mission the department has pursued in recent decades. But, there is also reason to worry — including news earlier this month of the HHS fast-tracking an experimental bird flu shot — that this roll back will turn out to be quite limited.

One thing surprising people is that Kennedy’s HHS is acting like a police baton to whack American institutions and individuals into submission to the demand that they show allegiance to the Israel government. First, HHS became one of three parts of the US government leading an effort to punish colleges if they fail to stomp out “antisemitism” — defined bizarrely to include criticism of the Israel government — communicated by leadership, employees, or students. Kennedy, in the announcement of this endeavor, even made the extraordinary claim that such targeted free speech, press, and assembly is a manifestation of illness. This is the same sort of “medicalization” of ideas and communication that the Soviet Union employed to suppress dissent.

Then, this week, came news that HHS subsidiary the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has, effective immediately, barred any entity that boycotts Israel from continuing to spend, or receiving any new, NIH grants. Given the importance of NIH grants in medical research, this new demand threatens to shut down much research and upend the lives of many people employed in research projects. All this is done based on a criterion that has nothing to do with the task-relevant qualifications of the grant seekers or the quality of their work. Out with merit. In with kissing up. That does not seem conducive to achieving Kennedy’s often repeated goal to Make America Healthy Again. It also seems a big divergence from the protecting liberty objective many Kennedy supporters hoped he would pursue.

These actions from HHS are in a way not a surprise because Kennedy made clear in his 2024 presidential run that he was a major booster for the Israel government, praising it without caveat. He even went so far as to make the following declaration in a Twitter post: “As President, my support of Israel will be unconditional.” But, at the same time, it seemed reasonable to think that, given HHS’s focus on health matters in America, Kennedy’s Israel views would be irrelevant in his new job. Well, surprise, surprise: In the Donald Trump administration it turns out that, with Kennedy at the helm, even HHS can put Israel First.

During the coronavirus crackdowns, Kennedy stood up for people who opposed taking experimental shots, wearing masks, or going along with other government admonitions and dictates. But, now his HHS, reminiscent of the “Soup Nazi” in the Seinfeld episode, is saying “no funding for you” if you don’t stand with Israel. What a letdown.

The HHS thought police are on the march. Fail to fall in line in support of the Israel government and you will be punished. HHS and its fellow US government departments have not reached the level of domination used to ensure love for Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. But, hey, the Trump administration is just three months into its Israel boosting operation. These things take time.

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

The post HHS – a Billy Club Enforcing Allegiance to the Israel Government appeared first on LewRockwell.

Nationalism is villainous and globalists are the heroes? It’s a propaganda message that has been building since the end of World War II and the creation of globalist institutions like the UN, the IMF, World Banks, etc. By the 1970s there was a concerted and dangerous agenda to acclimate the western world to interdependency; not just dependency on imports and exports, but dependency of currency trading, treasury purchases and interbank wealth transfer systems like SWIFT.

This was the era when corporations began outsourcing western manufacturing to third world countries. This is when the dollar was fully decoupled from gold. When the IMF introduced the SDR basket system. When the decade long stagflationary crisis began.

This was when the World Economic Forum was founded. The Club of Rome and their climate change agenda. When numerous globalists started talking within elitist publications and white papers talking about a one world economy and a one world government (under their control, of course). By the 1990s everything was essentially out in the open and the plan was clear:

Their intention was to destroy national sovereignty and bring in an age of total global centralization. One of the most revealing quotes on the plan comes from Clinton Administration Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot, who stated in Time magazine in 1992 that:

“In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority… National sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all.”

He adds in the same article:

“…The free world formed multilateral financial institutions that depend on member states’ willingness to give up a degree of sovereignty. The International Monetary Fund can virtually dictate fiscal policies, even including how much tax a government should levy on its citizens. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade regulates how much duty a nation can charge on imports. These organizations can be seen as the protoministries of trade, finance and development for a united world.”

The globalists use international trade controls as a way to ensnare competing economies, forcing them to become homogeneous. They take away the self reliance of nations and pressure them to conform to global trade standards. It’s important to understand that they view centralized dominance of trade as a primary tool for eventually obtaining their new world order.

The idea of a country going off the plantation and initiating unilateral tariffs is unheard of. The notion of countries producing their own necessities is absurd. As least, until 2025.

One of the most humorous and bewildering side effects of the Trump Administration’s policy rollout is the scramble by the political left (especially in Europe) to portray themselves as “rebel heroes fighting for freedom” in the face of a supposedly tyrannical dictatorship. Of course, these are globalists and cultural Marxists we’re dealing with, so their definitions of “freedom” and “tyranny” are going to be irreparably skewed.

The EU elites have truly lost the plot when it comes to their message on “democracy”. Today, many European nations are spiraling into classical authoritarianism, yet they’re pretending as if they’re in a desperate fight for freedom.

I’ve heard it said that authoritarianism is the pathology of recognition. One could also say that it’s the pathology of affirmation – It’s not enough for the offending movement to be recognized as dominant, the population must embrace it, joyfully, as if it is the only thing they care about. This is the underlying goal of globalism: To force the masses to love it like a religion.

But to be loved by the people, they have to believe that globalism is their savior. They have to believe that globalists are somehow saving the world. Enter the new world order theater brought to us by The Economist. The magazine, partially owned by the Rothschild family, has long been a propaganda hub for globalism. They recently published an article titled ‘The Thing About Europe: It’s The Actual Land Of The Free Now’.

Yes, this is laughable given the fact that many European governments are currently hunting down and jailing people for online dissent. Mass open immigration is suffocating western culture on the continent. Violent crime is skyrocketing. Not to mention, the new trend among EU governments is to arrest right leaning political opponents to stop them from winning elections.

Hell, in Europe you can be arrested for silently praying within the vicinity of an abortion clinic. We all understand how absurd The Economist’s claims are. Their argument boils down to this:  If it hurts globalism, it’s a threat to democracy.  That’s the tall tale being formulated in the media today.

The Trump Administration instituting “America First” policies is being called authoritarian by the elites because these things interfere with THEIR agenda, not because Americans are being oppressed.

In many ways the European shift in rhetoric is merely a reflection of the long running globalist strategy: To rewrite nationalists as agents of chaos and paint the internationalists as defenders of order.

In a recent interview with the German news platform Dei Zeit Online, EU President Ursula von der Leyen took the disinformation even further with her claim that there “Is no oligarchy in Europe”. In other words, European leaders are innocent victims under attack by the rich and dastardly nationalists. Frankly, this is news to most of us because the EU government has long been considered the very definition of faceless and unaccountable oligarchy. She argues:

“…History is back, and so are geopolitics. And we see that what we had perceived as a world order is becoming a world disorder, triggered not least by the power struggle between China and the United States, but of course also by Putin’s imperialist ambitions. That is why we need another, new European Union that is ready to go out into the big wide world and to play a very active role in shaping this new world order that is coming.”

Notice the attempt to paint Europe as the virtuous bystander caught up in the geopolitical turmoil of the US, China and Russia. No mention of their ongoing roll in fomenting a wider war in Ukraine, their interference with peace negotiations or the fact that globalism has made them dependent on energy imports for their very survival. This isn’t a lack of awareness, this is carefully crafted propaganda. The EU President continues:

“The readiness of all 27 Member States to strengthen our common defense industry would have been inconceivable without the developments of recent weeks and months. The same applies to the economy. Everyone wants to emulate our common plan for greater competitiveness, because everyone has understood: We need to stand firm in today’s globalized world…”

The EU has been peddling the idea of a unified European army for some time. It makes sense – In order to erase national boundaries even further in Europe, a singular defense structure would have to be established. They’re simply using the war in Ukraine and America’s economic decoupling as an excuse. She continues:

“For me, it is crucial that Europe plays a strong role in shaping the new world order that is slowly emerging. And I firmly believe that Europe can do that. Let’s look back at the last decade: the banking crisis, migration crisis, Brexit, pandemic, energy crisis, Russia’s war against Ukraine. All these are serious crises that have really challenged us, but Europe has emerged bigger and stronger from every crisis…”

Economically, socially, spiritually, culturally, the continent is in a death spiral. No one wants to fight for what Europe is today, including the millions of third world immigrants they’ve invited in. If they do try to institute a centralized military they will have to turn to forced conscription, which means even more tyranny. In terms of the economy she states:

“The West as we knew it no longer exists. The world has become a globe also geopolitically, and today our networks of friendship span the globe…”

“Everyone is asking for more trade with Europe – and it’s not just about economic ties. It is also about establishing common rules and it is about predictability. Europe is known for its predictability and reliability, which is once again starting to be seen as something very valuable. On the one hand, this is very gratifying; on the other hand, there is also of course a huge responsibility that we have to live up to…”

The US makes up 30%-35% of all global consumer spending and is the largest consumer market in the world. There are no clear numbers for the whole of Europe, but Germany, Europe’s largest economy makes up only 3% of global consumer spending. Germany is also the third largest economy in the world next to China. In other words, Europe has NO capacity whatsoever to fill the void in trade left behind by the US. If the US economy detaches from Europe, or if the US economy crashes, Europe would crash also. This is a fact.

Von der Leyen then dismisses the role of globalism in driving populist movements against the EU. She claims:

“There is one thing we should not underestimate: the polarisation is, in part, heavily orchestrated from outside. Via social media, Russia as well as other autocratic states are deliberately interfering in our society…”

“Views on both sides are being amplified because the real goal is to polarize and divide our open societies. But the European Union also has a big advantage. Inequalities are less pronounced here, in part because we have a social market economy and because the levers of power are more widely distributed.”

Russia is to blame for millions of Europeans wanting an end to globalist multicultural policies? Taking a rather Marxist stance, she asserts that populist divisions must be artificial because Europe is economically “equitable”. But the populists are not fighting for economic parity, they’re fighting for European identity which is being systematically erased.

Finally, she comes to the issue of oligarchy:

“Europe is still a peace project. We don’t have bros or oligarchs making the rules. We don’t invade our neighbors, and we don’t punish them…”

“Controversial debates are allowed at our universities. This and more are all values that must be defended, and which show that Europe is more than a union. Europe is our home.”

The EU government is a pure oligarchy with near zero accountability and it is actively trying to suppress and destroy any national party with conservative views. They support silencing any dissent among the peasants, only allowing for debate behind the closed doors of academia because they know academics police their own. The more a society moves towards globalism the less free it’s going to be.

I see this messaging as a kind of crude rough draft for the theatrics to come. They haven’t fine-tuned their story yet, but they have the fundamental pieces in place. The allegation is that national sovereignty is a threat to “democracy”; not freedom, but democracy. And the globalist notion of democracy is progressive rulership in the name of a subjective greater good that they can’t really define.

I feel sympathy for the common European, many of them are hungry for a free society built on traditional western principles. It’s a future that will never materialize, at least not without revolution. These people are at the epicenter of the death of the western world and many of them don’t even know it. In the meantime they’re being told that America is ruining them. I can’t speak for everyone, but many of us would like to save them. The fall of the west to globalism cannot be allowed to continue.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

The post Europe’s Anti-American Shift: Now Globalists Are the Saviors of the West? appeared first on LewRockwell.

On a recent appearance on the Young & Profiting podcast, Peter Schiff joins host Hala Taha to explain why today’s economic challenges—from rising income inequality to persistent inflation—trace back to misguided monetary policy and unsustainable government spending. Peter lays out his case against the conventional wisdom of redistribution, critiques the current tax system, and calls for a return to sound money.

Peter opens by challenging the narrative that capitalism produces rampant inequality. Instead, he argues, it’s Federal Reserve policy that fuels the ever-widening wealth gap in America:

But income inequality today is actually higher than it’s ever been, and the reason for that is because of the monetary policy that the Federal Reserve has pursued. And as a result of that, we have an extreme income inequality that is not the natural byproduct of capitalism and which is a problem. But the solution isn’t for the government to try to redistribute the wealth from the rich to the poor. That always backfires. And that will lead to even greater income inequality. What we have to do is change the monetary policy that has enriched the few at the expense of the many.

He then turns to the tax system, pointing out how middle-class workers bear a much heavier burden than most realize—especially when considering hidden payroll taxes:

So it’s counterproductive to say, ‘Hey, just let’s raise taxes on the rich.’ But I do think that in America today, the middle class pays a tax rate that’s much too high. It’s not just the income tax that they’re paying; it’s the payroll tax, the Social Security and Medicare tax. And a lot of people don’t realize this. They think they just pay half, right? They just think they pay half of the Social Security tax, and the employer pays the rest. No, the employer doesn’t pay any of it. The employer just collects it from the worker. So everybody is paid a little bit less so that their employer can send Social Security payments to the government. 

He goes on to explain that America’s ability to sustain budget deficits hinges on the special status of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency—a privilege that cannot last forever:

But the reason that we can actually get away with all this stuff is because the dollar is still the primary reserve currency. The world wants our dollars, even though it costs us nothing to create them, and so we’re able to finance these massive deficits because of the unique status the dollar has. So we could create dollars out of thin air and use them to buy the goods that other people work hard to produce, and we get it basically for free. So that’s really what’s allowing us to continue to live beyond our means.

Turning to solutions, Peter makes a strong case for gold—arguing that history, as well as the U.S. Constitution, affirms gold’s role as real money and a stable store of value. He contrasts gold’s century-long consistency with the steep decline in the dollar’s purchasing power:

I look at gold not so much as an investment, but as a store of value, so gold is money. Constitutionally, if you know, in 1789, when they established the United States and wrote the Constitution, gold and silver were written in as money. It’s the only lawful money in the country—it’s the only thing that states can make legal tender. The only thing the federal government was authorized to do was to take gold and make a coin out of it.

Finally, Peter addresses the rise of cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, and offers a warning. He argues that Bitcoin’s claims to be “digital gold” are unfounded—and likens its surge in popularity to classic Ponzi schemes:

Bitcoin is not digital gold; it’s not real money; it’s really a digital Ponzi, like a pyramid scheme, a chain letter. I call it a blockchain letter. The fact that it’s digital internet and all that, that’s what’s new, but the idea of a pyramid is old. … It’s not going to replace any currency. And it’s certainly not going to replace gold.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

The post Inflation, Taxes, and the Case for Real Money appeared first on LewRockwell.

The feud between President Trump and Fed Chair Powell is really a fool’s errand. Neither can possibly know what interest rates should be, simply because interest rates are derived in the marketplace. Price fixing, by either the Fed or the President, always ends us creating economic malaise. The Fed should not exist because there’s no way to properly fix prices, and counterfeiting is unconstitutional and immoral. The current posturing between fails to get us closer to ending this anti-American institution.

The post Trump vs. Powell: Fixing Rates Is A Fool’s Errand 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.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/in-che-modo-gli-inglesi-hanno-venduto)

Il 13 aprile 1919 un distaccamento di cinquanta soldati britannici aprì il fuoco sui manifestanti ad Amritsar, in India, uccidendone a centinaia.

I soldati erano indiani, in uniforme britannica.

Il loro comandante era un inglese.

Quando il colonnello Reginald Dyer diede l'ordine, cinquanta indiani aprirono il fuoco sui loro connazionali senza esitazione e continuarono a sparare per dieci minuti.

Questo si chiama soft power.

Su di esso è stato edificato l'Impero britannico.

Il soft power è la capacità di sedurre e convincere gli altri a fare ciò che non vogliono.

Alcuni lo chiamerebbero controllo mentale.

Grazie all'uso del soft power, un piccolo Paese come l'Inghilterra è riuscito a dominare Paesi più grandi e popolosi.

Persino i potenti Stati Uniti cedettero all'influenza britannica in modi che la maggior parte degli americani non comprese.

Per più di cento anni noi americani siamo stati spinti inesorabilmente verso la globalizzazione, contro i nostri interessi e contro la nostra naturale inclinazione.

La spinta verso la globalizzazione proviene principalmente da gruppi di facciata britannici che si spacciano per think tank americani. Tra questi il più importante è il Council on Foreign Relations.

Origine del Council on Foreign Relations

Il Council on Foreign Relations è nato dal Movimento della Tavola Rotonda britannico.

Nel mio ultimo articolo, “Come gli inglesi hanno inventato il globalismo”, ho spiegato come i leader britannici iniziarono a formulare piani per un governo globale nel corso del XIX secolo.

Grazie ai finanziamenti del Rhodes Trust, nel 1909 venne fondato un gruppo segreto chiamato Tavola Rotonda. Fondò sezioni nei Paesi di lingua inglese, tra cui gli Stati Uniti, per promuovere una federazione mondiale di popoli di lingua inglese uniti in un unico superstato.

L'obiettivo a lungo termine della Tavola Rotonda, come chiarito da Cecil Rhodes nel suo testamento del 1877, era raggiungere la pace nel mondo attraverso l'egemonia britannica.

Nel frattempo Rhodes cercò anche (e cito) il “recupero definitivo degli Stati Uniti d'America come parte integrante dell'Impero britannico”.

I Dominion

Si scoprì che le colonie anglofone della Gran Bretagna non volevano far parte della federazione di Rodhes. Volevano l'indipendenza.

Così i membri della Tavola Rotonda proposero un compromesso: offrirono lo status di “Dominion”, o una parziale indipendenza.

Il Canada doveva essere il modello. Aveva ottenuto lo status di Dominion nel 1867 e ciò significava che si autogovernava internamente, mentre la Gran Bretagna gestiva la sua politica estera. I canadesi rimanevano sudditi della Corona.

Gli inglesi proposero lo stesso accordo anche alle altre colonie di lingua inglese.

Era prevista una guerra contro la Germania, quindi i membri della Tavola Rotonda dovettero agire in fretta.

La Gran Bretagna aveva bisogno di placare i Dominion con l'autogoverno, in modo che accettassero di fornire truppe per la guerra imminente.

L'Australia divenne un Dominion nel 1901, la Nuova Zelanda nel 1907 e il Sudafrica nel 1910.

Corteggiare gli Stati Uniti

Gli Stati Uniti rappresentavano una sfida particolare. Eravamo indipendenti dal 1776. Inoltre i nostri rapporti con la Gran Bretagna erano stati burrascosi, rovinati da una sanguinosa Rivoluzione, dalla Guerra del 1812, dalle dispute di confine con il Canada e dall'ingerenza britannica nella nostra Guerra Civile.

A partire dagli anni Novanta dell'Ottocento, gli inglesi lanciarono un'offensiva di pubbliche relazioni chiamata “Grande riavvicinamento” per promuovere l'unità anglo-americana.

Nel 1893 il magnate dell'acciaio di origine scozzese, Andrew Carnegie, chiese apertamente un'“Unione anglo-americana”. Sostenne il ritorno dell'America all'Impero britannico.

Nel 1901 il giornalista britannico, W. T. Stead, sostenne la necessità di creare “Stati Uniti di lingua inglese nel mondo”.

Una soluzione “canadese” per l’America

Dal punto di vista britannico il Grande Riavvicinamento fu un fiasco.

Quando la Gran Bretagna dichiarò guerra alla Germania nel 1914, le truppe arrivarono da ogni angolo dell'Impero ma non dall'America. Gli Stati Uniti inviarono truppe solo nell'aprile del 1917, dopo due anni e mezzo di accanite pressioni britanniche.

Per gli inglesi quel ritardo era intollerabile. Dimostrava che non ci si poteva fidare degli americani per prendere decisioni importanti.

La Tavola Rotonda cercò una soluzione “canadese”, manipolando gli Stati Uniti per ottenere un accordo di tipo Dominion, con la Gran Bretagna che controllava la nostra politica estera.

Tutto ciò doveva essere fatto in silenzio, attraverso canali segreti.

Durante i colloqui di pace di Parigi del 1919, gli agenti della Tavola Rotonda collaborarono con anglofili statunitensi accuratamente selezionati (molti dei quali membri della Tavola Rotonda) per ideare meccanismi formali in modo da coordinare la politica estera statunitense e britannica.

Il meccanismo di controllo

Il 30 maggio 1919 venne fondato l'Anglo-American Institute of International Affairs (AAIIA), con filiali a New York e Londra.

Per la prima volta fu istituita una struttura formale per armonizzare al massimo livello le linee di politica degli Stati Uniti e del Regno Unito.

Tuttavia il momento storico era pessimo. In America stava crescendo un sentimento anti-britannico, molti accusavano l'Inghilterra di averci trascinato in guerra. Allo stesso tempo i globalisti inglesi denunciavano gli americani come scansafatiche per non aver sostenuto la Società delle Nazioni.

Poiché l'unità anglo-americana era temporaneamente in discredito, nel 1920 i membri della Tavola Rotonda decisero di separare le filiali di New York e Londra, per salvare le apparenze.

Dopo la separazione la filiale londinese fu ribattezzata British Institute of International Affairs (BIIA). Nel 1926 il BIIA ricevette uno statuto reale, diventando il Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), comunemente noto come Chatham House.

Nel frattempo, nel 1921, la filiale di New York divenne il Council on Foreign Relations.

Dopo la separazione da Chatham House, il Council on Foreign Relations continuò a collaborare strettamente con la controparte britannica, nel rispetto di un rigido codice di segretezza denominato “regole di Chatham House”.

L'agenda del Council on Foreign Relations

Il Council on Foreign Relations afferma sul suo sito web di “non prendere posizioni istituzionali su questioni politiche”, ma questo non è vero.

“L'impronta dell'internazionalismo” è evidente in tutte le pubblicazioni del Council on Foreign Relations, osserva il politologo britannico, Inderjeet Parmar, nel suo libro del 2004 “Think Tanks and Power in Foreign Policy”. Negli scritti del Council on Foreign Relations è evidente anche una marcata ostilità a ciò che esso definisce “isolazionismo”.

Parmar conclude che il Council on Foreign Relations persegue due obiettivi:

1. Unità anglo-americana
2. Globalismo

Si tratta degli stessi obiettivi stabiliti nel testamento di Rhodes, il quale auspicava un'unione globale anglo-americana così potente da “rendere in seguito impossibili le guerre [...]”.

“La nave madre”

Protetto dalle “regole di Chatham House”, il Council on Foreign Relations ha a lungo operato nell’ombra e la sua stessa esistenza è sconosciuta alla maggior parte degli americani.

Ciononostante nel corso degli anni sono trapelate voci sul suo potere.

“Poche istituzioni di spicco nella società americana sono state messe alla gogna con tanta costanza quanto il Council on Foreign Relations”, scrisse lo storico Robert J. McMahon nel 1985. “Per i complottisti di destra, così come per i critici radicali di sinistra, l'organizzazione con sede a New York ha spesso evocato il timore di una piccola élite che tira i fili della politica estera americana con una certa cattiveria”.

In realtà il controllo del Council on Foreign Relations sulla politica estera degli Stati Uniti non è un complotto, ma piuttosto un fatto ben noto tra gli addetti ai lavori di Washington, i quali hanno soprannominato il Council on Foreign Relations “il vero Dipartimento di Stato”.

Nel 2009 il Segretario di Stato Hillary Clinton ammise di aver ricevuto istruzioni dal Council on Foreign Relations definendo la sede centrale di New York “la nave madre”.

Parlando presso il suo nuovo ufficio a Washington, la Clinton dichiarò: “Sono stata spesso nella sede principale di New York, ma è positivo avere una sede distaccata proprio qui, a due passi dal Dipartimento di Stato. Riceviamo molti consigli da questo organo, quindi significa che non dovrò andare lontano per sentirmi dire cosa dovremmo fare e come dovremmo pensare al futuro”.

Il Council on Foreign Relations contro Trump

Trump non condivideva l'entusiasmo di Hillary per i “consigli” britannici.

Al contrario le politiche di Trump si opponevano espressamente alle posizioni britanniche sul cambiamento climatico, sulle frontiere aperte, sugli accordi commerciali truccati e sulle guerre senza fine. La politica “America First” di Trump incarnava ciò che il Council on Foreign Relations definisce “isolazionismo”.

Tutto ciò era troppo per gli inglesi e i loro collaboratori statunitensi.

È nata la “Resistenza” anti-Trump.

Il 16 giugno 2015 Trump annunciò la sua candidatura alla presidenza.

Verso la fine del 2015 l'agenzia britannica di intercettazioni, il GCHQ, avrebbe scoperto delle “interazioni” tra la campagna di Trump e l'intelligence russa.

Nell'estate del 2016 il GCHQ trasmise questo “materiale” all'allora capo della CIA, John Brennan.

Un titolo del 13 aprile 2017 del quotidiano britannico The Guardian annunciava con orgoglio: “Le spie britanniche sono state le prime a individuare i legami del team di Trump con la Russia”.

L'articolo spiegava: “Fonti di intelligence statunitensi e britanniche riconoscono che il GCHQ ha avuto un ruolo iniziale e di primo piano nell'avvio dell'indagine dell'FBI su Trump e la Russia [...]. Una fonte ha definito l'agenzia britannica di intercettazioni il 'principale informatore'”.

Così l’intelligence britannica ha preparato il terreno per l’inchiesta Mueller e per l’impeachment del “Russiagate” più di un anno prima dell’elezione di Trump.

Richieste di ammutinamento militare

Solo 10 giorni dopo l'insediamento di Trump nel 2017,  la rivista Foreign Policy chiese un “colpo di stato militare” contro il nuovo presidente.

L'articolo del 20 gennaio 2017 recava il titolo “3 modi per sbarazzarsi del presidente Trump prima del 2020”. In esso la professoressa di diritto Rosa Brooks chiedeva l'impeachment di Trump o la sua rimozione ai sensi del 25° emendamento.

Come ultima risorsa, disse la Brooks, si poteva provare un metodo “che fino a poco tempo fa avrei ritenuto impensabile negli Stati Uniti d’America: un colpo di stato militare [...]”.

Foreign Policy è di proprietà della famiglia Graham, la cui matriarca Katharine Graham contribuì a rovesciare Nixon quando era direttrice del Washington Post.

I Graham sono degli esperti di Washington. Non avrebbero mai invocato un “colpo di stato militare” senza il via libera della “nave madre”.

Destabilizzare l'America

La prova della complicità del Council on Foreign Relations è arrivata nel novembre 2017, quando la rivista Foreign Affairs ha fatto eco a Foreign Policy esortando i “leader militari di alto rango” a “resistere agli ordini” di Trump e a prendere in considerazione la sua rimozione ai sensi del 25° emendamento.

Foreign Affairs è la rivista ufficiale del Council on Foreign Relations.

Durante la presidenza Trump il Dipartimento degli Esteri lo accusò ripetutamente di instabilità mentale, esortando i “leader militari” e i “funzionari di gabinetto” a tenersi pronti a estrometterlo.

Provenienti dalla “nave madre”, questi incitamenti avevano un'autorità insolitamente forte. Soffiarono sulle fiamme della retorica di Washington fino a livelli indicibili, scuotendo la nazione e affermando l'insurrezione e il colpo di stato come la “nuova normalità” nella politica statunitense.

Considerata l'innegabile discendenza britannica del Council on Foreign Relations, la retorica della rivista Foreign Affairs solleva interrogativi sulle motivazioni britanniche.

Chiaramente Whitehall considerava Trump una minaccia esistenziale. Ma perché? Perché le obiezioni di Trump sulla politica commerciale erano considerate così minacciose per gli interessi britannici da giustificare un ammutinamento militare?

Neutralizzare la minaccia americana

Credo che la risposta si possa trovare negli scritti originali del gruppo Rhodes.

Nel suo libro del 1901, The Americanization of the World, il giornalista britannico W. T. Stead, stretto collaboratore di Rhodes, sosteneva che l'Inghilterra avesse solo due scelte: fondersi con l'America o essere sostituita da essa.

La scelta era chiara: unirsi agli Stati Uniti avrebbe potuto salvare la Gran Bretagna, mentre qualsiasi tentativo di competere con gli Stati Uniti si sarebbe concluso solo con una sconfitta.

Già negli anni Novanta dell'Ottocento, i leader britannici sapevano che sorvegliare il loro Impero era diventato troppo costoso. Concedere l'autogoverno ai Dominion permise di risparmiare denaro, rendendoli responsabili della propria difesa, ma la spesa militare era ancora troppo elevata.

Nel 1906 il banchiere britannico Lord Avebury si lamentò del fatto che gli Stati Uniti si stessero arricchendo a spese della Gran Bretagna. Mentre gli Stati Uniti traevano profitto dalla Pax Britannica, la Gran Bretagna spendeva il 60% in più dell'America per le sue spese militari, per garantire la sicurezza del mondo per gli affari.

Oggi, grazie al Council on Foreign Relations, la situazione è capovolta a favore della Gran Bretagna.

Ora l'America controlla il mondo, mentre gli investitori britannici si arricchiscono grazie alla Pax Americana. La spesa militare britannica è ormai una frazione della nostra.

Alla luce di questi fatti, diventa più facile capire perché gli inglesi non vogliono che Trump rovini la situazione.

I nuovi imperialisti

Le élite britanniche non si accontentavano di scaricare il costo dell'impero sull'America, volevano anche mantenere il controllo della politica imperiale, ottenendo così la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca. Con l'aiuto del Council on Foreign Relations, sono arrivate molto vicine a raggiungere questo obiettivo.

Il movimento “Nuovo Imperialismo” in Gran Bretagna mira a ricostruire l'influenza globale del Regno Unito, appoggiandosi alle forze armate statunitensi. Lo storico britannico Andrew Roberts annunciò questo nuovo movimento in un articolo del Daily Mail dell'8 gennaio 2005.

Il titolo riassume bene la loro filosofia: “Ricolonizzare l'Africa”.

Sostenendo che “l'Africa non ha mai conosciuto tempi migliori che durante il dominio britannico”, Roberts invocava senza mezzi termini la “ricolonizzazione”. Affermava che importanti statisti britannici sostenevano “in privato” questa linea di politica, ma “non si sarebbero mai sognati di approvarla pubblicamente [...]”.

Roberts si vantava che la maggior parte delle dittature africane sarebbero crollate al “semplice arrivo all’orizzonte di una portaerei proveniente da un Paese di lingua inglese [...]”.

Non specificò quale “Paese anglofono” avrebbe dovuto fornire portaerei per simili avventure, ma ve lo lascio immaginare.

La rivoluzione incompiuta dell'America

Sono passati più di cento anni da quando W. T. Stead avvertì che la Gran Bretagna avrebbe dovuto fondersi con l'America, o essere sostituita da essa. Poco è cambiato.

Le élite britanniche si trovano ancora di fronte alla stessa scelta. Non possono accettare un mondo guidato dagli americani, quindi devono trovare il modo di controllarci.

Da parte nostra, non dobbiamo accettare il loro controllo.

La sfida della nostra generazione è quella di rompere l'incantesimo del soft power britannico.

Completiamo l'opera della nostra rivoluzione incompiuta.

I nuovi imperialisti spingono CANZUK

Sedici anni dopo aver annunciato il “Nuovo Imperialismo”, Andrew Roberts e i suoi compagni imperialisti continuano a sostenere il sogno di Cecil Rhodes di un'unione di lingua inglese.

In un editoriale sul Wall Street Journal dell'8 agosto 2020, Roberts promosse il cosiddetto Trattato CANZUK, il quale mira a unire Canada, Australia, Nuova Zelanda e Gran Bretagna in un superstato globale “in grado di stare fianco a fianco con gli Stati Uniti” contro “una Cina sempre più revanscista”.

Come sempre, Roberts sta facendo progetti per noi.

Come al solito, i suoi piani prevedono di trascinarci in guerra.

Le élite britanniche non ci capiranno mai

Nel suo libro del 2006, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, Roberts suggerisce con leggerezza che l'America potrebbe vivere meglio sotto una monarchia.

Un governo monarchico ci avrebbe risparmiato il trauma del Watergate; un monarca sarebbe intervenuto e avrebbe licenziato Nixon, proprio come la regina Elisabetta II licenziò il primo ministro australiano Gough Whitlam nel 1975.

Non c'è bisogno di alcun processo democratico.

Roberts non arriva a capire come un simile intervento reale sarebbe stato recepito dalla “maggioranza silenziosa” che aveva votato per Nixon e lo aveva sostenuto.

MAGA contro MABA

In conclusione, Trump ha voluto realizzare il programma “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) ripristinando la nostra indipendenza e autosufficienza.

Il Council on Foreign Relations si propone di rendere l'America di nuovo britannica (MABA).

È semplice.

Se c'è una cosa che ci hanno insegnato gli anni di Trump è che MAGA e MABA non vanno d'accordo.

Nel momento in cui abbiamo un presidente che difende la sovranità americana, gli inglesi impazziscono, spingendo il nostro Paese sull'orlo della guerra civile.

È chiaro che non possiamo essere “grandi” e “britannici” allo stesso tempo.

Dobbiamo scegliere l'uno o l'altro.

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

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

On his latest appearance on “Capital Cosm,” Peter shares his perspective on the mounting pressures facing the U.S. economy, especially as America’s debt situation grows more dire. He unpacks the consequences of persistent trade deficits, the shifting global appetite for U.S. financial assets, and the implications for the U.S. dollar’s reserve status.

Peter opens with a dose of humility, addressing critics who suggest he’s eager to celebrate a long-awaited crisis. Instead, he explains, the stakes are far too serious for celebration:

Well, I don’t want to necessarily describe it as a Super Bowl in that the Super Bowl is a fun thing, a celebration. It’s not really that I want to celebrate the fact that I think we’re going to have an economic crisis. I mean, it’s something that I’ve been predicting for a long time, and it hasn’t even totally happened yet. So it’s even premature to really say I told you so. But I’m not necessarily going to celebrate the fact that I was right. … In a way I want to be wrong.

While the crisis Peter has forecast isn’t in full swing, he argues that the warning signs are undeniable. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s recent comments on debt sustainability draw skepticism from Peter, who points out the faulty logic behind official reassurances:

It’s not happening yet, but I think that we’ve set into motion the forces that will ultimately produce a sovereign debt and US dollar crisis. Powell said again yesterday, or he talked, and he said, we’re on an unsustainable path. He said the debt is not unsustainable, just the path, which I think is BS because if the path is unsustainable, then the debt is unsustainable because that’s the path the debt is on and it’s not changing. The path is the path. If anything, we’re picking up the pace.

A critical shift is already unfolding in the global marketplace. The long-standing pattern of foreign nations recycling their U.S. trade surpluses back into American government debt is beginning to unravel, posing a serious challenge to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency:

But what I think is significant about what’s happening is that we’ve begun the exodus out of U.S. financial assets, where the U.S. dollar is no longer the primary reserve and our trading partners are not recycling their trade surpluses into U.S. financial assets. Donald Trump has made it clear that a goal of his presidency is lower trade deficits. And the only way that’s going to happen is if Americans import less. And since we don’t have the capacity to produce more, we’re not going to close the hole with exports. It’s going to be with lower consumption and a weaker U.S. economy, and more of our inflation is going to stay within our own borders.

Turning to U.S. trade policy, Peter remains unconvinced that current political strategies will bring meaningful change. He believes that cosmetic victories may be announced, but the underlying structural issues won’t be fixed by symbolic deals or negotiation theatrics:

Well, I think it’s difficult. I think Trump is going to try to dig himself out of this hole by kind of pretending that this is all part of his master plan, and it’s all going exactly the way he planned it in his 4D chess game that nobody else can understand because he is the greatest negotiator in the world. And none of us can really understand the method of his madness because that’s how smart he is. But I think they will announce some deals with various countries that they will tout as being this major win, but they’ll really be insignificant, just cosmetic victories. 

In light of these broad systemic risks, Peter draws attention to gold’s renewed appeal. With mounting uncertainty and a visible move away from the dollar’s hegemony, he cites gold’s recent price action as a signal that the world is seeking genuine safe havens:

Yeah, gold had one dip below 3,000, and then it made a new high. I think the record I saw was above 3,360, and that was last night it made a new record. It’s pulled back a little bit now, but it’s still above 3,300. So we’re 10% above 3,000. Yeah, I think it’s becoming clear to people who didn’t see it before that gold is the new safe haven.

This originally appeared on SchiffGold.com.

The post Gold Shines as the Dollar Falters appeared first on LewRockwell.

Amidst the horrific U.S. abuse of foreigners through the use of tariffs and police-state enforcement of immigration controls, it’s easy to forget that the U.S. government abuses foreigners in other ways, such as sanctions, embargoes, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, torture, indefinite detention, and state-sponsored assassinations.

Perhaps the longest-lasting, continuous example of this foreigner-abuse syndrome is the U.S. government’s horrific abuse of the Cuban people, which has gone on for more than 60 years. Given that there is no good reason for abusing the Cuban people — and there never has been one — this would be a good place to begin breaking with the longstanding, ongoing U.S. policy of abusing foreigners.

It’s worth pointing out that Cuba has never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959, the U.S. government has always been the aggressor against Cuba, not the other way around.

For more than 60 years, the U.S. government has imposed and enforced a cruel and brutal economic embargo against Cuba. The embargo is designed to inflict maximum economic harm on the Cuban people with the intent of impoverishing them and even killing them through starvation.

The aim of this embargo is one that has been standard for many decades within the U.S. Empire: regime change. Ever since the Cuban revolution, U.S. officials have been obsessed with ousting the communist regime that controls Cuba and replacing it with a pro-U.S. dictatorial regime — that is, one that will be a loyal, obedient servant of the U.S. Empire, much like the current dictatorial regime in El Salvador. The idea has always been that to avoid death by starvation, the Cuban people can rise up and violently revolt against their regime.

The embargo strategy is much like the thinking that undergirds terrorism. Terrorists kill innocent people as a way to pressure a regime into changing its political system or behavior. That’s what the U.S. embargo against Cuba does also.

But it’s worth mentioning that the U.S. embargo is not the only way that the U.S. Empire has inflicted abuse on Cubans. During the early 1960s, the Empire also engaged in real acts of terrorism against commercial facilities inside Cuba.

That’s not all. U.S. officials, in partnership with the Mafia, also engaged in secret state-sponsored assassination attempts against Cuba’s first president, Fidel Castro. U.S. officials maintained that such assassination attempts were morally justified because Castro was a communist. However, it is difficult to understand how that would morally justify murdering someone. It’s also worth noting that the U.S. Constitution makes it illegal for U.S. officials to murder anyone, including foreigners.

Needless to say, the U.S. embargo against Cuba has never worked. For one thing, many Cubans hate the U.S. government. Moreover, many of Cubans who hate Cuba’s communist and socialist systems hate the thought of being under the control of the U.S. government even more. For another thing, there is a strict system of gun control in Cuba, which means that the Cuban people lack the means to violently overthrow their government. Thus, all that the U.S. embargo has accomplished for the past six and a half decades is extreme economic suffering among the Cuban people.

Proponents of the embargo do their best to avoid personal responsibility for this intentional infliction of suffering on innocent people by focusing exclusively on the harm caused by Cuba’s socialist system. What they avoid confronting is that the U.S. government’s embargo is the other side of an economic vise that, in combination with Cuba’s socialist system, succeeds in squeezing the lifeblood out of the Cuban people. What these embargo proponents also fail to confront is that while Cuban socialism inflicts harm on the Cuban people, it’s misguided harm. The harm inflicted by the embargo is fully intentional and deliberate.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the embargo against Cuba has contributed to the destruction of fundamental rights of the American people, such as economic liberty, liberty of contract, freedom of travel, and freedom of association. In a genuinely free society, people have the right to travel wherever they want, spend their money anyway they want, sell whatever they want to whomever they want, and associate with whomever they want. Yet, if an American sells things to Cubans, buys things from Cubans, or travels to Cuba and spends money there, he is immediately arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated by U.S. officials upon returning to his own country. He is also condemned as a “bad person” by U.S. officials for exercising fundamental rights.

Inflicting abuse on foreigners does not make a country great. It actually does the opposite. It produces a weak, frightened, contemptible country. A great country treats everyone, including foreigners, with decency and respect. A great way for America to start becoming great again would be by lifting the decades-old cruel, brutal, and unjustifiable U.S. embargo against the Cuban people.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Stop the U.S. Abuse of Cuba appeared first on LewRockwell.

Okay, history buffs, I write this on April 19, 2025, exactly 250 years from that most famous of midnight runs, that of Paul Revere and William Dawes to warn fellow patriots that the British army was on the march. Popular legend has it that Paul warned them by yelling, “The British are coming, the British are coming.” Not true. He yelled, “The regulars are coming,” as back then both sides thought themselves British.

Joseph Warren, a Founding Father, had tipped off Paul Revere and Willy Dawes to the British plans. The ride was immortalized by Henry Longfellow’s poem and has been reenacted in Massachusetts streets ever since. The Brits sent a contingent in secret out at night to capture weapons stored by anarchic locals at Concord. Paul and Willy warned them, and the war was on. Actually there was very little fighting. The local militia in Lexington was not looking for a fight. No one has ever proved who was the first to shoot. Nevertheless it became known in America later on as “the shot heard round the world.” After that shot a little hell broke loose. The Brit regulars fired volleys and charged with fixed bayonets. Eight local defenders died. Then the colonials retaliated. That’s when the Brit regulars fled. Victory has many followers, and more and more colonials joined, eager to fight.

“What kind of nation would this part of the world be had America lost the war?”

The British regulars stood and fought back in Lexington. The so-called Americans at the time surprised the Brits by fighting in formation and with courage and discipline. The British regulars were driven back to Boston, having suffered 300 casualties compared with 100 of the resisting locals. This, then, was the first day of that most incredible birth of a country now dominating the world, the United States of America. The Concord and Lexington battles may have been small beer in comparison with what ensued, but like Thermopylae 1,500 years before, they signaled great things to come. Like the Ancient Greeks, the Americans warned the all-conquering British that they were not about to lie down and be good little British subjects. Pay taxes without representation. Be looked down upon as simple colonials. Like it or not, and they didn’t like it and still don’t, the Brits were taught their first lesson. I lived in London for close to 35, perhaps 40, years, and I know what I’m talking about. The Americans are admired by many but also seen as loud and vulgar and too rich. But let’s put our cards on the table. Basically the Brits are jealous. The Yanks, as they call them, not only beat them on the field, they also prospered in an unimaginable way.

Perhaps I exaggerate. I’ve been torn between the two countries’ history, changing my mind about them time and again. Writing this on the date it all began puts me on the side of the Americans. My favorite general was Benedict Arnold. And still is. Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, the Brit general who came to fight in Saratoga with 40 trunks of clothes and his mistress along, was another favorite. And did you know that Alexander Hamilton had led the last charge down south before General Cornwallis surrendered? What do any of you think would have happened had the Howe brothers captured Washington before he snuck out of Brooklyn and into Manhattan and eventually New Jersey? What kind of nation would this part of the world be had America lost the war?

And now for some gossip about how the locals found out that the army was on the move against them and scored that first all-important victory. How did Joseph Warren know about the move and warn Paul Revere? Well, as in all mysteries, a woman was involved. Mind you, this could be vicious Brit gossip, because the lady was an American beauty. She was married to Gen. Thomas Gage, who ordered the army to move against the locals. Margaret Kemble Gage was a very rich local lady who married the Brit general when she was 24. After the outbreak of the war she sailed to England, and her hubby followed after a few months. Thus the stage was set for a fable that suited the British establishment as well as the American revolutionaries. She had extracted her husband’s plans to attack and passed them on to a fellow American. The myth pleased everyone. The British were happy that their loss was due to a betrayal. The Yanks were pleased that an American had chosen her country above her husband. The London set was also pleased because Margaret was a looker and the London gals were not.

Last but not least, by the great society arbiter Taki: An 18th-century lady of her standing did not exactly call on gentlemen she hardly knew and extract secrets from them. The Brits did not take the upstarts seriously enough, no matter the bull Hollywood puts up every so often. The Howe brothers, both great gentlemen and feeling that the Yanks were their naughty cousins, did not truly pursue George Washington in Brooklyn. They dined and wined instead. Margaret Gage was a loyal wife who was snubbed for the rest of her life for something she didn’t do.

This originally appeared on Taki’s Magazine.

The post Revolutionary Lore appeared first on LewRockwell.

A few readers thought I went a bit too far in my column two days ago when I expressed concern that if President Trump loses the existential conflict between Mega Americans and the corrupt anti-American Establishment, a return to power of the Democrats will mean oppression for traditional white ethnic Americans.  Not in America, they said.  But, yes, especially in America.

White heterosexual gentiles, especially males, have been second class citizens in the United States ever since Alfred Blumrosen at the EEOC stood the 1964 Civil Rights Act on its head and defied the clear statutory language in the legislation and imposed racial and gender quotas on white gentile heterosexual American men. These quotas have been in effect for 60 years, supplemented during the Biden regime with DEI-imposed quotas.

The American judiciary, despite the 14th Amendment absolutely requiring equality under the law and the clear unambiguous language of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, did nothing to enforce the Constitution and the Law.  The American judiciary, the American corporations, the American universities accepted and enforced the illegal and unconstitutional racial and gender quoters.  Essentially, the quotas are still in place.  The US Supreme Court ruled against them a year or two or so ago, but in a weak way that did not stop the Biden regime from extending them to DEI privileges and refusing to promote in the military based on merit.  Instead, the Biden regime placed racial and sexual constraints on military promotion. Promotions were not available for white heterosexual gentile males.

So what does law mean in the US?  Nothing except the right to gain money by suing and the right of partisan Democrat judges to block the President of the United States from fulfilling his contract with the electorate. For example, currently 12 Democrat states are suing the Trump administration for alleged damages to them from tariffs which so far are nothing but negotiation tools.

There is no law.  American Law Schools were taken over years ago and turned into instruments for overthrowing alleged white, racist America.

The George Soros-implanted Leticia James in New York is the perfect example of an Attorney General trained in law school to use law as a weapon against those in the way of revolutionizing American society. The electorate in New York is so indoctrinated and brainwashed that the people accept as attorney general a person committed to their demise. What was once our greatest state appears now to be our most stupid.

The same happened in journalism schools.  I was an invited  lecturer for some period at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism or at some program of the institution.  I remember watching the transformation of journalist training from finding and reporting the facts to learning to use journalism to support narratives that advanced the agendas of the ruling establishment. It became the only path to employment and success, and the budding “journalists” moved willing into it.  Today they know no other function.  Today the normal function of journalists is to lie in support of the agendas of the American Establishment, which most certainly is not a Mega American establishment.

I don’t think Trump understands the strength of the forces that he has challenged.  If you peruse the left-wing websites, you will acquaint yourself with the retaliation that is being prepared for the “Trump deplorables,” Hillary’s term, once Trump is defeated or out of office.

Without going there, let’s just consider what Democrat members of Congress, elected by Americans, have to say about the retaliation measures they will be able to use once Trump is gone.

Democrat US Representative Jamin Ben Raskin represents the 8th congressional district of Maryland. He is a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School. He led the impeachment of President Trump during Trump’s first term of office.

US Representative Raskin has issued a threat to everyone who does business with the Trump administration that “when we come back to power we are not going to look kindly.”

In other words, Raskin has clearly threatened repercussions for doing business of any kind with a lawfully elected government of the US.

This threat, of course, applies to the “domestic terrorists” who elected Trump.  Remember, it is Trump who is trying to restore America, and the Democrats who are trying to turn America into a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel.  But Raskin, the Democrats, the left-wing and most of the white liberals regard President Trump’s effort to resurrect America as the imposition of fascism. In US Rep. Democrat Raskin’s words, “We’re going to restore strong democracy to America and we will remember who stood up for democracy in America and who tried to drive us down towards dictatorship and autocracy.”

Raskin is indicting the traditional Americans who elected Trump by such a large margin that the Democrats could not again steal the presidential election.

It is my opinion that Trump, his government, and his supporters do not understand that they are up against a more powerful destructive ideological force than America ever faced from the Soviet Union.  The entirety of the Democrat Party, media, universities, deep state, are totally opposed to America and want to transform America into a Sodom & Gomorrah Tower of Babel.  

How else can you explain decades of totally open borders?

How else can you explain teaching white kids that they, their parents, their grandparents are racists who exploit black people?

How else can you explain teaching kids that they are born into the wrong body and need sex change operations that their parents cannot prevent?

The United States is a crazy land as is all of the Western World.  The Belief System that comprised Western Civilization has been destroyed by decades of propaganda from well-funded universities.

As I have said before, every institution that constitutes the United States has been hollowed out by decades of anti-American propaganda from American universities and public schools.  Those who defend America have been written out of public discussion and banned from the presstitute media. I used to be a Wall Street Journal editor and columnist, a columnist for Business Week, for the Scripts Howard News Service.  I was often on the major TV networks.  Today I am totally banned.  As a truth-teller, I am an enemy who must be suppressed.

Americans are very slow in realizing that the Democrats are an ideological party, like the Bolsheviks.  Democrats already know the truth and are unbothered by facts.  Facts are what serve the agenda.  The truth is in the agenda.  

The post What Happens to Us if President Trump Loses the Existential War With the Evil American Establishment? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Introduction by Bishop Joseph Strickland

Please read through this article prayerfully. As we look ahead to the next conclave, I urge you to pray fervently for the election of a truly Catholic pope. The Church is in a time of great trial, and we must be vigilant in guarding the faith that has been handed down to us.

While we know that the Holy Ghost assists us in the governance of the Church, He does not override the free will of men. It is possible for cardinals to elect someone who does not truly uphold the Catholic Faith, and if a man who has publicly embraced heresy were to be elected, he could not be a true pope. As St Robert Bellarmine and others have taught, a heretic cannot be the head of the Church because he is not a member of it.

Therefore, we must pray with great urgency — not only that the conclave chooses a worthy successor to St. Peter — but also for clarity and wisdom in recognizing whether the man elected is truly the pope. In these confusing times, we must remain steadfast in the unchanging truths of our faith, knowing that Our Lord will never abandon His Church.

Let us turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Peter and all the saints, asking for their intercession in this most critical matter.

Bishop Joseph E. Strickland,
Bishop Emeritus

The cardinals will soon enter a new conclave, yet it remains unclear whether the man who will emerge will be a legitimate Successor of St. Peter.

An article recently published by LifeSiteNews reminds us that the papacy is a divine institution and was established by Our Lord Jesus Christ to achieve specific ends according to His divine will.

If we approach the election of a pope as we approach the election of a political leader, or if we view it as a contest between “liberals” and “conservatives,” we will have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the office.

As another recent article explained:

The power and authority of the Roman Pontiff is immediate in the sense that it is received immediately from Christ and not through the agency of another person or groups of persons. [1]

According to the current law of the Church, it is the cardinals who elect the pope. Yet it is always Our Lord Jesus Christ who confers jurisdiction on the elected candidate:

It is left to the Church to elect, or otherwise designate, the person who then obtains the power of universal jurisdiction by virtue of divine institution, i.e., immediately from Christ, not from those who have elected him. [2]

It is the teaching of the Catholic Church that only a member of the male sex who is in possession of the use of reason and is a member of the Catholic Church can be elected pope. A member of the Catholic Church is one who is (i) baptized, (ii) publicly professes the Catholic faith and (iii) is subject to the lawful hierarchy. The non-baptized, public heretics, public schismatics, and public apostates are not eligible for election.

Our Lord will only confer papal jurisdiction on a man who fulfils the conditions which He has established. He will not confer it on an ineligible candidate, even if the cardinals were to choose such a man.

As the conclave approaches many will want to know more details about the cardinals who are regarded as papabile. In this article LifeSiteNews offers short profiles of eight men who are spoken of as being among the main contenders.

These profiles are not intended to endorse any candidate or to imply that they are members of the Church and eligible for election. They are simply intended to provide LifeSiteNews readers an introduction to who they are and what they stand for.

Longer profiles of some of these men will follow.

1. Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline – Archbishop of Marseille, France

Cardinal Aveline has been described as the most “Bergoglian” of the French bishops and it has also been reported that he is the man Francis wishes to succeed him. Aveline signed a positive statement of the French Bishops’ Conference (CEF) about Fiducia Supplicans. This letter stated that the “blessings should be given as a sign of ‘unconditional and merciful welcome.’” Furthermore, it stated that “Fiducia Supplicans reminds us that those who are not in a position to commit themselves to the sacrament of marriage are not excluded from God’s love or from his Church.” And specified that “it is in particular through prayers of blessing, given in a spontaneous, ‘non-ritualized’ form (no. 36), without any sign likely to be assimilated with the celebration of marriage, that the Church’s ministers will be able to manifest this broad and unconditional welcome.”

Aveline has supported the process of “synodality”; he was on the drafting committee for the final report of the “Synod for Synodality” and has called for a “Mediterranean Synod”. He holds erroneous views on the subject of other religions and interreligious dialogue. For example, he has said: “Basically, religions are ways for men and women to seek answers to the great, simple questions of life. It’s better to have a religion that helps you, that doesn’t give you answers to questions you don’t ask yourself, but that helps you to truly experience life – that’s the most important thing.”

He has also stated: “The Catholic Church first recognizes the possibility of a positive role for other religions, as socio-cultural realities, in the general economy of salvation. This excludes an exclusivist position, which, on the basis of a narrow ecclesiocentrism, would deny non-Christian religions any salvific or revelatory value, relying on a hardened, and thus distorted, interpretation of the ancient Patristic adage: ‘Outside the Church, no salvation.’”

An in-depth study of Aveline’s theology can be found here.

2. Cardinal Stephen Brislin – Archbishop of Johannesburg, South Africa

Cardinal Brislin has welcomed Amoris Laetitia and taken the approach that Fiducia Supplicans is reconcilable with the teaching of the Church. He has previously praised Cardinal Fernandez, whose congregation produced Fiducia Supplicans, and who is one of the figures at the forefront of Francis’s agenda, as “a person who’s got a very broad vision.”

In the past Brislin has made orthodox statements on moral questions; he has condemned abortion and euthanasia. Like many other cardinals he seems to have manifested more liberal tendencies under Francis. In 2019 he allowed dissident group “We Are Church” to meet on church property, reversing a ban he had introduced in 2012. He has expressed public support for the Synod on Synodality, calling it “a wonderful opportunity for the Church.” The synodal journey, he said, is “something that we can develop more locally, to become that listening Church, that discerning Church, and really opening ourselves to God’s Holy Spirit.”

3. Cardinal Kurt Koch – Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity

Cardinal Koch is a man who opposes fundamental doctrines of the Church. His dicastery produced a radical blueprint for the destruction of the Catholic Church and its replacement with a new “Synodal Church.” Ecumenism has been longterm interest for Koch and, if this blueprint were implemented, the “Synodal Church” would become a global church without true authority or unity in doctrine. Koch also holds the heretical position that there is no need for a mission to the Jewish people as they can be saved under the Old Covenant. His dicastery has produced documents that contain heresy, both with regard to the nature of the Church and outreach to the Jews. He defends his rejection of the teaching of the Catholic Church by an appeal to Vatican II.

4. Cardinal Marc Ouellet – Archbishop Emeritus of Quebec

Cardinal Ouellet was once regarded as conservative but has become a strong supporter of the radical agenda of Francis. He supports Amoris Laetitia and has publicly criticized the dubia cardinals.

In 2024 Ouellet published a book entitled Word, Sacrament, Charism: Risks and Opportunities of a Synodal Church. This book sets out his endorsement of the radical programme of “synodality.” At the book launch he lauded the “great synodal movement that is spreading throughout the entire Church.”

Ouellet permitted his titular church in Rome, that of Santa Maria in Traspontina, to be used for the pagan rituals in honor of Pachamama, an Amazonian idol. On October 4 Francis welcomed the idol of Pachamama to the Vatican gardens; during the ceremony some clerics prostrated themselves before the idol. Ouellet said of this act of apostasy, that it “did not bother me.”

Ouellet has been identified as one of the cardinals most responsible for Traditionis Custodes. An order of nuns in his archdiocese, which had used the traditional rite exclusively since 1969, was forced to introduce the novus ordo rite. Ouellet was found guilty by a French court of unjustly expelling a nun from the community after she opposed his subversion of the order. The court described her expulsion as “infamous and vexatious,” and said it was executed without her having committed “the slightest offense.”

Read the Whole Article

The post These 8 Cardinals May Succeed Francis. Here’s What They Believe appeared first on LewRockwell.