Saturday morning, we toodled over to the next town, Salem, New York, (pop. 2,612, per capita income $19,499) fifty miles northeast of Albany, to catch one of the hundreds of “No Kings” demos across the nation sponsored by Shanghai-based software billionaire Neville Roy Singham, Walmart heiress Christy Walton, Paypal partner (and Linked-in founder) Reid Hoffman, and father-and son team, George and Alex Soros.

Speaking of A;ex Soros, Saturday also happened to be his wedding day, to Huma Abedin, former Hillary Clinton sidekick and BFF (and ex-wife of disgraced congressman and convicted sex offender Anthony Weiner.) The nuptials happened at the Soros’s Hamptons estate. Cable news covered the fabulous cavalcade of black Escalade limousines conveying the super-elite of Progressive-Wokery to the glorious event. The New York Times, with its habitual lack of self-awareness, styled the event thusly:

“Liberal royalty?” Say, what. . . ? There is such a thing? In the party of No Kings? What’s the deal, then? Just princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, earls, viscounts, baronets, lairds, marquis, knights and dames, and so on. Yet, no king? Well, if you asked the fortunate wedding guests, they might aver to Hillary Clinton as a sort-of Queen of the party, or maybe just Queen Bee. As for former president Bill, he appears to be undergoing slow-motion mummification, so he currently occupies an ambiguous zone between this world and the next, with no mojo left for kingly duties. Anyway, it rained that day down on the South Fork.

Meanwhile, back upstate, cloudy and cool but no rain, some two-hundred wrathful plebeian souls gathered at the one-stoplight-intersection in little Salem, these days mainly a farm community, the old railroad engine repair shop defunct, and many good non-farm jobs with it, the usual story in this corner of the country. The hopped-up crowd was well-supplied with signs and placards, many avouching Down with Oligarchs! — which, oddly, seemed a sort of backhanded reference to billionaires of the very type underwriting the day’s festivities, not to mention the super-rich “liberal royalty” gang gathered for the Soros-Abedin royal wedding.

But that was only one of the many incongruities haunting the mass protest against the abhorred president, Mr. Trump. For instance, one poor fellow on the southeast corner of South Main and East Broadway inveighed mournfully against the suppression of free speech, apparently unaware of the epic efforts 2021 to 2025 by “Joe Biden’s” underlings to censor the Internet and de-platform the regime’s critics (including yours truly, whose website was mysteriously destroyed in October 2024).

The moiling mob was overwhelmingly geriatric, perhaps reflecting the backwater demographics of a region with few job opportunities for young folk. A spirit of revival bubbled among them as they reenacted old rituals of the hippie halcyon, the grand old days of the Vietnam War protests, when thousands gathered to levitate the Pentagon. Only now, their sentiments and beliefs exhibit a striking and peculiar inversion of the ancient 1960s credos that drove the beloved Movement.

I know because I was there, on campus, between 1966 and 1971. Back then, the Left opposed the wicked “establishment” and all its nefarious operations, from the war in Vietnam to the FBI’s underhanded suppression of political dissent. These days, strange to relate, the Left stands in staunch defense of the Deep State, big government (and its prodigious corruption), and the politicization of the FBI and CIA.

Their placards lament the withering of “our democracy,” yet they were just fine with “Joe Biden” selecting a 2024 presidential candidate for them — with no customary vote by party delegates, or anything approaching an open democratic process. They shout for the “rule-of-law,” except when it concerns special persons such as the former president’s crackhead, bag-man son. They’re all for the colossal grift around the war in Ukraine. And don’t forget they supported vaccine mandates, the closing and ruination of small businesses (while Walmart and Taco Bell were allowed to thrive), and all the other hypocritical, fraudulent, lethal actions of Covid-19 policy.

The object of the “No Kings” shuck and jive, you might suspect, was to prepare so many friction-points around the country that violence was apt to erupt in order to create a George Floyd-type martyr figure, so as to re-energize the Left for another sustained summer of riots. There was plenty of mayhem around the country but, alas, no martyr emerged, no apotheosis of “progressive” victim-hood. . . only the peculiar murder of two Minnesota legislators by an apparently deranged Democratic party fringe character, the sometime evangelist and Tim Walz appointee, Vance Boelter.

$65-million is a plausible number for the money spent by billionaires and political NGOs on the nation-wide “No Kings” project. A lot of that was paid directly to protesters for just showing up. (They ran ads on Craig’s List to enlist players.) None of them showed up in the Hamptons, though, where “liberal royalty” assembled for their special event. You’ve got to think that they missed something rather bigly there.

Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.

The post King-less? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Chewing the Fat About Cutting the Bloat at the Nuclear BBQ

Mer, 18/06/2025 - 05:01

Vacuous Pete read the US DoD FY 26 posture statement last week, explaining how the feds will spend the new trillion dollar US defense budget. The SecDef seems unaware of the idiocy, and the irony, of what he presented to Congress.

We may quibble on whether it was idiot-speak, mendacity, or simple ignorance. I’m agreeable that in Pete’s case, it could be all three.

First we have the sheer inability to identify the problem. Pete says, “The $961.6 billion budget put forward by the President reverses four years of mismanagement and underinvestment.” I’m not sure Pete has looked at Pentagon budget trends since WWII, but that budget has a long established pattern. Robert Higgs’ “ratchet effect” is clearly shown in this chart:

As Charles Hugh Smith explains, ratchet-systems produce bloat that is easy to expand and hard to reduce. “Four years of mismanagement” tells us that the DoD has no idea what is happening, what to do, and will proceed accordingly. Smith writes that over time, only the “delusionally incompetent” remain inside these systems “…[leading] to the substitution of PR and artifice for actually reducing the organization to a sustainable level, for what’s required is not just a revised spreadsheet but an entirely new culture and value system.”

Point for Pete – he is good at substituting PR and artifice for the real change that is required.

Much of the latest posture statement is indeed delusional. Pete states,

The President has also been clear – we will not tolerate attacks on American vessels. To that end, we have completed a highly successful and focused campaign against the Houthis. Our message — and our goal — was clear: Stop shooting at our ships and we will stop shooting at you. I am pleased to report that the attacks on American ships have now ended.

The reason the Houthis stopped targeting our naval vessels is because we removed them from the line of fire after the loss of a few billion dollars in drones and other weapons, all without slowing the Houthis attacks on Israel-bound shipping.

Along these delusional lines, Hegseth takes credit for the diplomatic blackmail of Panama to give US vessels priority “Free and First” passage, posing this as a question of military strength. He goes on to emphasize US military protection of the border, even as border control in the US is and will remain a bureaucratic enforcement operation, not “defense” to be funded in a new way.

While he correctly wants a lean and nimble force, he ignores or is unaware that the DoD is little more than a massive jobs program for low wage earners all the way to up to retired generals and admirals, and the expensive stovepiped acquisition octopus that embraces them all, and directly attaches itself to half of every dollar spent in the Pentagon right off the top. In turn, this MIC provides back to the DoD small numbers of uber expensive offensive platforms that are impossible to efficiently maintain, both for us and for the many “allies” we pressure into buying our not-lean and not-nimble products.

Pete nods to a future “Golden Dome,” innocently or ignorantly foretelling another massive overpriced stovepiped acquisition, run by contractors, that will, as in the past, deliver no effective defense – a fact we will discover 15 years and a dozen trillion dollars hence.

Pete likes lean and nimble, but we suffer one General or Flag officer for every 3,300 active duty service members, twice the ratio we had during World War II. Beta AI could do the jobs of every one of our generals today, and not a soul would notice. Hegseth’s reduction of GO/FO by 20% is too few by half, and yet he offered no comparable reduction in the 900 global locations where US troops are stationed around the world.

He advocates a government-funded shipping industry, comparing the productivity of modern ships built by China (and he might also have mentioned Russia or India). Barring major acquisition reform, US subsidized shipbuilding circa 2026 will be terminally expensive and permanently technologically behind the times, a welfare scheme for the less competitive. Similarly, Hegseth advocates a next generation F-35, with a new number and name. We know what our system produces, but why doesn’t Hegseth? In terms of the nuclear triad, Hegseth recognizes it is old and probably dysfunctional, but seems to have no sense of how to deal with the most important aspect of real deterrence, nor the cost of reshaping or fundamentally reducing it. I mean how many nukes does a man need? Pete has no idea.

Underlying this obscene budget request is the silent witness, the fundamental missing link – and that is the absolute and urgent necessity of blowing up entirely our current USG approach to defense. To blow the OLDTHINK out of the water, and to truly ban the bloat, we must institute zero-based budgeting from the Pentagon, and a zero-based analysis of the real requirements of a republican defense. For 60 years we have designed and funded the military of a slowly collapsing and increasingly desperate empire. We would do far better to think about and identify the real defensive needs of a constitutionally defined Republic, the one our founders presumed, and our people deserve.

That said – the idiocy is clear, and it would not be a challenge for any American to name a thousand more sterling examples of Pentagon stupidity. Oh, and Pete said the Pentagon must pass, and will pass an audit by 2028. I hope the Congressional audience laughed at that joke. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

Three days after his briefing, Hegseth wakes up to find that the President was lying about diplomacy with Iran, and more interested in big beautiful nuclear war than the lean and nimble deterrent force he told Pete and the rest of the country about earlier. Oh the irony, or maybe Pete’s just a patsy. Either way, Trump colluded with Israel in last week’s surprise attack and regime decapitation, “justified” by an Iranian nuclear weapons program that Trump’s own DNI briefed Congress a few weeks earlier DID NOT EXIST. Israel’s attack was assisted in advance and in real time by US and Germany and probably other NATO forces, and passively supported by the neutered neighbors of Israel, including a former ISIS commander with significant American blood on his hands. As Trump would say, so sad. Hegseth appealed to America First as Trump voters understood it, but Trump himself clarified that he “developed” American First, and it means whatever he says it means.

When your president is a real life Humpty Dumpty and the elites openly parasitical, when your empire is collapsing under the predictable trifecta of corruption, debt, and arrogance, what can we the people expect?

I think instead of listening to Pete Hegseth, we would do better to listen to Petyr Baelish.

Sometimes when I try to understand a person’s motives, I play a little game. I assume the worst. What’s the worst reason they could possibly have for saying what they say, or doing what they do? Then I ask myself, ‘how well does that reason explain what they say and what they do?

Along those lines, I think before building great ships, the USG will facilitate an all expenses paid funeral at sea for our oldest carrier, the USS Nimitz, as it diverts post haste to the current theater of war. This event may be facilitated by Israel aching for a false flag every couple of decades, or another psychopathic ally. War will intensify, and a nuclear attack or accident will “allow” the empire of fools to justify domestic totalitarianism, and continued endless war. I’m pretty sure that Alex Karp will help out, given his view that the tech industry has “a moral duty to work with the US government,…an affirmative obligation to support the state that made its rise possible.”

There is nothing new here. The evil of the state is perennial, persistent, with a taproot to hell. Henry David Thoreau wrote – perhaps with a future Pete Hegseth in mind as he tries to “fix” the Pentagon –“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one striking at the root.” The time for hacking the branches of evil is coming to an end, perhaps an abrupt end. We must strike the root.

The post Chewing the Fat About Cutting the Bloat at the Nuclear BBQ appeared first on LewRockwell.

America First – We Hardly Knew Ye

Mer, 18/06/2025 - 05:01

The Donald called Fed Chairman Powell a “numbskull” last week and deservedly so. But to paraphrase an old adage, when the cap fits said numbskulls tend to wear it themselves.

Surely, that’s where we are this morning upon Israel’s reprehensible attack on Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities and decapitation of its military and scientific leadership. Self-evidently, the attack was well known to Trump and tacitly greenlighted by him during the course of several conversations this past week with Netanyahu himself.

And that’s no armchair surmise. The Donald has been yapping like a banshee this morning telling one and all reporters that the attack fits like hand-in-glove to his “art of the deal” maneuvers. It may look like more war but its actually just part of the Donald’s brilliant pursuit of peace. Says he.

Thus, he told CNN’s Dana Bash that he had given Iran 60 days to capitulate to his demands regarding a new nuke treaty, and yesterday was day 61. The implication, of course, is that he gave them fair warning and therefore Tehran needed a 2X4 between the eyes for failing to satisfy the Great Dealmaker on the Potomac on a timely basis.

Likewise, ABC’s Trump-hating Jonathan Karl also got a heads up to the effect that –

I just spoke to President Trump and asked him about the Israeli attack on Iran. Here’s what he told me: “I think it’s been excellent. We gave them a chance and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come. a lot more.”

Moreover, just in case the message through these ordinarily hostile reporters wasn’t clear, the Donald let loose on social media a fusillade of bombast, bravado and sheer juvenile depravity that has never before been issued from the Oval Office in such raw and unfiltered form.

No, MAGA fanboys, these aren’t the art-of-the-deal words of even a blustering real estate developer from the backstreets of Queens. Indeed, we can’t imagine even in the Queens that you would expect an amicable cancellation of your plumber’s bill after you put a contract out on his brother-in-law.

And yet and yet. What in the hell is the Donald doing bringing America to the brink of yet another Forever War against a country that is in no way, shape or form a threat to the Homeland Security of the United States?

Indeed, the whole Iranian imbroglio is a direct repudiation of the entire America First proposition. Iran’s capacity to inflict military harm on the US homeland amounts to zero, nichts, nada, nugatory, nein and nyet. So why is POTUS giving bellicosity a new name by threatening that American weapons will be used to wipe Iran from the face of the earth?

For want of doubt, here are the facts about Iran’s nonexistent military threat to the American homeland. First, it has no blue water Navy such as aircraft carriers or world-scale cruisers, destroyers and attack submarines.

Instead, its Navy operates almost exclusively in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea and consists of a mix of small, coastal patrol boats including corvettes, frigates and mini submarines, totaling at most 100,000 tons of displacement. That figure is just 2% of the 4.5 million tons of Blue Water capacity embedded in the US Navy’s 11 aircraft carriers, 70 destroyers, 22 cruisers and 66 attack submarines, among others.

Secondly, Iran also has no long range bombers at all with a range of more than 2,800 kilometers. Even then its most advanced longer-range aircraft, the Su-24MK, is for the most part not operational, owing to lack of spare parts and maintenance. Only 20 of possibly 40 of these longer range aircraft are currently believed to be air worthy combatants.

Finally, while it does have upwards of 1,400 to 2,700 short and medium range missiles, none of these have the range to come anywhere near the continental US. That’s because the distance between Tehran and Washington DC, Chicago and Denver is 10,050, 10,300 and 11,100 kilometers, respectively, but Iran posses zero intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of spanning that distance.

In fact, the range on its numerous short range (SRBM) and medium range (MRBM) missiles is only 300 to 2,000 kilometers. That is, the maximum extent of Iran’s military attack perimeter is not even the Strait of Gibraltar, which is 5,000 kilometers from Tehran!

Iran’s Inventory Of Short And Medium Range Ballistic Missiles

Sources: Estimates are derived from U.S. Central Command (2023 testimony by Gen. Kenneth McKenzie), Iran Watch, CSIS reports, and posts on X. Quantities are approximate due to Iran’s secretive program.

So when we say zero military threat to the US homeland we mean exactly that. The only thing Iran can really threaten is a limited number of US bases, military personnel and naval ships that Washington has foolishly put in harm’s way in the middle east, Persian Gulf, Red Sea and Mediterranean.

Yet and yet. All of those military assets are about the operations of Empire, not the military security of the American homeland situated between the great ocean moats.

So what we really have unfolding in front of our very eyes is a real world demonstration of the folly of Empire, global alliances and allies and the related costly, unnecessary military footprint that spans the globe. Indeed, even as we write American lives at these unnecessary middle east military locations are being put in harms’ way by a decision in Washington to help Israel intercept the Iranian missiles that have been launched by Tehran in response to Israel’s foolish attack – with weapons also supplied and largely funded by Washington.

The very idea that Netanyahu had no choice but to preemptively attack Israel because it faces an existential threat from a purported imminent Iranian “breakout” of nuclear weapons is not merely a blatant lie; it’s unadulterated horse shit.

Exactly 90 days ago, in fact, the one utterly honest official in the vast US intelligence community, Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, made it very clear that there is no Iranian “breakout” that even remotely justifies Israel’s blatant act of war:

“We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Supreme Leader Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003,”

So there is no way in god’s green earth that the above declaration has changed in three months, thereby purportedly necessitating last night’s attack. To the contrary, the attack was “preemptive” alright, but what was being pre-empted was the slight possibility that the sixth negotiating session between the White House and Iran scheduled for this weekend might have led to a “breakthrough” of another kind – that is, a pathway to a detente between Washington and Tehran.

So there you have it. The decades long Israeli lie about Iran’s nuclear ambitions was in danger of being exposed and discredited for all the world to see. So once again the tail of a reckless “ally” wagged the dog of Washington’s War Machine into yet another chapter of death and mayhem.

Moreover, Tulsi Gabbard’s forthright report of three months ago was just yet another reiteration of what the national intelligence community has been consistently saying since 2007. That’s when the National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) issued at that time caught even George W. Bush short just as he was on the verge of attacking Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons sites in 20o8.

To remind, these periodic NIEs represent a consensus of all 17 US intelligence agencies on salient issues. And on the matter of Iran’s nuclear weapons program the 2007 edition could not have been more unequivocal:

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program…

Moreover, the documentary proof of that statement was thoroughly investigated by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) after the 2015 Obama nuke deal. The latter gave the IAEA full access to Iran’s facilities and records. Its report then re-validated that the Iranian weapons program was indeed disbanded in 2003.

Likewise, there is the aforementioned matter of “Dubya’s” memoirs. Near the end of his term in office, George W. Bush was under immense pressure from his vast stable of neocon warmongers to authorize a bombing campaign against Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities. But once the 2007 NIEs came out, even our “mission accomplished” President in a bomber jacket was caught up short, as he confessed in his memoir, Decision Points.

Most revealingly, he complained bitterly that the NIE “tied my hands on the military side” and called its findings “eye-popping.”

Spelling out how the 2007 NIE had kept the US bombers at their bases, President Bush concluded with this kicker:

“But after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”

Well, yes. But even if Dubya couldn’t make the case, the neocons never stopped trying until they found their mark in Donald J. Trump. And that gets us to the current fraught moment, which follows inexorably upon Trump’s foolish cancellation of Obama’s nuke deal during his first stint in the Oval Office – notwithstanding the fact that the IAEA had affirmed repeatedly that Iran was complying with the agreement.

Indeed, it is worth recalling the completely bogus reasons giving for the 2018 action by Trump because the same lies and distortions stand behind the White House’s current posture of green-lightening and supporting Netanyahu’s dangerous aggression.

In this context, it should be evident to all except blind MAGA fanboys that on most issues the Donald knows little and studies less. Instead, he just declares things to be so, whether true or not; and more often than not to be the fruit of “bad deals” made by his predecessors.

But when it comes to Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the Donald’s first term whopper was just plain risible. He called it the very worst deal in history including England’s so-called surrender at Munich.

Of course, that was absolutely irrelevant because Iran is not remotely comparable to Nazi Germany. In fact, Iran is a nearly bankrupt country that has no capability whatsoever, as we have shown, to threaten the security and safety of the citizens of Spokane WA, Peoria IL or anywhere else in the USA.

Its $425 billion GDP is the size of Indiana’s; its 500,000 man military is only slightly larger than the US national guard (now occupied elsewhere); and its $25 billion defense budget amounts to just 2.5% of US defense spending.

And unlike Hitler at Munich who got most of what he wanted, the Iranians at Lausanne (where the Obama deal was negotiated) gave up almost all of what they had. That is, they made huge concessions on nearly every issue that makes a difference including the number of permitted centrifuges at Natanz, the status of the Fordow and Arak nuclear facilities, the disposition of their enriched uranium stockpiles, the intrusiveness and scope of the inspections regime and on the matter of Iran’s so-called “breakout” capacity.

While every signatory of the non-proliferation treaty has the right to civilian enrichment, Iran had agreed to reduce the number of centrifuges by 70% from 20,000 to 6,000 and actually did so after the deal took effect. Moreover, it effective enrichment capacity had been reduced by significantly more because the remaining Natanz centrifuges consisted exclusively of its most rudimentary, outdated equipment – first-generation IR-1 knockoffs of 1970s European models.

Not only was Iran not allowed to build or develop newer centrifuge models, but even those remaining were permitted to enrich uranium to a limit of only 3.75% purity. That is to say, to the generation of fissile material for power plants that is not remotely capable of reaching bomb grade concentrations of 90%.

Equally importantly, the agreement eliminated enrichment activity entirely at Fordow. The latter was Iran’s only truly advanced, hardened site that could withstand an onslaught of Israeli or US bunker busters, and it was agreed that zero enrichment activity would take place there, subject to full IAEA inspection.

Instead, Fordow became a small time underground science lab devoted to medical isotope research and crawling with international inspectors. In effectively decommissioning Fordow and thereby eliminating any capacity to cheat – what Iran got in return was at best a fig leave of salve for its national pride.

And yet and yet. Even that was too much for the Israelis hardliners, who bombed the Fordow labs to smithereens last night—just to make sure.

The disposition of the heavy water reactor at Arak was even more dispositive. For years, the War Party had falsely waved the bloody shirt of because “plutonium”. That is, the civilian nuclear reactor being built there was of Canadian “heavy water” design rather than GE or Westinghouse “light water” model. Accordingly, when finished it would have generated plutonium as a waste product rather than conventional spent nuclear fuel rods.

In truth, the Iranians couldn’t have bombed a beehive with the Arak plutonium because you need a reprocessing plant to convert it into bomb grade material. Needless to say, Iran had no such plant, no plan to build one, and no prospect for getting the requisite technology and equipment.

But even that bogeyman was dispatched by the Obama nuke deal that the Donald saw fit to shit can the first time around. The 2015 deal required Iran to destroy or export the heavy water reactor core of its existing plant and replace it with a core that cannot produce material which can be reprocessed into weapons grade plutonium. All of these requirements were subject to rigorous international inspection and, in fact, were actually complied with before Trump cancelled the deal.

As to its already extant enriched uranium stock piles, including some 20% medical-grade material, 97% of this material was to be disposed of, and that requirement was complied with, too. Iran ended up retaining only 300 kilograms of its 10,000 kilogram stockpile—an amount that could be readily stored in the Donald’s wine cellar at Mar-a-Lago.

The deal’s real clincher, however, had been Iran’s agreement to what amounted to a 20-year cradle-to-grave inspection regime encompassing the entire nuclear fuel chain. International inspectors were allowed to visit Iran’s uranium mines and milling and fuel preparation operations; its enrichment equipment manufacturing and fabrication plants; and the storage facilities for its centrifuge rotors and bellows production.

Beyond that, Iran had also agreed to and had complied with a robust program of inspections to prevent smuggling of materials into the country to illicit sites outside of the framework facilities. That encompassed imports of nuclear fuel cycle equipment and materials, including so-called “dual use” items which are essentially civilian imports that could be repurposed to nuclear uses, even peaceful domestic power generation.

In short, even a Houdini could not have secretly broken-out of the box contained in the 2015 agreement and then confronted the world with some kind of fait accompli threat to use the bomb.

To do so would have required diversion of thousands of tons of domestically produced or imported uranium and the illicit milling and upgrading of such material at secret fuel preparation plants. It would also have involved the secret construction of new, hidden enrichment operations of such massive scale that they could house more than 10,000 new centrifuges. It would have also required the building of these massive spinning arrays from tens of thousands of components smuggled into the country and transported to remote enrichment operations – all undetected by the massive complex of spy satellites overhead and covert US and Israeli intelligence agency operatives on the ground in Iran.

Finally, it would have required the activation from scratch of a weaponization program which has been dormant according to the aforementioned US National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) for more than a decade. And then, that the Iranian regime – after cobbling together one or two bombs without testing them or their launch vehicles – would nevertheless have been willing to threaten to use them sight unseen.

Needless to say, to have shit-canned the 2015 agreement you needed to be a raging, certifiable, paranoid boob, at best. Or something very different than the America First champion so loudly advertised by the Donald himself.

There simply was no way that the Iranians could have broken out of the control box established by the 2015 nuke deal. And even if they had managed to defy these immensely prohibitive constraints and get one or a even a few nuclear bombs, what in the world would they do with them?

Drop them on Tel Aviv? That would absolutely insure Israel’s navy and air force would unleash its 200 nukes and thereby incinerate the entire industrial base and major population centers of Iran.

At the end of the day, the idea that deterrence would fail even if a future Iranian regime were to defy all the odds, and also defy the fatwa against nuclear weapons issued by their own Supreme Leader, amounts to one of the most preposterous Big Lies ever concocted.

So in cancelling the deal, what Trump really did was embrace the immense tissue of unwarranted demonization of Iran that the Empire Firsters had fabricated over the course of three decades. And now after unilaterally abrogating the 2015 deal and slapping brutal sanctions on Iran that has left its economy badly bruised, it is claimed that in recent months the Iranians have not complied with the agreement Trump canceled, and have therefore been sanctioned by the IAEA,

Well, for crying out loud, why would they?! Iran isn’t living up to the letter of the Nuclear nonproliferation treaty perhaps because Israel, which isn’t even a signatory and which has some 200 odd nukes illegally, has threatened to obliterate even the remnant of a civilian nuclear program that Tehran still possesses.

Indeed, seven years later Trump is repeating the same errors by green-lighting the Israeli attack rather than doing the one thing that has been in the so-called “tool kit” of the White House all along.

The fact is, Trump could have told Netanyahu that if he proceeded with the attack right in the middle of his negotiations to revive the nuke deal, then the $4 billion per year of US aid would be cut off, no munitions or spare parts would be supplied to the IDF and the US would introduce in the UN a resolution condemning any Israeli attack.

Needless to say, that would have stopped this chapter of the Forever Wars cold. But, instead, we are now stumbling into a far more dangerous conflagration than ever before – all on the basis of the “breakout” lie that has been promulgated by the neocons and Israel Firsters for decades now.

As a reminder, he is a time line of the hoary lie that has been repeated over and over again from as early as 1995. The claim that a Iranian nuke was just around the corner via this NYT story was a blatant lie that has never stopped replicating.

Indeed, the above was just the beginning. It’s gone on and on and on for the last thirty years.

And now we have the Washington War Machine lining up behind a reckless attempt to defend that lie – just before Israeli’s own best friend ever in the Oval Office might have stumbled into a deal with Iran that would have finally marked this Big Lie’s final demise.

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The post America First – We Hardly Knew Ye appeared first on LewRockwell.

Illegal Alien Economy: How Foreign Nations Exploit U.S. Borders For Profit

Mer, 18/06/2025 - 05:01

This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group

Well, the tensions over mass illegal immigration in the US are finally coming to a boil after 4 years of open borders under the Biden Administration and six months of obstruction by Democrat politicians and judges interfering with deportations. The progressive establishment position on illegals is clear: Make it as easy as possible for anyone to enter the country and make it as difficult as possible to kick them out.

I published a comprehensive overview on the riots in California last week, but I also want to examine how we got here in the first place and why many foreign governments are so intrusive when it comes to US immigration policies.

Think about it for a moment and ask yourself: Why is the rest of the world in our business? Why do they care if we have tighter controls on borders and stricter vetting for immigration? Why don’t foreign governments also complain about Chinese immigration standards, or Saudi Arabia’s standards, or even Australia’s standards? Why does everyone else think they have a say in how America handles immigration?

There are, of course, ideological agendas at play here, but I believe the primary reason for foreign meddling is economic, specifically when it comes to Central America and South America.

I’ve covered these issues briefly in the past but I think it bears repeating that the US is widely considered a kind of global buffet or a wounded gazelle – The entire jungle shows up to take a bite. We’re the cash cow of the planet ready to be milked. The exposure of organizations like USAID proved beyond a doubt that Americans pay for the ENTIRE WORLD. Not only that, but we get to pay for the inflation that is created for every dollar printed and circulated to fill the pockets of foreign interests.

This is the enduring curse attached to any country “lucky” enough to maintain world reserve currency status. When the Bretton Woods agreement was put in place after World War II there was an unspoken but clear trade-off, a devil’s bargain attached to the dollar’s ascension.

First, Americans were going to have to pay the vast majority of defense spending in the new international order (which would ultimately become NATO). Second, America was gifted the ability to print dollars with wild abandon while mitigating hyperinflation by exporting dollars overseas to foreign banks and corporations. However, the expectation was that the US would have to spread the fiat wealth and feed the coffers of other countries through various subsidies, foreign aid and perhaps even open immigration.

The question is, how does mass immigration play into this arrangement?

The Economic And Social Steam Valve

Using Mexico as an example, we can see some obvious economic advantages for foreign governments if US immigration policies remain unenforced. Mexico has enjoyed an exceedingly low unemployment rate for several years, not just because untold numbers of US manufacturing jobs have been outsourced to the south, but because Mexico has the option of encouraging poverty stricken citizens who can’t get jobs to sneak into the US.

This serves a couple of purposes – It allows Mexico to maintain low unemployment stats. It saves them loads of cash when it comes to social welfare programs (they can send their poor to the US where American taxpayers foot the welfare bill). And, in terms of crime and civil unrest, Mexico is able to relocate their own discontented rabble over the border and let the US deal with those people instead.

The same goes for most of Central and South America. The benefits are just too numerous to ignore. The more open the US border is, the more every third world country near us has to gain.

Immigration Extortion

Most readers might not remember, but under the Biden Administration there was a concerted effort to spin the immigration crisis as a problem of financial instability and humanitarian response. Kamala Harris, the supposed “border czar”, spent years avoiding a visit to the southern border to witness the migrant surge first hand. Instead, she claimed that her energies were better spent on trips to other countries where she could “solve the problem at the source”.

This meant that the Biden Administration would not close the border, but they would pay off foreign governments with billions of dollars in subsidies that would theoretically trickle down to third world populations and keep them at home. These payoffs were also designed to make South American and Central American politicians stop encouraging their people to enter the US illegally.

Of course, Democrats didn’t really want the migrant caravans to stop, but this was a way for them to pretend as if they were taking action. Meanwhile, foreign leaders were licking their chops; the more migrant mobs tried to force their way across the US border, the more subsidies they could extort from the progressive controlled US government. The incentives for them to continue sending migrant trains north were overwhelming.

The Golden River Of Remittances

While scrolling through Mexican news sources I came across the story that inspired this article: Last week Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum seemingly threatened the US over a proposed tax on “remittances”. If you are not familiar with remittances, they are basically any monies earned (or stolen) within the US by non-citizens and transferred to their home countries.

I have related my own experiences with this issue in past articles – As a construction worker and contractor in Florida in my early 20s I witnessed extensive hiring of illegals who were paid around 30% less than American workers. Most of those guys would end up at the local Winn-Dixie supermarket every payday to cash their checks and wire money to Mexico through Western Union. There would be a long line of them around the front of the store, all of them sending money outside the US.

Now imagine this is happening in every town in the US with illegals, and you’ll start to understand the sheer scale of remittances. The tax on remittances that is currently under review is only around 3%, but some law makers want to the tax closer to 15% or more. In response Sheinbaum has turned hostile, arguing that Mexicans would “mobilize” in reaction to any fees.

“If necessary, we’ll mobilize. We don’t want taxes on remittances from our fellow countrymen. From the US to Mexico…”

The socialist president did not specify what she meant by “mobilize”, but many commentators assert that this is a threat to mobilize unrest among migrants already within US borders. As we have seen in Los Angeles in the past few days, the threat is not idle. It seems like madness, until we look at how much US cash is actually transferred outside the US by migrants.

Mexico alone received at least $65 billion in remittances from the US last year. In other words, the Mexican economy enjoys a yearly boost of around $65 billion just by encouraging illegals to cross the border. To put this in perspective, Mexico’s entire social welfare budget each year is around $30 billion; less than half of what the country gets through remittances from the US. Mexico’s tourism industry generates around $32 billion annually; again, less than half of what remittances generate.

Total foreign remittances to Mexico make up around 5% of their annual GDP and it is the largest single source of income from foreign sources.

Also keep in mind that a dollar buys a lot more in Mexico than it does in the US. Want to buy a house in the US? The median price for a three bedroom home is $320,000. In Mexico, a three bedroom home goes for $100,000 (often less). This is yet another reason why illegals march across the border; even when working for 30% less wages they still earn triple the buying power or more in their own country by wiring dollars back home.

Sheinbaum understands full well that her country is highly dependent on the underground cash flows from the US through illegal workers. The same goes for numerous Central and South American countries. The expectation attached to the current financial order is that Americans get the world reserve currency, but Americans must foot the bill for nearly every other allied nation. This dynamic is changing and the parasitic feeder nations don’t like it. They’ve become so dependent on easy cash from the US they don’t know how to function any other way.

Panic is certain. The economics of illegal immigration are ugly. Some progressives will argue that open borders are “good for America” because remittances and cash outflows help reduce inflation. Obviously that’s not the case, otherwise inflation would have been non-existent under the Biden Administration with its unprecedented migrant invasion.

Not only that, but the mere presence of millions of illegals creates a massive demand spike in goods, services and housing which drives up prices. Add to this the billions of dollars spent every year on subsides for migrants collecting welfare (around 60% of all migrants collect from one or more welfare programs upon entering the US), and you have am undeniable inflationary burden that does not need to be here.

Foreign governments want illegals here because they are yet another tool for bleeding the US for extra funds. They believe they are entitled to this money, but this methodology is about to change. They simply aren’t ready for what is about to happen.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

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Who Really Decides What “America First” Means?

Mer, 18/06/2025 - 05:01

The base and those top influencers who channel their interests (and at times add their own insight) arguably define MAGA, but Trump is the only one with the power to implement it at scale, and he now believes that he knows better than them.

Trump recently told The Atlantic that “considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that. For those people who say they want peace—you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon—that’s not peace.” This was in response to vehement opposition within MAGA over a possible hot war with Iran.

His remarks preceded Tucker Carlson telling Steve Bannon, both of whom have enormous influence over MAGA, that such a war would “see the end of the American Empire” and Trump’s presidency. That prompted Trump to respond as follows on social media: “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that, ‘IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!’” Quite clearly, MAGA is now divided over who exactly decides what “America First” means: Trump or top influencers who channel his base’s interests.

Trump’s most zealous supporters believe that every MAGA member should “trust the plan”, as QAnon infamously urged, and insist that their political hero knows better than they do due to his access to the world’s most classified information. By contrast, their critics – who also deeply respect Trump and are grateful that he’s back in the White House – believe that he was manipulated by anti-MAGA forces during his first term, thus explaining their worries about him possibly being manipulated yet again.

Regardless of whether or not the US gets involved in a possible hot war with Iran, which is what Netanyahu is very clearly lobbying for and might have expected given reports that Israel can’t destroy Iran’s nuclear program without American bunker-buster bombs, MAGA is now divided from within. Each faction believes that the other is disloyal to the movement in their own way by correspondingly doubting its figurehead and blindly going along with everything that he says.

While Trump formally leads MAGA, he only coined the movement’s name and popularized its platforms that far predated his first campaign, which is why the Tucker-Bannon camp of “dissidents” and “purists” have no qualms about challenging and even condemning him for deviating from these positions. At the same time, his most zealous supporters argue that current realities sometimes require “pragmatism”, “flexibility”, and even “compromises” on these same positions in pursuit of the “greater MAGA good”.

Trump is convinced (whether rightly per Israeli intelligence’s assessment or wrongly per US intelligence’s own) that Iran really is secretly trying to build nukes, which if true could greatly limit the US’ freedom of action in West Asia and thus – as he sees it – undermine his envisaged MAGA goals. The Tucker-Bannon camp disagrees and is concerned not only about the costs of a hot war with Iran, but also that this is what would undermine MAGA’s true (understood as domestic-centric) goals, not a possibly nuclear Iran.

The real divide within MAGA isn’t over Iran, but over who decides what “America First” means, with Iran being the catalyst for bringing this long-simmering debate to the forefront. The base and those top influencers who channel their interests (and at times add their own insight) arguably define MAGA, but Trump is the only one with the power to implement it at scale, and he now believes that he knows better than them. This zero-sum divide risks irreconcilably splitting the movement if one of them doesn’t relent.

This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

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U.S. Sends More War Machines to the Middle East To Counter Iran

Mer, 18/06/2025 - 05:01

The United States continues moving war machines to the Middle East as Israel continues its military bombardment on Iran.

Meanwhile, recent reports claim Iran is crying uncle and wants to negotiate a ceasefire with President Donald Trump, who can’t seem to decide if he wants to deal or not.

A U.S. defense official told the military newspaper Stars and Stripes on Monday that the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group is on its way to the Middle East “amid ongoing strikes between Israel and Iran.” The group includes four destroyers — the USS Curtis Wilbur, USS Gridley, USS Wayne E. Meyer, and USS Lenah Sutcliffe Higbee — and an air squadron comprising Growler and Super Hornet fighter jets and combat helicopters.

Reports also say the Air Force has sent 30 U.S. air-refueling tankers across the Atlantic. “Officials have described some of these movements as routine or related to NATO exercises in Europe,” Newsweek noted.

These recent moves are in addition to the USS Thomas Hudner destroyer that was ordered closer to Israel the day after it commenced its surprise attack The U.S. military has also been helping Israel shoot down missiles Iran has been volleying at the homeland, where several people have been killed.

Another Forever War?

The mobilization of these war assets has prompted some of Trump’s most recognizable and influential supporters to raise alarms about what many Americans fear is about to turn into another U.S. interventionist quagmire. Podcasters Steve Bannon, who worked for Trump as an advisor, and Tucker Carlson, who went on a live pro-Trump tour in 2024, have been using their platforms to hammer against the idea of further military involvement. Both men spoke Monday about the eerily similar narratives we’re hearing about Iran today that we heard about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. In response to the criticism, Trump has lashed out at Carlson, calling him “kooky.”

Following Israel’s strike Thursday evening (U.S. time), Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement denying U.S. involvement. The Iranians contested that story from the beginning. Interestingly, initial accusations included a claim that American refueling tankers were operating near Iran 24 hours before Israel struck.

On Monday, reporters asked the president about full-on kinetic involvement in the Middle East. He declines to answer directly, saying, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

The Iranians allege that the United States is already heavily involved. They claim the two longtime allies coordinated the attack. The fact that the United States knew of Israel’s coming attack is indisputable, as the U.S. government ordered non-essential personnel out of the region within 48 hours of the attack.

U.S. Involvement

Trump’s first public comments after Israel’s attack didn’t help quell suspicions of U.S. involvement. Instead of bolstering Rubio’s statement of American nonparticipation, the president bragged about the lethal efficiency of Israel’s American-made weapons and issued another call for a nuclear deal. But the following day, he did post a message on his Truth Social account that aligned with the official Washington narrative. He said:

The U.S. had nothing to do with the attack on Iran, tonight. If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the U.S. Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before. However, we can easily get a deal done between Iran and Israel, and end this bloody conflict!!!

— Trump Truth Social Posts On X (@TrumpTruthOnX) June 15, 2025

Also, an Axios report claims to have spoken to Israeli officials who said the two countries had used nuclear negotiations as a ruse intended to keep Iranian targets from moving to new locations.

It’s also unknown whether Israel’s attack was contrary to the wishes of the Trump administration. Some commentators have pointed to Rubio’s initial statement on the matter, which did not include a declaration of support for Israel, as a sign that Israel did what it did without the blessing of the United States. Trump also told reporters days prior that he asked Israeli leadership not to hit Iran while negotiations were underway.

Ready to Talk

As expected, after Israel attacked, Iran called off the weekend’s upcoming nuclear deal talks and said the idea was off the table so long as they were taking incoming fire. But fresh reports from the Wall Street Journal and Reuters claim that Iran has had enough punishment and is sending messages through Arab liaisons that it wants a ceasefire and is ready to head back to the negotiating table. The Journal reported Monday:

In the midst of a ferocious Israeli air campaign, Tehran has told Arab officials it would be open to returning to the negotiating table as long as the U.S. doesn’t join the attack, the officials said. Iran also passed messages to Israel saying it is in the interest of both sides to keep the violence contained.

Reuters reported that Tehran has asked Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman to push Trump into influencing Israel into agreeing to a ceasefire. In return, Iran will head back to the negotiating table in a more flexible posture. Reuters reported:

Gulf leaders and their top diplomats worked the phones all weekend, speaking to each other, to Tehran, Washington and beyond in an effort to prevent a widening of the biggest ever confrontation between longstanding enemies Israel and Iran.… Iran made clear to Oman and Qatar that it would not negotiate while it is under attack and will only begin serious negotiations once it has finished responding to Israeli strikes, the official said.

Since Thursday, Israel has killed up to 20 high-ranking Iranian military officials and up to 10 nuclear scientists. It has bombed multiple nuclear and military sites (although it hasn’t achieved its official mission of completely destroying Iran’s nuclear program). Israel has also had free reign over Iranian airspace, and despite receiving waves of missile and drone attacks on the homeland, Israel has been in undeniable command.

Trump confirmed Monday while attending the G7 Summit that Iran would indeed “like to talk.” “I’d say Iran is not winning this war and they should talk. And they should talk immediately before it’s too late,” Trump said. But later in the day, he told reporters on Air Force One that he wasn’t “too much in the mood to negotiate.” Whether Trump is deploying misdirection or displaying indecisiveness is anyone’s guess, perhaps even Trump’s.

Israel indicates that the time for negotiations has passed:

When asked if a diplomatic mechanism was being worked out to end the campaign, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told Army Radio on Monday: “It is a little early for that. You don’t go to war and look to end it three days later.”

Read the Whole Article

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Lies Used To Justify War on Iraq Get Reused To Wage War on Iran

Mer, 18/06/2025 - 05:01

Former CIA officer Larry Johnson opines:

I believe that Israel’s attack was part of a planned international intelligence and military operation, which included the participation and support of the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. We got the first clue on May 31, when a UN watchdog issued two reports designed to create a narrative that Iran is a rogue nuclear state:
…
This tactic was employed in 2002/2003 to gin up a justification to attack Iraq, who the US insisted had weapons of mass destruction. We now know it was a lie, but the propaganda was effective in producing support in the US and Europe to invade Iraq. We’re seeing a similar effort today, only this time Iran is being falsely accused of enriching uranium to build a bomb. The Iraq WMD lie, like the current calumny against Iran, only has one purpose… justify military action in order to achieve regime change.

I have previously detailed the current IAEA operation to blame Iran over some alleged nuclear contamination which were found more than two decades ago.

During the build-up to the 2003 war on Iraq there was another lie that famously used to ‘justify’ the attack.

It was alleged that Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with al-Qaeda, a terrorist group that had been created by the U.S. in Pakistan to fight against the Soviet supported government of Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda was alleged to have committed attacks in the U.S. on 9/11 2001. Associating Iraq, which had fought against al-Qaeda inspired groups, with al-Qaeda itself was the second most cited lie used to justify the U.S. war on Iraq.

It is no wonder than that a similar narrative is now suddenly being build with regards to Iran.

David Ignatius, the unofficial CIA spokesman at the Washington Post, was told to publish this nonsense (archived):

But Iran has other means to hit back. One that has received little attention is its relationship with al-Qaeda affiliates. According to former U.S. counterterrorism officials, Tehran has built good relations with the new “de facto” al-Qaeda “emir,” Saif al-Adel, who took over in 2023 after Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed. These former officials say Adel helped manage WMD planning for Osama bin Laden.

The al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen may pose a special danger. It’s headed by Saad bin Atef al-Awlaki, who posted a chilling video this month threatening U.S. officials. “Go after the scum of the earth and its greatest criminals,” he urged his followers, naming Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and former DOGE chief Elon Musk. “There are no red lines after all that has been happening to our people in Gaza,” he said. According to the Jerusalem Post, Awlaki urged Muslims in Europe and America to make sure there is “not a single safe place” for Jews.

Who would be those “former U.S. counterterrorism officials”? Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, or some other notorious liars?

Saif al-Adel, the “de facto” never declared leader of Al-Qaeda has since 2001 been rumored to be in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt and Iran where he allegedly was once under house arrest and later exchanged against Iranian hostages held by al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Over more than two decades the Shia Iran has fought the Sunni al-Qaeda wherever it could. Its operations against Sunni extremist in Iraq and Syria were largely wars against al-Qaeda affiliated forces. In Yemen Iran is allied with the Houthi who are fighting against U.S. supported al-Qaeda aligned groups in the south of the country. A similar situation exists in Lebanon where Iran supported Hizbullah forces have for years feuded against al-Qaeda aligned radicals.

To claim that Iran is now somehow in cahoots with Saif al-Adel, an alleged but never declared leader of a more or less extinct al-Qaeda, is blatant nonsense.

David Ignatius is a much read ‘opinion leader’. That he was told to trot out those nonsensical claims is a signal for others to pick up on them.

We can now expect lots of other second rated opinion writers to come up with similar tales.

It is, like the attempt to associated Iran with weapons of mass destruction, a narrative that will be used to further escalate the current regime change war on Iran.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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Netanyahu Claims Killing Iran’s Supreme Leader Would ‘End the Conflict’

Mar, 17/06/2025 - 19:26

Thanks, John Smith.

Antiwar.com

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Trump Attacks Tucker Carlson Over Opposition to Iran War, Says He Decides What ‘America First’ Means

Mar, 17/06/2025 - 18:33

Thanks, John Smith.

The Libertarian Institute

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US lawmakers blast Israel, urge against war with Iran

Mar, 17/06/2025 - 18:29

Thanks, John Smith.

Responsible Statecraft

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Post from TheBlaze

Mar, 17/06/2025 - 18:00

Thanks, Saleh Abdullah.

TheBlaze posted:

Reporter: “Do you have any response to Tucker Carlson criticizing you and saying you that were complicit in the war?”

Trump: “I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.”

https://x.com/theblaze/status/1934721600907301190

>Trump also ordered Tehran a city of around 10 million people to evacuate indicating that he’s preparing to order military action against them. He also called Carlson “kooky” because he doesn’t want to go to war against Iran for Israel over unproven claims about nuclear weapons.

https://x.com/NickJFuentes/status/1934756100613480643

They’re already trying to spin all of this activity in the Middle East as “America First” when it is obviously not. Pete Hegseth was on Fox News comically claiming that Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran was “self defense.” He was also trying to sell the idea that all this stupid stuff we are doing in the Middle East is somehow good for America when it is obviously not. It’s all for the benefit of Israel.

https://x.com/disclosetv/status/1934772275741434199

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