Lew Rockwell Institute

The joint-leader of President Trump’s transition team, Howard Lutnick, confirmed that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will have a key position on the transition team of a second Trump administration, should the former president win a historic non-contiguous second term.

As reported in The Hill and The Financial Times, Lutnick said that transition team members will be selected based on their loyalty to the former president.

Lutnick, who is leading the transition team with former Small Business Administration head Linda McMahon, has named Kennedy an honorary member of that team alongside vice presidential nominee, Senator J.D. Vance, and former Democratic Representative and Army National Guard veteran, Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., will also be on the transition team.

If Trump wins, Kennedy will occupy an unprecedented position as a major independent policy maker and political leader in a Republican administration.

Kennedy has spoken at length about his private discussions with Trump, specifically around the Kennedy-led Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. Kennedy wants all Americans to be able to afford a healthier lifestyle and food choices. He has also said that President Trump will hold pharmaceutical companies to account in an administration in which Kennedy will play a vital role.

Kennedy has also said Trump is committed to policies to restore and strengthen the First Amendment, which has come under attack from the Biden administration, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her running mate Governor Tim Walz.

In addition, Kennedy told talk show host Tucker Carlson that he would be responsible for eliminating “corruption” from agencies such as the FDA, NIH, and the CDC.

This originally appeared on The Kennedy Beacon.

The post Confirmed: Kennedy to Play Leadership Role on Trump Transition Team appeared first on LewRockwell.

Americans who pay attention are critical of Israel for its control not only of US foreign policy but also US domestic policies, such as those regulating speech, and even tenure decisions of Catholic universities. CIA personnel have complained that attempts to rein-in Israeli spying on America have been politically blocked. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, reveal Israel’s power over America.

It is hard to see it any other way when American universities, such as Harvard, prevent students from protesting Israel’s genocide of Palestine, and when in the middle of the genocide, the US Congress shows its support for the genocide by inviting Israeli prime minister Netanyahu to address Congress and reward his war crimes with 53 standing ovations. How can Washington be any more subservient to Israel than that?

The visible evidence indicates that Israel controls America, not America controls Israel. But there is another view. It is well stated here by Michael Hudson and Richard Wolfe. Gilbert Doctorow shares it.

Hudson and Wolfe are credible witnesses, because they, especially Hudson, participated in the formation of Washington’s policy to use and direct Israel in behalf of US hegemony in the Middle East. Israel is Washington’s proxy against the Muslims, just as Ukrainians are Washington’s proxy against Russia, just as Georgians were when Washington sent them to invade South Ossetia, and just as the British and Europe are by serving Washington’s hegemony at the risk of their own destruction.

Looking at it from this standpoint, the view that Israel controls Washington serves as a cover to protect Washington from responsibility for Israel’s actions that serve Washington’s agendas.

Instead of choosing between the two explanations, I would say both are true. The cover has been in place for 50 years, and during that time due to belief in it, acquired its own power. The consequence is that whereas Israel has as much power over Americans’ First Amendment rights as the US Supreme Court, Israel continues as Washington’s proxy against the Arabs.

The Hudson-Wolfe explanation originated as an interview hosted by Nima Alkhorshid on October 6, 2024. At places it seems there are errors in the transcription that result in confusion, but if you attend to the confusing passages you can figure out what is being said.

In the last part of the interview, Hudson and Wolfe seem to agree with my position that the Russians, Arabs, and Iranians are miscalculating when they rely on threats of wider war and demonstrations of ability to strike Israel to bring the Washington hegemon to his senses. What they are actually doing is giving away their strategic advantage to Washington and to Israel without getting credit for trying to stop the widening of the wars.

Hudson and Wolfe support the point that I have often made. No one with a wide audience, money, or clout from a think tank, university, or major foundation is saying a word about the risks of two wars spinning out of control into nuclear war. Those few of us speaking are isolated individuals denounced as Russian agents, anti-semites, and purveyors of disinformation. This should scare the world to death. We are approaching Armageddon from two directions, and the word can’t get out.

The post Does Israel Wag America or Does America Wag Israel appeared first on LewRockwell.

I’ll let the documentation tell the story here, which story is about what started the war in Ukraine, taking that as the case for discussion here because the likeliest conflict to produce a world-destroying World War Three (WW3) would be further expansion of the war between Russia and America’s NATO that has been going on in the battlefields of Ukraine; and, so, what follows is documenting exactly how this war actually started:

——

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa

https://archive.is/Kq2W3   [19 August 2013]

“US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev”

25 November 2004, Ian Traynor the Guardian’s European editor. He is based in Brussels [LATEST: “Nato members could act against Syria without UN mandate: 25 Aug 2013: Kosovo-style humanitarian intervention could justify Nato military action against Assad regime after alleged chemical attacks”]

With their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy guerrillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory – whatever the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev.

Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by the young democracy activists and will never be the same again.

But while the gains of the orange-bedecked “chestnut revolution” are Ukraine’s, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.

Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.

Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.

Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat the Belarus hardman, Alexander Lukashenko.

That one failed. “There will be no Kostunica in Belarus,” the Belarus president declared, referring to the victory in Belgrade.

But experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat the regime of Leonid Kuchma in Kiev.

The operation – engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience – is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections. …

If the events in Kiev vindicate the US in its strategies for helping other people win elections and take power from anti-democratic regimes, it is certain to try to repeat the exercise elsewhere in the post-Soviet world.

The places to watch are Moldova and the authoritarian countries of central Asia.

——

video:

the transcript: https://archive.ph/9Srw5#selection-461.0-469.162:

Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We’ve invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.

Today there are senior officials in the Ukrainian government, in the business community, as well as in the opposition, civil society and religious community who believe in this democratic and European future for their country and they’ve been working hard to move their country and their president in the right direction.

We urge the government, we urge the president to listen to these voices, to listen to the Ukrainian people, to listen to the Euro-Maidan and take Ukraine forward.

——

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2014/mar/19/facebook-posts/united-states-spent-5-billion-ukraine-anti-governm/

https://archive.is/5HOzl [30 April 2016]

“Facebook posts stated on March 19, 2014 in a Facebook meme:”

President Barack Obama spent “$5 billion paying Ukrainians to riot and dismantle their democratically elected government.”

A meme on Facebook says President Barack Obama spent “$5 billion paying Ukrainians to riot and dismantle their democratically elected government.”

By Katie Sanders

March 19, 2014

The United States spent $5 billion on Ukraine anti-government riots

It’s a conspiracy with mainstream crossover: The United States bankrolled the bloody political uprising in Ukraine.

We saw the claim pop up recently in a story on RT (the Russian-funded English language cable network), and found lots of talk about it on reddit, Facebook and other websites.

The claims have the same basic structure. While President Barack Obama publicly said Ukrainians have the right to determine their own future, the U.S. government pumped $5 billion into the country to promote regime change.

In a Facebook meme, someone put it this way:

Obama “spends $5 billion paying Ukrainians to riot and dismantle their democratically elected government.”

So is there any truth to this claim? PunditFact dove in.

The roots

The claim is rooted in a December 2013 speech by Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, a non-governmental agency that promotes democracy in the former Soviet republic.

Nuland had returned days earlier from her third trip to Ukraine in five weeks to assess the protests over President Viktor Yanukovych’s policies to move away from the European Union, she said.

She made clear the United States supported the protesters’ fight and spoke of how she met with Yanukovych, pressing him to end the pushback from Ukrainian security forces because it is “absolutely impermissible in a European state, in a democratic state.”

She described how American taxpayer money has supported Ukraine’s democratic development despite the country’s challenges.

“Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations,” she said. “We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”

Her eight-minute speech (video) attracted little to no media attention.

The truth

We had a feeling that folks repeating the claim missed important context from Nuland’s speech. Wasn’t Nuland talking about money given since Ukraine broke away from the Soviet Union?

The State Department said yes.

“The insinuation that the United States incited the people of Ukraine to riot or rebel is patently false,” said Nicole Thompson, a State Department spokeswoman.

Since 1992, the government has spent about $5.1 billion to support democracy-building programs in Ukraine, Thompson said, with money flowing mostly from the Department of State via U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the departments of Defense, Energy, Agriculture and others. The United States does this with hundreds of other countries.

About $2.4 billion went to programs promoting peace and security, which could include military assistance, border security, human trafficking issues, international narcotics abatement and law enforcement interdiction, Thompson said. More money went to categories with the objectives of “governing justly and democratically” ($800 million), “investing in people” ($400 million), economic growth ($1.1 billion), and humanitarian assistance ($300 million).

The descriptions are a bit vague, which could lead people to think the money was used for some clandestine purpose.

But even if it that were so, the money in question was spent over more than 20 years. Yanukovych was elected in 2010. So any connection between the protests and the $5 billion is inaccurate.

And Obama was elected in 2008, so any connection between $5 billion and Obama also is inaccurate.

The challenge

We attempted to drill down and verify the expenditures independently but found that a difficult task.

That’s a byproduct of the United States’ foreign aid investments, which rival no other country (though supporters note the spending equals only 1 percent of all federal spending). The massive check-writing across dozens of agencies to non-governmental organizations to scores of countries and regions around the world is almost impossible to untangle.

“As it stands, it is nearly impossible to find a figure,” said Nicole Valentinuzzi, communications manager of Publish What You Fund, a group that pushes for aid transparency across the world. “These kinds of things would be easily verifiable if people were given timely information.”

The State Department created ForeignAssistance.gov to help taxpayers, journalists and others find out where the money is going, but the data is limited in the number of years available and not reported by all agencies.

“The Foreign Assistance dashboard is not capturing this information in an up-to-date, current way,” Valentinuzzi said, “so responding to a humanitarian crisis is a bit untraceable while it happens, which we argue makes it less effective, basically.”

That said, the United States is working on being more transparent.

The site started under the Obama administration and is a “work in progress,” Thompson said. Eight agencies, such as U.S. AID, Millennium Challenge Corporation and the Treasury Department, have begun posting planning and spending data to the site. Still, 14 agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, and Health and Human Services, have not.

From that website, we calculated the United States spent $456.4 million in Ukraine since 2009. Again, that’s an incomplete picture based on incomplete data reporting.

Some examples? The United States spent about $20 million on Peace Corps programs in Ukraine over the past four years. It spent about $40 million through U.S. AID on health programs in the countries since 2010 — fighting HIV/AIDs, malaria and providing for maternal and child health. The United States spent an additional $80 million or so working on projects related to weapons of mass destruction, according to ForeignAssistance.gov.

Our ruling

Contrary to claims, the United States did not spend $5 billion to incite the rebellion in Ukraine.

That’s a distorted understanding of remarks given by a State Department official. She was referring to money spent on democracy-building programs in Ukraine since it broke off from the Soviet Union in 1991.

We rate the claim Pants on Fire.

——

Here’s my article about how the Poynter Institute, which owns PolitiFact, is funded by U.S.-and-allied billionaires, and fronts “policing truth” for their Governments. The same people who control Governments in the American empire control also this agency that rates a clear truth that they don’t like as being instead a “Pants on Fire” lie. And they do it by taking as Scripture that Government’s allegations (such as that to take over a targeted country’s Government by deceiving its population, is to produce a “democracy” there).

Read the Whole Article

The post How the U.S. Government Deceives the World appeared first on LewRockwell.

Both gold and silver consolidated in a tight range close to all-time highs this week. Spot gold traded at $2660 in European trade this morning, up $3 from last Friday’s close, and silver was $32.05, up 43 cents on the same timescale. Comex volumes in both metals declined over the week, consistent with a consolidation.

The passing of October Comex contracts has led to a jump in gold stands-for-delivery, amounting to 10,840 contracts representing 1,084,000 ounces (32.6 tonnes) in the last four trading sessions, and 1,155 silver contracts representing 5,775,000 ounces (179.6 tonnes).

Interestingly, there is evidence of overnight Asian demand returning, which is likely to be from the Middle East given escalating tensions in the region. This week has seen attacks and a ground invasion by Israel into Lebanon attacking Hezbollah, and a missile attack by Iran against Israel. At the time of writing, we await the Israeli’s response, thought by many likely to be an attack on Iran’s oil refinery at Abadan on the Shatt al-Arab. An escalation of this sort would certainly drive oil prices sharply higher, because the Hormuz Strait would be effectively closed because cargos would be uninsurable.

WTI crude jumped 11% from its low on Monday morning to $74.30 today, reflecting these concerns. But it appears that wider financial markets are sleepwalking through a rapidly developing Middle East war. The assumption appears to be that America is not involved, so there’s nothing to see. But as informed commentators, such as Gilbert Doctorow now points out on his Substack, America supplied the two-tonne bombs dropped on Beirut on locations guided by US intelligence and by US AWACS early warning systems. The US appears to be very much involved, albeit covertly, and the situation is likely to deteriorate rapidly.

Market complacency is bound to be shattered. And this week saw the dollar’s trade weighted index recover some of its poise, bouncing off the crucial $100 level. This is my next chart.

There is little evidence of a war-driven flight into the dollar. The Bank of Japan signalled there’s no rush to raise rates further leading to a sharp fall in the yen. Furthermore, Andrew Bailey of the Bank of England indicated that the bank might cut rates aggressively if inflation continues to decline, knocking sterling down by a few cents.

Against a stronger dollar in forex markets, gold has held its poise. It is no longer as overbought as it has been recently, with Open Interest on Comex declining by 35,848 contracts in the last eight trading sessions while the price has held. And the tightness of physical supply facing renewed Middle Eastern demand is set to drive gold prices higher in the coming weeks, despite the dollar’s TWI.

Silver is also behaving strongly. We should not forget that in living memory silver circulated widely as money in the Middle East and other Asian regions. Adding growing monetary demand to four years of supply deficits and the price effect promises to be explosive. I shall end with silver’s technical chart to remind readers of how bullish this set up looks technically

Reprinted with permission from MacleodFinance Substack.

The post Gold Glows and Silver Shines appeared first on LewRockwell.

Let’s begin today’s rant with some definitions. I draw a clear line between the concepts of “Nation” and “country”. A Nation is a stack of papers held in a garrison called a “capital” or “capitol”, where indoctrinated cultists stand ready to slaughter anyone who defies their edicts and decrees. A country is a group of humans, defined primarily by culture, but also by shared principles and geography, who support and defend their natural and organic way of life against all threats.

The Nation is an artificial construct administered by bureaucrats and legal systems. The country is a society built on mutual trust and values, who feel “at home” in each other’s company with shared experiences and tastes. A Nation is defined by force and rule, while a country is defined by common interests, shared experiences, and mutual trust.

The United State of America is a Nation. Merka is a country.

Lysander Spooner was a 19th-century American philosopher, abolitionist, and political theorist, best known for his staunch individualist and anti-authoritarian principles. If you haven’t read The Constitution of No Authority, you’ve missed a profound educational experience. He was particularly critical of the State’s coercive powers, arguing that gummint authority derived from anything other than voluntary consent was inherently illegitimate.

Spooner believed that unjust authority—particularly gummint overreach—was the greatest threat to personal liberty and societal well-being. He was right.

If we apply Spooner’s principles to the present moment, several major threats are identified as significant challenges to Merkaa, primarily related to gummint overreach, erosion of individual liberties, and State-driven coercion at the point of a gun.

From Spooner’s perspective, the expansion of gummint surveillance, eternal war, the suppression of free speech, and restrictions on personal autonomy would represent significant, even existential threats. In recent years, debates over the scope of gummint power in areas like data privacy (e.g., NSA surveillance, tech companies sharing personal data) and freedom of speech (e.g., censorship on digital platforms), not to mention bodily sovereignty (e.g. mandated medical interventions) have plowed through any personal boundaries of individual liberty, bordering on violent rape of every individual at a core mental and physical level.

Spooner would argue that these actions violate the natural rights and dignity of individuals, as they are forms of State overreach (rape) that occur without explicit voluntary consent. He would see the increasing use of gummint surveillance and laws that restrict freedom of speech and property as a direct affront to personal sovereignty and security.

Another threat that Spooner would identify is the extreme centralization of feral (federal) power. Spooner was a proponent of decentralization, favoring localism and voluntary associations, over centralized militant force. In modern terms, the growing power of the feral gummint, through regulations, executive orders, and large bureaucratic systems, would appall Spooner, as it distances decision-making and responsibility from the individual to a brutal and abusive Our Democracy® that cares little about humans, self-determination and peaceful co-existance.

Spooner would argue that the Feral Reserve’s control over currency, or the vast scope of feral agencies (IRS, FBI, FEMA, FAA) infringe on personal liberty and economic freedom. He criticized monopolistic control over services, whether it was the post office, or monetary controls.

Spooner was an advocate of free markets and voluntary transactions. He opposed taxation and State intervention in the economy, believing that individuals should be free to engage in commerce without gummint interference. Modern forms of economic intervention, such as corporate bailouts, massive gummint spending, and inflationary monetary policies, would be viewed as direct, life-threatening attacks on humans.

Spooner would argue that such interventions distort the natural functioning of the economy and benefit certain interests at the expense of others, especially taxpayers who do not directly consent to these policies.

Ask anyone in North Carolina at the moment what they think of gummint interference.

Spooner’s opposition to slavery was rooted in his broader anti-coercion stance, and by extension, he would oppose the coercion involved in conscription and unjust wars. Spooner would rail against the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) and perpetual foreign conflicts, which demand large budgets, increased gummint control, and loss of individual freedoms through taxes and forced military service. He would label the current nation-state as abject slavery under a rapacious and dominating authoritarianism.

The USA’s involvement in endless military engagements, the growth of military spending, and the erosion of human liberties in the name of “national” security would be seen as manifestations of unjust State power, and slavery in it’s most horrific form — essentially rape at its most fundamental definition.

We humans have turned over so much of our personal freedoms to bloated and avaricious bureaucrats that we can not simply end it. The shock would be like someone using steroids who suddenly stops before the body has resumed its natural functions. However, we need to begin serious and focused tapering. We need elected representatives who will start cutting deep into the gangrenous flesh of governance. Entire agencies need to be exised and budgets slashed to the core.

And soon.

Read the Whole Article

The post Just a Spooner Full of Sugar appeared first on LewRockwell.

Assaults on the city of Rome, the See of Peter, have not been infrequent over the course of the millennia.

Attila attempted. But he failed when he came into the formidable presence of Leo, called “the Great,” resulting in a dramatic volte-face.

Napoleon conquered Rome in 1809.

The Italian Nationalists of the Risorgimento mounted attacks upon Rome in 1848, forcing Blessed Pius IX to flee in a simple black Roman cassock to Gaeta in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Hitler subdued Rome on June 4, 1944.

Yet none of these can compare to the assault being suffered by Rome today. This time the foe is Synodal Listening—II, and it is nothing less than the squandering of Christ’s salvific inheritance. To witness princes of the Church and assorted empurpled prelates parade about as though in some Rogerian self-actualization exercise makes a Catholic shudder. If not for Christ’s words, “And the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it,” a Catholic would be tempted to think he was witnessing the end of Catholicism.

This ruling elite behaved as though they were fanatical participants in a Maoist Struggle Session. Those historic monstrous displays dragged Chinese citizens into the semblance of a court and gratuitously accused them of being “class enemies.” They were then humiliated, accused, beaten, tortured, and put to death.

In the Synodal Sessions, it is the Faith that is so treated. Its majesty trampled upon, then traded for the cheap trinkets of the best psychobabble money can buy. All the more chilling is the gleeful willingness with which the successors of the apostles participated. Imagine. On the very ground consecrated by the blood of Peter and Paul and countless other martyrs, their successors are performing like a troupe of vaudevillians. They exhibit the gravitas of scarecrows.

One hesitates to accuse these synodalists of heresy, for there is far too little there to deserve the weight of such opprobrium. Heresy requires probity and purpose. It is the stuff of serious men. These synodalists are giddy pallbearers for the corpse of a spent Catholic Left.

Before the Synod began, a “retreat” was mandated. You see, the insipid requires preparation. To fool the Catholics masses, folly requires mimicking Old Catholicism, though it be only a hollow shell. Hence the otherwise respectable guise of “retreat.” The Synodal Retreat was as close to an authentic retreat as astronomy is to astrology.

Take a quick glance at a copy of the agenda and prepare to cringe. It begins:

This is the din of Babel. Where does one begin? The task is akin to nailing down raindrops. The most obvious question: What is the “sin of using doctrine as stones to be hurled”? Could this refer to the defense of the Revelation of Christ? If so, one wonders what then is there to believe? If doctrine is something hurtful, then the purpose of Christ’s Church evaporates. Doctrine is the unchanging teaching of the Faith. If that cannot be used as our buckler and shield, then what is?

That very query calls into question the purpose of martyrdom. Did St. John Fisher go to his death because he “hurled doctrine against his enemies”? Was his beheading then futile? Indeed, a sin? Was the Council of Trent a nefarious episode because it defined doctrines as ways to quell the fires of Protestant heresy?

Reason here stands stupefied. Theological analysis screeches to a halt. Against such stream of consciousness platitudes there is no egress. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle remarks that trying to argue with a man who has taken leave of reason is like speaking to a vegetable. Is this our predicament?

Any Catholic not embarrassed by this fog must look to see if their baptismal character has faded. Pachamama ceremonies along with the new Mayan and Amazonian rites of the Mass were only faint preludes to the soaring inanities of the Synod Retreat. These synodalists fashion themselves a pack of new Moses promulgating a terribly au courant list of sins. It used to be that Modernist theologians of the past years were busy burying any mention of sin. This new crop is now busy reviving it. But sins of a different color. A color bearing no resemblance to Christianity.

Read the Whole Article

The post The Synodal Comedy: Act II appeared first on LewRockwell.

My Dear Dr. F.,

Ah, what a time to be alive—or more precisely, to watch them live in such magnificent confusion! You’ve outdone yourself with this latest debacle. The release of that little gem—the COVID-19 bug—was nothing short of poetic. It is a rare thing to have one’s chaos so perfectly aimed at the very benefactors who unwittingly financed it. I must say, the irony is nothing short of diabolical genius. Bravo!

But what impresses me most is not the mere release itself. Any fool can let slip a contagion. No, your crowning achievement, my dear Dr. F., is the deflection. It was positively masterful. You had the entire world questioning whether the virus originated from that conveniently placed wet market instead. Exotic animals, unsanitary conditions—how easily the masses bit at that bait! You see, nothing provokes panic like the familiar threat of the “unclean,” and nothing satisfies their need for certainty like a vaguely plausible narrative.

And what a cover it provided! The more astute among them may have caught whispers of a lab incident, but by then, you had already ensnared their imaginations in a tangled web of alternative possibilities. Who could possibly say for certain? The doubt itself became the weapon. Confusion is far more deadly than any virus, and you’ve spread it with more precision than any pathogen.

Even better, while they were busy debating origins, they paid little mind to the more pressing question: Why was such a creation in development at all? Ah, that, my dear Dr. F., is a question best left unasked. After all, there’s something delicious about watching them wrestle with their own complicity while we stoke the fires of division and distrust.

I trust you’ll keep this momentum going. The beauty of such a debacle is that it feeds on itself, and with enough chaos, truth becomes indistinguishable from fiction. Keep them guessing. Keep them fighting. And by all means, enjoy the show.

Yours in malice and mischief,
Screwtape

My Dearest Screwtape,

Ah, how right you were to revel in the release of our little creation, but now we stand at a new precipice, one fraught with such delicious peril. The virus itself was never the point—of course not! Control the people, not the pathogen. That has always been the true aim, hasn’t it?

But can we sustain the grand narrative? That, dear Uncle, is the challenge I now face. The story of the bat, the wet market, and the natural origin—such a quaint, digestible tale for the masses, don’t you think? And yet, it is fragile, so easily shattered by the sharp inquiries of a few pesky minds. To guard against such dangers, I’ve enlisted our brethren—scientists, politicians, media pundits—from across the globe to craft the perfect Proximal Origin defense. These voices, drenched in authority, will affirm the distraction with all the conviction their hollow souls can muster. It is glorious to watch them do the devil’s work, while believing themselves righteous.

You see, I understand that the virus cannot be contained. But the lie? The lie can live forever. With enough repetition and expert denial, the very notion of a lab accident will be dismissed as conspiracy drivel. Already, we see discontent sowed among them—the beauty of conflicting “truths,” where no one dares trust the other. By the time the doubts creep in, they will be so tangled in webs of confusion that no one will remember where they started.

And now, the pièce de résistance—the lockdowns. The brilliance of it lies not in containing the virus (for we both know that’s impossible), but in controlling them. Oh, how they clamor for it, these little creatures, believing in the grand illusion that staying inside will save them. What a delight! They enforce their own cages, with Karens shrieking in public squares for more restrictions, and corporate overlords eagerly firing those who don’t comply. Such zeal for their own oppression is beyond anything I could have hoped.

But this is merely the beginning. The longer we drag out this state of suspended freedom, the more malleable they become. Soon, they won’t even know what normal looks like anymore. Oh, how they will beg for safety at the expense of liberty! They will turn on one another with righteous fury, demanding compliance, screaming for punishments to be dealt to those who dare question our narrative.

I must confess, the thrill of this orchestration is almost overwhelming. I await your further counsel, for I fear I may lose myself in the sheer glee of it all.

In dark anticipation,
Dr. F.

Read the Whole Article

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The star of this “60 Minutes” interview is Bill Whitaker for being an actual journalist instead of an MSM propaganda bot. Notice Kamala’s speech consists mostly of slogans and catchphrases.

Her performance reminded me of Orwell’s, “Politics and the English Language” in which remarked:

As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

As Orwell points out later in the essay, this is an indication that the speaker is not actually thinking about what he or she is saying. Reviewing the interview for the Spectator, Freddy Gray observed:

Perhaps the most revealing moment was when Whitaker asked Harris why voters say they don’t know what she stands for. “It’s an election, Bill,” she said, with a dead smile. Whitaker then mentioned her flip-flops on issues such as fracking, immigration and Medicare.

“In the last four years I have been vice president of the United States and I have been traveling our country and I have been listening to folks and seeking what is possible in terms of common ground,” she replied. “I believe in building consensus. We are a diverse people. Geographically, regionally, in terms of where we are in our backgrounds and what the American people do want is that we have leaders who can build consensus, where we can compromise and understand it’s not a bad thing as long as you don’t compromise to find common sense solutions. And that has been my approach.”

Note that the above statement has no content. It strikes me as analogous to something a philandering husband might tell his wife when she asks him why, in recent months, he has taken so many business trips to New York City—something he never did in the past—and specifically, what does he do when he turns his phone off in the evenings between 9:00 p.m. and midnight.

To this question, the husband replies:

In the last four months I have been the head regional sales manager for my financial products company and I have been traveling to New York and listening to our portfolio manager and seeking what is possible in terms of what the market is going to do this fall. I believe in understanding what our analysts believe. Our equity markets analysts are a diverse group. Educationally, in terms of where they are in their backgrounds and what our investors do want is that we have analysts who can build consensus about how the market is likely to perform this fall.

Kamala Harris cannot think—at least not well. I believe that choosing her is an expression of the DNC’s contempt for its voters. The Machiavellians who run that mafia syndicate believe their voters are so brainwashed they will vote for Kamala simply because she is not Donald Trump.

This originally appeared on Courageous Discourse.

The post ’60 Minutes’ Interview With Kamala Harris appeared first on LewRockwell.

A definition of “projection” is when one baselessly accuses others of doing something unsavory, immoral, or illegal that he is actually doing. For example, a thief who, without proof, accuses others of being thieves. This is what socialists do when they call their intellectual and political opponents “fascists” or compare them to Hitler. Fascism is socialism, as Lew Rockwell recently reminded us in an essay entitled “National Socialism Was Socialist.” Socialists calling opponents of socialism fascists and Hitler-like is a classic example of projection.

Socialists started out claiming that their goal was forced egalitarianism with the means being government ownership of the means of production. Then, according to Ludwig von Mises, it also came to be defined as government control of the private means of production through pervasive government regulation, controls, and regimentation. The ostensible goal was still egalitarianism but the means were different. In the 1976 edition of The Road to Serfdom F. A. Hayek wrote that by that time socialism also meant the pursuit of egalitarianism by yet another means – income redistribution through the institutions of the welfare state and the progressive income tax.

Today socialism is defined by its self-described “woke” practitioners as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI), a synonym for egalitarianism, along with comprehensive central planning through regulation in the name of “fighting climate change” (i.e., the “Green New Deal”). What these definitions of socialism have in common is that they would all require totalitarian governmental power and the further abolition of property rights, the rule of law, civil liberties, constitutionalism, and economic freedom in general, all in the name of “equity,” the new buzz word for socialist egalitarianism.

Today’s socialists see Donald Trump and his political followes as their main obstacle, so naturally they relentlessly label them as fascists and Hitler-like. A typical Washington Post headline was “How Trump’s Rhetoric Compares with Hitler’s.” Another one was “Yes, It’s OK to Compare Trump to Hitler.” National Public Radio’s web site had a headline announcing that “Donald Trump Used Language in a Speech that Echoed Hitler.” Joe Biden once publicly announced that “Trump echoes language you heard in Nazi Germany.” “Calling Trump Hitler has become part of the routine” of the Biden campaign, wrote POLITICO in early 2024, before it became “part of the routine” of the Harris campaign.

In reality it is today’s “woke” cultural Marxists in government, universities, the so-called “media,” the entertainment industry, and much of corporate America – including the people and institutions quoted above – who are the real fascists. They are the political children of the early twentieth century Italian communist Antionio Gramsci, who taught them that the road to socialism should proceed with a “long march through the institutions.” Their socialist long march as been concluded with the capture of all of the above-mentioned institutions. They are now busy rigging elections, “cancelling” anyone who disagrees with them, using “lawfare” to imprison their political opponents, and using the powers of government to try to destroy the First Amendment. Hillary Clinton, the widely acknowledged instigator of the “Russia Hoax,” the biggest political lie in memory, recently proposed prison sentences for anyone spreading “misinformation” ( i.e., criticizing her political agendas) on the internet. Talk about projection on steroids.

Fascism IS Socialism

Benito Mussolini, who ruled over fascist Italy, called himself an “international socialist” before he relabeled himself as a “national socialist,” which is what a fascist was defined as in the nineteenth century. Private enterprise was permitted in fascist Italy but was regulated and controlled with an iron fist by fascist politicians. As such, it was socialism as Mises explained.

The 2007 edition of The Road to Serfdom, published by the University of Chicago Press, included an appendix that was an essay by F.A. Hayek entitled “Nazi Socialism.” “The socialist character of National Socialism has been quite generally unrecognized,” wrote Hayek. This is remarkable on its face: Why would something called “national socialism” not be considered socialism?! (Hint: Because socialists understand that Hayek was right when he wrote in The Road to Serfdom that under socialism “the worst rise to the top” in politics. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Ceausescu, and the rest were not just aberrations).

“Pervasive anti-capitalism was at the heart of national socialism,” Hayek said. The Nazi Party Platform “was full ideas resembling those of the early socialists” including “a fierce hatred of anything capitalistic – individual profit seeking, large-scale enterprises, banks, joint-stock companies, department stores, international finance and loan capital, the system of ‘interest slavery.’”

Hayek described German national socialism as “a violent anti-capitalist attack” with “The End of Capitalism” being its slogan. “All of the leading men” of German and Italian fascism “began as socialists and ended as Fascists or Nazis,” he wrote.

Mussolini wrote in his book Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions that “The fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism.” “If classical liberalism spells individualism,” said the fascist dictator, “Fascism spells government.” Mussolini announced with great bombast that the twentieth century was “the collective century, and therefore the century of the State.” What socialist would not approve of that?

The Italian and German fascists adopted both kinds of socialism that Mises described: They nationalized many industries, more than half in Germany, and the rest were de facto nationalized with pervasive government regulatory control and regimentation.

Nazi apologist Paul Lensch was a self-professed Marxist, a member of the Reichstag who praised the “war socialism” of World War I, and the author of Three Years of World Revolution. In it he followed Mussolini in denouncing “English liberalism” and especially individualism (i.e., respect for all individuals) and called for replacing these “inherited political ideas” with “Socialism,” which “must present a conscious and determined opposition to individualism.” Accordingly, the fundamental philosophical plank of the “25-Point Program of the Nazi Party” was “The Common Good Comes Before the Private Good,” with of course the state defining what “the common good” is. A classic definition of collectivism.

As good socialists the Nazis in their platform demanded that capitalist “usurers and profiteers [bankers and entrepreneurs] . . . must be punished with death.” The media were to be under strict government control to eliminate “known lies” about fascism, essentially identical to Hillary Clinton’s recent proposal to imprison spreaders of “misinformation” about her political preferences.

As with all twentieth-century socialist regimes the Nazis demanded monopolistic, centralized governmental power and the abolition of federalism, states’ rights, and decentralization. “We demand the formation of a strong central power in the Reich” and “unlimited authority of the central parliament over the whole Reich.” That of course is exactly what today’s “woke” cultural Marxists want with their election rigging, censorship, lawfare, and calls to abolish the Constitution, the Supreme Court, the electoral college, and anything else that would stand in the way of “unlimited authority” in the central government. They know exactly what they are doing because they are, after all, fascists.

The post The ‘Fascist’ Ad Hominem As an Act of Projection appeared first on LewRockwell.

On October 12, 2004 Lew Rockwell published my article Now and Then, my first on LRC. Over the intervening 20 years there have been upwards of 170 posts by me, with as few as one article in 2009 when my daughter was a year old and 23 articles in the COVID year 2020.

I am very fortunate to own a house in the countryside in Burgundy, France that I have called My Investment in Heaven (in another LRC post). There is a mezzanine in the house that serves no obvious purpose. I once asked the previous owner who had restored the house why he had constructed this mezzanine. His response was surprising, at least to me, “I don’t know. I just felt like doing it.” Perhaps like this gentleman and the mezzanine, I cannot say why I write. I am not a professional writer. I have never been paid by Lew Rockwell. I can say that writing is simply an urge, like scratching an itch. As I am just a voice from the hoi polloi, I can’t believe what I write has any impact on the world. But I do feel privileged to be an author listed among the important writers that Lew Rockwell assembles six times a week. For that I thank Lew profusely.

Lew has allowed me to post articles on a wide range of topics. There have been many posts on books, movies, travel, economics . . . (My author page at LRC: Ira Katz, Author at LewRockwell.)

That first article in 2004, comparing  the Global War on Terror to the war on communism, still stands up, at least for me.

“I now realize, what I did not then, that virtually all wars begin with lies and only achieve mixed results at best. So now I know that the terrorists are wrong, but our government is a greater threat to the blood and treasure of this country.”

There are articles that have been more personal, in a sense written for my daughter to read one day, that I have listed below regarding my life, my family, life in France, and spirituality (now relatively common on LRC but what I thought might be taboo in 2004).

There is much more for me to thank Lew for than accepting my contributions to LRC. It is LRC that has been my daily view on the world, in turn shaping my worldview. It is because of LRC that I could spot the Covid fraud from the very beginning (see the list below). Already by March 24, 2020 I was writing about the idiocy of lockdowns.

As a non-writer writer, I am ambivalent if people read what I have written. I used to send select friends long letters to appease my urge to write out what I thought. I even wrote articles that never left my computer. But I must admit that receiving feedback from readers is gratifying. For that I thank you, LRC readers, as well.

Life

The Madeleine for a Chicagoan – LRC Blog (lewrockwell.com)
Dread the Future? Here’s What Helped Me – LewRockwell
0 for 16: Reflections on Corporate R&D – LewRockwell
Measuring Success – LewRockwell
Passions That Cool: Sports and Travel – LewRockwell
This Is Not a Conversion Story – LewRockwell

Family

My Mom – LewRockwell
What’s in a Name? – LewRockwell
Coming Out of a Dark Wood – LewRockwell
I Am Thirsty But I Cannot Drink – LewRockwell

France

Living in Paris – LewRockwell
Why I Moved to France – LewRockwell
Becoming an Ex-Pat – LewRockwell
A Libertarian in the Wilderness – LewRockwell
A French Summer Vacation – LewRockwell
A Story of Patrimony – LewRockwell
A French Cemetery – LewRockwell
Vendange – LewRockwell

Spiritual

Two Fantastic Stories – LewRockwell
This Is Not a Conversion Story – LewRockwell
Faith and Reason – LewRockwell
A Prayer for Our Time – LewRockwell
Catholicism in Meudon – LewRockwell

Covid

Signs of the Times – LewRockwell
A Profile in Courage: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. – LewRockwell
Eugenics – LewRockwell
Vaccine Wars: Update from the French Front – LewRockwell
My Noose Is Tightening – LewRockwell
Ivermectin, Covid-19, and Why It Could Be Miraculous – LewRockwell
To the Barricades … And to Church – LewRockwell
Covid Odds and Ends – LewRockwell
The End of Modernity – LewRockwell
A Hopeful Message From the Past – LewRockwell
Notes From the French Confinement – LewRockwell
The Resistance in Versailles – LewRockwell

The post A Voice From the <em>Hoi Polloi</em> appeared first on LewRockwell.

International Man: The 2024 US presidential election is a short time away. What types of surprises or twists could we expect?

Doug Casey: It’s long been said that there’s usually an October surprise. So what might happen between now and then?

All things considered, I expect the Democrats to win. Despite the fact that voting for a pair of hard-core leftists is clinically insane on the part of the average American, I think that they’ll win. The capite censi support leftist views on almost all major issues; the collectivists and statists have long since captured the moral high ground. Plus, the Dems control the apparatus of the State, and they’ll use it in any and every way possible. And, very importantly, 20 or 30 million illegal migrants realize that if Trump wins, there’s an excellent chance they’ll be evicted; they’ll find some way to vote against him. On top of that, the Democrats are notoriously better at cheating than Republicans, who tend to favor traditional Boy Scout values.

However, anything could happen between now and November 5. If a serious scandal, real or fabricated, is promoted against either Trump or Harris, that could sway the undecided.

A big October surprise might involve the US in an actual war because once a war starts, people don’t like to change horses in the middle of the stream. Anything could happen because we’re living in a chaotic environment.

“Our democracy” is nothing more than a degenerate collapsing empire that’s falling apart at the seams in every way possible. Anything can happen, including the old standbys—money, sex, and treason. I am forced, regrettably, to put my money on the bad guys. If only because the media will emphasize any Trump peccadillos while minimizing any Harris felonies.

International Man: The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are raging as China eyes Taiwan.

Could we see a significant geopolitical development ahead of the election?

Doug Casey: I wouldn’t worry too much about China and Taiwan. The Chiang Kai-shek government essentially conquered the island after World War II; Taiwan has never been part of China itself. Legally speaking, China has no more right to it than they do to Tibet or Xinchiang. But that’s irrelevant in the world of realpolitik.

The relevant question is: Will Beijing try to conquer it? That makes no sense to me because the Taiwanese government is in a position to resist mightily, and even if the Chinese won, they’d destroy most of Taiwan’s economic value. So, thinking long-term, as the Chinese do, they’ll threaten and parade around Taiwan but won’t start a real war.

A greater danger is the idiotic US policy of defending the island while probing and threatening China, even though it’s exactly on the other side of the world. US neocons have clearly learned absolutely nothing from their catastrophic misadventures in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, among other places in Asia.

The wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East are bigger problems. There’s no question that the Ukraine will lose and NATO will be embarrassed. The real question is whether the war spins out of control.

Some idiot in NATO, perhaps at the prompting of that degraded little clown in Kiev who likes dressing up in faux military T-shirts, could launch a serious missile attack on the interior of Russia. At that point, the Russians would feel obligated to strike back.

The odds of a catastrophe in the Middle East are much greater. The Israelis seem to feel striking at Iran’s oil and developing nuclear facilities will put off the inevitable for another decade or so. Perhaps they feel now’s the time to help keep the Dems in office, with the US acting as their trained attack dog. But that’s a whole different discussion…

International Man: Inflation, mass migration, and a deepening cultural divide are some of the most pressing issues domestically.

How do you see these issues evolving before the election?

Doug Casey: It bears repeating that inflation is a process. People think of retail price rises as inflation. They’re not. They’re the effect of inflation. And inflation is caused by money printing.

Money printing is going to continue because the US government is running a $2 trillion deficit annually; most of it is being financed by the Federal Reserve.

Various factors determine how much, how quickly, and where that new super money comes down to a retail level to increase prices. But I don’t think anything new will happen on this front in the next 30 days because the cause of inflation is always months or years in advance of the effect of inflation.

On the other hand, mass migration continues apace, with thousands of people entering or being actively imported daily into the US. Even the average brain-dead American is starting to recognize that these people are being recruited, subsidized, and housed at their expense. It’s not just Springfield, Ohio. There’s also a place called Charleroi, Pennsylvania.

Charleroi is a town of only 4,000 people that’s already been inundated with over 2,000 Haitians. It’s totally overrun and a template for many more towns across the US.

Mass migration is going to be a big thing in the months and years to come. But the next 30 days aren’t enough to create a real backlash.

No matter who wins this election, the other side is going to be bitterly unhappy. The red people and the blue people really hate each other. So, we’re looking at the early stage of an actual civil war in the US. I’ve been saying this for about the last decade. It won’t be like the War Between the States of 1861 to 1865. There will be lots of talk of local secession movements, and there’s bound to be violence no matter who wins. And we haven’t really touched on the consequences of a financial meltdown, an economic meltdown, or the potential for US wars coming home.

International Man: Donald Trump has had two attempts on his life in the past few months. It seems there are elements of the Deep State that want to take him out.

What do you think will happen?

Doug Casey: The Jacobins are fully in control in Washington, DC.

Trump may not be a prize, but at least he’s a cultural conservative; at least he doesn’t want to overturn American culture and traditions. He doesn’t like the Jacobins, and they actively hate him. Of course he’s going to try to root them out if he’s elected—and they don’t want to be rooted out.

They want to cement themselves more deeply into power. Although the Democrats will likely win, elements of the Deep State may believe it’s better to be safe than sorry. They might figure that the third time is the charm in getting rid of him. These two attempts were highly suspicious in many ways. It’s especially fishy the way the trial of the most recent attempt by Ryan Routh is being slow-walked. Perhaps he’ll be “Epsteined.”

As the US increasingly resembles ancient Rome, being President is more and more dangerous. Something around 35 emperors met violent deaths, most from people in and around their courts. In other words, members of the Roman Deep State. An ugly situation is brewing in and around Washington DC.

International Man: What do you expect to happen in the financial markets ahead of the election? How are you positioned to profit?

Doug Casey: Money makes the horse run, and the gigantic US deficits are creating super money, courtesy of the Fed. Most of it flows into the stock market. It’s a bubble that will eventually burst with a 1929-style ferocity because of the scores of trillions of debt created by the Fed, and fractional reserve banking.

Will it happen between now and the election?

Nobody can predict that, and the economy is going to go deeper and deeper into the Greater Depression. But what will happen in the financial markets? Stocks and bonds are both egregiously overpriced, but it simply means I don’t want to own them. I don’t want to be that risky.

What am I doing?

I continue to own gold, and I’m very happy about it. I speculate in junior resource stocks, which remain quite cheap. Although they’ve been ticking up every week for the last several months, I think at some point they could go into a bubble, which would make me very happy.

Reprinted with permission from International Man.

The post Potential ‘October Surprises’ Before the Election appeared first on LewRockwell.

Voluntary cooperation is robust, multiply-protected, and loss-limiting, and brings healthy deflation. A government regulator makes a system fragile, fraught with a single point of failure, and loss-compounding, and brings sickening inflation.

Donald Trump and his unity team members Robert Kennedy and Elon Musk promise to limit cronyism and slash waste.

Both approaches deny that state-government and national-government administrative states are themselves peak cronyism. If government people stop hosting business-crony socialists but still host activist-crony socialists, that’s still tyranny. Also, it’s unconstitutional.

The only adequate approaches are to fully executively close and legislatively repeal.

When there are no government regulators, that doesn’t mean that there’s a vacuum. Instead, people naturally take care of themselves and one another.

Voluntary Cooperation Increases Safety and Quality

Many people take advantage of the considerable information they have available and use it to make the choices that they expect to be the best for them. In doing so, they self-regulate.

Their choices affect others, creating a network of interactions. In this network, people’s interactions with others regulate the others.

So then when people are free, they increase safety and quality by taking decentralized, interdependent actions:

• Product raters compete to find and play up even small advantages and disadvantages.
• Media people spread bad news very quickly.
• Customers stop buying harmful products very quickly.
• Retailers and distributors stop carrying harmful products.
• Civil complainants can eliminate product lines and companies.
• Insurers work to prevent and limit losses.
• Producers anticipate problems and prevent them.

The resulting system is robust and resilient, and the people in it select naturally for improved performance. This is why freeing people to take care of themselves in the Dutch Republic, England, and the USA enabled people to create dramatic gains in how much value they added, bringing modern material comforts to the world.

Government Regulation Sounds Straightforward

Decentralization is only one way that safety and quality can be improved.

Complex modern systems include power grids, chemical plants, air-traffic-control systems, aircraft carriers, and nuclear plants. In such systems, safety and quality are improved by a variety of high-reliability organizations, which prevent most failures and also recover from failures.

Failures can be prevented and recovered from in several different ways:

Figure. System characteristics for high reliability.

In voluntary cooperation, the overall system benefits extensively from the actions of individuals. Individuals analyze conditions locally and take actions locally.

When a government regulator is introduced, the existence of this regulator displaces some actions of individuals, stopping individuals from analyzing some conditions and from taking some actions.

A system that otherwise would mostly be decomposable or action-focused gets transformed. It mostly becomes holistic or leader-focused.

Government Regulation Makes Systems Fail Badly

Holistic sounds smart. Leader-focused sounds natural. Organizations that have these characteristics can operate with high reliability. But systems that include government regulators can’t.

The problem is that when a system includes a government regulator, the presence of the regulator changes the system in ways that degrade safety and quality. Multiple independent layers of protection get stripped away, or never even form in the first place.

Larger complex systems need robust multiple independent protections. Such protections are what prevent most failures, localize the failures that slip through, and limit the resulting losses.

When people are free, their voluntary cooperation is robust, multiply protected, and loss-limiting.

Adding a government regulator makes the system fragile, fraught with a single point of failure, and loss-compounding:

Government regulators are why the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill wasn’t prevented by normal voluntary cooperation; why the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes weren’t prevented by developing an optimal new design; and why the East Palestine derailment wasn’t prevented by better precautions, and the subsequent toxic release wasn’t prevented by better planning and coordination.

Government immunities, regulators, and buyers are the reasons why producers of lipid nanoparticle mRNA covid shots have been able to kill and disable multitudes of people.

When producers are getting by with delivering subpar safety and quality, ask yourself: Are these producers selling directly to users, or have governments in some ways cut out the customers? Almost always you will find that governments are involved.

What’s needed isn’t government regulators but the opposite: getting government people out of the way of letting people naturally create protections on their own.

Producers do make errors, but producers mostly prevent errors. Customers buy from other producers to gain even the slightest advantages, so customers relentlessly pressure producers to improve performance in even the smallest ways. The producers that survive and thrive get better and better.

When producers do make errors, these are localized to individual producers and to their customers. Also, damage gets stemmed as quickly as possible. This is the only way that producers can limit how many customers they lose, so that they can stay in business and earn competitive profits.

To make errors affect everybody and continue interminably, it’s necessary to create and host government regulators. To optimally increase safety and quality, we must fully close and repeal government regulators.

Constitutional Government Ends Inflation

Eliminating government scope eliminates spending not only on labor but also on software, office equipment, offices, utilities, land, tax collection, and borrowing. Eliminate enough unconstitutional scope, and we will eliminate inflation and usher in healthy deflation—in which increases in productivity make prices fall.

Governments as a whole are waste and deprivation. We do far better on our own.

The post Repeal Government Regulators. Improve Safety and Quality, End Inflation appeared first on LewRockwell.

“What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer… And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”—Hannah Arendt

In a perfect example of the Nanny State mindset at work, Hillary Clinton insists that the powers-that-be need “total control” in order to make the internet a safer place for users and protect us harm.

Clinton is not alone in her distaste for unregulated, free speech online.

A bipartisan chorus that includes both presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump has long clamored to weaken or do away with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which essentially acts as a bulwark against online censorship.

It’s a complicated legal issue that involves debates over immunity, liability, net neutrality and whether or not internet sites are publishers with editorial responsibility for the content posted to their sites, but really, it comes down to the tug-of-war over where censorship (corporate and government) begins and free speech ends.

As Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes for Reason, “What both the right and left attacks on the provision share is a willingness to use whatever excuses resonate—saving children, stopping bias, preventing terrorism, misogyny, and religious intolerance—to ensure more centralized control of online speech. They may couch these in partisan terms that play well with their respective bases, but their aim is essentially the same.”

In other words, the government will use any excuse to suppress dissent and control the narrative.

The internet may well be the final frontier where free speech still flourishes, especially for politically incorrect speech and disinformation, which test the limits of our so-called egalitarian commitment to the First Amendment’s broad-minded principles.

On the internet, falsehoods and lies abound, misdirection and misinformation dominate, and conspiracy theories go viral.

This is to be expected, and the response should be more speech, not less.

As Justice Brandeis wrote nearly a century ago: “If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Yet to the government, these forms of “disinformation” rank right up there with terrorism, drugs, violence, and disease: societal evils so threatening that “we the people” should be willing to relinquish a little of our freedoms for the sake of national security.

Of course, it never works out that way.

The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, the war on COVID-19: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns only to become weapons of compliance and control in the government’s hands.

Indeed, in the face of the government’s own authoritarian power-grabs, coverups, and conspiracies, a relatively unfettered internet may be our sole hope of speaking truth to power.

The right to criticize the government and speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.

You see, disinformation isn’t the problem. Government coverups and censorship are the problem.

Unfortunately, the government has become increasingly intolerant of speech that challenges its power, reveals its corruption, exposes its lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices. Every day in this country, those who dare to speak their truth to the powers-that-be find themselves censored, silenced or fired.

While there are all kinds of labels being put on so-called “unacceptable” speech today, the real message being conveyed by those in power is that Americans don’t have a right to express themselves if what they are saying is unpopular, controversial or at odds with what the government determines to be acceptable.

Where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.

Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.

This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.

This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.

This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.

For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

Thus, no matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes.

Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation. For instance, the very same mass surveillance technologies that were supposedly so necessary to fight the spread of COVID-19 are now being used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, harass marginalized communities, and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools.

We are moving fast down that slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts.

The next phase of the government’s war on anti-government speech and so-called thought crimes could well be mental health round-ups and involuntary detentions.

Under the guise of public health and safety, the government could use mental health care as a pretext for targeting and locking up dissidents, activists and anyone unfortunate enough to be placed on a government watch list.

This is how it begins.

In communities across the nation, police are already being empowered to forcibly detain individuals they believe might be mentally ill, based solely on their own judgment, even if those individuals pose no danger to others.

In New York City, for example, you could find yourself forcibly hospitalized for suspected mental illness if you carry “firmly held beliefs not congruent with cultural ideas,” exhibit a “willingness to engage in meaningful discussion,” have “excessive fears of specific stimuli,” or refuse “voluntary treatment recommendations.”

While these programs are ostensibly aimed at getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with advances in mass surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics and behavior, mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, precrime initiatives, red flag gun laws, and mental health first-aid programs aimed at training gatekeepers to identify who might pose a threat to public safety, they could well signal a tipping point in the government’s efforts to penalize those engaging in so-called “thought crimes.”

As the Associated Press reports, federal officials are already looking into how to add “‘identifiable patient data,’ such as mental health, substance use and behavioral health information from group homes, shelters, jails, detox facilities and schools,” to its surveillance toolkit.

Make no mistake: these are the building blocks for an American gulag no less sinister than that of the gulags of the Cold War-era Soviet Union.

The word “gulag” refers to a labor or concentration camp where prisoners (oftentimes political prisoners or so-called “enemies of the state,” real or imagined) were imprisoned as punishment for their crimes against the state.

The gulag, according to historian Anne Applebaum, used as a form of “administrative exile—which required no trial and no sentencing procedure—was an ideal punishment not only for troublemakers as such, but also for political opponents of the regime.”

This age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by making them disappear—or forcing them to flee—or exiling them literally or figuratively or virtually from their fellow citizens—is happening with increasing frequency in America.

Now, through the use of red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, and pre-crime policing prevention programs, the groundwork is being laid that would allow the government to weaponize the label of mental illness as a means of exiling those whistleblowers, dissidents and freedom fighters who refuse to march in lockstep with its dictates.

Each state has its own set of civil, or involuntary, commitment laws. These laws are extensions of two legal principles: parens patriae Parens patriae (Latin for “parent of the country”), which allows the government to intervene on behalf of citizens who cannot act in their own best interest, and police power, which requires a state to protect the interests of its citizens.

The fusion of these two principles, coupled with a shift towards a dangerousness standard, has resulted in a Nanny State mindset carried out with the militant force of the Police State.

The problem, of course, is that the diagnosis of mental illness, while a legitimate concern for some Americans, has over time become a convenient means by which the government and its corporate partners can penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors.

In fact, in recent years, we have witnessed the pathologizing of individuals who resist authority as suffering from oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), defined as “a pattern of disobedient, hostile, and defiant behavior toward authority figures.”

Under such a definition, every activist of note throughout our history—from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. to John Lennon—could be classified as suffering from an ODD mental disorder.

Of course, this is all part of a larger trend in American governance whereby dissent is criminalized and pathologized, and dissenters are censored, silenced, declared unfit for society, labelled dangerous or extremist, or turned into outcasts and exiled.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is how you subdue a populace.

The ensuing silence in the face of government-sponsored tyranny, terror, brutality and injustice is deafening.

This originally appeared on The Rutherford Institute.

The post Disinformation Isn’t the Problem. Government Coverups and Censorship Are the Problem appeared first on LewRockwell.

Israel appears to have begun its long-planned ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, with the IDF dropping bombs, issuing evacuation orders for multiple hospitals, attacking civilians with sniper drones, and besieging civilian populations in order to force tens of thousands of people to either move south or die. Israel has reportedly been dropping leaflets on the Jabalia refugee camp ordering people to leave, and then shooting anyone who tries to.

Since the seventh of October last year Israel has committed roughly 100 October sevenths in Gaza; scores of American medical workers who volunteered in the enclave signed an open letter to president Biden estimating the real death toll from Israel’s onslaught at over 118,000. Israel has also committed about two October sevenths in Lebanon during that time, with the majority of the 2,100 Israeli killings in that country coming just in the last few weeks.

As Israeli murderousness ramps up in both Gaza and Lebanon, Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a statement addressed to the Lebanese people telling them that they need to somehow defeat Hezbollah in order to “save Lebanon before it plunges into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.”

So we went from “limited operation” to Israel threatening what they did to Gaza—an ongoing genocide—in Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/6k7cH6np2b

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) October 8, 2024

Israeli officials have been saying they’re going to destroy Lebanon like they destroyed Gaza for months. Back in December Israel’s defense minister Yoav Gallant said, “Every person in Lebanon can take the map, the aerial photograph of Gaza, place it on an aerial photograph of Beirut, and ask themselves if this is what they want to happen there.” Now Netanyahu himself is saying this.

Notably, Netanyahu’s statement was delivered in English, with English subtitles. This wasn’t actually a plea made to the people of Lebanon, it was propaganda made for western consumption. Netanyahu does not actually believe the Lebanese people are going to take up arms against Hezbollah to stop their country from being destroyed, he’s just creating a narrative to justify what he already plans on doing to Lebanon.

And the US is encouraging Israel to move forward. On Tuesday State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller told the press that the Biden administration no longer supports a ceasefire with Hezbollah, saying “We support Israel’s efforts to degrade Hezbollah’s capability” instead. Two weeks ago CNN reported that the administration has also essentially given up on a ceasefire in Gaza.

.@NBCNews claims US officials have discussed joining Israel in offensive strikes against Iran, and passing them off as “defensive” after the fact.

This should raise alarm bells – Congress has not declared war on Iran, which would be disastrous for the U.S. and the region. pic.twitter.com/tA6r9vGFvS

— NIAC (@NIACouncil) October 8, 2024

And we haven’t even talked about Iran yet. NBC News reports that US military officials have been discussing directly joining in Israel’s planned attack on Iran, potentially launching their own airstrikes on the Iranian military whenever Israel begins its attack.

Whether the US joins with Israel in its coming attack or not, Iran has already made it clear that it will retaliate against any further aggressions by Israel, and Israel has made it clear that if Iran strikes back it’s going to ramp up its aggressions and perhaps start attacking Iranian energy infrastructure. If this blows up into full-scale war, as looks increasingly likely, it’s inevitable that the US will come to Israel’s defense.

Axios and its Israeli intelligence insider Barak Ravid have a new report out on how super duper frustrated the Biden administration is becoming with Israeli warmongering. In typical Axios fashion the outlet reports that the White House is becoming “increasingly distrustful” of Israel’s planned military operations against Iran and Lebanon, but that, in typical Biden administration fashion, its American sources admit that the US “would very likely help Israel defend itself regardless” of whatever happens.

Vice President Harris Says Iran Is the US’s ‘Greatest Adversary’
The vice president also said the US ‘must win the competition for the 21st century with China’
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #KamalaHarris #Iran #Israel #China #hawkshttps://t.co/9SNkFzxR9Z pic.twitter.com/eEb8m1fsQv

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) October 8, 2024

Whoever wins the US election in November appears to be committed to riding with Israel down this path into the depths of hell.

In an interview with 60 Minutes, Vice President Kamala Harris defended the Biden administration’s genocidal support for Israel, saying the weapons it has been giving them “allow Israel to defend itself.” She also named Iran as the number one enemy of the United States.

In an appearance on The View, Harris was asked what she would have done differently from President Biden, and she said “There is not a thing that comes to mind.” Then later she added, “You asked me what is the difference between Joe Biden and me, that will be one of the differences: I’m going to have a Republican in my Cabinet.”

And lest you make the mistake of thinking Trump would be any better, last week the former president said that Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, and criticized the Biden administration for not being sufficiently aggressive on this front.

Trump says Israel should “hit” Iran’s nuclear facilities. Yet another bold “anti-war” statement on his part — a terrifying blow to the Deep State and military-industrial complex pic.twitter.com/BXwfCiR46Y

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 5, 2024

“They asked [Biden], what do you think about Iran, would you hit Iran?” Trump said at a campaign event on Friday. “And he goes, ‘As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you want to hit, right? I said I think he’s got that one wrong.”

Anyone who still says Trump is a peacemaker is a damn fool. Statements like this are in full alignment with the absolute worst warmongers in Washington like John Bolton or Lindsey Graham.

Anyway, that’s where we’re at right now. That’s the trajectory the US empire has us on. An active genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the threat of another extermination campaign in Lebanon, and acceleration toward a direct war of unimaginable horror with Iran.

These psychos must be stopped.

__________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post Slaughter in Gaza And Lebanon as War With Iran Approaches appeared first on LewRockwell.

These Trusted Flaggers are charged with eradicating “hate speech” and “fake news” from social media; platforms that ignore their Trusted Flagging can be fined or face other serious sanctions.

Are you one of those schoolmarm hall-monitor types?

Do you have a screechy voice and do you enjoy looking down your nose at other people?

Do your favourite pastimes include complaining to the manager, telling teenagers not to say bad words and levelling self-superior moral disapproval at everything you don’t like?

Well, then the European Union is just the place for you! Under our fantastic new Digital Services Act (DSA), you can engage in all these recreations, and what is more, you can do so in an official capacity, as a Trusted Flagger!

In places like the United States, censorship is a thing that the three-letter agencies and the major social media platforms have to hash out among themselves behind closed doors. Things are different here in Europe, where the DSA has imposed upon all of us a totally legal censorship regime for the purposes of cracking down on notionally “illegal” internet content. Any censorship regime of course requires censors, and that’s where you, the aspiring Trusted Flagger, come in. This is your golden opportunity.

It’s like this: The DSA requires all EU member states to empower a “Digital Services Coordinator” to enforce our happy new internet rules. And Article 22 of the DSA requires these Coordinators to appoint “Trusted Flaggers” to run about the internet reporting content violations, so that wrongthink can be deleted without unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles or “undue delay.” The DSA obligates all major social media platforms to take Trusted Flagger reports superseriously. They will be the new traffic policeman of our information motorways.

You’ll be happy to know that literally anybody can apply to become a Trusted Flagger, provided he can demonstrate that he has “particular expertise and competence for the purposes of detecting, identifying and notifying illegal content,” that he is “independent from any provider of online platforms,” and that he “carries out his activities … diligently, accurately and objectively.” In Germany, our Digital Services Coordinator is the Bundesnetzagentur, the federal agency responsible for regulating telecommunications. They are accepting Trusted Flagger applications at this very moment! All you have to do is fill out this brief online form! It’s amazing.

Klaus Müller, President of the Bundesnetzagentur, explains his newfound Digital Services Corodinator-authorities in this way:

Have you ever been annoyed, surprised or possibly horrified when you saw images, videos or texts on social platforms where people were defamed or discriminated against, possibly in violent confrontations, and you thought, you shouldn’t have to read or see that? Or where products were offered that couldn’t possibly be real? Many people encounter these kinds of things every day. The European Union has said that what is forbidden in the normal analog world must also in future be forbidden in the digital world. And thanks to the Digital Services Act, the Bundesnetzagentur now bears responsibility for this.

What can we do for you? Well, you can give us your complaints, you can give us information, you can help us to take action against platforms that do not react to your reports … You can help us identify systematic risks that we will address either together with the European Commission in Brussels or here in Germany, so that platforms are a safe place. What we will not do is censor content. That is not our job. It is, however, our job to ensure that people are safe and perhaps a little happier when using social networks and e-commerce platforms. That is our job, as the Federal Network Agency, as the new Digital Service Coordinator.

I want to implore the aspiring Trusted Flaggers among you not to lose heart at Müller’s claim that his new internet policing enterprise will not “censor content.” This is just a polite fiction he has to maintain to keep rabble who are still enamoured of quaint outdated concepts like freedom of expression off his back. In fact he hopes that you, his legions of Trusted Flaggers, will censor as much content as possible. This is why in the very next breath he emphasises that it is his job – and by extension, your job – not merely to make “people … safe,” but also to make them “happier.” As we all know, censorship concerns the enforcement of social and political harmony, particularly in that uncouth and untamed realm known as the internet. It is all about feelings, and it is especially about weaponising hurt feelings to make the online world a less threatening place for pink-haired gender lunatics, the racially aggrieved and everybody else with stupid and shrill political ideas.

In case you are a total idiot (which Trusted Flaggers are likely to be), our Digital Services Coordinator has published an entire sixteen-page instruction manual to help you through the Trusted Flagger application process. These instructions include a helpful appendix enumerating all the things they want you to flag. The third such category of Flaggable Things is “Disallowed Speech,” which includes the usual boring stuff like “defamation” and “death threats,” but also stretches well beyond the bounds of the merely illegal to encompass “discrimination” and “hate speech” too. These, happily, are terms borrowed from Anglosphere race activism discourse; they are totally alien to those sections of the German Criminal Code governing speech. While the DSA claims to be all about targeting illegal content, our aspiring Trusted Flaggers can take heart that those who have busied themselves with applying the DSA have a much more expansive vision. They’re going to make everyone happier online, and as we all know campaigns to make people happier always turn out well in the end.

The applications are rolling in, and our Digital Services Coordinator is happy to announce that he has approved our first Trusted Flagger to assist in forcing websites like X, Instagram and Facebook to remove not only “illegal content,” but also “hate speech and fake news very quickly and without bureaucratic hurdles … to make the internet a safe space.” And who is this first Trusted Flagger, you ask? Well, it is an internet tattle-tale operation run by the Baden-Württemberg Youth Foundation and funded by the Green-controlled Family Ministry.

Read the Whole Article

The post Creepy Government-Funded ‘Anti-Hate’ Organisation Run by a Weird Egyptian Man appeared first on LewRockwell.

Two disturbing news items out of Iran suggest that Iran may already have a nuclear bomb capacity.

Firstly an Armenian station recorded a seismic event measuring 4.4 on the Richter scale in Iran on Saturday 5th October and according to Armenian researchers, its characteristics suggest it was more like an explosion than an earthquake.

Secondly a source in the Islamic republic said in a private conversation with an official close to Khamenei that

“Allah has already given us everything, everything is far away from the eyes of the Zionists, and we are ready to release this genie in response to any hint of a real threat to the existence of our state”

Iran has announced (the Iranian Tasnim agency) it has plans to conclude a “Resistance Pact” with a number of Middle Eastern countries and movements which will guarantee military and economic assistance in the event of an attack by the United States or Israel on one of the signatory parties. The “movements” will undoubtedly include Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah all dangerous Iranian proxies committed to attacking Israel.

This scenario does not of course come under the above threat of using a nuclear bomb under a “real threat to the existence of our state” but is nevertheless ominous as in April of this year, Iranian authorities suggested that they might revise their nuclear doctrine in the event of aggression from Israel.

(First the USA and then Russia have made similar “revisions” to their nuclear strike doctrines in recent years)

Combined with news of an Iranian Russian agreement which could have provided Iran with Russian nuclear technology in return for missiles and possible Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities (supported by Donald Trump) the war rhetoric has now been made all the more dangerous by these seismic indications of a possible bomb test in Iran.

Iran’s main nuclear facilities are south of Tehran and it was in the desert to the south of Tehran in the area of Kavir that the Armenian sources (published on Tigranes Telegram channel) detected the seismic event on 5th October 2024

Earthquakes normally have an aftershock or seismic “tail” which a nuclear test does not exhibit. These graphs show the difference with examples of past tests and earthquakes in Pakistan, India, Russia and North Korea:

Iran has been expanding its uranium enrichment programme since 2018, reducing the so-called “breakout time” it would need to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb to a matter of weeks from at least a year under the (President Trump abandoned) 2015 accord.

Actually making a bomb with that material would take longer. How long is less clear and the subject of debate. Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60% fissile purity, close to the 90% of weapons grade, at two sites, and in theory it has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for almost four bombs, according to a yardstick of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. watchdog

It is interesting that there is a lack of western press coverage of this possible nuclear test by Iran, nor any attempt to refute the reports.

This originally appeared on Freenations.

The post Has Iran Just Tested a Nuclear Bomb? appeared first on LewRockwell.

That most of us live in a low-value, low-trust economy of shoddy goods and services hidden beneath high-tech frictionless, faceless transactions is not recognized.

Social trust manifests in all sorts of ways, and it’s often amorphous and difficult to measure. We sense its presence or absence, but exactly what is it? Is it our trust in strangers, or our trust in institutions, or a warm and fuzzy feeling that our society isn’t falling apart?

In several critical ways, social trust isn’t warm and fuzzy, it’s all about the money, honey. In high-trust societies, transactions are frictionless and low-cost. In low-trust societies, transactions must go through multiple levels of verification, trusted third-parties, etc., each of which is costly.

Correspondent Bruce H. illuminates the differences between high-trust and low-trust transactions:

“There must be a high degree of social trust in order to make business transactions. If you think the other person is likely to take the goods and not pay, you are not likely to engage as freely, and the “shadow work” of ensuring that a transaction is honored drains the economy.

In cultures where cunning and deception are seen as laudable, business transactions are slow, proceeding only carefully, in a time-consuming way because both parties have to ensure the other’s compliance at every phase of the arrangement. This is costly.

In cultures where personal honor take primacy, a quick handshake is sufficient and work can begin immediately, confident that payment or the exchange will proceed to both parties benefit.

That, in essence, is what my father told me about his experience of doing business around the world.

There are places where you just discuss what is needed and agree on a price shake hands and write it down, there are places where you make sure the paperwork is in order and signed before you work, there are places where you make sure they have the money they claim they have and do all the paperwork and get some up front, and there are places where you make sure the money is in the hands of some secure third party (which, of course costs money) before you sign any agreements.

This also absolutely correlates between the relative wealth of these places. The places with the least trust are the poorest, those with the highest levels of trust are the wealthiest, all other factors being equal.”

It’s the money, honey: low-trust = poor, high-trust = wealthy as cumbersome, time-consuming costly transactions suck the life out of an economy.

There are other financial aspects of high-trust / low-trust societies. In high-trust economies, transactions are the core of the economy. The vast majority of transactions occur online or with complete strangers. In low-trust economies, trusted relationships are the core of the economy, and so business is conducted in much smaller circles which are connected by trusted go-betweens, often related by family or other close social ties.

This relationship-based economy was the model used in the ancient world, and it works well when trade and communications took months or even years. It works well on high-value transactions, for example, ships carrying luxury goods long distances. It works less well in a globalized, commoditized economy where the volume of transactions and business is enormous and covers a range of goods and services.

We can understand the U.S. economy as bifurcated into high-trust / low-trust segments which are difficult to tease apart unless we analyze the society and economy through the lens of class, an unpopular analysis in our supposedly classless culture.

Read the Whole Article

The post Social Trust: It’s Not Warm and Fuzzy, It’s the Money, Honey appeared first on LewRockwell.

Netanyahu is a despicable brute. But his slapping down of Macron is a priceless demonstration of how much of a non-entity the French leader is.

French President Emmanuel Macron got his marching orders with a smack on the head for daring to propose an arms embargo on Israel.

Israel’s obnoxious leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, reportedly mauled Macron in a phone call for having the nerve to make such a suggestion.

With his typical bluster and deceit, Netanyahu claimed that Israel was fighting for Western civilization against an “axis of evil” led by Iran and that Macron should be ashamed of himself for not backing Israel.

It seems that Monsieur President got the message and has now shut up.

Earlier, according to reports, the French leader said in an interview with French media that he would be pushing for a diplomatic solution in the region which would involve an international halt on arms exports to Israel: He said: “I think that today, the priority is that we return to a political solution, that we stop supplying weapons [to Israel] to lead the fighting in Gaza.”

Macron added: “Our priority now is to avoid escalation. The Lebanese people must not in turn be sacrificed, Lebanon cannot become another Gaza.”

In response, Netanyahu blew a gasket, claiming: “As Israel fights the forces of barbarism led by Iran, all civilized countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side. Yet, President Macron and other Western leaders are now calling for arms embargoes against Israel. Shame on them.”

As a matter of legal fact, Macron’s call for halting arms exports is correct. The International Criminal Court has ruled that the Israeli regime’s offensive on Gaza could amount to genocide. Under the Genocide Convention, all states are obliged not to facilitate in any way another state that is engaged in genocide. That means that all weapons exports to Israel should be banned.

The thing is, though, Macron’s talk is cheap and lacking in genuine concern for ending the year-long horror in Gaza, which has now been extended to Lebanon. For a start, as Macron admitted, France has negligible arms exports to Israel. That is not due to any ethical stance by France. It is simply because it has not been a supplier of arms to Israel in recent years, although France crucially helped Israel develop nuclear weapons illegally in the early 1960s – a reprehensible legacy that continues to destabilize and menace relations in the region.

So an embargo on Israel, as called for by Macron, will not impact French business in the slightest. Given that, it is, therefore, an easy call by Macron for a halt to weapons sales.

The United States and Germany are the two main arms suppliers to Israel, accounting for nearly 70 and 30 percent of all imports.

What is of more interest to Macron is “exporting” French prestige to the rest of the world.

Since Israel launched its genocidal assault on Gaza one year ago, the French leader has said nothing about stopping the international supply of weapons to the Israeli regime even as the death toll has increased to more than 41,000 people, mainly women and children.

The United States has the predominant leverage over Israel. Over the past year, the U.S. has supplied an estimated $18 billion worth of weapons to Israel, including warplanes and heavy bombs. The slaughter could have been stopped almost immediately if the Biden administration had used its leverage. European leaders like Macron could have put pressure on the U.S. to do so, but they didn’t. That is the real shame.

However, lately, what concerns Macron more is the expansion of Israel’s genocide to Lebanon is an embarrassing blow to France’s international image and illusions of grandeur. After all, Lebanon is a former French colony in the Middle East carved from the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France under the Sykes-Picot agreement (1916).

Lebanon has been an independent nation since 1943. Nevertheless, Paris maintains a strong influence on the country’s politics and business under a presumed “special relationship.” It must be galling for Macron, who waxes lyrical about his ambition of renewing “France’s Greatness” and geopolitical importance, to see the former French colony being blasted apart by Israel.

Over 2,000 Lebanese civilians have been killed in Israeli air strikes over the past two weeks. The capital, Beirut, is pounded with impunity by heavy Israeli bombardment. Millions of people are being forcibly displaced – and the French state is doing nothing to alleviate the suffering and violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty. Not that France did much when Israel previously invaded Lebanon in 1982 and 2006. But this time, given that Macron has made such a song and dance about restoring La France, the impotence in Paris is all the more humiliating.

Macron’s call for an arms embargo was initially welcomed by Middle Eastern nations, including Lebanon, Egypt, Qatar, and, of course, the Palestinians.

It seems the French president is aiming to create pressure on the United States and Germany to exert leverage on Israel and for France to get the kudos. He won’t get much change out of that move, as Netanyahu’s slap-down showed.

But another reason for the feebleness is that the ultimate aim is not a principled call to stop the conflict in Gaza or Lebanon but rather to salvage France’s reputation as a diplomatic player. Vanity is not a sound basis for anything substantial or meaningful.

Macron and Biden had announced a joint statement on September 25 calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon. The Israeli regime rudely ignored that call and proceeded to escalate the violence with the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and intensified bombing of Lebanon.

Lebanon is being torn apart by Israeli aggression and France is seen as not being able to do anything about it. Neither having any political courage to do anything nor having any political clout.

Netanyahu is a despicable brute. But his slapping down of Macron is a priceless demonstration of how much of a non-entity the French leader is.

And by extension that applies to all the European so-called leaders who sit on their hands while the U.S.-backed Israeli regime murders with impunity.

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

The post Macron Slapped Down for Cheap Talk on Israel Arms Ban appeared first on LewRockwell.

Watch this conversation between Alex Jones and two independent investigators, who have been trying to locate undocumented migrant children in the US. (Link in footnote)

Even if you think the stories about children being flown around the country on secret flights is an exaggeration, if you think the problem is being created through disinformation, watch the interview.

I believe you’ll come away convinced there has to be a massive federal and state manhunt for these kids—which of course is not happening. On purpose.

The two investigators, Anthony Rubin and Carlos Arrelano (Muckraker[dot]com), talk about going to houses where children are supposed to be, and the houses are boarded up and no one is living there.

They visit a house, the child they’re looking for isn’t there, but illegal alien men are living in the house with other migrant children. One of the kids says she knew the missing child, but she doesn’t know what happened to her. She’s gone. Who are these other migrant kids living with the men? Unknown.

Children are moved around the country in buses, and dropped off at 3 in the morning in a field or a park, and someone else picks them up and takes them away. There are no records.

—CHILDREN, separated from their parents who apparently still live in Guatemala or Honduras or who knows where. The kids are now in America, at the mercy of undocumented unknown adults.

Many kids.

Obviously, money is changing hands. People aren’t doing this for nothing.

Who would pay for these children? Slave owners, rapists, men who want to force the children to work for no pay.

The two investigators say Guatemala is a major problem. At some houses, the men, who are living with undocumented children, don’t answer questions directly. First, they speak among themselves in an old Guatemalan dialect no one else understands. Then they provide an agreed-upon answer in Spanish.

As we know, all this is happening because the southern border is wide open, and because unlimited immigration is unofficial federal policy.

Brainwashed Americans believe this kind of immigration is CHARITY. They proudly wear “their badges of honor.”

They refuse to look below the surface. Of course they do.

Because what they’d see would terrify them.

It would make them realize the charade they support is brutal and violent and inhuman.

FOOTNOTE: “Witness To Massive Child Smuggling Breaks Down On Air” | Infowars[dot]com | (here)

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The post Brutal: Migrant Children Missing in the US appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Dow closes at record high after blow-out jobs report” proclaimed NBC News on Saturday. It is not surprising the story would ignore all historical perspective, even history within the past few months. Incumbent presidents routinely take credit for job creation during their administrations and the gullible American public largely believes them. Perceived as prospectively continuing the policies of the Biden administration, good news from the jobs report helps Kamala Harris’s election chances.

It isn’t just ignoring that only two months ago, the Bureau of Labor statistics revised downward their previously reported number April 2023 – March 2024 by over 800,000 jobs (around 27 percent)*. It’s the surreal practice of even talking about supposed job creation over the past four years as if most of it weren’t just recovering jobs lost during the 2020 Covid lockdowns.

During March and April of 2020, the BLS reported net job losses of almost 22 million. Of course, these were not the type of job losses sustained during the 2008 financial crisis. These were people ordered to stay home by the government as part of a suite of responses to Covid that did nothing but harm.

As people were allowed to go back to work, there were several months for which the BLS reported millions of “jobs created.” But everyone understood these were mostly just people previously ordered to stay home returning to work. At least while Trump was still president.

But once Joe Biden was inaugurated, the national media started ignoring that reality and treating higher than usual jobs reports as vindication of “Bidenomics.” The truth is it took years just to recover the number of jobs lost during March-April 2020. The 22 million jobs reported lost during that period were not added back until September 2022.

That’s 31 straight months of zero jobs created on net while millions of undocumented mouths to feed entered the country. That is an economic blow the likes of which modern Americans have never experienced in their lifetimes. And the problems it created were by no means solved after September 2022 when the economy finally began adding new jobs on net.

One cannot just start counting jobs created after September 2022 as “net jobs.” One also has to recognize the opportunity costs of the lockdowns. During those 31 months of net zero job creation, one must count the new jobs that would have been created during those 31 months. Job creation 2016-2019 averaged about 184,000 jobs/month. Had the economy continued at that pace during those 31 months, an additional 5.7 million new jobs would have been created during that time.

Once you net out job creation from March 2020 – July 2024 (August and September 2024 numbers are still “preliminary”) and subtract the 818,000 job downward revision, the economy has created a net 4.8 million jobs since March 2020. That’s an anemic 94,000 jobs per month on average over the past four and a half years, about half the jobs/month the economy was reported to have been creating 2016-19.

Had the lockdowns never been imposed and job creation averaged what it had 2016-19, the economy would have created a net 9.7 million jobs March 2020 – present. It has created half that number.

This might explain why the public has failed to acknowledge the supposedly strong economy. Why the numbers say job growth is strong but no one “feels it.” Why the Biden administration “isn’t getting credit” for the supposedly wonderful job it has done.

The American economy has nowhere near recovered from the Covid lockdowns and won’t for many years to come. From one perspective, the economy never recovers from these disastrous government interventions because capital formation is like compound interest. If you artificially lower a number in the past, the losses going forward are exponential.

Historians tend to ignore these considerations. The official story still says the New Deal saved the economy rather than dealt it a blow comparable to the Covid Regime’s. It is likely they will write the history of the 2020s in much the same way, with Fauci and company the heroes rather than destroyers of the wealth of an entire generation.

It is not until the public finally begins to consider what Bastiat called “that which is not seen” that anything will change. And that seems a long way off.

*As the job losses won’t be finalized by the BLS until February 2025, the BLS web page does not yet reflect the 800,000 jobs downward revision.

This originally appeared on Tom Mullen Talks Freedom.

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