Lew Rockwell Institute

Tim McGraw wrote:

LOL!  The video below is from Seattle TV news about a fire at Lake Cushman in the Olympic Mountains west of Seattle. The idiotic announcer says that Mt. Olympus is seen from Seattle and shrouded in smoke from the fire. LOL! You can’t see Mt. Olympus from Seattle. The peaks shown in the video are called “The Brothers.”

Decades ago, I’d take the kids out to the Olympics to go hiking. The highway goes by Lake Cushman. It’s a beautiful lake, but the logging trucks were constant. I had to be on my toes to drive safely.

Also, this was back in the 1980s, the Seattle TV news then was all aflutter about sharks being found in Lake Cushman. They were dead and discovered on the shore. Scientists at the University of Washington posited that there was an underground channel from Lake Cushman to the sea. Turns out that a local fisherman caught some dogfish (small sharks) and dumped them in Lake Cushman as a joke.

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David Krall wrote:

This is a MUST WATCH.   The most complete and comprehensive documentary by Candace Owens of the entire Jeffrey Epstein story.  More to come.

The post The Epstein Files: Dead Men Tell No Tales. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, David Krall.

Western media as accomplices to the genocide in Gaza – We stand up!

The post Genocide as “self-defense” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer .  

United Kingdom Announces Monumental Change On Who Can Vote In Next Election | WLT Report

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David Martin wrote:

I couldn’t have said it better myself, except that I would not state as a matter of fact that Epstein was “murdered in his jail cell.”  I believe the best evidence suggests that Epstein is still alive, and that there’s a very good chance that this guy seen outside a Starbucks in Vancouver, BC, Canada, last September is that man: https://dcdave.com/poet15/EpsteinVancouver2024.png

With his latest clownish remarks on the Epstein case, Trump really looks more and more like the man in “Donald Trump, The Song.“

The post Trump Has Completely Dropped His “Populist” Act appeared first on LewRockwell.

. . . by attacking a Catholic church with tanks, killing three civilians and injuring nine.

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Imagine, for a moment, that the ghosts of Shakespeare’s plays—Banquo, Hamlet’s father, Julius Caesar—were to step across the boundary of fiction into the halls of Congress or the modern news cycle. These spectral figures were never meant to take action themselves; they hovered, hinted, warned—but they never engaged the living world directly. Ghosts, by their nature, are unseen, unaccountable, and unanchored. And yet, today, our public square is increasingly crowded with just such figures—not from beyond the grave but from behind screens. Many would rather haunt than inhabit, lob than live, snipe than stand. They posture, provoke, and vanish. We’ve become a nation increasingly governed by those who wish to wield consequence without presence, accusation without ownership, opinion without flesh. And it’s killing our Republic.

We call it “ghosting” now—not just the quiet exit from a text conversation but the deeper cultural reflex of hiding. Of vanishing from dialogue. Of dissociating when the moment requires standing tall. It’s especially ironic in a time when so many men posture online about masculinity, invoking the likes of Andrew Tate as the ultimate alpha. And yet, unlike Tate—agree or disagree—who at least shows up and owns what he says, many of his loudest disciples won’t. They stay hidden, masked, lobbing rhetorical grenades from the safety of anonymity—never stepping into the light of real human discourse.

You’d be forgiven if it happened just once. But when it happens again and again—and I mean innumerable times—you start to notice a pattern. You’re scrolling through the digital town square () and someone lobs a loaded comment. Not a thoughtful question. Not an earnest observation. A grenade.

Of late, one of the most common examples concerns “the Jews.” Sometimes it’s wrapped in pseudo-scholarly language. Sometimes it’s laced with unhinged vitriol. But always, it trades in the same tired insinuations: that Jews—as a monolith—secretly run Hollywood, or debase American culture, or invented liberalism, or faked or exaggerated the Holocaust, or control governments, or are uniquely to blame for the decline of Western civilization. Never mind that no coherent documentation or testimony is provided. Never mind that these assertions collapse under five minutes of genuine scrutiny. They’re asserted as if they were obvious—and if you question them, you must be part of the cover-up.

I’ve seen it in comment threads, message boards, fringe channels, and conspiracy rabbit holes. But what’s even more revealing than the claims themselves—some outlandish, some more insidious—is what almost never happens: the person making them almost never steps forward in full view, name to name, to defend them. They rarely engage in good-faith conversation. They retreat. They obfuscate. They reframe. They ghost.

And I can’t help but think: if you really believed what you just said, if you were convinced it could hold up in the light, wouldn’t you want to bring it there?

This is not about any one controversy. It’s about the spirit of our age—an era of anonymous accusations and ideologically possessed half-truths, hurled from the shadows by people who want to sound brave without being brave. They don’t want to be questioned. They don’t want to be corrected. They want to appear as prophets while hiding behind a handle.

It’s not even that their conclusions are always wrong. Some touch on real patterns worth exploring. But their method reveals something deeper: a collapse of confidence in truth and, with it, a rejection of integrity. They commit the very error they denounce—attributing sweeping evil to loosely associated people based on identity rather than actual proof, while condemning others for doing the same. It is intellectual cowardice draped in the cloak of rebellion.

And what’s worse, this is no longer the exception. It has become a cultural norm.

From its very beginning, the American Republic was built on a different wager: that truth could and should be discovered in the light of open discourse and that citizens—endowed with reason, dignity, and conscience—could bring their ideas to the public square and allow them to rise or fall before the judgment of others.

The First Amendment—freedom of speech—was not intended as a license for chaos but, rather, as the lifeblood of a Republic of equals. It presumed a human being willing to speak what he believed, to own it, and to let it be examined. Thomas Jefferson himself wrote: “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

And across generations, thinkers of every stripe have reaffirmed this. Frederick Douglass, in 1860, warned: “To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Abrams v. United States, defended “the free trade in ideas” as the best test for truth. Even John Stuart Mill, James Baldwin, and modern contrarians like Chomsky, Peterson, and Greenwald—though wildly different in worldview—agree on this point: truth must be exposed to challenge if it’s to be trusted.

But today, truth is not being challenged. It is being hidden. Not by governments alone (though the Twitter Files showed government actors and platforms colluding to suppress disfavored but factual information). Not just by the media (which insisted that President Biden was cognitively sharp or that Hunter’s laptop was “Russian disinformation”). But by us. By citizens who no longer believe that reason works. Who treat disagreement as a threat. Who exchange argument for insinuation and accountability for anonymity.

The danger here is not just censorship but a Republic populated by people who no longer believe in the dignity of standing face-to-face.

We’ve entered an era where slander is safer than speech. Where ideas are pushed in memes not reasoned in essays. Where truth is no longer something to be pursued but assumed—so long as it flatters one’s tribe.

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In recent years, Dr. McCullough and I have frequently marveled at what appears to be a competence deficit among people who occupy leadership positions. Scarcely a month passes without news of a catastrophe that could have been prevented if those in charge had possessed the competence to assess quickly an unusual or risky situation— or even a clear and present danger—and to take decisive action to avert disaster.

We saw this competence deficit on a grand scale in the medical profession during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the vast majority of doctors showed an astonishing lack of curiosity, imagination, and even open-mindedness when the question arose: Is there anything I can do to help prevent my patients from being hospitalized and possibly dying from this novel illness? Instead, most of the medical profession looked to Anthony Fauci’s NIAID, which was, at best, wrong about everything, and more likely corrupt and nihilistic.

In August 2023 the historic town of Lahaina on the island of Maui was totally incinerated by a wildfire in which every single institutional leader at the county, state, and federal level demonstrated spectacular incompetence. In what struck me as a national commemoration of this garish parade of stupidity, President Joe Biden flew out to Maui and gave a talk at the local community center in which he remarked that the ground was hot and that he’d once almost lost his cherished ‘67 ‘Vette Stingray in a home fire.

In July 2024, presidential candidate Donald Trump was almost assassinated in Butler, Pennsylvania. The stunning lack of the most elementary security measures again demonstrated mind-boggling incompetence. A security guard equipped with a lawn chair, a box of donuts, and pistol could have secured the roof—150 yards from the stage—onto which the gunman crawled with his rifle.

Now comes the news from Texas that Dick Eastland—executive director of Camp Mystic—received an alert on his phone from the National Weather Service at 1:14 a.m. on July 4 about “life-threatening flash flooding.”

At that point, he “began evaluating whether to evacuate the young campers who were sleeping in their cabins without access to electronics,” according to Eastland family spokesperson Jeff Carr. He only began to evacuate 45 minutes later, after the flood was upon them.

This representation strikes me as unfathomably strange and expressive of incompetence of a mind-boggling scale.

Everyone who has spent some time in the Texas Hill Country understands the meaning of the expression “flash flood”—that is, a creek or a river that floods in a flash, leaving humans and animals who are in the flood plain unable to escape.

Dick Eastland had been at Camp Mystic since 1974 and was certainly aware that the camp and other habitations along the Guadalupe River had been been subjected to flash floods in the past that had swept away and drowned people.

In July 1987, ten children at a church camp in Comfort, Texas— about thirty-nine miles downstream from Mystic—were drowned by a flash flood.

Dick Eastland was a man in charge of protecting the lives of hundreds of young girls—girls sleeping in cabins on the bank of the Guadalupe River, in the flood plain. At 1:14 a.m. he received a warning from the National Weather Service of a “life threatening flash flood.” At that point, he had to have understood that a clear and present danger was upon the girls at Camp Mystic. The only rational course of action was to evacuate immediately to higher ground, above the flood plain.

To be sure, the girls would get soaked by the rain when they left their cabins to move to higher ground. However, the air temperature that night was warm, so the risk of hypothermia was negligible compared to the risk of drowning in a flash flood.

Confronted with an unusual and unusually dangerous situation, Dick Eastland apparently lacked the elementary competence to think and act quickly to fulfill his duty. One wonders how many men like him occupy positions of grave responsibility in the United States.

This article was originally published on Courageous Discourse.

The post A Competence Deficit appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Those bastards didn’t send back my article! Now I have to re-type the whole piece before I can submit it somewhere else!” I growled standing by the apartment cluster mailbox on a sultry afternoon of July 3, 1979. “Did they just throw away or steal the stamps from the self-addressed stamped envelope I sent along with my piece?!”

The New York Times logo on the front of a postcard in that day’s mail sparked my ire. I had dropped out of Virginia Tech three years before, confident that I didn’t need a college degree to make my way as a writer. But my strikeouts vastly outnumbered my few successes. My ego had been on half rations for longer than I druthered. A few weeks earlier, I’d sent out maybe my last volley of submissions before throwing in the towel on freelancing. One by one, my pieces straggled back, rejected from the New Republic, Playboy, American Spectator, and Washington Post. There was only one very long shot left in play.

And now this dinky little New York Times postcard was all I had to show for my busted publishing blitzkrieg. Scowling, I flipped it over to peruse another form reject: “We have tentatively accepted your manuscript for use on the Op-Ed Page. If and when the article is scheduled for publication an editor will telephone you to discuss any question that may arise in the editing process….”

Okay, that was better than sending back my manuscript.

I was not aware of any place in Blacksburg, Virginia that sold the New York Times, and the Virginia Tech University Library—the only place that I knew received the Times—was closed on the following day, July 4th. It never occurred to me to phone the Times to see if the article had run. On July 5, I tromped to that library to check the paper.

Yikes! The New York Times labeled me “a writer currently in exile in the Appalachian mountains.” Had their editors heard from law enforcement or the CIA before printing the article? What did the Times know that I didn’t know?! And then I remembered that I tossed in a similar quip in my cover letter with my submission. That sounded better than saying I’d been a temporary typist, highway flagman, Santa Claus, construction worker, peach picker, lawn mower, and—the worst indignity of all—wearing a giant rabbit costume for a Beatrix Potter promotion.

“Why Not Draft the Next Congress?” ruled the bottom of the July 4th op-ed page. Six years earlier, the federal government ended the draft and replaced it with the All-Volunteer Military. Members of Congress were invoking one bogus standard after another to unfairly condemn the new system. Plenty of congressmen claimed that reviving military conscription would produce vast moral and military benefits as well as budgetary savings. I viewed such proposals as the equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on the freedom of young Americans.

Using the classic format of Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal, I recounted the sordid details of the “failure of the All-Volunteer Congress.” I cited the pervasive “doubts about the intelligence of the recent volunteers” who had “not been able to balance [federal] income and expenditures for 10 years straight.”

It is only the ego-starved who volunteer for Congressional duty now. These people are forced into Congress by their psychological or mental poverty, as no real alternative or treatment exists for their condition.

The moral caliber of Congress would be improved by conscription. The personal background of many volunteers appears conducive to fabrication. Randomly picking people off the street would give a much higher level of honesty and responsibility.

Conscripts “would receive a subsistence allowance (an honorable precedent established during the Revolutionary War), as it would not be right to overpay someone for what he owed to society.”

Compulsory congressional service would “restore the sense of honor, duty, service, and patriotism to the middle-aged.”

Getting published in the Times revived my confidence and I continued banging out articles as my talent ripened. I appreciated that Op-Ed Editor Charlotte Curtis would consider a submission from an unknown writer in southwest Virginia. The Times op-ed page was far more widely read back then before the rise of the internet, podcasts, and social media. I sold the Times dozens of pieces in the following 15 years.

Almost exactly one year after my satire was published, President Jimmy Carter issued a presidential proclamation compelling all American males between the ages of 18 and 26 to register with the Selective Service System. His proclamation was spurred by a law, spurred by rising tensions with the Soviet Union, that Congress enacted to assure that millions of young people could potentially be speedily compelled to report for military duty. The same mandate for draft registration remains on the books, tempting presidents to thrust the nation into foreign quagmires that require far more body bags than recent US military debacles.

In the following decades, Capitol Hill’s know-nothing, no-fault legislating was always near the top of my target list for my articles and books. I mocked the harebrained reasoning and brain-dead logic in congressional floor debates in a Wall Street Journal piece, “How to Think Like a Congressman.” In USA Today, I derided the annual year-end omnibus debacles, rushing to enact thousand-page Towers of Babel that transmogrify into law though no member of Congress read the bill.

Plenty of members of Congress have denounced me and my articles but I never lost any sleep over their wailing. I realized long ago that, as Thomas Paine wrote in 1776, “the trade of governing has always been monopolized by…the most rascally individuals of mankind.”

Unfortunately, the mental and moral defects of our legislative class have become far more ruinous to America since my first published scoff. In recent times, squandering hundreds of billions of tax dollars has become simply another congressional perk.

In 1979, Congress spent roughly $500 billion; in 2025, federal spending is expected to reach $7 trillion. In 1979, the total federal debt was $827 billion; now, the debt is $37 trillion and Congress just authorized another $5 trillion in deficit spending. Since 1979, reckless spending has helped destroy more than 80 percent of the purchasing power of the dollar. Since 1979, the Federal Register has printed more than two million pages of new regulations, rulings, notices, and other poxes on domestic tranquility. Congress created thousands of new federal crimes since 1979 to maximize the power of federal prosecutors over private citizens.

And Congress is almost always AWOL on defending citizens’ rights and liberties from presidents and rampaging federal bureaucracies. Americans are increasingly in a similar plight to downtrodden commoners during the 1500s reign of Henry VIII. As historian David Hume wrote almost 300 years ago, the English people “had reason to dread each meeting of [Parliament] and were sure of having tyranny converted into law, and aggravated with some circumstance, which the arbitrary prince and his ministers had not hitherto devised.”

Especially since the 9/11 attacks, many congressmen view “converting tyranny into law” as their job description. The Patriot Act is not even the tip of the iceberg of such abominations. Congress rarely even has the courage or competence to investigate how presidents are trampling the Constitution. Congress and presidents teamed up to drop an Iron Curtain of secrecy around federal agencies, confident that what people don’t know won’t hurt the government. Top members of Congress responded to valiant whistleblowers like Edward Snowden like a mob of peasants clamoring to burn heretics at the stake.

My intellectual barrages have caused no stampedes to repent among either members of Congress or voters. But sometimes pummeling scoundrels is its own reward. And I have not seen any pundit who offered better political foresight than comedian Lily Tomlin: “No matter how cynical you get, it is not enough to keep up.”

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Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

The post My 46 Years of Contempt of Congress appeared first on LewRockwell.

“When the states legalize the deliberate ending of certain lives… it will eventually broaden the categories of those who can be put to death with impunity.”—Nat Hentoff, The Washington Post, 1992

Bodily autonomy—the right to privacy and integrity over our own bodies—is rapidly vanishing.

The debate now extends beyond forced vaccinations or invasive searches to include biometric surveillance, wearable tracking, and predictive health profiling.

We are entering a new age of algorithmic, authoritarian control, where our thoughts, moods, and biology are monitored and judged by the state.

This is the dark promise behind the newest campaign by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, to push for a future in which all Americans wear biometric health-tracking devices.

Under the guise of public health and personal empowerment, this initiative is nothing less than the normalization of 24/7 bodily surveillance—ushering in a world where every step, heartbeat, and biological fluctuation is monitored not only by private companies but also by the government.

In this emerging surveillance-industrial complex, health data becomes currency. Tech firms profit from hardware and app subscriptions, insurers profit from risk scoring, and government agencies profit from increased compliance and behavioral insight.

This convergence of health, technology, and surveillance is not a new strategy—it’s just the next step in a long, familiar pattern of control.

Surveillance has always arrived dressed as progress.

Every new wave of surveillance technology—GPS trackers, red light cameras, facial recognition, Ring doorbells, Alexa smart speakers—has been sold to us as a tool of convenience, safety, or connection. But in time, each became a mechanism for tracking, monitoring, or controlling the public.

What began as voluntary has become inescapable and mandatory.

The moment we accepted the premise that privacy must be traded for convenience, we laid the groundwork for a society in which nowhere is beyond the government’s reach—not our homes, not our cars, not even our bodies.

RFK Jr.’s wearable plan is just the latest iteration of this bait-and-switch: marketed as freedom, built as a cage.

According to Kennedy’s plan, which has been promoted as part of a national campaign to “Make America Healthy Again,” wearable devices would track glucose levels, heart rate, activity, sleep, and more for every American.

Participation may not be officially mandatory at the outset, but the implications are clear: get on board, or risk becoming a second-class citizen in a society driven by data compliance.

What began as optional self-monitoring tools marketed by Big Tech is poised to become the newest tool in the surveillance arsenal of the police state.

Devices like Fitbits, Apple Watches, glucose trackers, and smart rings collect astonishing amounts of intimate data—from stress and depression to heart irregularities and early signs of illness. When this data is shared across government databases, insurers, and health platforms, it becomes a potent tool not only for health analysis—but for control.

Once symbols of personal wellness, these wearables are becoming digital cattle tags—badges of compliance tracked in real time and regulated by algorithm.

And it won’t stop there.

The body is fast becoming a battleground in the government’s expanding war on the inner realms.

The infrastructure is already in place to profile and detain individuals based on perceived psychological “risks.” Now imagine a future in which your wearable data triggers a mental health flag. Elevated stress levels. Erratic sleep. A skipped appointment. A sudden drop in heart rate variability.

In the eyes of the surveillance state, these could be red flags—justification for intervention, inquiry, or worse.

RFK Jr.’s embrace of wearable tech is not a neutral innovation. It is an invitation to expand the government’s war on thought crimes, health noncompliance, and individual deviation.

It shifts the presumption of innocence to a presumption of diagnosis. You are not well until the algorithm says you are.

The government has already weaponized surveillance tools to silence dissent, flag political critics, and track behavior in real time. Now, with wearables, they gain a new weapon: access to the human body as a site of suspicion, deviance, and control.

While government agencies pave the way for biometric control, it will be corporations—insurance companies, tech giants, employers—who act as enforcers for the surveillance state.

Wearables don’t just collect data. They sort it, interpret it, and feed it into systems that make high-stakes decisions about your life: whether you get insurance coverage, whether your rates go up, whether you qualify for employment or financial aid.

As reported by ABC News, a JAMA article warns that wearables could easily be used by insurers to deny coverage or hike premiums based on personal health metrics like calorie intake, weight fluctuations, and blood pressure.

It’s not a stretch to imagine this bleeding into workplace assessments, credit scores, or even social media rankings.

Employers already offer discounts for “voluntary” wellness tracking—and penalize nonparticipants. Insurers give incentives for healthy behavior—until they decide unhealthy behavior warrants punishment. Apps track not just steps, but mood, substance use, fertility, and sexual activity—feeding the ever-hungry data economy.

This dystopian trajectory has been long foreseen and forewarned.

In Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932), compliance is maintained not through violence but by way of pleasure, stimulation, and chemical sedation. The populace is conditioned to accept surveillance in exchange for ease, comfort, and distraction.

In THX 1138 (1971), George Lucas envisions a corporate-state regime where biometric monitoring, mood-regulating drugs, and psychological manipulation reduce people to emotionless, compliant biological units.

Gattaca (1997) imagines a world in which genetic and biometric profiling predetermines one’s fate, eliminating privacy and free will in the name of public health and societal efficiency.

In The Matrix (1999), written and directed by the Wachowskis, human beings are harvested as energy sources while trapped inside a simulated reality—an unsettling parallel to our increasing entrapment in systems that monitor, monetize, and manipulate our physical selves.

Minority Report (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg, depicts a pre-crime surveillance regime driven by biometric data. Citizens are tracked via retinal scans in public spaces and targeted with personalized ads—turning the body itself into a surveillance passport.

The anthology series Black Mirror, inspired by The Twilight Zone, brings these warnings into the digital age, dramatizing how constant monitoring of behavior, emotion, and identity breeds conformity, judgment, and fear.

Taken collectively, these cultural touchstones deliver a stark message: dystopia doesn’t arrive overnight.

As Margaret Atwood warned in The Handmaid’s Tale,  “Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” Though Atwood’s novel focuses on reproductive control, its larger warning is deeply relevant: when the state presumes authority over the body—whether through pregnancy registries or biometric monitors—bodily autonomy becomes conditional, fragile, and easily revoked.

The tools may differ, but the logic of domination is the same.

What Atwood portrayed as reproductive control, we now face in a broader, digitized form: the quiet erosion of autonomy through the normalization of constant monitoring.

When both government and corporations gain access to our inner lives, what’s left of the individual?

We must ask: when surveillance becomes a condition of participation in modern life—employment, education, health care—are we still free? Or have we become, as in every great dystopian warning, conditioned not to resist, but to comply?

That’s the hidden cost of these technological conveniences: today’s wellness tracker is tomorrow’s corporate leash.

In a society where bodily data is harvested and analyzed, the body itself becomes government and corporate property. Your body becomes a form of testimony, and your biometric outputs are treated as evidence. The list of bodily intrusions we’ve documented—forced colonoscopies, blood draws, DNA swabs, cavity searches, breathalyzer tests—is growing.

To this list we now add a subtler, but more insidious, form of intrusion: forced biometric consent.

Once health tracking becomes a de facto requirement for employment, insurance, or social participation, it will be impossible to “opt out” without penalty. Those who resist may be painted as irresponsible, unhealthy, or even dangerous.

We’ve already seen chilling previews of where this could lead. In states with abortion restrictions, digital surveillance has been weaponized to track and prosecute individuals for seeking abortions—using period-tracking apps, search histories, and geolocation data.

When bodily autonomy becomes criminalized, the data trails we leave behind become evidence in a case the state has already decided to make.

This is not merely the expansion of health care. It is the transformation of health into a mechanism of control—a Trojan horse for the surveillance state to claim ownership over the last private frontier: the human body.

Because ultimately, this isn’t just about surveillance—it’s about who gets to live.

Too often, these debates are falsely framed as having only two possible outcomes: safety vs. freedom, health vs. privacy, compliance vs. chaos. But these are illusions. A truly free and just society can protect public health without sacrificing bodily autonomy or human dignity.

We must resist the narrative that demands our total surrender in exchange for security.

Once biometric data becomes currency in a health-driven surveillance economy, it’s only a matter of time before that data is used to determine whose lives are worth investing in—and whose are not.

We’ve seen this dystopia before.

In the 1973 film Soylent Green, the elderly become expendable when resources grow scarce. My good friend Nat Hentoff—an early and principled voice warning against the devaluation of human life—sounded this alarm decades ago. Once pro-choice, Hentoff came to believe that the erosion of medical ethics—particularly the growing acceptance of abortion, euthanasia, and selective care—was laying the groundwork for institutionalized dehumanization.

As Hentoff warned, once the government sanctions the deliberate ending of certain lives, it can become a slippery slope: broader swaths of the population would eventually be deemed expendable.

Hentoff referred to this as “naked utilitarianism—the greatest good for the greatest number. And individuals who are in the way—in this case, the elderly poor—have to be gotten out of the way. Not murdered, heaven forbid. Just made comfortable until they die with all deliberate speed.”

That concern is no longer theoretical.

In 1996, writing about the Supreme Court’s consideration of physician-assisted suicide, Hentoff warned that once a state decides who shall die “for their own good,” there are “no absolute limits.” He cited medical leaders and disability advocates who feared that the poor, elderly, disabled, and chronically ill would become targets of a system that valued efficiency over longevity.

Today, data collected through wearables—heart rate, mood, mobility, compliance—can shape decisions about insurance, treatment, and life expectancy. How long before an algorithm quietly decided whose suffering is too expensive, whose needs are too inconvenient, or whose body no longer qualifies as worth saving?

This isn’t a left or right issue.

Dehumanization—the process of stripping individuals or groups of their dignity, autonomy, or moral worth—cuts across the political spectrum.

Today, dehumanizing language and policies aren’t confined to one ideology—they’re weaponized across the political divide. Prominent figures have begun referring to political opponents, immigrants, and other marginalized groups as “unhuman”—a disturbing echo of the labels that have justified atrocities throughout history.

As reported by Mother Jones, J.D. Vance endorsed a book by influencer Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec that advocates crushing “unhumans” like vermin.

This kind of rhetoric isn’t abstract—it matters.

How can any party credibly claim to be “pro‑life” when it devalues the humanity of entire groups, stripping them of the moral worth that should be fundamental to civil society?

When the state and its corporate allies treat people as data, as compliance issues, or as “unworthy,” they dismantle the very notion of equal human dignity.

In such a world, rights—including the right to bodily autonomy, health care, or even life itself—become privileges doled out only to the “worthy.”

This is why our struggle must be both political and moral. We can’t defend bodily sovereignty without defending every human being’s equal humanity.

The dehumanization of the vulnerable crosses political lines. It manifests differently—through budget cuts here, through mandates and metrics there—but the outcome is the same: a society that no longer sees human beings, only data points.

The conquest of physical space—our homes, cars, public squares—is nearly complete.

What remains is the conquest of inner space: our biology, our genetics, our psychology, our emotions. As predictive algorithms grow more sophisticated, the government and its corporate partners will use them to assess risk, flag threats, and enforce compliance in real time.

The goal is no longer simply to monitor behavior but to reshape it—to preempt dissent, deviance, or disease before it arises. This is the same logic that drives Minority Report-style policing, pre-crime mental health interventions, and AI-based threat assessments.

If this is the future of “health freedom,” then freedom has already been redefined as obedience to the algorithm.

We must resist the surveillance of our inner and outer selves.

We must reject the idea that safety requires total transparency, or that health requires constant monitoring. We must reclaim the sanctity of the human body as a space of freedom—not as a data point.

The push for mass adoption of wearables is not about health. It is about habituation.

The goal is to train us—subtly, systematically—to accept government and corporate ownership of our bodies.

We must not forget that our nation was founded on the radical idea that all human beings are created equal, “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

These rights are not granted by the government, the algorithm, or the market. They are inherent. They are indivisible. And they apply to all of us—or they will soon apply to none of us.

The Founders got this part right: their affirmation of our shared humanity is more vital than ever before.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the task before us is whether we will defend that humanity—or surrender it, one wearable at a time. Now is the time to draw the line—before the body becomes just another piece of state property.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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Trump continues to be seized by the delusional view that his Israeli-centred vision could all be accomplished merely by ending the genocide in Gaza.

The big issue emerging from the U.S.’ 22 June strike on Iran – second only to ‘wither Iran?’ – is whether in Trump’s calculus he can ‘rhetorically impose’ the having “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear programme claim long enough to both restrain Israel from hitting Iran again, yet still allow Trump to pursue his show-stopper headline, ‘WE WON: I’m in charge now and everybody is going to do what I tell them’.

These were the key conflicting issues that were to be hammered out with Netanyahu during his White House visit this week. Netanyahu’s interests essentially are for ‘more hot war’, and thus differ from the Trump ceasefire general stratagem.

Implicit in his ‘In-Boom-Out & Ceasefire’ Iran approach is that Trump may imagine he has created the space to resume his primary objective – that of instituting a broader Israeli-centric order across the Middle East, devolving upon trade deals, economic ties, investment and connectivity, to create a business-led West Asia, centred on Tel Aviv (with Trump as its de facto ‘President’).

And, via this ‘Business Super Highway’, to strike further beyond – with the Gulf States penetrating into BRICS’ south Asian heartland to disrupt BRICS connectivity and corridors.

The sine qua non for any jumpstart to a putative ‘Abraham Accords 2.0 of course – as Trump clearly understands – is an end to the Gaza War; the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza; and the Strip’s re-construction (none of which seems to be in realistic reach).

What emerges rather, is that Trump continues to be seized by the delusional view that his Israeli-centred vision could all be accomplished merely by ending the genocide in Gaza, but with the world watching aghast as Israel continues on a hegemonic military rampage across the region.

The most obvious flaw to the Trump premise is that a chastened Iran somehow has been achieved by Israeli and American strikes. It is the opposite. Iran has arisen more unified, resolute and defiant. Far from being relegated to watching passively from the sidelines, Iran now – in the wake of recent events – resumes its place as a leading regional power. One that is readying a possibly game-changing military riposte to any further strikes by either Israel or the U.S.

What is ignored in all these western claims of Israeli success, is that Israel chose to bet all on a surprise ‘shock and awe’ strike. One that would overturn the Islamic Republic at a stroke. It didn’t work: the strategic objective failed, and it produced the opposite outcome. But the more fundamental point is that the techniques used by Israel – that required months, if not years of preparation – cannot just be repeated again now that their stratagems have been fully exposed.

This White House misreading of the Iran reality signals that the Trump Team allowed themselves to be deceived by Israeli hubris in insisting that Iran was a house-of-cards, primed to collapse completely into paralysis upon the first taste of the Israeli sneak decapitation ‘muscle’ on 13 June.

This was a fundamental error – in a pattern of similar errors: That China would capitulate to the threat of imposed tariffs; that Russia could be coerced into a ceasefire against its interests; and that Iran would be ready to sign an unconditional surrender document in the face of Trump’s threats post-22 June.

What these U.S. blunders speak to – apart from a consistent divorce from geo-political realities – is western weakness masked behind hubris and bluster. The U.S. Establishment clings to its fading primacy; but in doing it so ineffectually, it has instead accelerated the formation of a potent geo-strategic alliance intent on defying the U.S.

The consequence has been the wake up call to other States occasioned by the western slide towards stratagems of outright lies and deceit: The ‘Spider Web’ operation against the Russian strategic bomber fleet on the eve of the Istanbul talks and the U.S.-Israeli sneak attack on Iran two days before the expected next round of U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks, have increased the will-to-resist by China, Russian and Iran particularly, but more generally it is felt across the Global South.

The entire complexion of this war to retain America’s dollar primacy has been irreversibly altered.

All are ‘on guard’ as they see evidence that, with the expectation of NATO’s defeat in Ukraine, the West is ramping up the new Cold War on many fronts: in the Baltic Sea; the Caucasus; the Iran periphery (via cyber attack), and of course via escalated financial war across the board. Trump is again threatening to sanction Iran and any State purchasing its oil. On Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would impose a new 10% tariff on “any country aligning themselves with the Anti-American policies of BRICS”.

Naturally, States are preparing against this escalation. Tensions are rising everywhere.

Azerbaijan (and even Armenia) are being weaponised against Russia and Iran by NATO powers and Turkey. Azerbaijan was used to facilitate Israeli drones launched into Iran, and its airspace was used too by Israeli aircraft to circle into the Caspian Sea in order for Israel to launch stand-off cruise missiles from Azeri airspace over the Caspian Sea at Tehran.

Iraqi Kurdistan, Kazakhstan and the Baluchi borderlands have been used as platforms to infiltrate sabotage units into both Russia and Iran to pre-position missiles and drones and sabotage units for asymmetric warfare.

On the other flank of this escalating war, Trump is racing to land a string of ‘trade’ agreements across the Pacific, including with Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. The aim being to build ‘a cage’ of special higher tariffs around China’s ability to use ‘trans-shipments’ – that is goods imported into other States from China, which are then re-exported to America.

The U.S. set the precedent via Vietnam, with a 40% tariff on trans-shipments that is precisely double the 20% levy on Vietnamese-made goods.

Except that Trump’s ‘shock and awe’ strategy of imposing tariffs to regain industrial activity and to keep the rest of the world subject to dollar hegemony is not working: First Trump was forced to announce a 90-day moratorium on Liberation Day Tariffs in the hope that 90 deals would be struck in the interim – yet only three ‘framework agreements’ were settled. So the Administration is now forced to extend the moratorium yet again (to 1 August). Bessent, U.S. Treasury Secretary, has said that many of the 90 states originally tariffed did not even try to contact the U.S. to work out a deal

The ability to financially punish people for not doing what the U.S. says is drawing to a close. The alternative to the dollar network exists. And it is not a ‘new reserve currency’.

The alternative is the solution envisaged by China: a fusion of Fintech retail payment platforms with banking and Central Banking digital frameworks, based on block-chain and other digital technologies. (The U.S. cannot replicate this approach – as Silicon Valley and Wall Street are at war with each other, and won’t co-operate).

As Will Schryver noted wryly a couple of years ago —

“The empire’s seemingly endless string of hubris-driven blunders has rapidly accelerated the formation of what is quite arguably the single most potent military / economic / geostrategic alliance seen in modern times: the tripartite axis of Russia, China, and Iran …

“It has astoundingly managed to jump from the frying pan of a regional proxy war against Russia into the fire of a global conflict that all three of its steadily strengthening adversaries now view as existential”.

“In my considered opinion, this is almost certainly the single most inexplicable and portentous series of geopolitical blunders in recorded history”.

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

The post U.S. Hubris-Driven Blunders Transform the Entire Complexion of the Wider War appeared first on LewRockwell.

After Donald Trump embarrassed himself by berating a reporter with “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” it seemed likely that he would flip flop and say something to encourage his now disappointed base. But he did nothing of the sort. Instead, he took to Truth Social Media and produced an unfathomable rant.

The post deserves to be quoted extensively. “What’s going on with my ‘boys’ and, in some cases, ‘gals?’ They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein.” Trump proclaimed. “For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again. Why are we giving publicity to Files written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration, who conned the World with the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, 51 ‘Intelligence’ Agents, ‘THE LAPTOP FROM HELL,’ and more? They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called “friends” are playing right into their hands. Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files?”

Where do we begin to analyze such verbal legerdemain? We have come to expect the absurd boasts, and having a “PERFECT administration” fits in nicely with having the “strongest economy in history” and “most secure border in history.” Is the line about Epstein never dying an inside baseball remark, alluding to the fact that he is alive, as many believe? Trump now accuses Obama, Hillary, and the Biden administration of creating the Epstein files. If he believes that such things as Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” are more important, then why isn’t it being investigated by his Justice Department? He asks why the leftist “lunatics” didn’t release the “Epstein Files.” Which, of course, he, his attorney general, and the director of the FBI claim doesn’t exist. Trump insists that the FBI should be focused on investigating voter fraud, political corruption, and arresting “thugs and criminals.”

So, did Trump order Kash Patel and/or Pam Bondi to investigate voter fraud, particularly the dubious 2020 election? Who has been deposed? Who has been arrested? Why aren’t Comey and Hillary, at least, being prosecuted for “Russia! Russia! Russia!?” What Trump’s delusional, surrealist statement comes down to is a ridiculous defense of not investigating those who abused the young girls being trafficked by Epstein. Trumpenstein the actor is now being forced to play an even more buffoonish character, one who seemingly has zero awareness of how the MAGA faithful are viewing his recent statements, and his administration’s glaring acquiescence to that swamp he once promised to drain. He knows that we know he knows that he’s lying. He isn’t planning on looking into Hunter’s laptop any more than he is in reinvestigating 9/11 of the JFK assassination. Remember, not long ago, he revealed that he’d always thought Oswald acted alone. As he released the JFK files.

The “National Security State” requires as little information as possible be shared with the unwashed masses. Going back to the Nixon days, there have been constant battles about insiders “leaking” information. Yes, we cannot have the public learning about what we’re really doing. And so everyone in Washington, D.C. hates “leakers” as much as they hate whistleblowers. At least a few officials have dared to suggest that the likes of Assange and Snowden shouldn’t be prosecuted. The “leakers” have no defenders. If that all that sounds very much like what we were told went on in the Soviet Union back when they were the foreign hobgoblin of choice, you may be starting to get the picture. Imagine if they really audited the Pentagon. Imagine if they even just made the budgets of the intelligence agencies public. They’ve never been. And none of your “representatives” are demanding that they be disclosed.

If Jeffrey Epstein, dead or alive, had truly been investigated, and that notorious “list” of glittering celebrities been produced, it would have been the first such case of transparency in my lifetime. We’ve waited over sixty years to force the release of JFK assassination files, which were classified even though the government and the state controlled media assured us that it was the act of a lone, demented Marxist. Who couldn’t satisfy his wife, for good measure. The CIA claimed, at the end of 2024, to have released the last classified files from World War I. Countless files from World War II remain hidden from the public. Why? That was the “good war,” remember? What could we possibly have to hide about that? There are files related to Roswell, New Mexico that remain classified. You know, where something crashed in the desert in 1947. “Conspiracy theorists” say it was an alien craft. The government says it was just a harmless weather balloon, but is keeping things secret, anyhow.

From the time Richard Nixon first popularized the term “national security” to justify withholding information during Watergate, every politician has grown enamored with it. This includes all those elected officials who permitted the southern border to be a revolving door for over forty years now. Somehow, border security isn’t “national security.” And so, they don’t tell us the truth about anything. Pick your topic. POW-MIAs? Untold numbers of American soldiers were abandoned by the government that sent them into harm’s way, going back at least to the Korean War. I included a long section on this in my book Hidden History. It’s a disgrace that those who pressure us to “support the troops” didn’t rescue them after they’d been captured by the enemy. Both World Wars, October Surprise, Iran-Contra, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City- they lied about all of it. But if you persist in asking questions, if something isn’t classified, they’ll explain that it was “lost,” or accidentally destroyed.

That’s what happened to those intriguing videotapes and other evidence that the FBI found in a safe at Jeffrey Epstein’s stately New York home. They somehow lost it all. Well, to be fair, if NASA can lose the original footage from the first alleged trip to the moon, what can’t our government lose? There are still classified files on Area 51, which the government claimed didn’t exist for decades. They said the same thing about the yearly Bilderberg meetings of international elites, until the late great Jim Tucker started sneaking inside them. The FBI reluctantly responded to Freedom of Information Act requests from Wolfgang Halbig regarding the Sandy Hook incident, and their report is still classified. Why? It was cut and dry, wasn’t it? A demented kid, probably triggered by video games, and with an unfortunate access to guns, acted out of madness, didn’t he? Do we have to prosecute Alex Jones again?

in 2023, the FBI was ordered by a judge to release the information it had on the shooting of young Seth Rich, whom “conspiracy theorists” believe was Julian Assange’s source for leaking documents that incriminated the DNC in rigging the 2016 primaries against Bernie Sanders. They requested another sixty six years of classification instead. Remember, according to our “free press,” this was a random act, a murder that happened during an attempted robbery. Where nothing was stolen. And Rich’s family will threaten to sue those who ask too many questions. At any rate, if they aren’t going to tell the truth about the shooting of Seth Rich, you know they’re never going to disclose what really happened on 9/11. Okay, we admit it was an inside job. We put explosives in the buildings. We blew up Building 7 for good measure, and stole the gold from Building 6. Don’t threaten national security. We’re number one!

It doesn’t matter if someone like the “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey takes the precaution of saying publicly, as she did on Alex Jones’ show, that she would never commit suicide. She still did. Epstein’s most well known accuser, Virginia Giuffre, supposedly produced a “Deadman’s Trigger,” which was her final video, released after her death, in which she said, “HILLARY HELPED HIM ESCAPE. THE CLIENTS WALK FREE. THE VIDEOS ARE GONE.” Nobody is paying much attention to that. I guess “Deadman’s Triggers” aren’t as important as “conspiracy theorists” think. I’m confident that there is a government Hit Squad that we pay for, in some dark corner of one of our intelligence agencies. Maybe DOGE can get around to finding it, assuming they still exist. Elon Musk is gone, and now feuding with Trump. I remember fondly the early days of 2025, when we were finally learning about waste, fraud, and abuse.

Future President Gerald Ford once claimed that the motto of the Warren Commission he served on was “Truth is our only client.” It’s not possible for there to be a more inaccurate description of the “work” the Warren Commission produced. Our government, through its mouthpieces in the state controlled media, lies incessantly. They are a collective pathological liar. They cover up even when they don’t have to. It’s a “they hate our freedom” thing, you wouldn’t understand. So when the Trump Justice Department just cavalierly announced there was no Epstein List, it didn’t surprise some of us. But it did disappoint millions of MAGA supporters, who have clung to the belief that Donald Trump is different, despite anything he does, or doesn’t do. This billionaire is one of us. Instead of transparency, we got Alligator Alcatraz. Nothing quite sums up the Trumpenstein Project like Alligator Alcatraz.

Alligator Alcatraz is what has become of the “mass deportation” that was promised on “day one,” and hasn’t happened. Well, you have to admit that alligators are cool. Who wouldn’t get excited watching an alligator bite some illegal alien in half? I wonder if Mexico is going to pay for Alligator Alcatraz, like they didn’t pay for Trump’s big, beautiful wall. Big beautiful walls, big beautiful bills. You can’t say Trumpenstein isn’t big on hyperbole. “No new wars” has turned into “bomb, bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.” Trump is flailing, and failing on all points. I guess maybe blaming Pam Bondi for it might work. Scapegoating usually is successful. Poor Pam. Still amazingly hot and youthful at fifty nine, only to potentially be thrown under the Trumpenstein bus. But Trump seems loyal to blondes of all ages, and at least for now is defending her. Maybe it’s time to find a “sleeper cell” so we can get back to bombing Iran.

Trump has proven to be no different than the other Republicrats who have been such a disaster for the public they “represent.” He’s just wilder and crazier. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The majority of Americans have swallowed one whopper after another, for well over a century. They sent their boys “over there” to fight World War I, when no one even bothered to try to give any rationale for it. Later, they planted Victory Gardens. They watched Jack Ruby shoot Oswald on live television and went on with their lives. They bought the 9/11 fairy tale, and rolled over for the Patriot Act and the creation of the unconstitutional monstrosity Homeland Security Department. Homeland Security. National Security. Except for that southern border. That’s where the cheap labor is to be found. And now Trumpenstein wants to grant illegal farm workers, hotel workers, and restaurant workers amnesty. Only we can’t call it amnesty. Just another broken promise. And we’re surprised about Epstein?

Read the Whole Article

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On July 3 U.S. President Donald Trump had a phonecall with the Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation:

President Donald Trump revealed the details of his conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

Trump told reporters before he boarded Air Force One for an “America 250” rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, “We had a call, it was a pretty long call, we talked about a lot of things, including Iran. We also talked about the war with Ukraine.”

Trump shook his head and said, “I’m not happy about that,” as the president remarked about the ongoing war he hoped to quickly end.

“No, I didn’t make any progress with him today,” Trump said when asked about a potential deal with Putin to end the Russian offensive in Ukraine.

Trump wanted to pause the war In Ukraine while Putin sees an advantage for Russian troops in the field and wants to continue the war until its root cause, the NATO march towards Russia, is eliminated.

Trump could not get his will. He was also under pressure from neoconservative parts of Congress to commit the U.S. to a longer war against Russia. They asked for shipping more weapons to Ukraine and for penalties against countries which continue to buy oil and gas from Russia.

Yesterday Trump gave in and decided (archived) to give another try to his predecessors failed Ukraine policy :

President Trump said he would help Europe speed more weapons to Ukraine and warned Russia that if it did not agree to a peace deal within 50 days, he would impose a new round of punishing sanctions.

Speaking from the Oval Office, where he met with NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte​, Mr. Trump said the weapons would be “quickly distributed to the battlefield.” He also threatened to impose secondary sanctions, which are penalties imposed on other countries or parties that trade with nations under sanctions.

“I’m disappointed in President Putin, because I thought we would have had a deal two months ago, but it doesn’t seem to get there,” Mr. Trump said.

“It’s just the way it is,” he added. “I hope we don’t have to do it.”

Several additional Patriot air defense missile systems are supposed to be given to Ukraine by NATO countries which would buy new ones when the U.S. is able to deliver them (archived):

Mr. Trump said the United States would sell those arms to European nations, which would ship them to Ukraine or use them to replace weapons they send to the country from their existing stocks.

But Pentagon officials said later that many details were still being worked out.

It is doubtful that new Patriot batteries will help against Russian swarm attacks each with several hundreds of drones and missiles. There is also a severe lack of munitions for these system with new production of Patriot missiles per year still being lower than the monthly consumption in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Trump did not specify what additional weapons and how many of them would be delivered to Ukraine (archived):

What Trump didn’t talk about is that the military assistance might also include authorization for some powerful new offensive weapons. I’m told by a source involved in the decision that this is likely to include permission to use the 18 long-range ATACMS missiles now in Ukraine at their full range of 300 kilometers (about 190 miles). That wouldn’t reach all the way to Moscow or St. Petersburg, but it would strike military bases, airfields and supply depots deep inside Russia that are now out of range. The package might also include more ATACMS.
…
Trump also considered sending Tomahawk cruise missiles, the same weapons fired against Iranian targets last month. If fired from Ukraine, these could hit Moscow and St. Petersburg, and they were included in discussion as late as Friday. But the Tomahawks are off the delivery list for now, I’m told. They could be deployed later if Trump wants even more leverage.

Trump’s determination to squeeze Putin was conveyed in a conversation last week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a source told me. Trump asked Zelensky why he didn’t hit Moscow. “We can if you give us the weapons,” Zelensky said. Trump said Ukraine needed to put more pressure on Putin, not just Moscow but St. Petersburg, too.

ATACMS are an old story. In the overall balance these ‘wonder weapons’ had little effect so far.

Tomahawks are a no-no because they can be nuclear armed. Russia’s strategic defense would have to consider any ongoing Tomahawk attack on Moscow or Petersburg to be a nuclear decapitation strike and act accordingly. The U.S. is unlikely to risk a Russian counterstrike with nuclear weapons.

Trump’s sanction threat against buyers of Russian hydrocarbons is not taken seriously (archived):

[E]xperts doubted the credibility of Mr. Trump’s threat to impose 100 percent tariffs on Russia’s trading partners if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia did not agree to a cease-fire within 50 days.

The scale of China’s mutual trade with Russia — nearly $250 billion per year, including huge oil imports — means that delivering on the threat would throw Mr. Trump into a showdown with Beijing. Analysts said it was unlikely that Mr. Trump would risk a renewed confrontation with the world’s second-largest economy over Ukraine, a country whose fate he has long said is not vital to the United States.

Mr. Trump is also notorious for setting deadlines that he does not enforce, raising questions about whether he will act if the 50-day timer he has set for Mr. Putin expires.

The neoconservative editors of the Washington Post are not convinced that the policy change (if this even is one) will lead to significant changes.

They ask the right questions to then pressure for more measure without regarding the consequences for the U.S. (archived):

But what if Putin refuses to make peace and sticks with his maximalist demands for a dismembered Ukraine under Russia’s thumb? Is Trump ready to ramp up the pressure? Will he sustain the arms shipments once the stockpiles run dry? Will he seize billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets? Will he try to crack down on the shadow tanker fleet that moves Russian oil? And will he follow through on his secondary sanctions threat, with its potentially vast implications for trade with countries such as China and India?

The war against Ukraine has already persisted for far too long, with horrific casualty tolls on both sides. It will only end when Putin realizes he has nothing more to gain, and much more to lose, the longer it goes on. The arms shipments to Ukraine might bring that realization closer. More pressure can bring that day closer still. Now that Trump has issued his ultimatum, he needs to make clear to Putin he means what he says.

In late 2021 Russia issued its demands in form of treaty outlines with the U.S. and NATO. They were disregarded by the U.S.. The war is a consequence of that.

Russia has the means to continue the war until those demands are met. Meanwhile Ukraine is running out of – not weapons but soldiers.

How long will it take for the editors to understand that it is Putin who has the trump cards in this game?

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

The post Trump Delivers Next Nothingburger to Ukraine appeared first on LewRockwell.

Since early 2022, more than three years ago, my theme has been that Russian President Putin’s unwillingness or inability to bring the conflict with Ukraine to a quick end will result in an ever-widening war culminating in a major conflagration far beyond Donbas and Ukraine.  It was obvious to me, but not to Putin and to my critics, that by refusing to use sufficient force to end the conflict Putin was guaranteeing the increased participation of Washington and NATO in the conflict.  Over the years of the conflict I have provided numerous updates on “The Ever-widening War.”

The war has widened into an attack on Russian strategic forces and recent talk of providing Ukraine with missiles to attack Moscow.  According to news reports, Europe is preparing for war with Russia.  The conflict has already gone far beyond Donbas. The point of a major conflagration cannot be far off.  One Russian commentator says “World War III has already begun.”

Putin, and as far as I can tell, few  in Russia understand the Zionist neoconservatives doctrine of American hegemony.  It seems that Putin has never heard of the three decades old Wolfowitz doctrine. Putin himself admits that he has only now understood the situation that confronts Russia.  As John Helmer reports:

“Putin has just admitted this in a television interview on July 14.  “I thought that the contradictions with the West were primarily ideological,” he said. “It seemed logical at the time – Cold War inertia, different views of the world, values, the organization of society. But even when the ideology disappeared, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the same, almost routine deviation from Russia’s interests continued. And it was not because of ideas [ideology], but because of the pursuit of advantages – geopolitical, economic, strategic. The world respects only those who can protect themselves. Until we show that we are an independent and sovereign power that stands behind our interests, there will be no room for anyone to treat us as equals.” See this and this.

But American hegemony is an ideology and remains the basis of US foreign policy.  Moreover, Putin  has demonstrated that his red lines are meaningless.  Consequently, there are no constraints on the widening of the conflict.

President Trump, stopped by the Ruling Establishment from his domestic agenda, has turned to foreign affairs where he can remain in the limelight by bullying other countries to conform to his edicts.  He has now given Putin 50 days to comply.

To comply with what?  With Zelensky’s demands?  What is the agreement for which Trump demands Putin’s consent?  As the conflict is between Washington and Russia, the agreement has to be made by Trump and Putin.  Putin has made it clear that the agreement must deal with “the root cause” of the conflict, which is the absence of a mutual security agreement.  But if Washington is set on hegemony, there can be no mutual security agreement.

Here is the real situation:  Two heavily nuclear armed governments are both in denial of reality.  Putin and Lavrov are governed by their illusion that the difference between Russia and the West can be resolved through words.  Washington is dangerous because the Zionist neoconservative doctrine of American hegemony is institutionalized.

To avoid the brewing conflagration, all Washington and the EU need to do is to agree with Russia to a mutual security treaty.  Russia only wants threats off its borders.  Russia has no territorial ambitions unless Russia is  driven to them by security threats.  Trump wants America to make money.  How does America make money when US aggression cuts the West off from the majority of the world?  The only reason for BRICS is Washington’s hostility to Russia, China, and Iran.

The dilemma is that the US weapons industry is too powerful for peace.

The post The Conflict in Ukraine Is Widening Out of Control appeared first on LewRockwell.

The rise in turbo cancers is often solely attributed to the release of the mRNA gene therapy clot shot (AKA as a “COVID vaccine”) in late 2020. But could there be a less obvious reason for the surge in aggressive tumours?

While Paul Leendertse agrees that injecting poison into your body is about as wise as stabbing yourself with a knife, he has another theory as to why the shots are causing so much cancer. Paul is the founder of the Root Cause Institute and claims to have been reversing cancer in clients by identifying and releasing emotional tension in the body.

In this interview with the Breaking Free Podcast, Leendertse explains how the scamdemic caused an awful lot of emotional tension in people’s bodies. He jokingly described that the public health “protocol” was to “start fighting with your neighbour and telling them they have to keep you safe.”

In the same interview, Leendertse says the last five years have been ripe with incessant guilting, shaming, screaming, fighting, blaming, flaming, judging, name-calling, labelling and fear-mongering around the so-called virus, the lockdowns, the social distancing, the masks and the shots.

In an interview with Jason Christoff, he proposes that many (if not most) people who rolled up their sleeves for this untested experimental vaccine did so out of fear or guilt (not science). He argues that the emotional stress of your government and neighbours coercing and guilting you into taking a dangerous injection may have been more cancer-inducing than the toxic spike protein itself.

In this webinar, Paul explains his theory that a tumour is a fungal infection that develops in an area of the body that has died due to a lack of blood flow. The fungus is eating the resulting dead cells. This lack of blood flow is caused by emotional stress. Different emotional stresses affect different areas of the brain, which are neurologically connected to different areas of the body.

This theory regarding blood vessel constriction would support another purely physical reason why people who’ve been jabbed with the mRNA vaccines are experiencing turbo cancers. Study after study has shown that the shot causes clots to form in the bloodstream — ranging from microclots to meter-long strings of calamari-like blockages.

For example, a new survey from the Tennessee Funeral Directors Association Annual Convention, shows that 75% of embalmers in Canada, US, Australia and the UK have seen “white fibrous clots” in 20% of their corpses.

Needless to say, clots reduce blood circulation. This would then only intensify the pre-existing constriction in the emotionally stressed-out parts of the body and brain, resulting in faster cell death and a more rapidly growing fungal tumour.

Without the shots, many of these people may have still developed cancers. But start clogging up their bloodstream with “white fibrous clots” and the cancer-causing contractions in the body are intensified, resulting in turbo cancers.

For more on Paul Leendertse’s nuanced theory about the connection between the pandemic theatre and the rise in turbo cancers since 2020, you can watch his free two-hour webinar “The Root Cause of Turbo Cancers” over at the Root Cause Institute’s website.

The post Emotional Blocks + White Fibrous Clots = Rapid Tumour Growth? appeared first on LewRockwell.

We’ve all seen the headlines about America becoming a majority non-Christian country someday. Though we are encouraged by recent waves of conversion, we all know people who have lost their faith. We read that “while most Catholics have remained within the religious fold, a significant number have left the Catholic faith: 15 percent of the U.S. population says they were raised Catholic but no longer identify as such.” Professor Ryan Burge notes that Catholics have the worst “retention gap,” compared to other faith groups in America, among Gen Z: “For people born in 2000, 45% of them were raised Catholic. But only 28% still identify as Catholic.”

Understanding the reasons people give may help us to save souls. The stated reason for falling away may not be the real one, but something can still be drawn from the offered answers. Looking at multiple surveys from different sources at different times and in different countries can give us insight into the loss of faith or decline in Mass attendance—because the same issues keep coming up.

As a threshold matter, we need to understand what we are losing Catholics to. Our people are turning to nothing—becoming “nones.” It is not Islam or Protestantism (except maybe in parts of Latin America) that is poaching the faithful. In surveying teens 20 years ago, Professor Christian Smith found that among the third that lost their faith: “There were small losses to Protestantism and other religions but the biggest loss was the 20% that went to nonreligious. More than twice as many were sucked into nonreligious than into Protestantism.” Smith conducted the National Study of Youth and Religion, surveying thousands of teens and following up with them, noting that respondents often gave “quite vague reasons for losing their religion.” Some teens reported skepticism/disbelief (32 percent) while others “just stopped attending services” (12 percent) or had life disruption (10 percent).

In a 2016 survey, the Public Religion Research Institute identified several causes for disaffiliation from religion:

The reasons Americans leave their childhood religion are varied, but a lack of belief in teaching of religion was the most commonly cited reason for disaffiliation. Among the reasons Americans identified as important motivations in leaving their childhood religion are: they stopped believing in the religion’s teachings (60%), their family was never that religious when they were growing up (32%), and their experience of negative religious teachings about or treatment of gay and lesbian people (29%). 

While LGBTQ+ issues are often singled out in these surveys, it really seems like a subset of not believing in a religion’s teaching. PRRI also broke this out for Catholics:

Notably, those who were raised Catholic are more likely than those raised in any other religion to cite negative religious treatment of gay and lesbian people (39% vs. 29%, respectively) and the clergy sexual-abuse scandal (32% vs. 19%, respectively) as primary reasons they left the Church. 

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University conducted the National Poll of Young Catholics in 2020. The survey asked about their reasons for missing Mass pre-pandemic, with the option to select multiple reasons from a list. These included practical reasons (e.g., 57 percent cited a busy schedule) and theological (e.g., 43 percent said they were not very religious). Ten percent indicated they missed Mass because they were divorced or married outside of the Church. “Seventy-three percent of respondents agree ‘somewhat’ or ‘strongly’ that they can be a good Catholic without going to Mass every Sunday.” Clergy abuse is also mentioned among reasons for not being involved in parish life.

The Pillar’s more recent survey, and Brendan Hodge’s wise analysis, continues to pay dividends. The Pillar asked respondents: “If at some point you ceased to attend religious services regularly (for a year or longer) why did you do so?” The results “were a mix of theological issues and practical ones.” The top reason (20 percent) was moving away from their church, while others also mentioned moving away from family (17 percent). Of course, others listed theological reasons (attending church doesn’t matter at 19 percent, change in beliefs at 14 percent, etc.) and, again, behavior of religious leaders (11 percent), which must certainly include the abuse scandals.

America is not the only country losing its religion. Western Europe has grown notoriously secular. In asking why people disaffiliated from their faith, the Pew Research Center notes that:

Majorities also report disagreeing with religious positions on social issues, like homosexuality and abortion, as a reason they no longer identify with a religion. And at least half of respondents in several countries, especially in predominantly Catholic ones, cite church scandals. 

This includes 58 percent reporting that they did not agree with their religion’s position on social issues, 54 percent indicating they did not believe in the religion’s teachings, and 53 percent being unhappy with the scandals. Gradually shifting away from the religion, which seems to capture a number of concerns, was the top selection.

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“All roads lead to Rome” – British writer Geoffrey Chaucer, 1391
“All roads lead to London” – Alex Krainer, author of Grand Deception

In 1776, the colonies of America declared their independence from Great Britain and subsequently won their freedom by the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.  But through the inveigling of British banks, the private British-owned “American National Banks” and the 1913 private Federal Bank Reserve System, America was covertly absorbed back into servility and subjugation to Britain. America won the battles but lost the war, but you won’t find this in any adopted college history book.

The exception is historian Carroll Quigley’s two books Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (1966), and The Anglo-American Establishment (1981), without which we would not have any record of the financial and political subjugation of the US to 33 members of the secret society started in London around 1890 by Cecil Rhodes. This cabal was known as The Milner Group controlled by the Cecil Family and was comprised of many British elite families (Rothschild, Viscount, Baron, Balfour, Astor, etc.). This secret society, together with foundations established by the collaborating American “Robber Barons” the Rockefellers, Carnegie, Morgans, Vanderbilts, Gould, Astor etc., controlled the curriculum and content of American history in high schools and colleges.  New PHD’s in history were required to go to London as part of their training (Rhodes Scholarship).  As George Orwell famously wrote in his classic sci-fi novel of totalitarianism titled 1984”, “those who control the past, control the future”.  The main tool of propaganda is academic history along with religion. Quigley’s books were marginalized and thus the American public were left in the dark without a clue.

Banker’s Un-Civil War

By 1865 British banks provoked the Civil War and funded both sides to reap the profits that cost of 500,000 American lives. Britain tried to break the US into two vassal states by the US Civil War.

London-based Karl Marx wrote letters to Pres. Abraham Lincoln hoping to radicalize him into creating a class revolution. Marx and Friedrich Engels returned the correspondence with Lincoln and a Communist Union Army officer during the Civil War (see Andrew Zimmerman, The Civil War in the United States, 2016). In Howard Jones’ book Union in Peril: The Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War (1992), the British considered the Union’s anti-slavery position as a hypocritical attempt to stir up slave revolts to salvage the war for the North. So, slavery as a cause of the war was a British invention to portray the Union as the moral high ground in the war. But why did devoted Marxists and socialists support Lincoln who was funded by, and was an advocate for, Northern industrialists unless perhaps Marxism was a cover for London banking interests? We were all taught the Civil War was fought over slavery, but Abe Lincoln’s wife and many Union army generals and landowners also owned slaves. Lincoln wrote: “My paramount objective is to save the Union, not to save or destroy slavery”.

For an example of modern British propaganda advancing the erroneous historical revisionism that the Civil War was fought against slavery see London-based historian Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War, 2010. Foreman’s book is a sort of “chick flick” version of the epic novel and Hollywood propaganda movie “Gone with the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell that perpetuated the notion of slavery as the just cause of the war. However, an unsung historical novel written during the Civil War era by southerner John B. Jones, Secession, Coercion and Civil War, The Story of 1861, was never made into a Hollywood movie and told the story about secession.

Divide and Conquer 

The main strategy of London was “divide and conquer” which continues domestically to this day with the Democrat and Republican parties and globally with the Middle East conflicts (Israel versus the so-called Islamic Terrorists). This is why the Founding Fathers warned about political factions because they create false ideological dialectics of good guy/bad guy that keep people enslaved by fighting with each other.

London’s Catalyzed World Wars 

London bankers fomented WWI as a war to prevent Germany from forming an alliance with Russia against any coalition that could challenge the then British Empire. They politically constructed Israel in 1948 to preserve London banking dominance (hegemony) over oil producing states and world trade routes.  The Russian Revolution, WWI and WWII, were falsely touted as ideological wars against undemocratic Monarchy, Capitalism, Communism and Nazism.  The Suez Canal was built by the French in 1869 and in 1875 the Rothschild family advanced 4 million pounds to Britain to buy it. It took US Pres. Eisenhower to stop Israel, France and Britain from taking over the Suez Canal in 1956.

London banks and the Freemasons assigned a handler, Friedrich Eckart, to Austrian Adolph Hitler to groom him to be the future German Chancellor to wage war against Russia (see Guido Preparata, Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich and Destroyed Europe, 2023). It is often said that all world wars are banker’ s wars. But what needs to be clarified is that they have been wars precipitated by the bank of London.  After the decline of the British Colonial Empire after WWII, Britain was no longer a military power but continued stealthily disintegrating the US into a finance-dependent colony with the puppet presidents and legislators we have today, of which there is little awareness by the American public principally due to their control of the mass media and education.

The Jacksonian Era and the Anti-Masonic Party Movement

Except for an 80-year period when Pres. Andrew Jackson ousted the British bankers by cancelling the charter of the Second National Bank, America has been effectually governed by a small secret society of bankers in the sovereign city of London. It was during the Jacksonian era that the Anti-Masonic Party movement (1827-1840) gained momentum as an “organization of the people against a secret society…of the Masonic Empire” (i.e., the British Empire) which, again, escaped the history books – see Charles McCarthy, The Anti-Masonic Party, 1903.

All Presidential Assassinations were Facilitated by London

Although all presidents since 1913 were keenly aware of the London connection, those presidents who resisted London’s clandestine rule were assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, JFK along with RFK and JFK Jr.) or were subjected to an attempted assassination (Reagan, Trump).  Minnesota Congressman Charles Lindbergh led the fight against the private London based American Federal Reserve Bank system, but in 1932 his 1-year-old son and wife were kidnapped and his son murdered by an immigrant. Copies of Lindberg’s book “Why Is Your Country at War and What Happens to You After the War” were burned by Federal agents along with the contents of his home office.

American Marxist Sociology of Power Elites Omitted London

Trotskyite Marxist American sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote The Power Elite, in 1965. In 1967 sociologist William Domhoff wrote Who Rules America, 1967. Both used Marxist social class analysis propounding that the Capitalist corporate ownership ruled America, omitting any consideration of London bankers. Marxism was propaganda paid for by British industrialists in London in the mid 1800’s.  Marxism was used by British bankers to instigate the Russian Revolution, the Gulags and the Ukrainian Holodomor genocide for depopulation (see Richard Pope, How the British Invented Communism and Blamed It on the Israelis, 2024). Former Communist turned pretend conservative James Burnham, whose parents migrated to the US from Britain, wrote The Managerial Revolution in 1941, falsely blaming the corporate managerial class for America’s “suicide”, not “homicide” by the bank of London.

The ‘Deep State’ is a Mysterious Scapegoat

In his first term in office, Trump was surrounded by the mysterious “Deep State”, which wasn’t deep nor comprised of bureaucracies as much as it was by a small British secret society. Since the 1930’s Communists, with dual Israeli citizenship (not ordinary Israelis) as their clandestine foot soldiers, infiltrated the US State Department. Whitaker Chambers defected from the Communist Party and blew open this infiltration with his “pumpkin patch” microfilm spy evidence that spawned anti-Communist McCarthyism (Whitaker Chambers, Witness, 1952). But infiltration persisted and has grown so absurd that the entire Congress of the US is currently run by the London bribery system through its proxy, the Israel lobby.

COVID Created Suspicion About Who Rules American Politics

This is why it was taken for granted for so long that American institutions reflected reality, unaware that effectually mainline American institutions were controlled by London. This lasted up until 2020 when the COVID crisis started to make Americans suspicious that mass spectacles (e.g., 9/11, Weapons of Mass Destruction, COVID, etc.), movies (Gone with the Wind), novels (J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye) and even domestic policies (e.g., vaccinations and germ theory, chemotherapy, fluoride, food genetics, etc.) were malevolent. Even though COVID vaccinations were an intentionally spotty but murderous failure, it was not disclosed that the World Health Organization was run by its London banking partners.

American Evangelical Christians Were ‘Born-Again” in London

A large segment of Americans (70 million), mainly Evangelical Christians, have swallowed the war propaganda of London hook, line and sinker about the Ukraine, Palestine-Gaza, and Iran wars as they have been mentally programmed by their own leaders and twisted scriptures to consider Israeli’s as “God’s chosen moral people”. This was accomplished partly through infiltrators into Evangelicalism (John Hagey, Tim Keller, and eschatologist Hal Lindsey who in 1974 co-authored The Coming Russian Invasion of Israel). They took their inspiration from London-based Bible translator John Darby and his Plymouth Brethren and Massachusetts Pilgrims, who shrewdly substituted Dispensationalism and Zionism for historical Christianity (see Sean Durbin, Righteous Gentiles: Religion, Identity and Myth in John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, 2018).

Alex Krainer on the London Connection

Again, the American public don’t have a clue about the role of London banks and the British Free Masonry secret society. As former president Richard Nixon said: “The American people don’t believe anything until they see it on television”.  A possible current exception is alternative media such as Alex Krainer, a commodities trader in Monaco who formerly went to school in the US, and his online videos and Substack page (https://alexkrainer.substack.com). Recently, retired US Army Lt. Colonel and libertarian Karen Kwiatkowski, among others, have been facilitating Krainer getting his messaging exposed to more Americans about the London connection. Krainer’s book Grand Deception (2018) describes how the Russian-American friendship was scrubbed from history.

The Erased US-Russian Alliance

Krainer explains how America has had its historical alliance with Russia erased from their history. In 1809 Russia and the US initiated friendly relations around mutual interests so as not be held hostage to the British Empire. US Ambassador to Russia John Quincy Adams had 33 meetings with the Russian emperor Alexander I. When Britain, France and the colonial Ottoman Empire attacked Russia in the Crimean War from 1853-1856, the US supported Russia but did not intervene (Crimea is a peninsula in the Black Sea in southern Ukraine). Sound familiar? In 1863, Russia sent its imperial navy fleet to New York and San Francisco for six months with authorization to fight the navies of Britain and France with the US Navy at Pres. Lincoln’s command during the Civil War. This was only because Britain, France and the Vatican were mainly funding the Confederacy, not to support Southern slavery. It was a balance of power issue to the Russians, not necessarily a pro-slavery or anti-secession issue. Russia joined Lincoln in opposing the power of the London bankers who had pushed through the passage of the oppressive US National Banking Act. Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Boothe, was hired by international bankers, but once again evidence of this was expunged from public records. Historian Carroll Quigley stated that Britain’s objective was:

“nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands to dominate the political system of each country…in feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, …meetings and conferences” (page 20).

Lincoln violated arrest abuse laws, refused to release imprisoned newspaper anti-war reporters in opposition to a Supreme Court order, and fought a “total war” of rape, pillage and destruction against even civilians in the South in his unnecessary attempt to “save the union” (see Thomas DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: His Unnecessary War, 2003). Lincoln didn’t want to go into bondage to British bankers who opposed his issuance of “greenback” dollars to finance the war instead of depending on foreign bank loans. But at what price was the phony emancipation from slavery or British banks achieved?  Former slaves were not integrated into the economy until 100 years later, mostly through professional sports run by billionaire “owners,” proving the war was not about slavery. The Civil War morphed the federal government from a republic into a cloaked foreign banker’s oligarchy sold to the public as “democracy”, just as the assassination of Caesar replaced the Roman Republic with a tax farming empire dependent on perpetual wars to give soldiers farmland for their retirements (see Jim O’Reilly, Capitalism as Oligarchy: 5,000 years of Diversion and Suppression, 2015).

London bankers fomented the Russian Revolution and Communism, as well as WWI and WWII, to keep Russia from uniting economically with Germany or the US against the British Empire. This culminated with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s infamous “Russia, Russia, Russia” bogus accusations of Russian election interference in collaboration with rival Donald Trump before the 2016 presidential election. This put a wedge between Russia and the US to smear Trump. Clinton’s opposition research was conducted by Fusion GPS, which farmed out the work to Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer.

Like every banking family in western history, from the Sadducee money changers and Herod tax farmers of ancient Jerusalem to the Medici’s in 15th century Italy, the money oligarchs stay out of the limelight and use well remunerated priests, popes, rabbis, anti-heresy theologians, proxies, unwitting mercenary armies, historians, scientists, and media personalities as their false fronts. But all roads lead to London.

Which begs the question: is a plausible reason the Jeffrey Epstein tapes cannot be released is they are somehow connected to London banks? Epstein’s partner was British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell whose father, Robert Maxwell, was a naturalized Britain and alleged Mossad Intelligence triple agent spy.

The post How All Roads Lead to London appeared first on LewRockwell.

You should have these.

When a crisis hits, whether it’s a natural disaster, economic collapse, or something else, store shelves empty fast.

People panic, and the essentials vanish in hours. If you want to be ready, you need to stockpile the right items now, before the rush.

Below, I’ve listed 10 things that disappear first during emergencies, along with tips on where to find them affordably and how to store them properly.

Scarcity creates urgency, so let’s dive in and talk about what you need to prioritize.

1. Non-Perishable Food

Why it disappears

Food is the first thing people grab when a crisis looms.

Canned goods, pasta, rice, and freeze-dried meals fly off shelves as everyone scrambles to secure calories.

What to stock

Focus on shelf-stable staples like canned beans, vegetables, fruits, and meats (think tuna or chicken). Rice and dried lentils are cheap and last years. Freeze-dried meals or MREs are great for long-term storage.

Sourcing tips

Buy in bulk at warehouse stores like Costco or Sam’s Club for deals on rice, beans, and canned goods. Dollar stores often have canned food for under $1.

Storage advice

Keep food in a cool, dry place, ideally below 70°F.

Use airtight containers for rice and grains to prevent pests. Rotate your stock by eating and replacing items to keep them fresh.

Aim for at least a 30-day supply per person.

2. Water Filters

Why it disappears

Clean water becomes a priority when taps run dry or get contaminated. Portable water filters and purification tablets sell out fast.

What to stock

Get a high-quality portable filter like a Sawyer Mini or LifeStraw.

Purification tablets or a gravity-fed system like a Berkey are also solid choices.

Sourcing tips

Sawyer Minis are around $20 on Amazon or at outdoor stores like REI.

Purification tablets are cheap at Walmart, Amazon or camping supply websites.

For larger systems, check Berkey’s website for discounts or eBay for used units in good condition.

Storage advice

Store filters in their original packaging in a dry place. Keep tablets in a waterproof container.

Test your filter before a crisis to ensure it works, and have a backup for redundancy.

3. Medical Supplies

Why it disappears

Pharmacies get cleaned out when people worry about injuries or illness without access to hospitals. Bandages, antiseptics, and medications go first.

What to stock

Build a robust first-aid kit with bandages, gauze, antiseptic wipes, burn cream, and pain relievers. Include prescription meds (talk to your doctor about extra supplies). Don’t forget basics like thermometer, tweezers, and gloves.

Sourcing tips

Dollar stores have bandages and antiseptics for cheap. Buy generic over-the-counter meds at Walmart or CVS during sales.

Storage advice

Store in a waterproof, portable container in a cool, dry spot.

Check expiration dates yearly and replace as needed. Keep a list of contents to stay organized.

4. Batteries

Why it disappears

Power outages make batteries critical for flashlights, radios, and devices. AA and AAA batteries are the first to go.

What to stock

Stock up on AA, AAA, and D batteries, plus any specific sizes for your devices.

Rechargeable batteries with a solar charger are a smart long-term option.

Sourcing tips

Buy bulk packs at Costco or Amazon for the best price per battery.

Look for sales around holidays.

Solar chargers are affordable on sites like Goal Zero or Amazon, starting at $30.

Storage advice

Store batteries in their original packaging in a cool, dry place. Avoid extreme heat to prevent leakage.

Check expiration dates and test devices periodically.

5. Fuel

Why it disappears

Gas stations shut down or run dry during crises. People hoard fuel for generators, vehicles, or heating.

What to stock

Gasoline, propane, and kerosene are key. Get enough for your car, generator, or camp stove. Stabilized gasoline lasts longer.

Sourcing tips

Buy fuel cans on Amazon, at Home Depot or Walmart (5-gallon cans are around $15). Purchase fuel stabilizer at auto stores for under $10. Propane tanks are cheapest at hardware stores or gas exchanges.

Storage advice

Store fuel in approved containers in a well-ventilated, cool area away from your home (like a shed).

Use stabilizer to extend gasoline life up to a year. Rotate stock every 6-12 months. Follow local laws on storage limits.

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Thanks, John  Frahm.

News Target

The post Health Ranger Report: Gerald Celente warns of ECONOMIC TURMOIL looming over America appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Johnny Kramer. 

Gateway Pundit

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