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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated with new FBI documents recently discovered, and subsequently is being republished on August 1, 2025. Primary source documents used in the story have been notated and added to the ‘End Notes’

One of the enduring mysteries of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing case is the little-known but well-documented and indisputable fact that Timothy McVeigh and the “others unknown” involved in the attack used two different Ryder trucks in the later stages of the bombing plot.

What happened to this second truck, where it was obtained (FBI documents indicate that the FBI may have believed it was purchased at auction—more on those documents in a moment), and its final purpose remains unknown today.

Dozens of witnesses in Kansas observed two distinctly different Ryder trucks between April 11th and 18th — both parked at both Geary Lake and the Dreamland Motel.

One of the trucks was smaller, described frequently as faded yellow in color, with either no visible Ryder logo or one that was barely visible, and with a cab-overhang on the front part of the truck.

The other of the two trucks was described as much larger—the 20-foot model—and appeared cleaner and newer. This was the truck rented from Elliott’s body shop on the 17th that was ultimately used to deliver the bomb.

The Smaller “Second Truck”

The second truck, with a few exceptions, is generally omitted from most contemporary accounts of the bombing, yet its existence is confirmed within numerous FBI documents.

A half dozen people at the Dreamland Motel—where McVeigh stayed the week before the bombing—place McVeigh parking the smaller Ryder truck at the motel on Easter Sunday and Fri/Sat—days before the larger bomb truck was rented at Elliott’s on Monday the 17th.

The Dreamland Witnesses

Consider the following account from Apache helicopter mechanic Shane Boyd. Boyd stayed in room #28 at the Dreamland Motel for several weeks in April 1995 while he was working at nearby Ft. Riley. Boyd told FBI SA Mark Bouton that around 6:00 AM on Friday, April 14th, he saw a Ryder truck with a steel-framed trailer pulling out of the Dreamland Motel’s parking lot.1 Boyd also told the FBI that he is sure he saw the Ryder truck parked at the Dreamland Motel again on Saturday the 15th and Easter Sunday. 2

Consider also the accounts of Dreamland residents David King and his mother, Herta King. The Kings both saw the smaller Ryder truck the weekend before the bomb truck’s rental. FBI special agents Robert Knox and Leslie Gardner interviewed David King on April 27 regarding activities in and around the motel. King told the FBI that on Easter Sunday, his mother, Herta, visited him at the Dreamland around half past noon. King stated that both he and his mother saw a yellow Ryder truck parked directly in front of his room that Sunday afternoon.3

Herta King later testified at the McVeigh trial that she saw the Ryder truck parked at the Dreamland on Easter. She stated that she was friends with the motel owner, Lea McGown, and that they had even discussed the truck being there on Easter. King testified that Lea McGown told her “it doesn’t make sense that a truck was there on Sunday, if McVeigh rented it on Monday.”4

Indeed, it doesn’t make sense. Consider, then, what does make sense: the truck seen before the 17th was a different truck. This is what the evidence suggests. Supporting this theory is David King’s statement that he saw two different Ryder trucks at the Dreamland. King’s observations are crucial for understanding the multiple Ryder truck sightings that occurred before Monday, April 17th.

On April 16th, Easter, King saw the older “faded yellow” Ryder truck parked at the Dreamland. King then noted a change in the truck from Sunday to Monday: on Monday, McVeigh arrived driving a “brand new” and “more aerodynamic” model Ryder truck.5 This was the bomb truck that was rented from Elliott’s, and its appearance was distinctly different, much larger than the truck King and his mother had seen that weekend.

King also saw McVeigh and two other men attaching a trailer to the new Ryder truck and engaging in some activity with the truck and trailer. King recalls this because the Ryder truck blocked access to his parking spot. He noted that something was inside the trailer wrapped in a dirty white canvas tarp: “It was a squarish shape, and it came to a point on top, about three or four feet high,”6 King told the New York Times.

Witness Connie Hood described a similar scene involving the older Ryder truck that weekend: it had a trailer attached and a group of guys working there. Hood told McCurtain Gazette reporter J.D. Cash, “I saw John Doe No. 2 with McVeigh in the parking lot, and a couple of other guys were helping them. They were working on that old truck they had. There was a trailer hooked to the truck that afternoon, and it had a lot of stuff in it. I couldn’t tell what because a tarp covered the trailer.”7

Witness Shane Boyd also observed a trailer attached to the older model truck that weekend. Whatever its purpose, it seems the trailer was moved from the older truck and then attached to the new one when McVeigh showed up with it on Monday.

In addition to Shane Boyd, Herta King, David King, and Connie Hood, the owners of the Dreamland Motel also noticed the other older model truck. Motel owner Lea McGown and her son, Eric, described the truck to the FBI and reporters, and their accounts were published in the newspaper.

It was shortly after an Easter lunch when the McGowns saw McVeigh trying to park the Ryder truck.8 Lea McGown’s recollection to reporters was vivid, saying, “He backed in jerky, jerky, jerky. Like somebody who doesn’t know how to drive a truck. I thought he was going to smash my roof!”9

Upon watching this, Lea McGown sent her son, Eric, to tell McVeigh to move the truck to the open area in front of the office. Eric McGown got a good look at the truck as he did and described it in detail:

“It was medium-sized. It wasn’t one of the newest models. It was not so rounded. It had a different compartment for the one cab, and it had the trailer portion.”10

Consistent with other sightings of this second truck, it had a trailer attached, looked older, with faded and worn yellow paint, and had no writing on the back.

The Geary Lake Witnesses

Alongside the Dreamland witnesses, a handful of people observed a Ryder truck parked at Geary Lake days before the bomb truck was rented.

According to the official story, McVeigh built the bomb with Terry Nichols at Geary Lake on April 18th. However, witnesses interviewed by the FBI reported seeing a distinct yellow Ryder truck at Geary Lake fishing park for four straight days the week before: on the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th.

The FBI roadblock at Geary Lake gathered testimony from multiple credible witnesses who recalled seeing the truck parked there every morning on their way to work, with some also spotting the truck in the evening during their commute home.

Two of these witnesses were Kansas real estate agent Georgia Rucker11 and retiree James Sargeant12, with the latter spending the week from the 11th to the 14th fishing at the lake each morning. Sergeant testified at trial that “it’s pretty hard to forget something you see four days in a row” – much less something so out of place as a yellow moving truck parked at the shoreline. Rucker said much the same, spotting the truck parked at the lake each morning on her commute that week.

Perhaps the most interesting account from the Geary Lake witnesses is that of Robert Nelson. Nelson testified that he drove into Geary Lake on April 17th or 18th—he wasn’t sure which day. It was there that he saw the Ryder truck, surrounded by several vehicles, and a group of four to five men.13

Read the Whole Article

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On Saturday, I received three pennies in change at a store. Looking at the pennies in my hand, one jumped out for its unique color. I was happy to see it — the happy penny.

Sometimes I have to look at the date on a penny to see if it is one of those increasingly rare to receive in change pre-1982 pennies with a different metal composition than the newer pennies. But, sometimes a special hue shines through the surface giving away the relatively rare coin’s presence.

In 1965, silver was replaced with cheaper metal in new dime and quarter coins. A few years later, in 1971, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window, preventing foreign governments from exchanging their United States dollars for gold. Several decades earlier, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had demanded Americans turn in to the government their gold coins. Roosevelt then devalued the dollar in terms of gold. US gold coins production for public use also ended.

These actions, spanning roughly fifty years from the 1930s to the 1980s, were all taken to facilitate progressively inflating away the value of the dollar. Over this time, metals deemed too valuable were successively removed from US coins. First removed was gold. Then silver. Both are precious metals long valued for their monetary use. Then even the base metal copper was replaced so that new pennies are made nearly entirely of cheaper zinc.

One reason you don’t often see these older pennies, and silver coins especially, in change is that people hold on to them because of their high metal value relative to face value (the value stamped on the coins). This is an example of the behavior described in Gresham’s Law. Gresham’s law is often summed up briefly as “bad money drives out good.” In other words, people will tend to spend the lower metal value coins while saving — or exchanging at a premium over face value as is now commonly done with the old gold and silver coins — the higher metal value coins.

A little over forty years after the penny’s metal content was downgraded, the US government is taking a new sort of action with pennies because of the continuing decrease in the dollar’s value. In May, the United States Mint declared it had made its final order of blanks upon which pennies are pressed. The plan is for these blanks to be turned into the last pennies put into circulation. Fatima Hussein and Alan Suderman, reporting for the Associated Press on the discontinuation of the production of new pennies, noted that making each penny now costs almost four cents — nearly four times the coin’s face value.

Hussein and Suderman also related that a nickel costs almost 14 cents to make — nearly three times its face value. Despite the coin’s name, nickel makes up only about one fourth of the metal content of a new nickel coin. The rest is copper.

The writing seems to be on the wall for nickels. As their metallic value and production costs further and further exceed their face value, there will be more pressure to make changes in nickels’ composition to significantly reduce their cost of production. Alternatively, the government may, as is being done with the penny, just stop making new nickels.

How bad has the inflation been that the coins debasement and discontinuation of production has accompanied? Consider that the one-ounce gold coins Roosevelt demanded people turn in had a face value of twenty dollars but now have a metal content value of roughly 3,400 dollars. And the metal value of those silver dimes and quarters that the US Mint stopped producing 60 years back is now over 25 times the face value.

Why do I think of that penny with the unique color as the happy penny? The reason is because it reminds me of a time when coins, along with the dollar, retained their value instead of having their value continuously eroded by government’s inflation.

This article was originally published on The Ron Paul Institute.

The post The Happy Penny appeared first on LewRockwell.

Escalation with Russia is clearly on the cards (in one form or another), but Trump has also threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear sites – again.

A U.S. President, beset by the Epstein story that refuses to lie down and die, and under pressure from domestic hawks because of a visibly collapsing Ukraine, has been letting off a blunderbuss of geo-political threats across the board: Firstly, and principally, at Russia; but secondly at Iran: 

“Iran is so nasty, they’re so nasty in their statements. They got hit. We cannot allow them to have nuclear weapons. They are still talking about uranium enrichment. Who talks like that? It’s so stupid. We will not allow it.”

Escalation with Russia is clearly on the cards (in one form or another), but Trump has also threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear sites – again. Were he to do so, it would be ‘gesture politics’ entirely removed from the reality of Iran’s present circumstance.

A further strike would be presented as setting back – or finally halting – Iran’s capacity to assemble a nuclear weapon.

And that would be a lie.

Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at MIT, regarded as the U.S.’ leading expert on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, however makes some counter-intuitive technical points which, when translated politically (the aim of this piece), plainly indicate that a further attack on the three nuclear sites struck by the U.S. on 22 June would be pointless.

It would be pointless in terms of Trump’s ostensible objective – yet a strike may happen anyway albeit as a piece of theatre designed to facilitate other different objectives such an attempt at “regime change” and furthering Israel’s hegemonic ambitions in the region.

Simply put, Professor Postol’s compelling argument is that Iran does not need to rebuild its previous nuclear program in order to build a bomb. That era is over. Both the U.S. and Israel believe, with good reason, Postol says, that most of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU) survived the attack and is accessible:

“The tunnels at Esfahan are deep – so deep that the United States did not even try to collapse them with the bunker busters. Assuming the material wasn’t moved, it is now sitting unsquashed in intact tunnels. Iran unblocked the entrance to one tunnel at Esfahan within a week of the strike”.

In short, the U.S. strike did not set back the Iranian programme by years. It is highly likely that most of Iran’s HEU survived the strikes, Postol estimates.

The IAEA says that Iran had, at the time of the strike, 408kg of 60% HEU. It likely was removed by Iran before the Trump strike, which Postol has said could be readily transferred on the back of a pick-up (“or even a donkey cart!”). But the point is that no one knows where that HEU is. And it almost certainly is accessible.

Professor Postol’s key argument (– he eschews drawing political implications –) is the paradox that the more highly enriched the uranium is, the easier further enrichment becomes. As a result, Iran could make do with a centrifuge facility much smaller – yes, much, much smaller than the industrial-scale plants at Fordow or Natanz (which were designed to accommodate thousands and tens of thousands of centrifuges, respectively).

Postol has drawn up the technical outline for a 174 centrifuge cascade that would require a mere 4 to 5 weeks for Iran to obtain enough weapons-grade uranium (as enriched hexafluoride gas) for one bomb. In 2023, the IAEA found uranium particles enriched to 83.7% (weapons grade). This likely was an experimental exercise to prove to themselves that they could do it when, and as, they wanted, Professor Postol suggests.

Postol’s cascade demonstration was intended to underline the point – ‘the secret story of enrichment’ – that with 60% HEU, it takes almost no enrichment effort to reach 83.7%.

What may be even more shocking to the non-technical observer, is that Postol has further demonstrated that a 174 centrifuge cascade could be fitted within a space of a mere 60 square metres – the floor space of any modest city apartment, and would require, as power input, just a few tens of kilowatts.

In short, a few such small enrichment facilities could be hidden anywhere in a vast country – needles in a big haystack. Even the conversion of the uranium to uranium metal 235 would be a ‘small size operation’ that could be done in a facility of 120 to 150 sq. m.

In another culling of the shibboleths surrounding the Iranian reality, building a spherical atomic bomb requires no more than 14 kg uranium metal 235, surrounded by a reflector. ‘It is not high tech; it’s garden shed stuff’. Just assemble the pieces; no test needed. Postol says: ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima. Without a lot of testing; wrong to think it needs testing.

There goes another Shibboleth! ‘We would know if Iran moved to weapons capability, because we could detect seismically any test of a weapon’.

A small Atomic bomb of this nature would weigh just 150 kg. (The warheads on some Iranian missiles launched on Israel in the course of the 12 day war, by comparison, weighed between 460 and 500 kg).

Ted Postol is careful not to spell out the political implications. Yet they are absolutely clear: There is no point to another round of bombing Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. The bird has gone. The coops are empty.

Professor Postol, as the foremost technical expert in nuclear matters, briefs the Pentagon and Congress. He knows Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and reportedly briefed her before the Trump strike on Fordow on 22 June to argue that the U.S. likely would not be able to destroy the deeply buried centrifuge hall at Fordow. (Other Pentagon reportedly officials disagreed).

We know that the U.S. did not even try to collapse the tunnels under Isfahan with the bunker busters, but contented themselves with trying to block the several tunnel entrances to Isfahan by using conventional weapons (such the aging Tomahawk missiles, launched from submarines).

To repeat the 22 June exercise would be pure Kabuki theatre devoid of any solid objective based in reality. So why might Trump still contemplate it? He told reporters during his recent Scottish visit that Iran has been sending out “nasty signals” and any effort to restart its nuclear program would be immediately quashed:

“We wiped out their nuclear possibilities. They can start again. If they do, we’ll wipe it out faster than you can wave your finger at it”.

There are several possibilities: Trump may hope that a further attack might finally – in his and others’ estimation – prompt the Iranian government to fall. He may too instinctively shy away from kinetic escalation against Russia, fearing the conflict might spin out of control. And subsequently might conclude that he could, the more easily, spin an attack on Iran as showcasing U.S. ‘strength’ – i.e. spin it, irrespective of truth, as another “obliterated” claim.

Finally, he might think to do it, believing Israel desperately wants and needs it.

The last seems the more likely motivation. However, the biggest game-changer of the present geo-strategic era has been the revolution in terms of accuracy of Russian and Iranian ballistics and hypersonics, that precisely destroy a target with negligible collateral damage – and which the West basically can’t stop.

This changes the entire geo-strategic calculus – especially for Israel. A further attack on Iran, far from benefitting Israel, might unleash a devastating Iranian missile riposte on Israel.

The rest – Trump’s narratives – are Kabuki theatre: A Potemkin simulacrum of supporting Israel, whilst the true underlying objective is to collapse and Balkanise Iran – and weaken Russia.

An Israeli Colonel told Netanyahu (Postol relates) that by attacking Iran ‘we’ll likely have a weapons state on our hands’. Tulsi Gabbard likely told Trump the same.

Professor Postol concurs. Iran must be viewed as an undeclared nuclear weapons State, albeit one with its exact status carefully obfuscated.

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

The post A Further U.S. Attack on Iran Would Be Pointless Kabuki appeared first on LewRockwell.

A few weeks ago I published an article noting that the State of Israel and the Zionist movement that gave rise to it have probably employed assassination as a tool of statecraft more heavily than any other political entity in recorded history. Indeed, their deadly activities had easily eclipsed those of the notorious Muslim sect that had terrorized the Middle East a thousand years ago and gave rise to that term.

The piece had been prompted by Israel’s sudden strike against Iran, capping its reputation as the greatest band of assassins known to history. Even as the Iranian government was intensely focused on the negotiations with America over its nuclear program, a sudden Israeli surprise attack successfully assassinated most of Iran’s highest military commanders, some of its political leaders, and nearly all of its most prominent nuclear scientists. I cannot recall any previous case in which a major country had ever had so large a fraction of its top military, political, and scientific leadership eliminated in that sort of illegal sneak attack.

Less than one year earlier, a series of missile exchanges between Israel and Iran had soon been followed by the death of hardline Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister in a highly-suspicious and never explained helicopter crash. Given subsequent events, I think we can safely assume that he, too, had died at the hands of the Israelis.

• Zionist Israel as the Assassination Nation
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • June 23, 2025 • 11,800 Words

Earlier this year, the declassification of a large batch of JFK Assassination files had prompted me to recapitulate and summarize many of my articles of the last half-dozen years on that landmark twentieth century event. I gathered together some of the very considerable evidence that the Israeli Mossad played the central role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 as well as the death of his younger brother Robert a few years later, probably the highest-profile political assassinations of the last one hundred years or more.

• How Israel Killed the Kennedys
  Ron Unz and Mike Whitney • The Unz Review • March 24, 2025 • 11,500 Words

The most weighty and authoritative work on the long history of Israeli assassinations is surely Ronen Bergman’s 2018 volume Rise and Kill First, running 750 pages and including a thousand-odd source references, with many of the latter citing official documents never previously made available to journalists. By some estimates, this book documented nearly 3,000 such foreign political killings, a remarkable total for a small country then less than three generations old.

Although the Bergman book was certainly very comprehensive, it was produced under strict Israeli censorship, so the text quite understandably omitted almost any coverage of some of the highest-profile Zionist attacks on Western targets. For example, there was no mention of the unsuccessful but well-documented attempts to kill President Harry Truman, nor the assassination efforts aimed at British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the top members of his Cabinet.

Some of this latter coverage may be found in Thomas Suarez’s 2016 book State of Terror which I would recommend as a very useful supplementary work, though its focus is almost entirely limited to the activities of Zionist groups just prior to the establishment of Israel.

For a broader discussion of the history of Israeli assassinations and closely-related terrorist attacks, especially those targeting Westerners, one of the most useful compilations might be my own very long January 2020 article, providing extensive references to the underlying primary and secondary sources.

• American Pravda: Mossad Assassinations
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • January 27, 2020 • 27,300 Words

That 2020 article had actually been prompted by America’s own sudden assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a shocking development that drew a great deal of media coverage at the time.

I had opened my long discussion by noting that over the last several centuries Western governments had almost totally abandoned the use of political assassinations against the leadership of major rival nations, regarding such actions as immoral and illegal.

For example, historian David Irving revealed that when one of Adolf Hitler’s aides suggested to him that an attempt be made to assassinate the Soviet military leadership during the bitter combat on the Eastern Front of World War II, the German Fuhrer immediately forbade any such practices as obvious violations of the laws of civilized warfare.

For most of American history, a similar attitude had prevailed, but I explained that this began to change over the last couple of decades, mostly in the wake of the 9/11 Attacks.

The 1914 terrorist assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, was certainly organized by fanatical elements of Serbian Intelligence, but the Serbian government fiercely denied its own complicity, and no major European power was ever directly implicated in the plot. The aftermath of the killing soon led to the outbreak of World War I, and although many millions died in the trenches over the next few years, it would have been completely unthinkable for one of the major belligerents to consider assassinating the leadership of another.

A century earlier, the Napoleonic Wars had raged across the entire continent of Europe for most of a generation, but I don’t recall reading of any governmental assassination plots during that era, let alone in the quite gentlemanly wars of the preceding 18th century when Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa disputed ownership of the wealthy province of Silesia by military means. I am hardly a specialist in modern European history, but after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War and regularized the rules of warfare, no assassination as high-profile as that of Gen. Soleimani comes to mind…

During our Revolutionary War, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and our other Founding Fathers fully recognized that if their effort failed, they would all be hanged as rebels by the British. However, I have never heard that they feared falling to an assassin’s blade, nor that King George III ever considered using such an underhanded means of attack. During the first century and more of our nation’s history, nearly all our presidents and other top political leaders traced their ancestry back to the British Isles, and political assassinations were exceptionally rare, with Abraham Lincoln’s death being one of the very few that comes to mind.

At the height of the Cold War, our CIA did involve itself in various secret assassination plots against Cuba’s Communist dictator Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders considered hostile to US interests. But when these facts later came out in the 1970s, they evoked such enormous outrage from the public and the media, that three consecutive American presidents—Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan—all issued successive Executive Orders absolutely prohibiting assassinations by the CIA or any other agent of the US government.

Although some cynics might claim that these public declarations represented mere window-dressing, a March 2018 book review in the New York Times strongly suggests otherwise. Kenneth M. Pollack spent years as a CIA analyst and National Security Council staffer, then went on to publish a number of influential books on foreign policy and military strategy over the last two decades. He had originally joined the CIA in 1988, and opens his review by declaring:

One of the very first things I was taught when I joined the CIA was that we do not conduct assassinations. It was drilled into new recruits over and over again.

Yet Pollack notes with dismay that over the last quarter-century, these once solid prohibitions have been steadily eaten away, with the process rapidly accelerating after the 9/11 attacks of 2001. The laws on our books may not have changed, but

Today, it seems that all that is left of this policy is a euphemism.

We don’t call them assassinations anymore. Now, they are “targeted killings,” most often performed by drone strike, and they have become America’s go-to weapon in the war on terror.

The Bush Administration had conducted 47 of these assassinations-by-another-name, while his successor Barack Obama, a constitutional scholar and Nobel Peace Prize winner, had raised his own total to 542. Not without justification, Pollack wonders whether assassination has become “a very effective drug, but [one that] treats only the symptom and so offers no cure.”

Thus over the last couple of decades the American government has followed a disturbing trajectory in its use of assassination as a tool of foreign policy, first restricting its application only to the most extreme circumstances, next targeting small numbers of high-profile “terrorists” hiding in rough terrain, then escalating those same killings to the many hundreds. And now under President Trump, the fateful step has been taken of America claiming the right to assassinate any world leader not to our liking whom we unilaterally declare worthy of death.

Pollack had made his career as a Clinton Democrat, and is best known for his 2002 book The Threatening Storm that strongly endorsed President Bush’s proposed invasion of Iraq and was enormously influential in producing bipartisan support for that ill-fated policy. I have no doubt that he is a committed supporter of Israel, and he probably falls into a category that I would loosely describe as “Left Neocon.”

But while reviewing a history of Israel’s own long use of assassination as a mainstay of its national security policy, he seems deeply disturbed that America might now be following along that same terrible path.

Pollock’s discussion of these facts came in his lengthy 2018 New York Times review of the Bergman book entitled “Learning From Israel’s Political Assassination Program,” and he greatly decried what many have called the “Israelization” of the American government and its military doctrine. President Donald Trump’s sudden public assassination of so high-profile a foreign leader as Gen. Soleimani came less than two years later and demonstrated that Pollock’s concerns were fully warranted and indeed even understated.

As my January 2020 article explained, nothing like this had ever previously happened in peacetime American history, and only very rarely even during wars.

The January 2nd American assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani of Iran was an event of enormous moment.

Gen. Soleimani had been the highest-ranking military figure in his nation of 80 million, and with a storied career of 30 years, one of the most universally popular and highly regarded. Most analysts ranked him second in influence only to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s elderly Supreme Leader, and there were widespread reports that he was being urged to run for the presidency in the 2021 elections.

The circumstances of his peacetime death were also quite remarkable. His vehicle was incinerated by the missile of an American Reaper drone near Iraq’s Baghdad international airport just after he had arrived there on a regular commercial flight for peace negotiations originally suggested by the American government.

Our major media hardly ignored the gravity of this sudden, unexpected killing of so high-ranking a political and military figure, and gave it enormous attention. A day or so later, the front page of my morning New York Times was almost entirely filled with coverage of the event and its implications, along with several inside pages devoted to the same topic. Later that same week, America’s national newspaper of record allocated more than one-third of all the pages of its front section to the same shocking story.

But even such copious coverage by teams of veteran journalists failed to provide the incident with its proper context and implications. Last year, the Trump Administration had declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard “a terrorist organization,” drawing widespread criticism and even ridicule from national security experts appalled at the notion of classifying a major branch of Iran’s armed forces as “terrorists.” Gen. Soleimani was a top commander in that body, and this apparently provided the legal fig-leaf for his assassination in broad daylight while on a diplomatic peace mission.

• American Pravda: Mossad Assassinations
  From the Peace of Westphalia to the Law of the Jungle
  Ron Unz • The Unz Review • January 27, 2020 • 27,300 Words

Although Pollock provided some explanations for this shocking transformation in American doctrine, he failed to note what was arguably the most obvious factor. Over the last generation or two, the American government and American political life have been almost entirely captured by what scholars John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt called “The Israel Lobby” in their best-selling 2008 book of that title, and this political and ideological transformation has only further accelerated in the last couple of years, most recently reaching ridiculous, almost cartoonishly extreme levels.

Read the Whole Article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the Whole Article

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Politics and Cognitive Dissonance appeared first on LewRockwell.

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

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

❖

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

❖

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

The Times of Israel reports:

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

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

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

❖

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

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 2, 2025

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

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

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

❖

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

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

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

__________________

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

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Writes David Martin:

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

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

Thanks, John Frahm. 

Blaze Media

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks,  Tim McGraw.

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

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

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

Thanks,  John Frahm.

Natalie Winters

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

People are walking up!

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

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

To read the full article FOR FREE please go HERE.

And Please Pass On The Good News.

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

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

______________________________________________________________________________________

di Peder Zane

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

Stiamo parlando di due storie diverse e di portata diversa.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Mises University 2025 appeared first on LewRockwell.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warning Signs

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

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

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

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

Coming to a Head

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Final Straw

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

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

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

Moving On

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

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

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

A Few Take-Home Lessons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Poseidon’s Wrath’?

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

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

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

Read the Whole Article

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