Aggregatore di feed

Thanks, Gail Appel.

Facebook

The post Leipzig Germanistan appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Andy Thomas. 

Vox Popoli

The post Clown World Fears Peace appeared first on LewRockwell.

Leo Higgins

Looks like the tariffs have struck us in the backside yet again, in another exercise of President Trump’s penchant for creating unforeseen consequences in mindless “statecraft.” This time, due to the overall shortsighted tariff policy (aimed, as a practical matter, mostly at China), China has embargoed 7 rare-earth minerals which are essential for many “defense related” components to our high end weapons systems, and which are equally vital in many civilian uses, as well. 

This shortsightedness is becoming more and more typical of the mercurial pronouncements of President Trump, I’m afraid.   While it is doubtless true that the overall picture would have been even bleaker under Harris, it does no good for conservatives to bury our heads in the sand regarding Trump’s strategic gaffes and moral lapses.  His thinking is almost pure impulsiveness and flailing “reaction,” there is no “wisdom” behind any of it, it seems.  And his choices for advisors – especially in military and foreign affairs – are leading him to make the same mistake of surrounding himself with backstabbing neocons of the same “quality” that permeated his administration the last time around.  From backing Israeli genocide in Gaza, to seriously undermining the freedom of speech of American citizens (also in support of Israel), to picking unnecessary fights with China via tariffs and general saber-rattling, we’re not off to a good start. 

I tried to point out Trump’s rather weak grasp of details all through the campaign, but people just wanted to reply with: “Yeah, but we have to stop Harris!”  Perhaps so, but the Republican/conservative electorate, by thinking this way, and reflexively pinning all their hopes on Trump, just managed to kick the can down the road *yet again* with regard to forcing *real* change.   He’s LARPing as a clumsy Trojan Horse for political change, and, wittingly or otherwise, he’s setting the stage for the continuation of the Republican Party’s penchant for carrot-and-stick-based Hopium for the plebes out here in the national chorus.  There’s always tomorrow!  Besides, we’re ‘Murica, dadgummit!  We can cajole the whole world and take orders from one particular “ally,” while riding the wave of worldwide chaos to unimagined prosperity!  Well, sure.  Except that the reckoning for our collective, long-term, hubristic insouciance is nigh.  Judging from the trajectory of President Trump’s first three months, there will be precious little of constitutional principles or true liberty left to preserve by the next national election in 2028, and the can won’t even be able to get kicked along any further. 

Now, just three months in, Trump’s policies in military and diplomatic relations – or those of his advisors, if one insists on the distinction – have us very close to WW3 if Israel attacks Iran (entirely and solely with our direct help);  close to another international crisis that could lead to hot war with China;  close to a real First Amendment crisis of free speech for US citizens via muzzling opinion over Israeli genocide in Gaza at Israel’s behest, with possible incarceration in foreign hell-hole prisons yet;  and close to potential economic collapse, critical resource shortages or sundry other severe crises because of these crazy tariffs. 

The foregoing are the end-result of conservative complacency over 40 years at the least, where RINOs and neocons have led us by the nose because they took over the Republican Party and offered themselves as the only “choice” opposed to even worse Democrat sociopaths and communists. We did basically nothing to demand better choices in candidates, and just concentrated on being mere “game managers,” and wound-up *still* losing in the end. 

We’re toast.  Perhaps that’s an alien and incomprehensible concept for MAGA to ruminate on, and I take no delight in saying it.  Less attention should have been paid to NASCAR, the NFL, Dancing with the Stars, and other inconsequential inanities, in favor of focusing on stopping the looming national (global?) calamity dead ahead.  Fox News, Newsmax, and the rest of the so-called “conservative” mainstream media aren’t going to give anyone a heads-up about any of that.  They’re in bed with the crowd that is about to hang us with the rope we gave them by taking our own eyes off the ball for decades. 

Anyway, check out this short video from Kernow Damo’s website on the rare-earths fiasco engendered by tariffs and mindless aggression…

The post Tariffs to Cause Huge Shortages in Critical Rare-Earth appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

Exclusive | Joe Biden ‘having trouble booking gigs’ with $300K per speech asking price

The post Biden “having trouble booking gigs” at $300K per speech asking price appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

The post Biden Treated Like a Toddler As He Drops “Partially Melted” Ice Cream Bar in Gaffe-Filled Visit to Harvard appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Yves Engler

The post Why the double standard about Israel’s foreign interference? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

Antiwar.com 

The post The Cross and the Pieta: The Passion of Palestine appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

One of the most touching, sad antiwar songs ever performed is Mr.Lonely by Bobby Vincton. Vinton, who served two years in the Army, co-wrote this song when he was a lonely soldier. It was a #1 hit for him in 1964. He sung the song on the Mike Douglas Show in 1972 and in his introduction explains US troops are about to be coming home. Vinton continued to tour until 2014 and, at 90, is still with us.

The post Bobby Vinton’s Antiwar Song: Mr. Lonely appeared first on LewRockwell.

As a kid growing up in the 80s one of my favorite cartoons was ‘Voltron: Defender of the Universe.” The main characters would pilot 5 robotic lions who would eventually assemble to create Voltron, who’d use a massive sword to defeat the enemy. In this article I’ll briefly introduce 4 main thinkers and impactful friends associated with the ‘Austrian School of Economics’, and how they create the superhero needed to defend civilization from the economic and Zionist fallacies-myths that threaten it.

Besides properly grounding economics on the subjective (not labor) theory of value, founder of ‘The Austrian School’, Carl Menger(1840-1921), via his seminal “Principles of Economics” also provided what I like to call the “flux-capacitor” idea of the social sciences: Menger’s explanation of the evolution of money.

Private-sector economic competition turns the planet into a supercomputer as companies innovate and copy the innovations of competitors thus spreading superior information. Business profit-loss accounting ensures that the private sector is ordered in a manner where more wealth is produced (sales revenue) than consumed (costs) and is thus profitable-wealth-order-life increasing. Overcoming the double-coincidence-of-wants problem allows the benefits of trade like the expanding division of labor and information to apply to populations above small tribes. All three depend on or emerge from money. Without money and its emerging benefits, homo sapiens would not have progressed beyond the tribal stage. Menger showed how similar to language, which is a vital communication mechanism that man did NOT design or invent, money too and emerging ‘Social Organism’ is “the unintended result of individual human efforts (pursuing individual interests) without a common will directed toward their establishment.” The fact that money and emerging civilization was not deliberately designed is key for understanding how we live in this mind-bogglingly complex world with complex airplanes, the Internet, microchips, etc., yet hardly anyone has the slightest clue regarding how the economy works, and the masses naively clamor for self-mutilation via coercive competition-immune-monopolistic government planning  and tribalistic good vs. evil wars.

During the Christmas holidays of 1903, while a student at the University of Vienna, Ludwig von Mises(1881-1973) read Carl Menger’s “Principles of Economics” and, in his own words, “It was through this book that I became an economist.” Among other contributions (see my article on Mises’ business cycle theory), via his 1920 essay “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth“, Mises showed how it was impossible for soviet-style central planning to work (see my article for a Mises-Hayek inspired critique of central planning). By persuading leading Austrian politicians away from joining the Bolsheviks, Mises also helped stop its calamitous expansion. Mises properly identified economic ignorance as the main source of mankind’s problems and felt like “all reasonable men are called upon to familiarize themselves with the teachings of economics. This is, in our age, the primary civic duty.” This ethos made him a brilliant and inspiring writer, the intellectual Atlas upon whose shoulders future generations would stand.

1974 Nobel Laureate in Economics F.A. Hayek(1899-1992) writes: “the decisive influence was just reading Menger’s Principles.” And that it was “such a fascinating book—so satisfying.” By having a job under Mises, especially in 1922 when Mises published his majestic “Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis”, and having Mises help him get a job at the prestigious London School of Economics, this catapulted Hayek to prominence in the 1930s-40s where he played a leading role fighting socialist and Keynesian myths in the English-speaking world. With the help of fellow Mises disciples Henry Hazlitt(1894-1993), and Max Eastman(1883-1969), Hayek’s 1944 book ‘The Road To Serfdom’, and its condensed 40-page Eastman-created version, helped educate millions including future freemarketeers like Ron Paul, Margaret Thatcher, and countless others. His classic essays like “The Use of Knowledge in Society”, “Competition as a Discovery Procedure”, “The Theory of Complex Phenomena”, “The Three Sources of Human Values” and many other writings-books helped us further understand the vital role that markets play in generating and spreading the information that coordinates the socioeconomic order, and the complex co-evolution of the market and culture, ultimately providing a complete evolutionary hypothesis-framework for understanding all order, biological and socioeconomic. Like Mises, Hayek too felt like “nothing could contribute more to the cure of humanity’s ills than to give people a better understanding of economics.”

Absorbing the Misesian econogospel and educational ethos, Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995, Jewish like Mises) would write his own treatise “Man, Economy and State”, which according to Mises improved-refined his ideas. Murray’s friend, great freedom-entrepreneur and founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell, writes in a brilliant collection of Murray’s educational essays:

”[Murray] also had a passion for public persuasion. A free society can only be sustained if the general public is aware of the vital importance of the market and the terrible consequences of statism. That’s why Rothbard hoped to convince everyone about the virtues of the free economy. For Rothbard, educating the public was strategically necessary and morally obligatory.”

If economic competition motivates the discovery and spread of superior information, why not allow competition in law, courts, police, defense, and everything we naively assume must be done by inherited competition-immune bureaucracies? Murray was a pioneer in these ideas referred to as Anarcho-Capitalism and described in his books like “For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto”

Mises:

“History speaks only to those people who know how to interpret it on the ground of correct theories.”

Rothbard used his Misesian glasses to better understand history, how perverse incentives in competition-immune governments grew state power, propagated myths of all kinds, and most importantly, promoted WAR. Murray rightly saw wars, not as necessary simplistic-tribalistic battles of good-homo-sapiens vs. bad-homo-sapiens, but as the result of complex historical events and negligent-ignorant ideologues. Murray knew, and had the courage and integrity to state, that the US should have never gotten involved in WWI, that Zionism was a monumental error, and how naive politicians, not Hitler, were the main culprits in sparking and expanding the WWII calamity.

Yes! Hitler held anti-Jewish fallacies, like misinterpreting Jewish overrepresentation in the horrific Bolshevik revolution and resulting Communist movements with some deliberately malicious plot masterminded by Jews and-or also tied to their “race”. These are very understandable and easy-to-overcome fallacies. But it was also a fallacy to neglect-overlook Hitler’s fallacies, and misrepresent Hitler as some non-homo sapiens maniacal conqueror, and prevent him from overturning the wrongs of the ‘Treaty of Versailles’ like reuniting the Danzig Germans, forcing Hitler to do it by force, and then persuading the world into a massive world war. Rothbard writes in a review of A.J.P. Taylor’s classic book, “The Origins of the Second World War”:

“Germany and Hitler were not uniquely guilty of launching World War II (indeed they were scarcely guilty at all);…Hitler, in brief, (in foreign affairs) was not a uniquely evil monster or daimon, who would continue to gobble up countries diabolically until stopped by superior force…Hitler had no designs, no plans, not even vague intimations, to expand westward against Britain and France (let alone the United States). Hitler admired the British Empire and wished to collaborate with it. Not only did Hitler do this with insight, he did it with patience, as Taylor excellently shows.”

Understandable economic fallacies fooled many into adopting Socialist mythology, morality, and “identity”. Similarly, as an understandable reaction to ‘anti-Jewish fallacies’, Jews fooled themselves, and rightly sympathetic supporters, into attempting to overcome  anti-Jewish fallacies, NOT via reason and education, which are the ONLY ways to overcome fallacies, but by abandoning the humble Synagogues and towns where they were really from to create a secular and socialist state in an area already overwhelmingly populated by Muslims, Christians, and fellow anti-Zionist Jews. People who for understandable reasons were adamantly opposed to the creation of, and potentially living under a “Jewish State”. A state concocted by misguided European ideologues who inherited some of the imperialist-racist and Socialist fallacies of their times. For example, David ben Gurion, Israel’s architect and first Prime Minister, eagerly attended Moscow in 1923 to celebrate the 7th-anniversary of the Bolsheviks’ October Revolution.

Zionism, as with Socialism, was a massive intellectual error propagated by respective echo-chambers of fallacies-myths, negligence, perverse incentives, and ultimately violence-coercion. Like the Russians, Jews increasingly tied their “identity” and morality to an error and eventually reach the stage where we are today, where saying that Zionism and resulting Israeli state was an error is seen as hate-speech. CEO of the ADL Jonathan Greenblatt mentioned that: “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism”, and that: “Anti-Zionism is genocide”. Israeli author of the great books ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’, and ‘The Invention of the Land of Israel’, Shlomo Sand, astutely mentioned that: “Zionism has become…a sort of Stalinism.”

Rothbard’s classic essay ‘War Guilt in the Middle East’(1967) succinctly summarizes the inevitable fallacy that Zionism was bound to be. With Murray and friends, our freedom-superhero is better equipped to overcome, both, economic and Zionist myths-fallacies.

The post Austrian Economists Make Up The Superhero Needed To Save Civilization From Economic and Zionist Myths appeared first on LewRockwell.

LewRockwell.com readers are supporting LRC and shopping at the same time. It’s easy and does not cost you a penny more than it would if you didn’t go through the LRC link. Just click on the Amazon link on LewRockwell.com’s homepage and add your items to your cart. It’s that easy!

If you can’t live without your daily dose of LewRockwell.com in 2025, please remember to DONATE TODAY!

1. Approaching Vietnam: From World War II Through Dienbienphu, 1941-1954
2. The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ
3. Ex America: The 50th Anniversary of the People’s Pottage
4. Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education 
5. The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1966
6. Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World
7. SAS Survival Handbook, Third Edition: A Comprehensive Course in Emergency and Wilderness Medicine 
8. Bernoulli’s Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science 1st Edition
9. Neuroplasticity (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series)
10. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy
11. The Servile State (Liberty Fund Classics on Liberty)
12. Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300 
13. Cancer Care: The Role of Repurposed Drugs and Metabolic Interventions in Treating Cancer
14. Coconut Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Superfood
15. Real RFK Jr.: Trials of a Truth Warrior
16. Thrive Don’t Only Survive: Dr.Geo’s Guide to Living Your Best Life Before & After Prostate Cancer
17. Natural Law 
18. How Was That Built?: The Stories Behind Awesome Structures
19. Leviathan and Its Enemies 
20. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World

The post Books LRC Readers Bought This Week appeared first on LewRockwell.

An important new public opinion survey taken by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has revealed very little American support for the deportation of legal foreign guests in the United States for expressing support for Palestine in its current conflict with Israel.

Responding to FIRE’s quarterly National Speech Index survey conducted by the Dartmouth Polarization Research Lab this month, a mere one-quarter of the respondents supported the deportation of non-citizens legally in the US for expressing pro-Palestine views. A solid majority of 52 percent are strongly opposed or opposed to such measures.

The survey result comes as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has boasted of revoking “at least 300” student visas for the “crime” of expressing a position on middle east politics that the current US Administration disagrees with. Derided by Rubio as “lunatics” for opposing ongoing US government support for Israel as Gaza is flattened, many foreign students have been arrested by masked, armed federal agents – who refuse to even identify themselves – and sent to a federal detention facility in Louisiana.

In the case of Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, the State Department had already produced a report concluding that she neither supported terrorism nor anti-Semitism before masked federal agents accosted her on the street and arrested her.

Her “crime” was co-authoring an op-ed in her university newspaper a year earlier criticizing Israel.

In many cases these arrests are carried out based on lists provided to the federal government by a militant, extremist group called Betar. The group is so radical that it has even been added to the pro-Israel ADL’s “extremism” list, yet somehow it has the ear of the Trump Administration.

Commenting on the findings, FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens said, “deporting someone simply for disagreeing with the government’s foreign policy preferences strikes at the very freedoms the First Amendment was designed to protect. Americans are right to reject this kind of viewpoint-based punishment.”

Additionally, the shocking arrests and incarceration of legal residents or guests for committing no crime beyond expressing a particular point of view has begun to eat away at Americans’ confidence that the Trump Administration can be trusted to uphold the First Amendment. From Inauguration day until the FIRE poll this month, a majority of Americans have now lost confidence in the Trump Administration’s respect for our most sacred right of free expression:

Many Americans mistakenly believe government “grants” rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and that it grants them to American citizens only. Constitutional scholar Andrew Napolitano dismisses such claims, writing:

We know from the writings of James Madison — who authored the Bill of Rights — that the Founders regarded the freedom of speech as a personal individual natural right. It is also, of course, expressly protected from government interference and reprisal in the First Amendment. The courts have ruled that it protects all persons — no matter their immigration status — who may think as they wish, say what they think, publish what they say, worship or not and associate with whomever they choose.

While many supporters of the Trump Administration are currently applauding the arrest and deportation of legal foreign residents who express political views they do not support, they would do well to keep in mind that the vicissitudes of the American body politic may well soon turn against them and their views, and – particularly given President Trump’s stated intent to begin deporting American citizens as well – once the trap of a precedent is set they may not be able to wiggle out of it.

Indespensible pro-liberty intellectual Jim Bovard expressed it best in a recent article:

What legal perils will pro-freedom protestors face in the coming years if the Ozturk rule is canonized, entitling federal officials to crush any disfavored opinion? Big-spending Democrats may consecrate Modern Monetary Theory and demonize anyone who criticizes the Federal Reserve. I took this ‘Kill the Central Bank’ photo of Ron Paul supporters at a 2008 Capitol Hill event for his presidential campaign. If the same protestors had peacefully carried the same banner within a half mile of the Capitol on January 6, they likely would have been nailed on a bevy of federal charges. Many politicians have made stark their hatred of libertarians and freedom advocates.

As long as anyone is sitting in shackles in a federal detention center simply for writing an op-ed, freedom of speech is not safe for anyone in the United States.

While a trip into the bowels of social media suggests a torch-bearing mob rallying to send those guilty of the “wrongthink” of the day to some El Salvadorian gulag, the good work of the freedom of expression organization FIRE reassures us that cooler heads continue to prevail. However, by no means does that suggest we can afford to let our guard down for a minute. This is not an issue of partisanship, but of principle. The mob – whether left or right – must not be allowed to take over.

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

The post New Poll: Americans Reject Deporting Foreigners for ‘Wrongthink’ on Middle East appeared first on LewRockwell.

So, you wonder why Democrats are so anxious to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the USA. Is it to lead the national ticket in 2028? Who else have they got? Pete Buttigieg doesn’t have half of Kilmar’s charisma. AOC is just pretending to be Sandy-from-the-block — and everybody knows it. Who else best represents the party’s newest constituency: the undocumented (people unfairly deprived of documents by a cruel and careless bureaucracy)? Who best represents the Democratic Party’s number one policy goal: diversity fosterization! Kilmar, of course! Viva Kilmar!

It’s also pretty obvious by his recent actions, that Judge “Jeb” Boasberg is angling to be Kilmar’s running mate in ‘28. Perfect! He could fulfil the traditional role of vice-president by doing nothing for four years, which is exactly what people of non-color should do in the Democratic Party’s new national order. (Haven’t they already done enough?) Boasberg could set an example for the rest of America’s dwindling color-deficient population: quit hogging all the action, stop collecting all those dividends and annuities, step aside and give the other a chance at the American Dream!

Did you happen to notice how enterprising Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been since he boldly breached the border in 2011, fleeing persecution from the vicious gangs of his native El Salvador? Running a one-man jobs program, he crossed the country countless times indefatigably from Maryland to California in his mobile office — the legendary KAG SUV — seeking employment opportunities for young women of color otherwise condemned to clean hotel rooms and labor in senior care facilities filled with abusive people of non-color clinging pointlessly to life only to oppress their caretakers with never-ending demands for medication and extra portions of Jello.

Kilmar’s gritty organization, Mara Salvatrucha-13, has been among the Democratic Party’s most effective NGOs in a greater galaxy of justice-seeking ventures marshaled under the USAID umbrella — recently vandalized by Elon Musk’s DOGE band of pillaging oligarchs. MS-13, for short, was beloved among the undocumented for its fund-raising abilities, its networking expertise, and its relentless search for the missing documents the undocumented have been looking high-and-low for lo these many decades — rumored to be concealed in a vast underground complex in the Catoctin Mountains of Frederick County, MD. (More white peoples’ mischief!)

Thus, it came to pass that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Maryland Dad-of-the-Year, was cruelly snatched from an MS-13 board meeting last month and transported without benefit of due process to the Salvadorean hell-hole known as CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo). And so, his Senator, Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) traveled this week to Central America on his one-man rescue mission. The Senator claimed he was detained miles from the gate of CECOT, and yet we have this photograph of Mr. Van Hollen meeting with Kilmar (and an unidentified aide) over Margaritas and pupusas at a cantina in the nearby town of Tecoluca. Asked to comment on the photo, El Savador’s Presidente, Nayib Bukele, declared: “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camp’ & ‘torture!’ Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody,” Mr. Bukele added.

Oh, so you say Señor Presidente! But not if “Jeb” Boasberg can help it. The dauntless super-judge has ordered Kilmar to be returned the USA pronto expressimo, or else he, the judge, is laying criminal contempt charges on the entire West Wing staff of Donald Trump’s White House. They will go to jail just like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, two capos regime of Trump’s MAGA gang, did last year for the insolence of refusing to testify in Congress. Only, they will get life-without-parole! Lessons to be learned, ye miserable color-deficient, oppressors!

Alas, the DC federal district court is a bit short of enforcement officers, so Judge “Jeb” has enlisted the Harvard rowing crew to bring Kilmar back home. Kilmar will take the coxswain’s place in the racing shell as the crew rows up the Pacific Coast to their planned landing spot at Las Olas, CA, just south of San Diego. Joy will reign in Wokeville.

Having displayed such pluck at diplomacy, unnamed sources say Senator Van Hollen is under consideration for Secretary of State when Kilmar wins the 2028 election. Up until now, we’d been hoping for Senator Adam Schiff to fill that spot, but he has his hands full fighting the influence of the Soviet Union on the Trump cabinet. Looking forward, though, to the bold prosecutor, New York AG Letitia ‘Tish” James, moving into the top spot at DOJ, if her term for mortgage fraud ends before Jan-20, 2029. The Democratic Party — such bright prospects! Forward together, with Kilmar and company! Documents for all, at long last!

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

The post Kilmar for President! appeared first on LewRockwell.

For 20 years, the REAL ID law has been languishing in enforcement purgatory. But Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem recently announced that’s about to change.

Anyone who wants to enter federal buildings, fly, or tour nuclear power plants will soon need a REAL ID. According to Noem, this is for our own good. She said:

Starting May 7, you will need a REAL ID to travel by air or to visit federal buildings in the United States. These IDs keep our country safe because they help prevent fraud and they enhance security. Please do your part to protect our country. Go today and don’t delay.

This is not what I supported!

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. – William Pitt the Younger

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announces everyone will need a REAL ID to fly starting MAY 7. pic.twitter.com/FB7r7QB4zs

— T (@Rifleman4WVU) April 12, 2025

Conservative Pushback

But many Americans aren’t interested in “doing their part.” Noem’s announcement triggered significant pushback.

Former Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) likened justification for the REAL ID to the erroneous justification Americans received about the Federal Reserve Bank. He laughingly pointing out how “they always twist” laws such as these to fool people into believing it’s for their safety. He said advocates of the Federal Reserve justified that monstrosity by claiming it would prevent money counterfeiting. In reality, the point of the Fed was to establish a monopoly on currency. REAL ID, he said, is similar. It’s designed to establish a government monopoly on control. Paul signaled that he was becoming disillusioned with the Trump administration:

I’m not very happy with the direction we’re going right now. It looks like we’re going to lose a lot more privacy if this bill is re-opened and made much worse. It looks like it can do a lot more damage yet to come.

Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) is also a vocal opponent. He said the REAL ID will not accomplish what the government claims it would:

Real ID isn’t needed and won’t stop terrorists from hijacking planes. Most of the 9/11 hijackers held Saudi, UAE, Egyptian, or Lebanese passports. Real ID is a national standard and database of IDs that is primarily a tool for control of Americans. Trump shouldn’t enforce it.

Popular conservative YouTubers The Hodgetwins asked, “Why not delay it like past administrations did so you can hear from the people on it? Americans don’t want a big government surveillance state.”

The American Policy Center said the REAL ID “has many tentacles that are each very egregious.” The group also believes this legislation could threaten Americans’ gun rights:

You may wrongly believe the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security would never add purchasing a firearm and/or ammunition to the OFFICIAL PURPOSE of the Real ID Act 2005…. In fact, Democrats in California have already made a move in that direction. The attempt failed at the time because all States/Commonwealths were not yet certified as being Real ID compliant. In 2021, the Department of Homeland Security certified all States/Commonwealths as being Real ID compliant.

The Secretary of the DHS can require the seller of the firearm and/or ammunition to swipe the back of the Real ID compliant drivers’ license and provide the information to the DHS.

ACLU Opposition

This law is so bad that it triggered a rare episode of clarity and dedication to values from the New York branch of the ACLU. The ACLU warned REAL ID would create the first national identification system in American history. It would also set federal standards for state driver’s licenses and identification cards. That means it could be required to vote, go to a ball game, access Medicaid, or even get a gun (you read that right; the ACLU is suddenly worried about your gun rights). REAL ID requirements could also spill over into the private sector, says the ACLU. And it “could establish an enormous electronic infrastructure that government and law enforcement officials — or whoever else hacks in — could use to track Americans’ activities and movements.”

Papers, Please

Paul made similar arguments in 2005 before the bill passed. He argued on the House floor that the REAL ID would lead to the nationalization of all identification. “It will be the introduction of the notion that we will be carrying our papers.” The REAL ID bill, Paul added, had no limitations. “There are minimum standards but no maximum limitations,” meaning the government can add anything it wants, including a category for people who are in gun clubs.

He took the gun analogy further. While some advocates truly believe the REAL ID will make Americans safe, the argument is about as solid as the one that says gun registration will tell authorities which criminals have guns. He said, “So you’re registering all the American people because you’re looking for a terrorist — and all a terrorist is going to do is evade the law. But we, the American people, have to obey the law. If we don’t, we go to prison.”

REAL ID Origins

Congress passed the REAL ID in 2005 after it was recommended by the 9/11 Commission. Representative James Sensebrenner (R-Wis.) sponsored the legislation. Sensebrenner also authored the Patriot Act, which gave the federal government enormous latitude to legally spy on Americans.

The primary argument for the REAL ID was that it would strengthen national security by preventing terrorists from obtaining fake IDs. Sensebrenner also touted it as a way to support law enforcement, a notion no patriotic American would ever oppose. And, according to the venerable 9/11 Commission, REAL ID would close the security gaps that allowed that terrible day to happen.

Read the Whole Article

The post Trump Administration to Enforce Real ID appeared first on LewRockwell.

For most of my life, I’ve observed the FDA belligerently suppress natural treatments and any unorthodox therapy which threatens the medical monopoly while simultaneously railroading through a variety of unsafe and ineffective drugs regardless of how much public protest the agency meets. Consider this 2004 Senate testimony by the FDA scientist who got Vioxx banned that accurately described exactly what would come to pass with the COVID vaccines two decades later.

As such, I do not hold the FDA in a positive light, especially given that during COVID-19, I (like many others) spent hundreds of hours trying to get the agency to allow the limited use of off-patent therapeutics for COVID-19—all of which ultimately went nowhere due to the unjustifiable roadblocks the agency kept putting up.

Over the past year, especially since Trump’s election, I’ve received many questions about FDA reform. To address the issue properly, I’ve carefully examined both sides.

In medicine, “sensitivity” refers to a test’s ability to correctly identify those who have a condition (e.g., detecting an infection), while “specificity” measures how well the test avoids false positives (i.e., correctly identifying those who don’t have the condition). The challenge is that improving one often reduces the other. For example, increasing the PCR cycle threshold in COVID tests made it more likely to detect infections (higher sensitivity), but also increased false positives (lower specificity). This trade-off leads to problems, like breast cancer screenings, where high sensitivity can result in false positives and unnecessary “treatments” for women who don’t actually have cancer.

The FDA faces a similar challenge: it must prevent harmful foods and drugs from reaching the market while ensuring useful products aren’t blocked. Though this seems straightforward, it’s incredibly difficult, and the FDA has often failed at both, even with leadership dedicated to public health.

Crime Against the Food Law

In the late 1800s, food producers were selling adulterated products, and pharmaceutical companies peddled medicines with secret ingredients like opium and alcohol. Public outrage grew, especially after exposés like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which helped spark the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. This law gave the Bureau of Chemistry the power to ensure accurate labeling and prevent harmful additives in food.

The director of the Bureau of Chemistry (and thus the first head of the FDA), Harvey Wiley conducted tests on food additives, proving they made healthy volunteers sick. While the public and many scientists supported his findings, the food industry fought back with powerful lobbyists and legal tactics.

Note: the additives Wiley scrutinized were boric acid and borax, salicylic acid (aspirin) and salicylates, benzoic acid and benzoates, sulfur dioxide and sulfites, formaldehyde, sulfate of copper (used to green produce), and saltpeter (nitrates).

Gradually, the food industry hijacked the presidency, and in 1912, Wiley resigned, realizing he could achieve more for America’s health as a private citizen than within the government.

Wiley’s book “The History of A Crime Against The Food Law” details much of the same abhorrent industry tactics we see happening now. For example, a series of investigative reports recently showed that the processed food industry’s lobbyists worked fervently behind the scenes to block RFK’s nomination and had there not been widespread public protest, would have stopped us from Make America Healthy Again.

Those tactics also highlight a key point Wiley made—the only way to create change in this industry is to coax the public at large to demand it, as the moment you rely upon the members of the government to fix it, lobbyists will crush those efforts.

Generally Recognized as “Safe”

Many food additives are “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS), meaning they’re widely used without regulation. Wiley faced two major issues: food industry counterfeiting and harmful additives. The industry often faked products to cut costs, like selling grain alcohol as whiskey or using polluted waters to enlarge oysters.

Despite evidence of harm, the food industry claimed these additives were essential for production, even though competitors showed higher-quality (and ultimately more profitable) products could be made without them. Wiley also warned that chronic exposure to additives could cause long-term health issues, such as organ damage and aging.

Sadly, his concerns were ignored as industry influence grew and he was unable to ban them—rather they were eventually reclassified as “generally recognized as safe.” As a result, these “safe” additives have contributed to widespread chronic illness in society.

Note: those additives included sodium benzoate, sulfur dioxide, alum (potassium aluminum sulfate), sulfur dioxide, saccharin, modified corn sugars, saccharin, and nitrogen bleached flour—many of which were linked to cancer. Sadly, since 2000, nearly 99 percent of new food chemicals added to the food supply chain have exploited the GRAS loophole. I believe the widespread use of aluminum in processed foods is particularly detrimental (due to it greatly impairing the physiologic zeta potential and causing micro-clotting throughout the body), and provides a key explanation for why you often see certain rapid improvements in individuals once they stop eating processed foods and their additives.

The Kefauver–Harris Amendment

In the years that followed Wiley’s departure, the handicapping of the FDA continued. As such, the FDA agent assigned to the morning sickness drug thalidomide could only stall but not reject it—a tactic that prevented catastrophic birth defects across America. A 1962 amendment was then passed, giving the FDA the power to block unsafe drugs.

This law gave the FDA excessive power, slowing drug approval and causing mismanagement. It also required “well-controlled” trials for drug approval, which the FDA defined as expensive double-blind randomized controlled trials (RCTs). This:

• Elevated RCTs, making drug approval a “pay-to-play” system, with approval costs soaring to 0.98-4.54 billion.1,2
• Created bias, as RCTs cost so much they inevitably produce results in favor of their sponsor (which often outweigh any benefit of their expensive “controlled” design).
• Sidelined smaller, effective observational trials, which, being affordable, are feasible for investigators to conduct without pharmaceutical sponsorship and can yield the same results as large RCTs (proven by a 2014 Cochrane Review).
• Stifled innovative therapies, as unorthodox treatments lacking costly RCTs were dismissed. As a result, medical innovation in the U.S. slowed, with scientists financially pressured to avoid challenging existing paradigms, leading to fewer groundbreaking discoveries despite advancing technology.

Because the FDA had rapidly expanded in numerous directions it was not prepared for, it subsequently frequently failed to fulfill its primary responsibilities (e.g., taking something harmful off the market), and it simultaneously took things away Americans actually wanted. This in turn led to numerous committees investigating the FDA (e.g., Commissioner Lay’s Kinslow report of his agency’s serious shortcomings) and key officials with integrity like Lay being kicked out, all of which were encapsulated a series of scathing articles that were published by the New York Times in 1977.

In my eyes, the most important thing about this period of FDA reforms was that the FDA was the most complained about agency in the government. Congress made numerous attempts to fix it (as did ethical FDA officials)—but nothing was ever solved.

The DMSO Saga

Over the last seven months, I’ve begun exploring a remarkable forgotten side of medicine—DMSO. This simple and freely available natural chemical is incredibly effective at treating a variety of (often “incurable”) conditions, including many that are otherwise impossible to treat including:

•Strokes, paralysis, a wide range of neurological disorders and circulatory disorders.

•Chronic pain and a wide range of tissue injuries.

•Many autoimmune, protein and contractile disorders.

•Head conditions, such as tinnitus, vision loss, dental problems, and sinusitis.

•A wide range of internal organ diseases.

•Acute and chronic infections including shingles and herpes.

•Many skin conditions including acne, herpes, hair loss and varicose veins.

•Many aspects of cancer, and when used in combination with other therapies, directly treating challenging cancers.

Likewise, since publicizing this research, I’ve received over two thousand reports from readers who then took it and had almost unbelievable results that precisely match what many reported in the 1960s and 1970s.

This all raises a simple question. How is it that no one knows about DMSO or that an agent that could dramatically reduce the need for opioids or prevent millions with stroke and spinal cord injury from having a life of disability never saw the light of day?

That’s because as DMSO rapidly spread across America in the 1960s, the FDA reversed its initial positive stance, declaring DMSO dangerous without evidence. This pivot was initially prompted by the FDA not wanting to have to process a flood of new drug applications, and then evolved into being done to protect the status quo and to justify the FDA’s newfound police powers. Despite extensive safety studies showing DMSO posed no risk to humans and numerous Congressional hearing being held to legalize DMSO, for decades, the FDA continued to demonize it, claiming a lack of evidence for efficacy (as DMSO’s characteristic effects make blinded trials with it impossible). Because of this, DMSO only became available decades later after the public got fed up with the FDA targeting natural medicines and the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act was enacted (which removed the FDA’s ability to regulate natural medicines).

Read the Whole Article

The post The FDA’s War on America’s Health appeared first on LewRockwell.

Like everyone else I met on an overnight meeting in the Bahamas, I am worried about a recession. The world’s largest economy could dip into one, and very quickly, said a multibillionaire attending the same party as me. Personally, I have never understood much about economics. I have always left such matters to people who can tell the difference between a hedge fund and a mutual fund, duties and tariffs, and so on.

So, let those of us who regularly read this column and know as little as I do about economics try to figure out what The Donald is doing: Is he taking us down a black hole, or is he making those of us living in America better off? All I am certain of is that good faith in the U.S. dollar is what the government runs on, which in turn is based on “business as usual.” Where change must be introduced, it need be in slow increments. When upended, there’s a danger of recession. The tariff plan includes duties on many countries, but the planned start dates for many of those changed abruptly last week, with a ninety-day pause for goods from many places except China. This is very disruptive and roils global markets. U.S. debt and U.S. budget deficit are also big—in fact, enormous—worries. The reason I am worried is that I’m not at all the type who worries. Still, the naysayers can get to one, especially when reading an old bag like the Dowd woman, whose proof that Trump doesn’t get math was by recalling The Donald’s appearance on Howard Stern’s show and when asked what’s 17 times 6 answered 112. I’m pretty certain if Einstein were asked the same question and had to answer in a jiffy he might well have also missed the mark. Such are the joys of reading old hags like la Dowd about The Donald.

“Is The Donald taking us down a black hole, or is he making those of us living in America better off?”

Now let’s get back to economics, or finance, or the stock market, or even tariffs. Nobody knows “nuttin’,” as far as I’m concerned, and the so-called experts are always getting it wrong. The only thing I am sure of is that Trump is imposing tariffs on certain goods that Uncle Sam does not and cannot produce. Such as manganese from Gabon that American companies need to make steel. On the other hand, I am sure that once this is pointed out, Gabon will be excluded from the tariff burden. Or so the great economist Taki believes. Also making the great economist lose sleep are higher interest rates, because higher interest rates make the federal debt harder to repay. Oy vey, as Einstein would say. Uncle Sam owes trillions—37, to be close to exact—and the plunging dollar is not helping. What happens if the almighty buck suddenly goes the way of the Mexican peso or Bolivian Bolivar, if that’s the currency of that faraway and very “high” country. Americans will have to start growing their own drugs because they will not be able to afford buying them from those nice guys down south. Sure, reviving domestic manufacturing is my dream—Pat Buchanan and I wrote at length about it when Clinton and Obama and the idiotic W. were going globalist—but factories take years to build, and not many people are ready to plunge their money into projects when The Donald’s successors might not maintain his policies.

See why I’m worried, jelly bean? Tariffs are like guns—they can make you win big and lose even bigger. In the meantime the stock market is going up and down like a drunken sailor who is being refused entry to an upstairs whorehouse. A 10 percent loss in the market is enormous when felt by 60 percent of American adults who own stocks or mutual funds. The only ones benefiting from this chaos are the Democrats, who got a shellacking last November and now have been given a reprieve on a golden platter. What I think The Donald should do is keep the screws on China and take it easy on the rest of the world. China is a hostile global power but one that can be tamed easily because the Chinese are intelligent people who simply dislike the West because of what the West did to China for a couple hundred years.

And now for a happy ending: Lift the tariffs for everyone except China, force Israel to stop the genocide or else, and watch the stock market reach 50,000 and The Donald proclaimed the greatest president since my favorite, Warren Harding. Yippee!

This originally appeared on Taki’s Magazine.

The post Thoughts From the Great Economist appeared first on LewRockwell.

One of the most fascinating aspects of President Trump’s tariff attack on China has been the acceptance among so many Americans that China is now our official enemy or, if you prefer more benign imperialist terms, our “opponent,” “adversary,” “rival,” or “competitor.”

After all, wasn’t it just recently that our official enemy was Russia? Even when Trump was president the first time and through the Biden administration, the standard mindset of the American people was that it was Russia and Vladimir Putin who were coming to get us. The Russians were influencing the way Americans voted. They were conquering Ukraine on their way to worldwide conquest. “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!” It all brought to mind the Cold War decades when the Reds, including the Russian Reds, were our official enemy and coming to get us.

After the 9/11 attacks, our official enemy became the “terrorists” or the Muslims. “The terrorists are coming!” replaced “The Russians are coming!” That’s what generated the perpetual “war on terrorism,” the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, USA Patriot Act, the illegal telecom surveillance scandal, the illegal mass surveillance schemes, the TSA, official state-sponsored assassinations, torture, indefinite detention, and all the rest of the anti-terrorism measures to keep us “safe.”

Heck, I remember when Saddam Hussein was our official enemy. For eleven years, I had to hear every day, “Saddam! Saddam! Saddam!” Many American was convinced that Saddam was going to unleash mushroom clouds across America.

But today under Trump, China has been named as the new official bugaboo. And the mindsets of many Americans, especially Trumpsters, have seamlessly and effortlessly now replaced Russia with China as America’s newest official enemy. That helps these people feel okay about the economic devastation that Trump’s tariffs will inflict on the Chinese people. The idea is that we don’t need to care about them because they are the new big, bad enemy of the United States.

Permit me to issue a personal public declaration: While China might well be the new official enemy of Trump and his Trumpsters, along with the State Department and the U.S. national-security establishment, China is not my enemy.

In fact, I feel pretty much the way Mohammad Ali felt when he declared, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong. No Vietcong ever called me nigger.”

Oh boy, did that make U.S. officials angry. Not only was it considered “treason” for an American to not accept an U.S.-designated official enemy as his enemy, the fact that it was a black man saying this compounded the problem a hundred-fold. They went after Ali with a vengeance, trying everything they could to incarcerate him and destroy his boxing career.

Oh yes, I fully realize that China is governed by a communist regime. As a libertarian, I dislike communism immensely. But that still doesn’t make China my enemy. I’m with President John F. Kennedy, who declared in his Peace Speech at American University in June 1963 that Americans and communist nations could exist in mutual harmony despite their ideological differences. Of course, it was that mindset that got him killed.

Moreover, it’s worth noting that the officials in the Chinese Communist Party are as unlikely to be adversely impacted by Trump’s tariffs as Trump will be by China’s retaliatory tariffs. The rich and the political elites don’t have anything to worry about when it comes to tariffs and trade wars. It’s the regular, ordinary citizens of both countries who will pay the price of the tariffs. It is regular, ordinary Chinese people who will be impoverished and bankrupted. I feel very bad for those people — as bad as I feel for the regular, ordinary Americans who will be impoverished and bankrupted by Trump’s tariffs.

Why do Americans so readily adopt the new official enemies that are declared by U.S officials? That’s where the success of America’s public (i.e., government) school systems comes into play. For twelve long years, the minds of American children are shaped and molded by an environment of conformity, regimentation, obedience, and fear. By the time they graduate high school, most Americans have no conception of what was done to them through the power of state indoctrination. Thus, when a new official enemy is decreed, they don’t think it is strange that their mind immediately reshapes and conforms by accepting the new official enemy as their enemy as well. This mental phenomenon brings to mind the constant array of shifting enemies in George Orwell’s novel 1984. Like the citizens in Orwell’s fictional nation of Oceania, many Americans are also scared to death to question or challenge what the Trump administration is doing for fear of what it might to do them.

Color me treasonous, but the fact is that I ain’t got no quarrel with them Chinese. They’ve never done anything bad to me. I wish I could say the same thing about the U.S. government. It has done lots of bad things to me, including destroying my freedom and privacy with its income tax, IRS, welfare state, monetary debasement, mass secret surveillance, conscription, out-of-control federal spending and debt, managed/regulated economy, drug war, national-security state, denial of due process of law, denial of trial by jury, foreign invasions and occupations, attacks on freedom of speech, tariffs, trade wars, sanctions, embargoes, travel restrictions, immigration police state, and much, much more. In fact, if truth be told, the U.S. government has proven itself to be the real enemy of American liberty and privacy.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post Them Chinese Ain’t My Enemy appeared first on LewRockwell.

In recent years, the global movement toward regenerative and organic agriculture has gained significant momentum. These approaches promise to restore soil health, enhance biodiversity, reduce reliance on synthetic chemicals and create more sustainable and resilient food systems. Rooted in ecological principles and farmer autonomy, these practices have become vital alternatives to the destructive patterns of industrial agriculture, which has long prioritised short-term yields and profit over environmental integrity and public health.

However, despite their promising potential, these movements face a formidable challenge: the encroachment of big agribusiness corporations seeking to co-opt and distort their core principles. Through aggressive marketing and lobbying and strategic rebranding, corporations are attempting to position genetically modified (GM) soil microbes and other biotech biologicals as sustainable or regenerative solutions.

This effort, cloaked in greenwashing rhetoric, aims to maintain corporate dominance, control over agricultural inputs and influence over public perception and policy.

Adding a layer of complexity and concern is the potential targeting of influential advocates such as Robert F Kennedy Jr (RFK Jr), a prominent voice championing organic and regenerative farming. Critics like Claire Robinson of GMWatch warn that these corporations may seek to co-opt RFK Jr and other respected figures to lend legitimacy to biotech products that fundamentally conflict with the principles of true sustainability.

At their core, regenerative and organic agriculture emphasise working with natural systems rather than against them. These approaches prioritise soil health, water conservation and ecological balance by adhering to agroecological principles. Practices such as cover cropping, crop rotation, reduced tillage, composting and integrated pest management aim to rebuild degraded soils, sequester carbon and foster resilient ecosystems.

Organic agriculture, as defined by certification standards, explicitly prohibits synthetic pesticides, fertilisers, GM organisms and artificial additives. It promotes natural nutrient cycles, biodiversity and animal welfare. Both movements are driven by the recognition that sustainable food systems must prioritise ecological integrity, social equity and long-term resilience.

The rise of these movements reflects growing public concern about the health impacts of chemical-laden foods and environmental degradation. The public increasingly demand transparency, sustainability and food sovereignty: the right of communities to culturally appropriate food and to determine their own food production, distribution and consumption practices, rejecting corporate-dominated models

Corporate Greenwashing  

Despite the noble principles underpinning regenerative and organic agriculture, the reality is that large agribusiness corporations are actively seeking to co-opt or undermine these movements for their own benefit. Their strategy involves promoting biotech innovations—particularly GM soil microbes and biologicals—as part of a narrative of “sustainable” or “regenerative” solutions.

Genetically engineered soil microbes are marketed as biofertilisers, biopesticides or soil conditioners that can enhance nutrient uptake, improve pest resistance or sequester carbon more effectively. These products are often gene-edited or genetically modified to supposedly outperform native microbes, with claims that they can revolutionise farming practices.

However, these biotech products are fundamentally incompatible with the principles of true regenerative and organic farming. They often rely on proprietary genetic technologies that require farmers to depend on corporate-controlled inputs, perpetuating dependency on chemical and biotech giants. Moreover, the ecological risks of releasing GM microbes into soil ecosystems are largely unassessed, and their long-term impacts on native microbial communities and soil health remain uncertain.

This corporate push is often accompanied by aggressive lobbying that frame GM biologicals as “natural”, “sustainable” or “innovative”, even though they are genetically engineered and may involve synthetic chemicals or proprietary technologies. Such messaging blurs the lines between genuine ecological practices and industrial biotech solutions, deliberately designed to confuse the public and undermine the credibility of authentic organic and regenerative systems.

GM biologicals, particularly soil microbes, are engineered microorganisms designed to supposedly enhance agricultural productivity and soil health through genetic modification techniques. Unlike traditional biological inputs, which rely on naturally occurring microbes, GM biologicals are created by altering the genetic material of microbes to perform specific functions or to introduce new capabilities.

GM biologicals are primarily microorganisms—such as bacteria, fungi or other microbes—that have been genetically engineered to serve specific roles in agriculture. These roles include improving nutrient availability, pest and disease resistance, soil remediation and plant growth promotion. The genetic modifications are made using various biotechnology techniques, including gene editing tools like CRISPR, gene guns or agrobacterium-mediated transformation.

The development of GM biologicals involves inserting, deleting or modifying genes within microbial genomes to produce desired traits. For example, nitrogen-fixing bacteria are engineered to ostensively increase nitrogen availability to plants, reducing the need for synthetic fertilisers. Biocontrol agents can be modified with the aim of producing natural insecticides or antifungal compounds, providing pest and disease control. Engineered soil remediators aim to break down pollutants or xenobiotics in contaminated soils. These microbes are then produced at scale and applied to fields as seed coatings, soil amendments or foliar sprays.

Examples of GM soil microbial products include Pivot Bio’s Proven, a gene-edited nitrogen-fixing bacteria used on millions of acres of corn designed to reduce synthetic fertiliser dependence; BASF’s Poncho/VOTiVO, a seed coating containing GM bacteria that aims to protect against nematodes and enhance nutrient breakdown around roots; and Pivot Bio’s Microbial Inoculants, engineered microbes designed to break down organic matter to release nutrients more efficiently.

Proponents argue that GM biologicals can increase crop yields, reduce chemical fertiliser and pesticide use, improve soil health and resilience and enable more sustainable farming practices.

However, there are significant risks. These include ecological disruption as GM microbes can share genetic material with native microbes, potentially creating invasive or unintended species. Moreover, the unpredictable spread of these microbes, because they can travel great distances via wind or water, makes containment challenging. And unknown long-term effects on soil ecosystems raise concerns about potential damage to soil biodiversity and ecosystem functions.

The potential for horizontal gene transfer also exists, raising the risk that engineered genes could transfer to non-target organisms, including pathogens or other beneficial microbes. The deployment of GM microbes at scale raises profound ecological concerns. Unlike traditional biological inputs, these engineered organisms can reproduce, spread and potentially disrupt native microbial communities. Once released into the environment, their ecological fate becomes difficult to control or reverse.

There may also be unintended effects on non-target organisms, including beneficial insects, plants and animals and soil health degradation if engineered microbes outcompete or displace native, ecologically balanced microbial populations.

Currently, at least two GM microbial products are used across US farmland, mainly in monoculture corn production. These include nitrogen-fixing bacteria and microbes that aid in nutrient breakdown. Despite their widespread use, there is ongoing debate about their safety, ecological impact and regulation.

Claire Robinson has discussed research indicating that GM biologicals, such as engineered soil microbes, often do not outperform existing natural or conventional microbial models in agricultural contexts. She highlights that despite aggressive corporate claims, many of these GM biological products fail to deliver superior benefits compared to native microbial communities or traditional biological inputs.

Robinson points out that studies and field trials frequently show that these engineered microbes do not consistently improve soil health, nutrient cycling or crop yields beyond what existing, naturally occurring microbes achieve. This challenges the narrative pushed by big agribusiness that GM biologicals are revolutionary solutions for regenerative agriculture. Instead, their efficacy is often overstated, and their ecological risks remain poorly understood.

Her critique emphasises that the promotion of GM biologicals as superior or essential components of regenerative farming is part of a broader corporate strategy to greenwash industrial agriculture and maintain control over farming inputs. By pushing GM microbes, companies attempt to rebrand their products as “natural” or “organic”, despite lacking evidence of clear advantages and raising concerns about ecological disruption.

Robinson’s perspective aligns with a broader critique of how big agribusiness attempts to hijack regenerative and organic agriculture through misleading claims about genetically engineered products.

Despite the risks, regulatory frameworks often lag behind technological developments, allowing biotech companies to release GM microbes with minimal oversight. This regulatory gap exacerbates fears that ecological integrity and public health could be compromised.

Robert F Kennedy Jr has emerged as a prominent advocate for organic and regenerative agriculture, emphasising the importance of reducing chemical inputs, supporting small farmers and restoring ecological balance. Robinson has expressed concern that big agribusiness interests may target RFK Jr as a potential figure to endorse or promote biotech solutions, including GM soil microbes.

The strategy would involve co-opting his reputation to lend legitimacy to products that are fundamentally at odds with organic principles.

This potential targeting is part of a broader pattern where corporations seek to influence or manipulate influential advocates to serve their commercial interests. By framing biotech innovations as essential to “feeding the world”, climate mitigation or soil health, they aim to position themselves as allies of sustainable agriculture, even as their products undermine ecological and social values.

History of Deception and Disregard  

The question of whether big agribusiness corporations can be trusted with the future of agriculture is central here and is not merely a matter of speculation; it is a question steeped in a history of documented transgressions. Reports of creating “hit lists” targeting critics, manipulating scientific research and employing PR companies to discredit dissenting voices are not isolated incidents, but rather indicative of a systemic willingness to prioritise profit and control over transparency, public health and ecological concerns.

These actions have been well-documented over the years, and far from being aberrations, they reveal a calculated strategy to maintain dominance in the face of mounting evidence against their practices.

Historically, some of these corporations have faced persistent accusations of suppressing or distorting scientific findings that contradicted their commercial interests. This manipulation of science, often achieved through funding biased research or discrediting independent studies, has had far-reaching consequences. It undermines evidence-based policymaking, endangers public health and silences those who dare to challenge the prevailing corporate narrative.

The consequences are particularly dire in the context of agriculture, where decisions about pesticide use, GM organisms and farming practices have directly and adversely impacted human health and environmental sustainability.

The vision of global agriculture being advanced by these corporations is one where genetically engineered seeds, soil microbes, data harvesting and drone technology are all employed to entrench corporate control and dependency. This vision actively displaces smallholder farmers and undermines agroecological practices that are essential for food sovereignty and ecological resilience.

The use of PR firms to attack critics and spread misinformation further erodes trust, creating a climate of fear and discouraging open debate about the risks and benefits of agricultural technologies. These tactics often involve character assassination, the spreading of disinformation and the creation of astroturf organisations designed to mimic grassroots movements while actually serving corporate interests (all of this and more is documented at length on the GMWatch website).

Deregulation efforts surrounding new genetic modification techniques are paving the way for the unchecked proliferation of gene-edited GM organisms and engineered microbes, further increasing risks to health, the environment and farmer livelihoods.

Given this well-documented history of deception, manipulation and disregard for public welfare, it is not only reasonable but imperative to approach any claims made by these corporations with a high degree of scepticism. Their involvement in regenerative and organic agriculture should be viewed through a lens of intense scrutiny, with careful attention paid to the potential for greenwashing, the co-optation of sustainable practices and the further entrenchment of corporate control over the global food system.

It is essential to increase transparency and public awareness about the ecological and health risks of GM biologicals while supporting farmer-led, ecologically based practices that prioritise soil health, biodiversity and community resilience without reliance on proprietary biotech.

The original source of this article is Global Research.

The post Toxic Agribusiness’s Genetically Mutilated Greenwash appeared first on LewRockwell.

On April 4, 2025, South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol was formally removed from office after the Constitutional Court found him guilty of leading an illegal pro-government coup on December 3, 2024. Having lost the presidency, Yoon will now be tried for treason in a regular criminal court—a separate institution from the Constitutional Court—where he faces either the death penalty or life imprisonment. Western liberal media outlets have praised these developments as a testament to the strength and maturity of South Korea’s democratic system. They argue that South Korea is a politically advanced nation, capable of dealing with any wrongdoing or abnormality through constitutional procedures and democratic deliberation, serving as a model for Western democracies.

Indeed, since the 1990s, South Korea has widely been regarded as a leading example of democracy, highly respected by Western nations. Yet I argue that this case reveals not a robust demonstration of constitutionalism but rather its deep fragility. Far from celebrating a “victory” for constitutional democracy, this situation in South Korea actually underscores a nightmare scenario for constitutionalism.

The Constitutional Crisis in South Korea: A Brief Summary

Throughout the 20th century, the South Korean people waged a pro-democracy movement against a succession of illegal military regimes armed with tanks and guns. By the late 1980s, they successfully toppled the military government and amended the constitution. Unlike numerous non-Western nations that descended into perpetual political upheaval after ousting authoritarian regimes, South Korea managed to establish a lasting democratic order. The Economist Democracy Index and the V-Dem Democracy Index—today’s most trusted measures of democracy—have consistently ranked South Korea as one of the most democratic countries in Asia for the past decade, placing it in the global top 15–20. At one point, it rivaled established democracies in Europe and North America, even surpassing some, like Italy, Australia, Canada, and the United States. South Koreans refer to the post-1987 constitution—which introduced direct presidential elections—as the “1987 System,” and many take pride in how this system emerged from their struggle against a military regime.

The high level of constitutional democracy attained by a non-Western nation has often been used to show that constitutionalism and democracy are universal, ideal systems for humanity. However, South Korea’s events last year demonstrated how constitutionalism can fail when President Yoon Seok-yeol, who professed to follow Ludwig von Mises, declared a state of emergency to “eliminate communists and defend freedom,” invoking the very powers that the constitution grants. I do not highlight President Yoon’s coup attempt simply to show the failure of constitutionalism: it can be written off as the act of a historically rare “madman.” No system may be able to respond well to such a crazy person. Moreover, his coup, under the guise of constitutional authority, was thwarted within two hours by a constitutionally empowered National Assembly that nullified martial law. Indeed, one could say the same constitution that triggered the crisis ended it. Where is the problem, then?

The real trouble emerged in the aftermath: the series of severe and repeated failures by South Korea’s constitutional and political apparatus. These failures laid bare the brittleness of a constitutional system. Here are the key events in the three months following the state of emergency:

1. An impeachment motion against President Yoon passed, removing him from office, and elevating the Prime Minister—akin to the U.S. Vice President’s succession—to Acting President.
2. Under South Korea’s constitution, a specialized Constitutional Court addresses constitutional matters. It comprises nine justices: some appointed by the president, some elected by the National Assembly, and others nominated by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
3. Impeached on charges of insurrection, Yoon now faced a trial in the Constitutional Court. However, because three of its justices elected by the National Assembly were vacant due to prior political turbulence, only six justices remained—fewer than required by law to commence proceedings.
4. As the constitution grants the National Assembly authority to elect those three vacant seats, it attempted to fill them. But formally, the President (or Acting President) must sign off on these appointments. This step is meant to be a ceremonial approval, similar to a constitutional monarchy, rather than a genuine veto.
5. After Yoon was impeached, the Prime Minister (as Acting President) and his ruling People Power Party, which supported Yoon’s coup and opposed impeachment, refused to appoint the three new justices chosen by the National Assembly—an overtly unconstitutional move.
6. The Democratic Party, which holds a majority in the Assembly, responded by impeaching the Prime Minister as well. The next in the line of succession, the Finance Minister, did appoint certain judges(recommended by Yoon’s party), but again refused to seat those nominated by the opposition, prompting yet another impeachment.
7. The Constitutional Court, not yet fully functional, attempted to resolve the political chaos by ruling on the Prime Minister’s impeachment. While the Court declared the Prime Minister’s refusal to appoint justices was unconstitutional, it deemed it insufficient grounds for removal, ultimately reinstating him.
8. Once back in office, the Prime Minister continued to withhold appointments for the opposition’s chosen justices, deliberately delaying President Yoon’s impeachment proceedings. The apparent plan was to hold out until 2027, when Yoon’s term would end, effectively usurping power unconstitutionally.
9. In a final attempt to break the deadlock, the opposition-led National Assembly threatened to abolish the entire executive branch by impeaching all its members, thereby establishing legislative rule.
10. Facing mounting pressure, the undermanned Constitutional Court finally held a hearing with only eight judges, ultimately voting unanimously to remove President Yoon Seok-yeol from office.

Though it sounds like a contrived plot, this strange series of events is not an exaggerated worst-case hypothetical but a real situation unfolding in South Korea (with minor abstractions and omissions).

To summarize:

1. Using constitutionally sanctioned powers, the regime’s leader launched a pro-government coup.
2. Opponents of the regime countered the coup, also relying on constitutional powers.
3. Yet afterward, the president’s supporters openly flouted the constitution, seizing power illegally.

At first, both sides followed “the rules,” but once one side decided to ignore them, the constitutional structure offered no further mechanism. The only remaining path was a raw power struggle.

The Constitution Is Not an Automaton—It Is Enforced by People

Statists often argue that government is necessary to prevent criminal wrongdoing by individuals and private groups. But who, then, watches the government? The leading mainstream answer has been “the constitution,” which supposedly limits government power. Yet the constitution is ultimately written and enforced by the government itself. If a private individual announced they would draft their own murder or robbery statutes and then monitor themselves to ensure compliance, we would laugh at the absurdity. Why should we treat governments any differently?

Many libertarians reject giving the state any such privileged exemption. As Murray Rothbard famously observed in Anatomy of the State, it is self-defeating to entrust one agency with not only the authority to govern but also the ultimate power to interpret its own constitutional limits. He Says,

This danger is averted by the State’s propounding the doctrine that one agency must have the ultimate decision on constitutionality and that this agency, in the last analysis, must be part of the federal government. For while the seeming independence of the federal judiciary has played a vital part in making its actions virtual Holy Writ for the bulk of the people, it is also and ever true that the judiciary is part and parcel of the government apparatus and appointed by the executive and legislative branches. Black admits that this means that the State has set itself up as a judge in its own cause, thus violating a basic juridical principle for aiming at just decisions.

and,

Smith noted that the Constitution was designed with checks and balances to limit any one governmental power and yet had then developed a Supreme Court with the monopoly of ultimate interpreting power. If the Federal Government was created to check invasions of individual liberty by the separate states, who was to check the Federal power? Smith maintained that implicit in the check-and-balance idea of the Constitution was the concomitant view that no one branch of government may be conceded the ultimate power of interpretation: “It was assumed by the people that the new government could not be permitted to determine the limits of its own authority, since this would make it, and not the Constitution, supreme.”

The moment government monitors go astray, there is no recourse through ordinary rules. The constitution, far from ensuring our protection, merely subjects us to the will of those who enforce it. When that small group wields all legislative, executive, and judicial power, they inevitably oversee themselves. Once they abandon adherence to the constitution, legal forms of resistance are powerless. In this sense, the constitution fails as a safety mechanism and ends up as a fragile construct that functions only so long as “luck” and “good faith” last.

How might a constitutionalist respond? One counterargument is that South Korea’s case is “extreme” or “abnormal” and therefore no basis for broader critique. This is reminiscent of leftist attempts to dismiss North Korea as irrelevant to discussions of socialism. Singling out inconvenient examples as aberrations merely “immunizes” a favored theory from contradiction—a hallmark of pseudoscience in traditional philosophy of science.

Another tactic is to propose more stringent constitutional constraints that reduce government power to forestall such crises in the future. Yet history suggests otherwise. The expansion of government power has typically proceeded by transforming once-unconstitutional measures into legitimate functions of the state. According to Rothbard,

All Americans are familiar with the process by which the construction of limits in the Constitution has been inexorably broadened over the last century. But few have been as keen as Professor Charles Black to see that the State has, in the process, largely transformed judicial review itself from a limiting device to yet another instrument for furnishing ideological legitimacy to the government’s actions. For if a judicial decree of “unconstitutional” is a mighty check to government power, an implicit or explicit verdict of “constitutional” is a mighty weapon for fostering public acceptance of ever-greater government power.

Even Friedrich Hayek, the intellectual giant of the Austrian School, ended up endorsing conscription and certain forms of welfare within a constitutionally limited government. Such expansions demonstrate that tightening a constitution cannot ward off every eventuality; new loopholes, fueled by human creativity, invariably appear. We are left with an endless cycle of amending the constitution after each new breakdown—slamming the stable door after the horse has already bolted.

Ultimately, what is needed is not a patchwork fix but a wholesale transformation. As Rothbard insisted, the constitution is the greatest illusion of our supposed freedom. We must recognize its impotence in restraining the state and abandon the tyranny it facilitates. If there is a lesson to be drawn from the South Korean crisis, it is that constitutionalism’s vaunted safeguards are neither automatic nor fail-proof. The time has come to consider bolder alternatives that do not hinge on the goodwill of those who wield power, but which are rooted in genuine liberty for all.

[related article: The Political Crisis in South Korea and the Failure of Beltway Libertarians]

The post A Rothbardian Analysis of the South Korean Constitutional Crisis appeared first on LewRockwell.

For decades, U.S. foreign policy wonks such as Paul Wolfowitz, Raymond Tanter, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, argued that U.S. military power could reshape the Middle East, somehow transforming it from the tribal and religious mess that it is into an American-style liberal democracy.

The primary beneficiary of this miraculous transformation would—they claimed—be Israel. Both Tanter and Wolfowitz grew fond of the notion that “the road to Damascus leads through Baghdad,” meaning that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was the first step to getting rid of the Assad regime in Syria, thereby eliminating Israel’s troubles with its two of its most bloody minded rivals.

It’s been obvious to anyone with eyes to see that none of the Neocons’ childish scheming has worked. They finally succeeded in getting rid of Assad, but he has been replaced by former Al Qaeda gangsters.

The primary intellectual deficiency of the Neocon clique is that all of their mental energy is directed at getting rid of bad guys, with apparently zero thought given to who will replace them. This is especially evident in the case of Russia. If these schemers and their friends in the CIA succeed in getting rid of Vladimir Putin, who do they believe will replace him?

It was precisely this kind of scheming that led the British and the French to believe it would be a good thing to get rid of Ottoman rule in the Middle East. In 1916, the British and French essentially redrew the map of the entire region with their Sykes–Picot Agreement.

One could easily make the argument that all the bloody tribal and religious conflict in the region that has happened ever since probably wouldn’t have happened if the Ottomans had remained in charge.

Neocon policy wonks are—like millions of Americans—given to the comic book concept that humanity can be neatly divided into good guys and bad guys, and that improving humanity is always just a matter of getting rid of the bad guys. This overlooks this essential fact that is expressed (literally or metaphorically, take your pick) in the Book of Genesis—namely, that man is a fallen and fractured created who must constantly contend with his own depravity.

After making a mess of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the same gang—suffering from incurable learning disabilities—wants to drag the Trump administration into war with Iran. This would be a total disaster for the American people and almost certainly for the Israeli people as well.

Here it is worth recalling that President Kennedy expressly warned Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his successor, Levi Eshkol, that if Israel succeeded in developing a nuclear bomb, everyone else in the neighborhood would want one. They didn’t listen to President Kennedy, despite the fact that he was obviously right about this.

War with Iran would be President Trump’s Waterloo. Iran is a huge country with mountainous terrain and a population of 80 million people. All the problems the U.S. military operation in Iraq encountered would be amplified manyfold.

Going to war with Iran would certainly result in an array of terrible consequences—many unforeseen— for the United States and the entire region, as well as for world trade. The Strait of Hormuz—with most of Middle East oil running through it—would be closed, as would the southern end of the Suez Canal.

The world economy and financial system is already in a precarious state, and the U.S. is already trapped in a debt sink, with annual interest payments now over a trillion dollars. The U.S. simply cannot afford war with Iran.

In other words, regarding Iran, President Trump should tell the obtuse Neocons to go jump in a lake. He should also be very wary of Benjamin Netanyahu doing something foolish to draw the U.S. into war with Iran.

Every great power in history was ultimately been sunk by foolish people who refused to accept the limits of their financial and military power. President Trump should stick with his instinct to negotiate with people instead of trying to get rid of them.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post War With Iran Would Be Trump’s Waterloo appeared first on LewRockwell.

Have you heard? The world is going to Hell in a handbasket. Our politicians are devils, our hierarchs are often devils themselves, and Catholics are leaving the Church in droves. The media lies to us, and our institutions turn our children into post-modern pill-addicted zombies who can’t be happy in a society where they lack no creature comfort.

Marriages are failing, and a lot of men are addicted to vile images of perversion that they sneakily watch on their phones while standing in a corner on the metro on their way home to their families.

And who is at fault?

Why, it is the media, it is the bankers, the Hollywood elite, and the Democrats; the public schools are to blame, and the bad priests and bishops; if we look a little deeper, it is also the Freemasons and the Zionists; and, somehow, it is also Jeffrey Epstein and Diddy. The forces of evil have been unleashed against us and the real reason that the world is on the brink of implosion is because the bad guys have done bad things, and they need to be exposed!

Granted, there are many wicked and vile men in this world, and they do wicked and vile things. There is no excusing the behavior of the lizard people who rig our economies, rig our elections, and kill our kings.

But we must admit, no matter how painful, that those lizard people are us.

God is All Good; man is a sinner.

One venial sin makes us more like Epstein than Christ, and one mortal sin makes us more like the devil than St. Michael.

The reason why our world is going so rotten is because we are rotten, and we have the world we deserve. We do not deserve peace—because peace can only come with the peace of Christ, but we don’t want that; no, we want religious liberty and the freedom of speech, where Satan and the Son of God are equals in the public square.

We scream and shout about our national debts which cause inflation, and then we spend money we don’t have, to buy something we don’t need, and post on social media how the bankers are controlling civilization!

The food companies and big pharma are to blame for our obesity rates and heart disease because they keep us dependent on Twinkies and pills, so we need RFK to make us healthy again. Well, RFK isn’t going to stop us from putting too much KFC in our gullets, is he?

In reality, we are to blame for our societal ills and the ills in our personal lives because we are sinners and the wages of sin is death.

Worse than the death of our nations or even the death of civilization is the death of God, which we also caused, and continue to cause in some mystical way.

When Christ prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane while awaiting betrayal, he sweated blood in anticipation of what was to befall Him.

He saw the Passion in all its detail. He saw the blood, He saw the scourge, and He saw each and every splinter wedged into His shoulder from the rough wood of that Tree of Death. In a sense, He lived the Passion while awaiting the Passion in an interior way, thereby experiencing pain and suffering that none of us could ever understand.

He saw from Adam and Eve, right until the end of time; and sees every sin that men and women will commit and have committed. He saw your sins; He saw my sins; He saw each and every sin you or I will ever commit in gruesome and graphic detail. This means that while He was sweating blood, He saw just what vile creatures we all are.

Perhaps more painful than all this, Christ saw that so many souls would still go to Hell, despite all the merits and satisfaction earned by the Crucifixion. Innumerable souls have rejected Christ, knowing full well what He did.

You and I have rejected Christ with every sin and caused Him unspeakable pain. We may still go to Heaven, but we may not; we may be one of those souls who caused Him the greatest pain.

Keeping this in mind, perhaps we can look at the state of the world differently and with an eternal perspective. Yes, things are bad, and maybe some things will get worse; yes, there are bad actors who make things worse when they needn’t be. But, none of those things that they do to economies or governments are as bad as the things that we all do to Christ when we sin.

If the world is dying and the forces of evil are winning, it is because we have all contributed to deicide; we all killed Him.

May God have mercy on us all.

This originally appeared on Crisis Magazine.

The post We All Killed Him appeared first on LewRockwell.